On Monday 4th April, in the run-up to the AV referendum, the Gladstone Club hosted a debate in the National Liberal Club on electoral reform which featured Lib Dem Voice’s co-editor Mark Pack and the Chairman of the Edmund Burke society, Ian Alston. Both took a look at the lessons which can be learnt from history by those deciding how to vote in the referendum.
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Suzanne Fletcher
Interesting and relevant article from Bradley Hillier Smith: this is the beginning, I don't have the article weblink so just copy an pasting 1st page. message...Cassie
An eye-opening, and brave, article. Changing the recording system seems a very simple change to make, and it seems crazy no government has ever done it....Nonconformistradical
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Whats the rss feed for podcasts for future episodes? (As opposed to the general RSS which includes it – but also a lot of entries with no media files associated))
An evening I was not enthusiastic about beforehand turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable. The subject matter held no particular interest as I opine it is an exercise in expensive futility. However, the contributors did an excellent job.
Tim Longman:
The following URL seems to have worked for me:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/category/podcasts/feed
The Gladstone Club used to meet at the National Liberal Club under the chairmanship of Roger Pincham http://www.liberalhistory.org.uk/people/roger-pincham/. The attraction for me was the excellence of the speakers which Roger managed to attract.
The economist and Guardian journalist Chris Huhne spoke several times, saying that he wanted to remove “Land Value Taxation from the control of its most enthusiastic adherents”, several of whom were members of the Gladstone Club.
Jo Grimond (then a peer) asked whether he was expected to speak for an hour. Roger replied “Not more than an hour”. It was Christmas.
Unusually a Tory MP was a member, describing himself as “a Gladstonian Liberal”, although in reality there was very little attempt to advance Gladstone’s policies such as irish Home Rule, on which Liberal MP Winston Churchill had spoken for an hour in Belfast in 1912 [ISBN 0385 607415].An obituary of Richard Body is in the Daily Telegraph 17/3/2018 page 33 columns 1-4, including the Prime Ministerial comment from John Major about “white coats flapping” http://iaindale.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/return-of-flapping-white-coats.html
“Maverick Conservative MP, fervent Eurosceptic, pig farmer, barrister and Quaker”.
The Daily Telegraph’s obituary depicts Richard Body as an amusing eccentric. They are right in that 8 MPs lost the Tory whip, but uniquely, Richard Body joined them. The numbers matter because John Major’s majority at the general election had been 21 and his attempt to discipline the ‘bastards’ who included Michael Portillo, then a possible future leader and John Redwood who did stand against John Major and is still an MP now.
The obituary in the Times on 19/3/2018, page 45, is much kinder “he repeatedly warned of the consequences of feeding the brains of sheep to cattle, pigs and poultry. His prophecy that ‘Nature will get its own back’ went unheeded as British farming became affected by successive crises brought on by salmonella poisoning and mad cow disease.” He was not a careerist, have stood down before the Tory landslide of 1959 and rejoined the Commons in 1966, a Labour landslide.
“He was persuaded by Compassion in World Farming to table a bill to outlaw the keeping of pregnant sows in narrow stalls or chains. It became law in 1999.”