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EU birth certificates myth swallowed whole by the anti-European press

By Giles Goodall | Published Mon 12th August 2013 - 3:45 pm

It may be the silly season, but the latest Euromyth to ruffle right-wing feathers takes silliness to a whole new level. The Express, Mail, Sun and Telegraph unanimously announced at the weekend that Brussels wants to remove the royal crest from British birth certificates and replace it with the hated EU flag. The Mail declared Brits would be “stamped with the EU flag from the cradle to the grave” while the Sun led with the rather lame “B-EU-rths ‘n deaths”.

They gave generous space to Eric Pickles, who fumed:

This imposed Euro-law is part of an

…

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Posted in News | Tagged eric pickles, euromyth, european union | 20 Comments

Tim Farron MP writes… Helena Morrissey report update

By Tim Farron MP | Published Thu 8th August 2013 - 1:55 pm

The Helena Morrissey report was incredibly difficult reading for our party. Facing up to the reality that the party that I love and joined at 16 had not always lived out its values is painful. But throughout this process my top priorities have always been the people affected, getting to the truth, ensuring justice and making certain that we enact every single recommendation of Helena Morrissey’s report. That’s why I wanted to give you an update on the work we have done to put Helena Morrissey’s recommendations into practice.

Since the report was published, I have made efforts on …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged helena morrissey, tim gordon | 13 Comments

Britain can’t cook, won’t cook. Should we care?

By Andy Boddington | Published Fri 2nd August 2013 - 7:05 am

A year ago we set up a tiny community garden on the verges of our barren car park. Not a great deal grew in the first season, but what we produced we tried to give away, sometimes without success.

“What will I do with it?” asked J as I offered him a bunch of dirty carrots. A few days ago, I got a glimpse inside J’s fridge. Everything was pre-packed, microwave or oven ready, accompanied by step-by-step instructions. J doesn’t cook and he is not alone.

A review for Defra by Best Foot Forward highlighted that one in six …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Food, sustainability | 29 Comments

Chickens, eggs, Twitter and report abuse buttons

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 28th July 2013 - 8:30 pm

In the last 24 hours, over 40,000 people have signed an e-petition calling on Twitter to install a “report abuse button.” This was started after journalist Caroline Crialdo-Perez suffered numerous tweeted threats of rape and sexual assault in the wake of her successful campaign to have Jane Austen put on a bank note. Shewrote for the Independent about her experience both of the abuse and the support she’d received in return. Ishould warn you that if you click on the link you will see some examples of the tweets she was sent:

These are all tweets from men. Men who

…

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Posted in News | Tagged caroline crialdo-perez, communication, internet abuse, misogyny, sexism, twitter | 14 Comments

2 gains from Labour on Merseyside – and very nearly a third

By Simon Shaw | Published Fri 26th July 2013 - 3:45 pm

Winning a council seat in Merseyside off Labour would be a significant achievement. Winning two on the same day would be virtually unheard of.

Yesterday, in Maghull, Sefton MBC, Merseyside, Lib Dems won two seats off Labour and came within 9 votes of winning a third. The by-elections concerned took place in three adjacent seats on Maghull Town Council.

Maghull Town Council, 8 miles to the North West of Liverpool City Centre, is the largest civil parish in the country and levies a Band D council tax precept of nearly …

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Posted in News | Tagged council by-elections, Local government, maghull | 41 Comments

The economy is growing again. But that’s no reason to think the voters will be grateful.

By Stephen Tall | Published Thu 25th July 2013 - 12:45 pm

What a difference 3 months makes.

As late as 24th April, the fear was the UK economy might be slipping into a ‘triple dip’ recession. That was a bullet dodged. Then a month ago, on 27 June, we discovered the ‘double dip’ recession never actually happened after all. That was a bullet extracted.

Today, the Office of National Statistics has announced GDP growth increased by 0.6% in the second quarter of 2013. The smile of relief has become something more genuine.

No-one should get too carried away. The …

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Posted in News | Tagged economy, gdp | 15 Comments

Opinion: Performance related pay for teachers: does it drive up standards?

By Layla Moran MP | Published Thu 25th July 2013 - 11:30 am

Michael Gove’s most recent big idea to improve the teaching profession takes the form of performance related pay. Like many of Gove’s big ideas it has incensed teachers. But it’s also a populist move. One poll estimated that 61% of voters backed the idea. But will it improve teaching standards?

The evidence for performance related pay leading to improving standards in education is inconclusive. Literature shows no causal relationship between performance related pay and standards and results vary enormously depending on the context. In India one study showed that “after controlling for student ability, parental background and the resources available …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged david laws, education, featured, michael gove, performance related pay, schools | 33 Comments

Opinion: Cameron’s false porn panacea

By Paul Thompson | Published Wed 24th July 2013 - 8:52 am

From suggesting that the Blackberry messenger service be shut down during the 2011 riots, to proposing that the food standards agency can monitor your home internet usage It’s clear that Cameron, or those around him, have a limited appreciation of how the internet works.

Yesterday Cameron announced another clanger – default internet filtering for every household in the country, so unless you tell you ISP otherwise, pornographic content would be blocked – or at least some porn, as Cameron was today forced embarrassingly admit that the Sun’s Page 3 topless models wouldn’t be blocked.

So isn’t it a good idea to …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged ceop, david cameron, internet, pornography | 15 Comments

Martin Horwood MP writes… Balance of competence reports shows EU membership is crucial for UK jobs

By Martin Horwood | Published Mon 22nd July 2013 - 4:53 pm

The Government today published the long awaited first six reports of the review of the balance of competences between EU and national levels, due to be finalised at the end of 2014. The review has been overseen by a Ministerial star chamber with Lord Wallace of Saltaire leading impressively for the Liberal Democrats in the complicated process.

Contrary to the perception in Eurosceptic ranks, this review is not and was never about creating a wish list of demands for unilateral repatriation of powers. Liberal Democrats have been unwavering in our arguments that the EU needs reform to make …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged european union, william wallace | 6 Comments

Catherine Tate’s top tips: Be nice to everyone and don’t be late…

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sat 20th July 2013 - 9:30 am

Catherine Tate? On a politics site? Really?

Well, this is a lovely Summer Saturday morning, Parliament has just broken up for its holidays, so I just thought I’d do something a little bit different. You can tell me to take a running jump if you like, and this is something I would only ever do sparingly, but I thought I’d give it a try. Please don’t worry. My fixations with Doctor Who, Strictly and F1 will be confined to my own blog.

A few weeks ago, I missed both the Social Liberal Forum Scottish conference and the British Grand Prix to …

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Posted in News | Tagged catherine tate, david tennant, doctor who, holiday fun | 3 Comments

Nick Clegg gives an extra £400 to disadvantaged kids – so why is this turning into a story about ranking pupils?

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 17th July 2013 - 10:24 am

You have to feel for Nick Clegg. He’s doing the media rounds this morning with some really good news. Primary schools are going to get an extra £400 in Pupil Premium, bringing the total per child per year to £1300. Impressive, surely?

It makes sense that the money is directed so that if a child is struggling in primary school, they get the help that they need then. Early intervention has to be the name of the game. The last thing you would ever want is for …

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Posted in News | Tagged education, nick clegg, pupil premium | 37 Comments

Liblink… Greg Mulholland calls for referendum on EU membership

By Joe Otten | Published Mon 15th July 2013 - 11:20 am

The Daily Mail is reporting Greg Mulholland’s call for a vote on EU membership without waiting for a treaty change.

Even the huge changes that have taken place in Europe over the years – we’ve moved from EEC to EC to EU – have not led to a public vote. And it is not a little ironic that at the times there was a significant and constitutional change – in 1984, 1986 and 1992 – the then Conservative governments did not give the British people a say. The same happened under

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged European referendum, european union, in/out referendum | 5 Comments

Opinion: Does the School Food Plan really ban packed lunches?

By Iain Roberts | Published Sat 13th July 2013 - 11:30 am

If you’re an independent person involved in writing a report for Government, I offer some advice. Take a holiday for the week after the report’s published. Somewhere remote. Ideally without internet.

How else to avoid your blood-pressure shooting through the roof as the media – both social and traditional – ignore 99% of your work and misrepresent the rest?

For the latest example, look no further than the School Food Plan, a 149 page practical guide to improving the health and attainment of young people by improving their diet in …

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Posted in News | Tagged daily mirror, featured, fleet street fox, michael gove, school food plan, schools, susie boniface | 10 Comments

Vince Cable opens massive biofuels plant

By Mary Reid | Published Tue 9th July 2013 - 11:53 am

For a picture of Vince Cable in a hard hat and hi vis clothing, check out the Yorkshire Post. He was opening a £350 million bio-fuels plant in Humberside, one of the largest in Europe.

The plant converts animal quality wheat into bioethanol which is then added to petrol to produce a greener fuel. This is in an area which has been described as the ‘wheat belt’ of the UK.

Vince Cable is quoted as saying:

Here we are turning an agricultural product potentially into very good fuel, blending for motor vehicles, creating environmentally

…

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Posted in News | Tagged biofuels, vince cable | 5 Comments

Farron asks Gove to put mental health on the school curriculum

By Caron Lindsay | Published Mon 8th July 2013 - 7:43 pm

Last Friday a new charity, providing online counselling to teenagers with mental health issues, launched in London. Mindfull, run by the team behind BeatBullying, built the service after feedback young people themselves. We’re talking about a third of our young people either self-harming or contemplating suicide because they are feeling so bad. The case stories in the report give some idea of how that feels:

Jessica was 14 when she started to feel very down. She didn’t tell anyone about the way she was feeling until she was 15, and even though she started to have suicidal thoughts it took

…

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Posted in News | Tagged education, mental health, michael gove, nick clegg, tim farron | 6 Comments

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 3rd July 2013 - 10:24 am

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Posted in Site news | 1 Comment

A free-for-all on school term dates?

By Mary Reid | Published Tue 2nd July 2013 - 2:58 pm

Michael Gove has had another ‘good idea’, produced without any reference to the professionals who will have to implement it, nor to the general public who will have to work around it. This time he is keen to allow all schools to set their own term dates, in line with the freedom already granted to academies and free schools.

It sounds like a superficial change, but those of us who have examined the issue in depth know that the implications could be far greater than you might imagine.

Some eight years ago I attended a series of meetings of councillors who, like me, held education portfolios in London boroughs. Our aim was to co-ordinate school term dates across the whole of London, and, wherever possible, with the surrounding counties, and we did achieve that. At the same time we looked at patterns of terms, considering some quite radical alternatives, such as six or seven equal length terms, with a shorter break in the summer.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged michael gove, schools | 30 Comments

Interview: Nick Clegg on the economy, welfare, Cleggism and the “superb” Kung Fu Panda films

By Nick T | Published Mon 24th June 2013 - 1:02 pm

We brought you a taste of the Voice’s exclusive interview with the deputy prime minister yesterday. Here is the full interview, covering the economy, welfare reform, pensions, Cleggism, our approach to the manifesto, Kung Fu Panda and Clegg’s cooking.

Nick Thornsby: What’s your take on where the economy is now, three and a bit years into the coalition?

Nick Clegg: My overall assessment is that it is healing. There are signs of confidence slowly seeping back into the sinews of the economy. Some of the latest data on consumer confidence are better …

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Posted in News | Tagged economy, featured, general election manifesto, nick clegg, pensions, spending review, steve webb, triple lock, welfare | 7 Comments

Baroness Kate Parminter writes…We need more research and public engagement before agreeing to GM crops

By Kate Parminter | Published Thu 20th June 2013 - 10:39 am

The speech today by Owen Paterson, Secretary of State for the Environment makes it clear that he is intent on promoting the use of GM crops in Britain – and to do so by acting as a cheerleader for an industry which has consistently promised much over the last twenty years and yet failed to deliver. It follows hard on the heels of that of the Science Minister, David Willetts, as the latest attempt by the Tories to go beyond the Coalition Government’s agreed policy on GM crops.

Liberal Democrats are not in principle opposed to GM, but we believe no …

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Posted in News | Tagged defra, gm crops | 18 Comments

How not to write for Liberal Democrat Voice

By Joe Otten | Published Mon 17th June 2013 - 8:45 am

Here at LDV towers, we often receive offers of work which do very little to persuade us that the author either knows what this site is about, or is able to write reasonably correct English.

The following is typical. I have removed names.

Hello Blog Owner,

Hope the day is treating you well!

My name is ______, an Internet Marketer.

While searching on internet, I came across your blog and read 3 of your quality posts and got really impressed with it. I think you’re doing a great job and making your readers happy and better than they were.

My all blog posts

…

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Posted in News | 9 Comments

Opinion: Arming the Syrian Rebels

By Joe Bourke | Published Fri 7th June 2013 - 10:30 am

The Independent reported this week that Cameron faces serious Cabinet split over arming Syrian rebels.

Nick Clegg is said to have warned at a recent meeting of the National Security Council that supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army might only escalate the conflict, killing many more people without any realistic prospect of decisive victory and that it could be “next to impossible” to ensure that British arms do not fall into the hands of Islamist militants.

A Whitehall source said Mr Clegg did not believe “there was a military-only solution to Syria” and would not back any attempt to arm …

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Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds | Tagged foreign affairs, syria | 34 Comments

Annette Brooke MP writes…What I hope to achieve in my new role

By Annette Brooke MP | Published Thu 6th June 2013 - 3:54 pm

I was very pleased this week to become Chair of the Parliamentary Liberal Democrat Party. I was elected unopposed, and took my place as Chair at the Parliamentary Party meeting, in what many would consider a slight baptism of fire, having only had my new role confirmed hours before!

I am delighted to be embarking on this new role. The job is an extremely important one and I am really excited to be taking it on. As I am retiring at the end of this Parliamentary term, I feel that while many of my colleagues will need to be focusing …

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Posted in News | 2 Comments

Sarah Ludford writes …Creating EU Data Protection rules that safeguard both privacy and jobs

By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP | Published Tue 4th June 2013 - 10:29 am

As those who read this LibDem Voice article by Peter Bradwell of Open Rights group will know, I am currently the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) group ‘shadow rapporteur’ on the draft EU Data Protection Regulation in the European Parliament.

I was not originally expecting to play a major role on this particular piece of legislation. But when my German FDP colleague Alexander Alvaro unfortunately suffered a serious car accident in February, the ALDE group appointed me as his interim replacement. I unwisely promised a response to Peter’s article ‘soon’! – but the last few months of negotiations have been very demanding. The new Regulation, unlike …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged ALDE, Data Protection Regulation, european parliament | 2 Comments

EDMWatch #2: Beer, moths, space and human rights

By Caron Lindsay | Published Mon 3rd June 2013 - 4:45 pm

We take a regular look at the Early Day Motions tabled by MPs. These are basically House of Commons petitions and are used to raise awareness of an issue. One of the biggest elements of an MP’s postbag or inbox is a pile of requests from supporters of a particular organisation or charity to sign a particular EDM. As a rule, ministers don’t sign EDMs. A look at EDMs can be a useful insight into what’s on MPs’ minds.

The second week of the parliamentary session saw a flurry of motions, going up from 71 to 155.

Most popular

The most …

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Posted in Op-eds, Parliament | 1 Comment

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #328

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 2nd June 2013 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 328th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throacughs from the Aggregator (26 May-1 June, 2013), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, 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:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment

Report on internet pornography highlights need for education, not restriction

By Caron Lindsay | Published Fri 24th May 2013 - 10:28 am

One of my biggest concerns in recent years has been the effect of access to easily available internet pornography on the next generation of young people. Every time I ask an expert in the field to reassure me and tell me that I’m panicking too much, they shake their head and tell me that my fears are spot on.

It just takes a couple of clicks to arrive at free videos which depict women in a subjugative role, as little more than receptacles. The language used about those women is demeaning and deeply misogynistic. The expectations of a generation of boys …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged children's commissioner, education, internet pornography, iSPs, sex education | 12 Comments

Willie Rennie calls for international relations review after Humza’s howler

By Caron Lindsay | Published Thu 23rd May 2013 - 9:57 am

The Scottish Government has a Minister for External Affairs, whose job it is to represent the Scottish Government on the international stage. This role is currently undertaken by SNP rising star Humza Yousaf.

Humza has spent this week in Doha at the International Forum there. This is an event which discusses key international issues as they affect the Middle East. He has been caught on video telling this international audience of academics, political leaders and intergovernmental organisations that the UK Government wants to leave the European Union. Unfortunately for him, he was caught on video doing it. Have a look at …

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Posted in News | Tagged humza yousaf, snp, willie rennie | Leave a comment

Duncan Hames MP writes… Must we continue to use food for fuel?

By Duncan Hames MP | Published Fri 17th May 2013 - 8:25 am

The European Union is currently committed to ensuring that 10% of each Member State’s transport energy will come from biofuels by 2020. This originated as a well-intentioned attempt to combat climate change, but time has shown that using food for fuel can have devastating impacts on hunger and the environment. I’ve come to accept that it is time for a re-think.

In addition to concerns over their green credentials, biofuels are now recognised to be a key cause of hunger, affecting millions of people in developing countries. The World Bank, OECD, WTO, IFPRI, IMF, and five other UN agencies recommended …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged actionaid, biofuels, climate change, david cameron, edward davey, european union, food for fuel, justine greening, lynne featherstone, malcolm bruce, nick clegg, norman baker, oxfam | 15 Comments

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