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Caron Lindsay

Vince v Osborne – the battle for RBS’s future

By Caron Lindsay | Published Thu 2nd August 2012 - 2:26 pm

The future of the Royal Bank of Scotland is back in the headlines today.

The Financial Times reports that ministers are discussing buying the remaining shares in RBS, bringing it fully under state control. This would allow them to force it to lend more to viable small and medium-sized businesses  without having to worry about other shareholders challenging such a direction in the courts.

The Guardian reports that Liberal Democrat   Vince Cable is the driving force behind this plan. He believes that it’s the only way to get money to businesses.

What we do know, and Vince Cable confirmed when taking …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments
Paul Walter

Menzies Campbell in celebration of Olympians in Parliament

By Paul Walter | Published Thu 2nd August 2012 - 10:54 am

BBC Parliament has shown a documentary, “First past the post”, which celebrates parliamentarians who are Olympians. Needless to say, our own Sir Menzies Campbell, once one of the fastest men on the planet, is featured liberally in the programme.

Menzies reveals the exotic mixture which his mother used to feed him on race days, and shows viewers his old team blazer. He tells us he can still get into it, but the buttons don’t do up.

Until the end of …

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The Voice

Lib Dems push for ‘blind marking’ to level the playing field for ethnic communities

By The Voice | Published Tue 31st July 2012 - 3:10 pm

The Observer this weekend reported on the Lib Dems’ latest attempts to push for more equal treatment of citizens from different ethnic backgrounds:

Ministers are seeking to introduce “blind marking” of pupils’ schoolwork by teachers as part of a push to tackle a history of underachievement among black and ethnic minority groups, while banks will be required to carry out ethnic monitoring of people to whom they lend money. Under the proposals, the identities of pupils would not be a factor when teachers mark work, and banks could be held accountable for the racial profile of their customers. The controversial

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , | 33 Comments
Giles Goodall

Opinion: Brussels vs. the banksters

By Giles Goodall | Published Sat 28th July 2012 - 1:21 pm

European Parliament building European Parliament building

Almost no-one in the UK would these days dispute the fact that the country’s banking sector needs a serious overhaul to correct the runaway behaviour which helped nudge Britain (and others) into the financial crisis. The Liberal Democrats have rightly been most persistent in demanding reforms, in particular a break-up of retail and casino banking, as recommended by the independent Vickers Inquiry.

The latest scandal about fixing the benchmark Libor interest rate plumbs new depths – even by the standards of Britain’s banks. Here were …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , | 14 Comments
Craig Bennett

The Independent View: Will Osborne gas the Lib Dems’ green credentials?

By Craig Bennett | Published Fri 27th July 2012 - 9:05 am

Ed Davey’s announced this week that he’d secured an important concession from the Chancellor over wind farm subsidies – but at what cost?

Although there was understandable relief over the certainty this move gave to investors in clean British energy it seems the victory may have come with a hefty price tag: an agreement to burden our electricity system with dirty and increasingly expensive gas for decades to come – despite the enormous damage this could cause to both the economy and planet.

Ed Davey’s success in securing a 10 per cent cut in wind farm subsidies – to reflect the …

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Posted in Op-eds, The Independent View | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Vince in Edinburgh – what the members said.

By Caron Lindsay | Published Thu 26th July 2012 - 2:33 pm

Edinburgh was spoiled last weekend. Not only was there a Madonna concert and a performance of the Hitch Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy radio show (which I went to), but Business Secretary Vince Cable answered questions from Liberal Democrat members on Sunday evening.

Readers will be glad to see former Edinburgh West MP John Barrett, sufficiently recovered from illness and on his usual sparkling form, chairing the session.

Vince answered questions for well over an hour on subjects ranging from renewable energy to high executive pay to winning back …

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Mark Pack

Local liberal heroes: Flick Rea

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 26th July 2012 - 10:25 am

A while back, I penned a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten – such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP.

There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure – those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are often unacknowledged in the wider party.

Today it is the turn of Camden councillor Flick Rea.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , | 4 Comments
Paul Walter

Opinion: Vince Cable’s leadership comments are unwelcome

By Paul Walter | Published Mon 23rd July 2012 - 8:54 am

A few months ago we received advice from Tim Montgomerie:

… you need to change party leader. Not now. Not, I suggest, until 2014. But you can’t go into the next election with Nick Clegg at the top of your ticket.

OK, on that occasion, the advice was asked for in the form of an invitation to write for this esteemed website.

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Posted in News | 47 Comments
Stephen Tall

In other news… Trident, MI6, DECC, defections & other stories

By Stephen Tall | Published Sun 22nd July 2012 - 5:25 pm

Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past few days…

Coalition set for new split on cut-price Trident plan (Scotsman)

COALITION splits over Britain’s nuclear deterrent are set to be reopened after an internal Ministry of Defence review suggested a slimmed-down version of the £25 billion Trident replacement could be an option. … The report, led by Lib Dem armed forces minister Nick Harvey, looks set to reopen coalition divisions with many Tory back-benchers concerned that Britain’s replacement for Trident could end up being sacrificed for political reasons. However, with final decisions not

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments
Michael Moore

Michael Moore’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Published Wed 18th July 2012 - 9:25 am

Every week Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore writes a column for newspapers in his Borders constituency. Here’s this week’s edition.

Farming

It has been a challenging few months for farmers here in the Borders with the extreme weather putting pressure on feed and bedding supplies and causing untold damage to crops and disruption to livestock. We have also heard the worrying news that processors are aggressively cutting the price they pay to our dairy farmers at the farm gate. These cuts are extremely disappointing because they appear to fly in the face of rising prices in global markets …

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Paul Haydon

Opinion: Britain and the EU-Liberal Democrats need to help reduce the democratic deficit

By Paul Haydon | Published Tue 17th July 2012 - 4:14 pm

Following the launch of the Balance of Competences review of EU powers last week, the next major debate within the coalition looks set to be over Britain’s relationship with Europe. Nick Clegg has emphasised that the review should not be used as a way to exploit the eurozone crisis and carve out a special EU deal forBritain. However, many Tory eurosceptics will no doubt view it as a platform to push for a significant repatriation of powers, in the run-up to an eventual referendum on EU …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 36 Comments
The Liberator Collective

New edition of Liberator

By The Liberator Collective | Published Tue 17th July 2012 - 11:05 am

 

The latest issue of Liberator magazine (issue no.354 – July 2012) was mailed to subscribers last week. If by chance you have not yet got round to taking out a subscription, here’s a summary of the contents:

  • The editorial column Commentary calls for tougher bank regulation in the wake of the Barclays scandal. It also calls on the party’s Federal Finance and Administration Committee to produce the evidence for its decision to defy both the conference and the Federal Conference Committee and persist with police accreditation for conference representatives.
  • The insider

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

How Jeremy Thorpe (and then Nick Clegg) broke the electoral system

By Stephen Tall | Published Sun 15th July 2012 - 2:45 pm

Democratic Audit this week published its latest analysis, its depressing conclusions summed up by The Guardian’s headline British democracy in terminal decline.

A fascinating aspect of the Audit, even for those of us still scarred by the rejection of electoral reform in the 2011 referendum, is its detailed dissection of how the First-Past-The-Post system is failing democracy. And in particular the pinpointing of the year when FPTP started to go bad: 1974, and the Liberal insurgence under Jeremy Thorpe, when the party increased its support from 7.5% in 1970 to 19.3%.

This, say the Audit’s authors, marked a turning point in the UK’s electoral history, a moment when ended the dominance of the ‘Golden Age’ of FPTP (1950-70) and introduced instead its ‘Dysfunctional Age’ (1979-2005):

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , | 41 Comments
The Voice

LDVideo: Introducing the Land Value Tax

By The Voice | Published Sat 14th July 2012 - 3:05 pm

The Liberal Democrat campaign for Action on Land Tax and Economic reform has recently released a new video to explain the virtues of a Land Value Tax — described by ALTER as ‘making taxation more progressive and addressing the injustice of economic rent, it would encourage development and boost the economy. It’s the kind of measure that our country is in desperate need of right now.’

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Posted in YouTube | Tagged , | 78 Comments
Paul Burstow

Paul Burstow MP writes… Radically reforming social care

By Paul Burstow | Published Wed 11th July 2012 - 12:55 pm

Most of you will have a friend or family member who needs some kind of care and support to help them get through the day.

In fact, more than 80% of us will need some form of care once we turn 65 – which is why getting social care right is so important.

It’s important because it touches upon some of the most essential things in life, like being healthy, happy and independent.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Published Sun 8th July 2012 - 9:25 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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Stephen Tall

Lib Dems should back a judge-led inquiry into financial scandal

By Stephen Tall | Published Wed 4th July 2012 - 10:55 pm

I get why the Tories are opposed to a judge-led inquiry into the scandalous rate-rigging practices employed by Barclays and other banks: their experiences of the Leveson Inquiry show how scandals, even ones that blend across the red/blue parties, have a habit of rebounding on the government of the day.

I get why Labour are in favour of a judge-led inquiry: so complicit were Labour (and Ed Balls in particular) in the catastrophic financial mess of the last few years, of which the banks are just one part, that they are desperate to appear transparent in the hope the inquiry will rebound on the government of the day.

But I don’t get why the Lib Dems are lining up with the Tories to oppose a judge-led inquiry.

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Posted in News, Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , | 58 Comments
Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Tim Leunig – David Cameron should know better than this Housing Benefit gimmick

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 27th June 2012 - 9:27 am

I wrote the other day that I wanted to see our party in general and Nick Clegg in particular come out and roundly condemn David Cameron’s ridiculous plan to stop under 25s from claiming Housing Benefit. Centre Forum director Tim Leunig did just that in an article for the Guardian on Monday.

His calm and forensic evisceration of Cameron’s argument put me in mind of the way Nick Clegg took apart the Tory Marriage Tax Break plan ahead of the 2010 election. This, of course, has been kicked into the long grass because of the Liberal Democrats. I’m also reminded of …

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments
Ewan Hoyle

Opinion: Changing demand without changing supply puts prostitutes at risk

By Ewan Hoyle | Published Wed 20th June 2012 - 11:57 am

It is with some concern that I read of proposals to criminalise paying for sex in Scotland.

Prostitution is a catch-all term that describes arrangements that should make the state very concerned indeed – trafficking of children for brutal sexual exploitation for example. There are also arrangements that the state has no business interfering in – the work of a self-employed, financially comfortable escort making very good money to supplement another income in an environment over which he or she has control.

Changing demand by criminalising the purchase of sex will have a number of unintended and undesirable consequences.

Firstly, we should consider …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments
Nick Clegg MP

Nick Clegg MP writes… Rio+20 should set the green agenda for the next 20 years

By Nick Clegg MP | Published Fri 15th June 2012 - 12:05 pm

Next week, representatives from 190 countries will meet to discuss how we build a green economy that reduces poverty without destroying the environment. These issues have been close to my heart since I wrote a postgraduate thesis on the “Deep Green” movement and humans’ effect on the environment over twenty years ago. But their importance for future generations has been brought home tenfold to me since becoming a father, and I am proud that I will be leading the UK delegation at the Rio Summit.

At the original Earth Summit in 1992, against the backdrop of Brazil’s disappearing Amazon …

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Posted in News | Tagged , | 4 Comments
Sara Bedford

Does mislaying your child really make you a bad parent?

By Sara Bedford | Published Tue 12th June 2012 - 11:55 am

As soon as Eric Pickles announced his ‘Back to Basics’ crackdown on ‘troubled’ families, it was odds on that a Conservative minister would oblige by executing his own family faux pas. How many would have placed their bets in the culprit being the Prime Minister himself, who with model mum Samantha appears to have chillaxed a little too much after Sunday lunch at the pub, leaving their daughter Nancy in the Ladies.

The uncomfortable end to Nancy’s comfort break apparently happened ‘a couple of months ago’, according to a Downing Street spokesman, but conveniently surfaced in the press as soon as …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , | 26 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 7th June 2012 - 10:25 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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Stephen Tall

Our political writers can pretend they know what makes us tick: a response to Matthew d’Ancona

By Stephen Tall | Published Wed 6th June 2012 - 8:25 pm

Here’s how Matthew d’Ancona could’ve started his article for today’s London Evening Standard, ‘Our political class can now work out what makes us tick’. But he didn’t.

So what was all that about? As the waves of media fervour subside to reveal the bleak promontories of Austerity Commentariat, let us pause and ask what this extraordinary four-day Jubilee told us about journalists, and their obsession with extrapolating about our national life and character.

There then follows some delicious cognitive dissonance. First, an acknowledgement of what is to follow:

The lazy reflex for political observers is to extract the lessons that suit them.

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib-Lab cooperation: there’s one easy way to find out if Labour are serious

By Stephen Tall | Published Wed 6th June 2012 - 5:55 pm

Today’s Guardian big-ups a call by Labour’s chief whip in the Lords, Lord Bassam, to his Lib Dem opposite number Lord Newby as a sign that ‘elements of the party are preparing the ground for a possible Lib-Lab coalition after the next election.’

I have to say on first reading the tenor of Lord Bassam’s note strikes me more as told-you-so than conciliatory, but maybe I’m being over-sensitive — judge for yourselves from this excerpt:

“The last couple of years have been a bit bruising for your colleagues in this house, and no doubt they will be looking forward to

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , | 28 Comments
Caron Lindsay

The day the Nationalists stole me

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 30th May 2012 - 6:28 pm

Last Friday saw the launch of Yes Scotland, the campaign for Scottish independence. I wrote at the time that it really amounted to some white blokes talking in a cinema.

It’s not been a good week for them because yesterday they were forced to change their website after I found out my photo was on it, among others, under the headline “Powered by people o’ independent mind”.  The clear implication was that I support their cause when I absolutely do not.

I also found out I had a profile on their site, and had been awarded 50 “political capital” points for …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments
Kavya Kaushik

The importance of community politics in a homogenous political scene

By Kavya Kaushik | Published Tue 29th May 2012 - 2:47 pm

When I first became aware of politics the world was looking towards Obama as a beacon of hope and change. As an 18 year old it was inspiring enough to want to change the world and campaign against inequality. However since I have gained further exposure, it has become apparent that politics attracts a disproportionate amount of young, careerist men. I refer to the likes of David Miliband, brought up in Hampstead yet representing the safe Labour seat of South Shields (which has a child poverty rate of 28%). When people say they don’t see a difference between the …

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Posted in News, Op-eds | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments
The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #275

By The Voice | Published Sun 27th May 2012 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 275th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (20-26 May, 2012), 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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The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 25 May 2012

By The Voice | Published Fri 25th May 2012 - 5:00 pm

It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

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Caron Lindsay

Five years in five posts – 2007-2011

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 16th May 2012 - 11:28 am

I was wondering how I could amuse readers on my own blog yesterday and I came up with this amazing idea of going back and finding out what I was writing about around this time in previous years. It was only later that I realised that Helen Duffett does this for Liberal Democrat Voice every Friday in the Friday Five . I hope she doesn’t mind me borrowing her idea and  adding in a little extra spot.

What was good about my post yesterday is that a few other Liberal Democrat bloggers got in on the act and I spent …

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NewsHound

‘Nick Clegg sets out plans to break private schools’ grip on establishment’

By NewsHound | Published Sat 12th May 2012 - 5:33 pm

Nick Clegg has long championed the pupil premium, new money allocated to schools to help boost the educational chances of children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Today’s Guardian reports how he plans in a major speech on Monday to emphasise its importance in improving social mobility in the UK:

Nick Clegg will next week set out long-term plans to break the grip of private schools on the British establishment when he publishes proposals for a surge in social mobility based on the “pupil premium”. … Clegg, launching a two-week drive on social mobility, which he sees as one of the

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , | 42 Comments
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