By Carrie Hynds
| Mon 3rd September 2018 - 4:35 pm
The Liberal Democrats have a great policy on assisted dying, detailed in the Medically Assisted Dying motion moved by Chris Davies MEP in 2012. Yet it is buried in the depths of Conference papers past on our party website (see page 20, Conference Report Brighton 2012) and in the last general election manifesto there was only a bland half-line to show we support extending end-of-life choices at all.
As Davies’ motion notes, good assisted dying models already exist in several European countries, and having control over one’s own life is at the heart of liberalism. So why let this …
The author, broadcaster and campaigner Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died aged 89. A former BBC Panorama journalist, Sir Ludovic spent decades investigating miscarriages of justice, including the case of the Birmingham Six. He contributed to the abolition of the death penalty and was also president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
Nick Clegg has joined in the tributes to Sir Ludovic, a member of the Liberal party and later the Lib Dems, for most of his life:
Ludovic Kennedy was one of the great thinkers of his generation. His pursuit of justice and his championing of sometimes unpopular and controversial causes marked him out as a true liberal. He will be greatly missed.”
Sir Ludovic was the Liberal candidate and runner-up in the 1958 Rochdale by-election, propelling the party to its highest vote in the constituency since the 1920s, with the Tories pushed from first to third place. It was the first UK election to feature televised debates between the candidates, with Granada also broadcasting the count – another first.
He quit the Lib Dems in 2001 in protest at Charles Kennedy’s refusal to countenance legalised euthanasia, even standing as an independent candidate for the cause in Devizes, Wiltshire, polling just over 1,000 votes. He later re-joined the party.
During the 1980s and ’90s, Sir Ludovic gained fame among a new generation (such as myself) through his appearances as himself in the superior BBC comedy programme, Yes, Minister, as well as his interviews with Peter Cook, playing Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, for A Life in Pieces. Here’s the first programme from that fantastic series, first broadcast in December 1990:
Peter Davies Driverless cars are not just a replacement for Black Cabs which make up a small proportion of the hire market. They will replace minicabs first but expect them ...
Peter Davies "A 2025 study in Traffic Injury Prevention found Waymo’s San Francisco any-injury crash rate was 0.88 per million miles against a human benchmark of 8.02, an ...
Anthony Harris Alex Macfie, electronic voting is a bad example. Over the past decade, 34-36 countries have used it to count around 4 billion ballots. We have the infrastructur...
cim The big barrier to mass adoption of driverless cars isn't technological (not that the technology is easy) but legal.
With a driver-controlled vehicle, liabil...
Mick Taylor @PM
LDV word limits do not always make it possible to say everything one might like!
Yes, some people, myself included, have been able to make other provision...
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Exploring the history of old Tottenham with John Rogers
Some of the churches of Gower
Latest voting intention and leadership ratings opinion polls
Peter Davies 
Anthony Harris 
cim 
Mick Taylor 