By Steffan Aquarone | Published Thu 28th December 2017 - 12:44 pm
Local Party Organisers have a hard balancing act to maintain: running seemingly every aspect of election campaigns in their local area whilst also overseeing the long-term development of the local party.
It’s no wonder sometimes it can seem like an impossible task!
In preparing to recruit for a new Local Party Organiser (LPO) for North Norfolk and Great Yarmouth Liberal Democrats, I tried to think from scratch about the sorts of skills we were looking for. One of the first things we concluded was that we couldn’t expect to find everything in one person. So, having returned an executive with a huge …
By Kirsten Johnson | Published Thu 21st December 2017 - 12:56 pm
We are living in an increasingly automated, digitalised and interconnected world. I recently had the opportunity to tour an exhibit on automation, robotics, and future technology in Belgium.
There was a robot for feeding babies:
Not sure that I’d want this to be common-place. Bonding between parent/carer and child is ever so important. There is definitely a role for human contact in feeding a child.
A robot doll for reminding older people when to take medicines and eat. I can see the practical benefits here, but I would not wish a robot
By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 17th December 2017 - 9:00 pm
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 499th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (10-16 December, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
By Duncan Brack | Published Fri 15th December 2017 - 8:55 am
FPC met on Wednesday evening for its last meeting of the year. Taking place in the House of Commons, we were regularly interrupted by the results of votes on amendments to the Brexit bill – including the one the government lost!
Tuition fees
Vince Cable – who is chair of the FPC as well as party leader – pledged in his leadership election manifesto to look at party policy on the tuition fees system: ‘We need a solution that keeps the benefits of the current system – relating contributions to income and protecting university funding – but is fairer across the board, including for the 60 per cent who never go to university, many of whom pursue vocational options instead.’ As he reported to conference in September, he asked David Howarth (Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge 2005–10) to consider options for reforming or replacing the current system and present them to FPC as a basis for consultation within the party.
David’s paper, which he outlined to FPC, sets out the benefits and drawbacks of five options. FPC members raised a series of fairly minor issues, but overall were happy with the paper. I won’t attempt to summarise it here, as the options deserve to be read in detail, and it’s not completely finalised yet. We will publish it as a consultation paper in late January or early February and hold a consultative session around it at the Southport conference, on the afternoon of Friday 9 March. Local and regional parties might like to consider organising discussions on the issue in the spring and summer. Based on the feedback we receive, FPC will aim to put a policy motion for debate to the autumn conference.
Education policy paper
Lucy Netsingha, chair of the Education policy working group, presented a near-final draft of the paper, following our discussion on its outline proposals at our previous meeting. FPC members raised a few new issues and resolved a number of others. We left the remaining major issue, on the future of the schools inspection regime and Ofsted, for discussion at our January meeting, when Layla Moran, the party’s education spokesperson, should be able to join us. The paper will then be published and submitted for debate at the spring conference in Southport.
By Tom Arms | Published Fri 1st December 2017 - 8:55 am
Donald Trump has just shot the special relationship in the foot.
It will recover. The special relationship between the US and Britain does not rely on one president, one prime minister or even one monarch. They are all relatively ephemeral influences in a relationship based on centuries old links involving a common legal foundation, a common language (almost), cultural and family ties, and common philosophical roots.
But the hole in the foot hurts. It means that the relationship will now limp along at a time when frighteningly unstable events on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere in the world demands the normal good steady stride.
So what did Trump do and—more importantly– why? Well, for those who have just emerged from a spelunking trip, the president has been tweeting again, or, to be more precise, retweeting.
This time President Trump retweeted a video from Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of the far-right Britain First Party/movement. The video purported to show the violent activities of Muslim immigrants in Europe. Its clear purpose was to support the movement’s racist, hate-filled, anti-Islamic, anti-immigration message.
Setting aside the morality of such a goal, the videos had virtually no basis in fact. They were the fakest of the fake news that Trump loves to attack. But this did not bother the president or his spokesperson Sarah Huckabee who dismissed the credibility issue. It’s the threat that counts, she said, and the threat is real.
Threats, like medical diagnoses, must be based on hard facts. If a doctor makes the wrong diagnosis then the prescribed treatment will be wrong and the patient will die. If a politician—especially the president of the United States—makes his decision on false information then the resultant actions will cost lives.
By Kirsten Johnson | Published Thu 30th November 2017 - 5:05 pm
There was a recent article on Lib Dem Voice by Lord MacDonald on the review that is taking place on the Party’s disciplinary procedure. I would like to encourage you to take part if you have not already done so – I confess I only just got around to filling it in myself yesterday!
Regarding complaints, I have experienced elements of both ends of this process – having something done to me which I made a complaint about; and sitting on a disciplinary panel to decide whether charges against a party member were held or not.
Think of Africa, and you think of elephants. But sadly, these glorious and magnificent animals are under serious threat from poaching. It is estimated that one elephant is killed every fifteen minutes by poachers who are part of a chain of criminal activity that makes immense profits from selling ivory tusks onto the global market. This illegal ivory is distributed all around the world with routes mirroring those of drugs, guns and trafficked people. It is shocking to find that more raw and carved ivory is traded through the EU to …
By Bernard Aris | Published Tue 21st November 2017 - 10:32 am
In my previous postings about the D66 contribution on entering the new Dutch coalition government (here and here), I noted that D66 surprised everybody in Dutch politics by being able to have some profiling, and indubitably progressive programmatic points in the coalition agreement. Also, D66 was the main provider of women (cabinet) ministers; and they are highly qualified women politicians!
A brief “tableau de la troupe” of the new Dutch government…
It consists of two Liberal parties: the progressive, pro-European D66 and the more eurosceptical, car-owner oriented VVD (with prime minister Mark Rutte); and two Christian Democrat …
By Tom Arms | Published Fri 17th November 2017 - 9:44 am
Recent events in Zimbabwe have underscored the fragility, failings and dangers of unrepresentative government and the absence of the rule of law exercised by an independent judiciary.
Note the use of term “representative government” and “rule of law”.
Democracy is a much overworked term which is mainly used to describe the American and British political models. The existence of hundreds of different nationalities dictates that each nationality must find a form of representative government that suits its particular needs, history and culture.
But it must be representative, because as Zimbabwe has so accurately demonstrated, the problem with dictatorships is that they attract corruption, repression and failure.
Such governments succeed for a limited time as the governed compare the rulers to the incompetence of their predecessors. But gradually the misdeeds of the new dictator mount and are added to an increasingly explosive recipe. The dictator attempts to stay in power by repressing dissent and screwing down the lid on the simmering discontent.
But the issues feeding the discontent refuse to go away. Because of the repression they simmer all the more violently in a pressure cooker political environment without the escape valve of a representative system through which legitimate discontent can be expressed.
Editor note – comments are closed on this article, given its nature.
The consultation on the Party’s governance held in late 2015 laid bare a number of concerns which members had with our current disciplinary processes. The Federal Executive at the time took the decision to commission a separate review, which I was asked to chair in the autumn of 2016.
I am clear: the only way members will be well-served by a disciplinary process is if it is simple, transparent and efficient. It needs to be independent, a stand-alone process, and it needs to deal with complaints promptly with clear lines …
By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 15th November 2017 - 11:59 am
Yesterday, MPs debated International Men’s Day. Our participant in that debate was Jo Swinson. She would not ever be so shameless as to give a massive plug for her book, Equal Power, which is due out in February, but she used a lot of her speech to talk about how gender equality benefits both men and women. Men face pressures from our unequal world, she said, in mental health, employment, expectations of being the bread winner, of not showing emotion. She talked about the importance of both parents’ roles in children’s lives.
Here is her speech:
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for this important debate, Mr Austin. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) on introducing it and all Members who supported the subject being heard. It is the first time during which I have been an MP that we have had a debate on International Men’s Day. I was not in Parliament for the previous two occasions, so I am delighted to be able to take part. I hope this debate will become a firm annual fixture in the Commons, perhaps even taking place in the main Chamber in future years. These issues are important and deserve to be properly explored.
Inequality is endemic right across society. The stereotypes, assumptions and rigid constraints on behaviour affect both men and women, girls and boys, but our focus is often on how women and girls lose out from gender inequality. It is right that we explore those issues, but as we have already heard and will explore in the debate, it is absolutely the case that men and boys are also negatively affected by gender inequality. That is why gender equality is good for everyone. Sometimes in the media these issues are portrayed as men pitted against women, as if there is some battle of the sexes going on. In fact a world that is more gender equal would be good for everyone, and it is one that we should be able to join forces to create.
Health care, particularly mental health for men and boys, is a huge issue. Such problems can start very early on. In the opening speech, we heard statistics about how men are more likely to commit suicide, and indeed that is the biggest cause of death for men under the age of 45. That prompts us as a society to take a step back and consider what services we provide for men who find themselves in trouble. There is also an element of stigma, which we are starting to break down. In recent years there has been a welcome move towards talking more openly about mental health, and I know that hon. Members from across the House have spoken movingly in the Chamber about their own battles with mental health problems. That is to be welcomed, but no one would suggest that we are there yet when it comes to breaking down that stigma.
Importantly, we must also ensure that the services are there. For too long, mental health has been the Cinderella of the health service. It should be given parity with physical health problems, but mental health provision for individuals who need that support does not yet exist in our communities. Given that it is more difficult for men to seek help in the first place, if those support services are not there when they do, that is a double whammy.
In my constituency I am aware of an interesting project that has been set up specifically to help men with mental health difficulties. It is called Brothers in Arms, and when I spoke to its founders I was interested to hear their concern that not enough specialist services cater specifically for men and recognise some of the difficulties that men might have in coming forward. Such organisations—I know there are many others, particularly south of the border—and many strong campaigners and advocates are raising these issues and putting them on the agenda, but we must ensure that that is supported and progress accelerated.
By Andy Boddington | Published Mon 13th November 2017 - 8:01 am
In yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, Michael Gove sets out his plans for an environmental watchdog post-Brexit. As education secretary under David Cameron, he was seen as a career hungry politician willing to risk quality education in a drive to create academies, open creationist schools and dictate what was taught in lessons. He was marginally better as Justice Secretary, but not much. Now, he is well on the road to becoming Britain’s leading environmental champion.
This is not the first conversion on the environmental road to Damascus but it could be one of the most important.
By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 29th October 2017 - 9:15 pm
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 494th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (22-28 October, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.
With #metoo and the more open discussion about omnipresent harassment, such that most of us are guilty of ignoring ‘minor’ incidences rather than acting on them, there is now growing pressure to make misogyny a hate crime.
By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 22nd October 2017 - 9:59 pm
Liberal Democrats have played their part in making sure that the inadequacies of Universal Credit have been highlighted. In the debate on Wednesday, Christine Jardine said:
We hear that, instead of it helping, as many as 1 million children could be pushed into poverty by 2020. That surely cannot be the legacy that my Conservative colleagues would want to leave for future generations. They surely cannot be content with what they are hearing in this Chamber from constituents and even their own Back Benchers: that families are facing rent arrears and the threat of losing their homes; that there is anxiety about missed payments; and that people are choosing between making those payments or feeding their families.
Citizens Advice Scotland has already seen more than 100,000 people, one in five of whom have waited more than six weeks for payments—and only 14 areas in Scotland have UC. We stand at an important crossroads: the Government have the opportunity to pause UC, address its many flaws and say to those coping with the cruel reality of this botched benefit reform, “We hear you. We recognise the problem and we will fix it.”
Stephen Lloyd caught Iain Duncan Smith out one of those economic with the truth moments:
Secondly, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), a former Secretary of State, said that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has supported universal credit. I was a bit surprised by that, so I did a quick check. The JRF actually said that it would support universal credit if it was properly funded—I just mentioned the £3 billion—and if payment and waiting times were reduced, which is exactly what many people have been saying today.
The media reports yesterday that the Government is ready to make changes on the amount of time people are waiting for money, but that isn’t the only problem with Universal Credit. It’s interesting that Labour now accepts the principles behind Universal Credit – that it should end the poverty trap. Until the Tories got a majority, that’s exactly what it would have done. There was enough money in there to ensure that people could move into work and not lose their benefits. Then May 2015 happened and George Osborne took billions out of the system.
So, our Work and Pensions Spokesperson Stephen Lloyd and Leader Vince Cable have written to the the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to ask him to sort this out in the budget. They said:
By Geoff Payne | Published Thu 19th October 2017 - 3:16 pm
The Federal Policy Committee met again on 18th October 2017. This was a fairly heavy agenda this time and decisions were taken that will reach some distance into the future.
Association of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)
Peter Price presented a report on the work of ALDE. The organisation has a total of 59 member parties throughout the EU and members of the Liberal Democrats have traditionally played a significant role within it. It is governed by a Bureau, a Council and a Congress, the latter meeting annually. Motions and papers can be submitted and there are usually quite a lot of them, often on what are …
By Tom Arms | Published Sun 8th October 2017 - 12:39 pm
Please, please, Mr. Trump, think twice before opening your mouth next week. Think again before opening your twitter account and a fourth time before turning away from the teleprompter to extemporaneously voice your thoughts.
Carefully consider all the options that Rex Tillerson says he has prepared for you. And think about what General Mattis told Congress about the wisdom of scrapping the Iran nuclear deal.
At stake is so much more than the appeasement of your political base and the fulfilment of a shoot-from-the-hip-vote-catching campaign promise.
Your decision will have repercussions on relations in the wider Middle East, with North Korea, Europe and America’s standing in just about every corner of the world.
Let’s start with the pressing problem of North Korea. You want—everyone wants — a deal which de-nuclearizes North Korea. But agreements involve at least two sides and requires both to stick to the deal and be known as the sort of government which keeps its promises.
Agreed, North Korea has a bad record in that department. But China doesn’t; and as you have repeatedly said: With China on your side, North Korea could be forced into keeping its part of the bargain.
By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 1st October 2017 - 9:17 pm
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 490th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (23rd-30th October, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
By George Kendall | Published Thu 28th September 2017 - 3:19 pm
Have you ever heard the following?
“The government should stop subsidising exploitation wages.”
“I work hard for my money. Families on child tax credits need to get up off their backsides.”
If you’ve canvassed on council estates you probably have. And, no doubt, the #labservatives have too, which is why both of them supported massive cuts to welfare.
There are good reasons for continuing with in-work benefits. The policy of both Labour and the Conservatives is to raise the minimum wage and cut benefits. This will result in employers replacing lower paid employees with automation; reorganising
By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 27th September 2017 - 8:19 pm
As if we needed any further proof that the best people were born in 1967 after Nick and I celebrated our Golden Jubilees this year, it is Willie Rennie’s special day today.
We have to remember that Willie has done a lot more with his half century than fool around with cute animals. In 1993 he helped Diana Maddock win the Christchurch by-election. In 1997, he moved back up to Scotland where he was Chief Executive of the Party during the first devolution referendum. Then he moved to be Chief of Staff at the Parliament. All the early coalition achievements in Scotland – free personal care, free university tuition, had his fingerprints on them.
Then in 2006, he grabbed his place in history as a Lib Dem by-election winner. He audaciously took the Dunfermline and West Fife seat in Gordon Brown’s back yard after a dreadful few weeks for the party when we’d deprived ourselves of a leader and had a new tabloid scandal breaking roughly every half hour.
Since he became leader of the Scottish Lib Dems in 2011, he’s challenged the SNP Government on education and mental health, centralisation, justice, the Police, civil liberties and many other issues.
In the party, he put his own reputation on the line by championing radical diversity measures that saw Scotland elect 2 male and 2 female MPs this June. That took courage and determination on his part.
He has been the leader the party so desperately needed after the drubbing we took in 2011. He has campaigned with energy and always a massive smile in every part of Scotland.
And what is he doing on his birthday? Giving a speech on Brexit to the SCER Europa Institute. He’s challenging the SNP, Ruth Davidson the Scottish Conservative Leader who supported Remain and Scotland’s Labour leadership contenders to get on board with a Brexit Deal referendum. He says that such a vote would be entirely democratic and asks why we shouldn’t trust the people to give their opinion.
At the consultation meeting the Lords Party held at our Bournemouth conference, the strongest plea that came from round the table discussing Brexit was for more information on what is happening. We will take that back to the wider parliamentary party and our small and overworked group of researchers, and see what more we can do. There are some really good papers from Nick Clegg’s advisory group on the party’s web site, which explore the underlying issues; but the politics of the negotiations are moving and changing almost every week, and I guess that campaigners want usable material to respond to that. So meanwhile, here are some initial suggestions on how best to play the issues in different places.
The most important shift in the Brexit debate over the summer has been from general principle to detail, as negotiations get under way, and as the deadline of March 2019 begins to loom. Boris Johnson’s Telegraph article was a denial of where we are – sweeping aside the difficult questions about HOW we manage a mutually-advantageous relationship with the EU after we leave, to argue that those who say Britain will suffer if we don’t get an agreement are talking the country down, and that a close external association with the EU will make the UK ‘a vassal state’, in ‘a national humiliation.’ This, we must all repeat vigorously, is Brexit denial, like climate change denial: refusing to admit the detailed evidence that there are problems to resolve. The detail matters, we must insist against the ideological sceptics: crashing out without a deal will cause chaos in the UK economy, cost jobs, and endanger standards.
Let’s take the issue of border controls. 2.6 million trucks pass through Dover every year, five times as many as when the Single Market started in 1992. They spend an average of 2 minutes each passing the border. If this extended to 20 minutes each (the fastest one estimate suggests they could be cleared outside the customs union), the queues would soon stretch along the M20, supermarket shelves would empty (1/3 of our food is imported from the EU) and assembly lines would grind to a halt (Honda’s Swindon plant alone depends on 350 truck-loads of components a day coming through Dover). Revenue and Customs are trying to introduce a new computer system, but that may not have the capacity to cope with the number of transactions required outside the customs union, and in any case may well not be ready by March 2019. Estimates of additional customs staff needed by then are in the thousands; but recruitment has not yet begun. And Boris doesn’t think we need a transition arrangement after that date?
By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 20th September 2017 - 10:25 am
Having covered Not the Leader’s Speech, it is only fair to give you the chance to see the actual Leader’s Speech again. It was very different in style from the bouncy style of Tim Farron, but no less compelling to listen to.
You can watch it in full below and the text follows. There are four quick observations I’d like to make, first, though.
Firstly, note that PR has been displaced as our number 1 ask on political reform by votes at 16. By doing so, Vince emphasises his commitment to ending intergenerational unfairness. He talked about how young people had had no say in their future which had been limited by older people voting for Brexit.
He wants to ensure that they have a say in future decisions.
This all makes perfect sense as it is achievable and something that has been our policy for as long as I can remember anyway.
I might have been inclined to take the joke about us inviting Corbyn to join the Anti-Brexit People’s Liberation Front out. It was a joke aimed at highlighting Corbyn’s lefty student style of politics, but it didn’t work out of context and jarred slightly when I saw it on tweets from the BBC.
Thirdly, he did acknowledge that the issue of student fees was still a problem for us. A review is fraught with problems as it then has to come back to Conference and the whole thing is gone over again and the papers write about it all over again. Of course, he couldn’t do anything else or he’d have been accused of trying to make policy over the heads of Conference but it is to be hoped that this review happens very quickly. If David got his skates on and had something ready for Spring, that would be entirely satisfactory. The whole thing is a risk, but less of a risk than doing nothing. We have to be seen to be taking this one on.
Fourthly, he wants us in Government. On our own. A big ambition, but I’d rather see him say that than say that he wants us to go up a wee bit in the polls. We have to show what a Lib Dem world would look like.
Finally, the best bit of the speech for me was this:
We know, of course, that our call will be resented by the Brexit fundamentalists.
We will be denounced as traitors and saboteurs.
I’m half prepared for a spell in a cell with Supreme Court judges, Gina Miller, Ken Clarke, and the governors of the BBC.
But if the definition of sabotage is fighting to protect British jobs, public services, the environment and civil liberties, then I am a proud saboteur.
It’s very bold and I hope we all use that quote as often as possible from now on.
Vince had 3 things to do at this Conference. He had to firmly establish us as the Party of Remain – unequivocally fighting to stay in the EU. Secondly, he had to showcase his credentials as the foremost economically literate grown-up on the political scene in this country. He did that. Thirdly, he had to showcase a wider commitment to sort things out for those people who voted Leave because they are struggling. He has put tackling inequality, most particularly wealth and inter-generational unfairness, front and centre of what he wants to achieve. As Jo Swinson said on Sunday, an exit from Brexit is necessary but not sufficient.
By The Voice | Published Sun 17th September 2017 - 12:50 pm
Here is Jo Swinson’s speech to Conference.
Let me take you back to a rainy Saturday morning, 28 years ago. I’m doing what many 9-year-olds do on a Saturday morning, watching TV. It’s a children’s programme called Going Live, presented by Philip Schofield – some of you might even remember it, and depending on your age, nostalically feel it was no match for Swap Shop or Saturday Superstore.
“That particular morning’s show sticks in my mind because in amongst Gordon the Gopher, kids’ cartoons, and celebrities getting gunged, there was an amazing competition. The prize was to win a piece of the Berlin Wall, recently torn down in one of the most pivotal moments of 20th century history.
“It was pretty obviously in an entirely different league to the usual phone-ins to win toys, or CDs, or tickets to concerts. I didn’t win the competition, but later on my dad visited Berlin and brought me back a little piece of that history.
“I think it’s fair to say that as a child, apart from one Christmas watching the animated film “When the Wind Blows”, I hadn’t given much thought to nuclear war. But the cloud had hung threateningly over the world, at times perilously close to disaster on an unimaginable scale.
“Thanks to the diplomacy, courage and political leadership which led to the end of the Cold War, we have enjoyed three decades with much reduced levels of nuclear threat, until now.
By Geoff Payne | Published Fri 15th September 2017 - 11:56 am
This report relates to the meeting of the Federal Policy Committee which took place on 13th September 2017. The committee had not met for a few months. Its last meeting, which was scheduled for 12th July 2017, had been cancelled. There was therefore quite a lot to catch up on.
Vince Cable Update on Priorities
It hardly needs saying but, since the last meeting, a new Leader has taken over. Vince Cable attended the meeting to update the committee on his priorities.
Vince said that he had been to eighteen meetings around the country as a substitute for leadership hustings. He had also …
By Bernard Aris | Published Wed 13th September 2017 - 4:37 pm
For Dutch Social Liberals, being a party activist and being a feminist have always been strongly (90%) overlapping aspects of our social behavior and social activism. Whereas Dutch Social Democracy until 1934 neglected the women’s emancipation struggle because the emancipation of all proletarians came first, we are proud that from the beginning, Dutch social-liberal parties (Radikale Bond/RB, 1892-1901, VDB, 1901-’46, D66) have always had feminist spokespersons in their parliamentary parties. Aletta Jacobs, our most famous late 19th century feminist, was a RB founder/activist, and it was a VDB bill which gave Dutch women the vote. And the 1966 founders of D66 were strongly involved in the Second Feminist Wave (raising male consciousness about issues like equal pay, equal family law rights, childcare and family planning), and proudly conscious of the RB and VDB feminist tradition.
And British feminists, Millicent Garrett Fawcett (and her sister, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson) in particular, played an indispensable role in getting that Dutch feminist tradition going.
In 1870-’76 a young Dutch liberal, Victor Gerritsen, lived in London where he immersed himself in the Radical and Liberal scene around John Stuart Mill and the Garrett sisters. In those years (thanks to permission by liberal prime minister Thorbecke), Aletta Jacobs was able to study medicine including her Ph. D. promotion. On his return here, Gerritsen heard about this, and that Jacobs wanted to study medical practices in London. Gerritsen wrote her, giving her useful contact addresses, and telling about the advent of British female medical doctors (this proved the start of their love- and later marriage relationship).
According to the authoritative biography of Jacobs, she visited London in March-September 1879. Via the brothers George and Charles Robert Drysdale (women’s doctors and pioneers in Neo-Malthusianism) she met Elizabeth Garrett (Britain’s first female doctor meeting the first Dutch one), and worked with her in the London Medical School of Women, New Hospital for Women, and in Garrett’s “St. Mary’s Dispensary” aimed at mothers and children. Via Elizabeth, Jacobs also met Millicent Garrett and her husband, the Cambridge economist/suffragist Henry Fawcett (their mutual supportive, loving relationship was to be copied by Jacobs and Gerritsen), who were more involved in the women’s voting right movement. Gerritsen already subscribed to the suffragist “Englishwomen’s Review”, and had his British friends send him new Liberal, feminist and radical publications; when the Dutch feminist movement got started in the 1880’s, his substantial library was used by everybody in Dutch social liberalism and feminism.
By Jane Reed | Published Wed 13th September 2017 - 10:25 am
I am writing this in response to Paddy Ashdown’s Essay to the Party of Monday 11th September in which he extolls us to follow Vince Cable’s lead and start coming up with our own new, dangerous ideas and debate them at conference.
I know from talking with friends and meeting people on the campaign doorstep that many people have a very negative attitude to the Liberal Democrats. I know from being a member since 2015 that the party is well organised, with plenty of ground troops, puts its principles into practice in how it deals with members, has socially valuable ideas and is full of very able and well intentioned people perfectly capable of government. However this does not seem to be picked up by many of the electorate. If we are to gain traction with the electorate something has to change. One aspect that I think would be worth looking at is our branding. If this was changed and was seen to be genuine in that the new branding reflected other more substantial changes I think it could have a positive effect. I know rebranding is often seen as a nightmare and certainly can be expensive but if done at the right moment can be effective.
I have not given great thought to how the branding could be changed but just a few comments. I think we should stick with the yellow colour but perhaps make it a more golden yellow. I personally like our present emblem with its sense of freedom and development but I wonder if it comes across as rather weak. One possible emblem, suitable in terms of shape, could be a sunflower head but it is yellow, possibly used by BP and would be probably perceived as too soft. Perhaps we should also consider changing the name of our party.
This year, the organisers are being uncharacteristically cagey about their line-up, tantalising us by drip-feeding out the contestants who will be competing for the prized accolade of Best DJ. The title has been won for the last two years in fantastic style by Jo Swinson. The last time I spoke to her about it she was adamant she wasn’t going to go for the hat-trick.
So far, we know that Lib Dem Newbies co-founder and force of nature Daisy Benson and Lib Dem Peer and former MEP Sarah Ludford will be taking their turns at the decks.
Thank goodness somebody is out there saying that immigration is actually a good thing and that this narrative that these foreigners are coming over here and taking our jobs and driving down wages. Step forward one Vincent Cable, writing in the Guardian:
At the heart of the politics of immigration is the belief, repeated by Theresa May as a fact, that immigrants, especially unskilled immigrants, depress wages. At first sight the argument seems plausible – and undeniably there is low-wage competition in some places. But there is no evidence that this is a general problem. When the coalition embarked on its review of EU competences in 2013, I commissioned a range of reviews and studies to establish the facts. They showed that the impact on wages was very small (and only in recession conditions). By and large, immigrants were doing jobs that British people didn’t want to do (or highly skilled jobs that helped to generate work for others). This research was inconvenient to the Home Office, which vetoed the publication of its results. I have now written to the prime minister to ask her to publish them as part of the current public debate.
So, the Government has evidence, commissioned by Vince, that the right wing tabloid press is talking hogwash and refuses to publish it.
And he makes an important point about the costs of immigration and who they affect:
By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 6th September 2017 - 8:30 pm
For me, the Liberal Democrats have always been about reducing the inequality that poisons our society, that holds people back from opportunities.
We have always talked about it, but perhaps in the last few years the language has been a bit different. I was really chuffed when Vince talked about the need to tackle inequality so explicitly in his leadership manifesto. Today, his first major speech since becoming leader is on this issue and you can watch a clip here.
The full text of the speech is below. It’s thoughtful, serious stuff as you would expect.
Yes, under his leadership we’ll be looking for the exit from Brexit, but our main mission as a party is to do something about this inequality. That works for me.
Politicians talk at length about fairness and unfairness. Verbal confetti. Bland. Something almost everyone can relate to emotionally. And it can be defined in so many different ways that it can be applied in almost every situation, for about every audience. Inequality narrows the subject down a bit but, again, has a wide range of definitions and meanings.
Putting aside the health warnings and the academic qualifications there is however, in the UK in 2017, something stirring around the idea of inequality: something new and worrying. It starts from the observation, or the belief, that inequalities of income, wealth and opportunity, between classes, regions and generations, are getting worse; that Britain is becoming relatively as well as absolutely unequal when we look at comparable countries, especially in Europe; and that this inequality is not merely offensive to the sensibilities of progressive minded folk but is doing serious damage to the wider society and economy.
Sometimes an event crystallises this feeling. The Grenfell Tower disaster wasn’t just a horrific accident with a large loss of life but illustrates in a graphic way that relatively poor people were not listened to by those in authority and attracted a casual approach to life threatening risk. And close by geographically, but light years away socially and economically, lived London’s super-rich.
What motivates me personally and politically is the way this this new Britain contrasts with the more egalitarian culture and mobile society that I grew up with: parents who progressed in 20 years from being factory workers living in a terraced house with an outside loo to being part of the professional class living in a detached house; from parents who left school at 15 progressing though ‘night school’ to a son at an elite university. There were of course ‘posh’ people in post-war Britain but they were few and largely inconspicuous; and there were poor people on the council estates but they were distant relatives or friends and we played and watched football together. A provincial British city, even today, does not have the jarring contrasts of London; but my sense is that even there, big differences in living standards and opportunities have opened up.
By The Voice | Published Wed 30th August 2017 - 8:55 am
Vince Cable has said that Theresa May’s visit to Japan has descended into farce before it has even begun. This was after the government briefed that a post-Brexit Britain would seek a trade deal with Japan based on the existing EU-Japan deal.
He put a reality check on the government’s spin:
Theresa May’s trip to Japan to gain a trade deal was already of questionable value because there can be no fresh agreements with other countries until we leave the EU.
But this staggering statement by the government just adds a whole new level of absurdity to their negotiating strategy. It is now saying that the best trade deal we can possibly hope for with Japan post-Brexit is the trade deal we already have as a member of the EU.
The likes of Liam Fox were promising a new dawn of improved trade deals but this clearly shows that even the government now recognises that the best possible deal we can get with one of the world’s largest economies is the deal negotiated by the EU.
cim The easiest way to demonstrate stability around joining the EU would be to get through the ~ten/twenty year accession process without any UK government pulling ...
Nigel Ashton I first met Simon circa 1978 when we were both on the Home Counties Regional Executive, he as the ULS rep and me as his YL counterpart. We share many of the sam...
Andrew Tampion " A clever wheeze might also be for the EU to demand we store half our gold reserves in Brussels, to be repatriated in 20 years time provided the UK has not by ...
Anthony Harris @David Allen do we have any gold reserves left? I thought that Gordon Brown sold them all at the bottom of the market? :-)
He sold so many that he caused a s...
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Roman Leicester wasn't built in a day 2
Spread it around
Shambolic, careless Reform and their disappearing councillors
Sandy Walkington 
cim 
Nigel Ashton 
Andrew Tampion 
Anthony Harris 