Tag Archives: freedom of expression

Stolen Signs

When I was canvassing for Charlie Maynard, the Lib Dem candidate in Witney and West Oxfordshire, I asked a lady who has traditionally voted Conservative but is voting Lib Dem if she’d put a sign in front of her house.

“I’d rather not,” she said. “There’s a man across the street who takes down signs he doesn’t like, and I don’t want to get into a fight with him.”

“How about a small sign that you can stick to the inside of your front window?” I asked. “Surely he wouldn’t put a rock through it?”

She declined, looking like she thought he just might. A couple of days later, the Lib Dem sign in front of my house disappeared. Her neighbour is getting ambitious! I thought, and What’sApped the canvassing group to request two replacement signs to make a point. It’s happened at my house and all over, the newly elected Lib Dem local councillor replied, and brought two signs right away. He showed me CCTV footage of a person in a white shirt on a bike pulling away from his house with his sign. Does that lady’s neighbour ride a bike? I thought. Does he have a white shirt?

But who the person in a white shirt on the bike is, and if he or she is acting alone – based on the number of signs disappearing, she or he would have to have a very fast bike – isn’t really what matters, although it would of course be good if she or he or they are caught for attacking the right to express one’s views.

Posted in News | 16 Comments

10 March 2023 – today’s press releases

  • ONS: Economy still suffering consequences of Conservatives
  • BP boss pay doubles: Sunak must bring in bonus tax now
  • Lineker: Today is a reminder that we need a properly independent BBC
  • Lee Waters must apologise to Welsh nurses

ONS: Economy still suffering consequences of Conservatives

Responding to the latest ONS GDP figures from January 2023, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said:

These disappointing figures are yet another reminder that our economy is suffering under this Conservative Government, and people are feeling this under-performance in their own pockets.

The Conservative party has broken this country’s economy with record energy bills, rising food prices and soaring mortgage costs. Yet they are completely out of touch with people’s worries.

The Chancellor needs to take action in next week’s Budget by cutting people’s energy bills by £500, and putting in place a proper plan to get our economy growing fairly and sustainably.

BP boss pay doubles: Sunak must bring in bonus tax now

The Liberal Democrats have demanded that the government bring in a tax on the bonuses of oil and gas company bosses, following the news that the chief executive of BP’s pay doubled to £10m.

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Layla on Salman Rushdie’s “Beautiful pieces of literature”

The news of Salman Rushdie’s stabbing at an event in upstate New York is profoundly shocking.

My first thoughts were with those police officers and a doctor in the audience who put themselves in harm’s way to help the author and no doubt give him the chance of survival. At the time of writing he is still in surgery and I know that everyone reading this will hope that he pulls through and our thoughts will be very much with his loved ones.

We don’t know the motivations for this particular attack, but we are well aware that Salman Rushdie had to spend a decade in hiding after the Iranian Government issued a fatwa against him in 1988 after they decided that his book, The Satanic Verses, was blasphemous.

Rushdie has had to live with this threat for decades for doing nothing other than challenging orthodoxy. For using his considerable creative talent to make us think.

Tonight, Layla Moran described how the threat to Rushdie encouraged her to read his books:

She said:

Posted in News | Also tagged | 22 Comments
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