Tag Archives: john redwood

Clegg’s bailed-out banks’ shares give-away proposal triggers national debate

Nick Clegg’s very public call for the British public to be given shares in the bailed-out banks — creating 46 million shareholders and allowing collective ownership of banks — has garnered acres of coverage the past couple of days.

It’s three months since Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams first proposed the privatisation of its 83% stake in RBS and 41% in Lloyds by distributing shares to the public. Here’s what my co-editor Mark Pack said about the idea at the time:

Giving everyone shares in the banks: Stephen Williams’s proposals examined (7th March, 2011)
Stephen Williams’s plan is to give shares

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Opinion: A visit to the library

Every Christmas Eve throughout my childhood, a mystery visitor came to the doorstep of our council flat and deposited a bag of children’s books before disappearing into the darkness. S/he never stopped to be recognised or thanked, and we never found out who s/he was, but I still remember the thrill of opening up another consignment of new reading every Christmas.

Even without our mystery benefactor, however, I and my three siblings would have been brought up with books. My father left school at 14 to be …

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Conservative splits as two stand against John Redwood

Not a happy time for the Conservatives in Wokingham where not one but two party members are standing as independent candidates against John Redwood.

I’d already highlighted how (ex) Conservative Town Councillor Robin Smith was standing against John Redwood (see more details in the Reading Chronicle).

As pointed out in the comments, there is in fact a second Conservative running against John Redwood – Mark Ashwell, who has criticised John Redwood for being too right wing.

The Lib Dem candidate is Prue Bray.

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Looks like a Tory councillor is standing against John Redwood

As far as I’ve been able to find our, Cllr Robin Smith (Conservative) is the same as Robin Smith, Independent Parliamentary candidate in Wokingham, where the Conservative candidate is one John Redwood. Curious.

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What happened to the 19 Conservative MPs who voted to keep MPs’ expenses secret?

I’ve commented on the fate of the 21 Conservative MPs who voted against reform of Parliamentary expenses (in brief: nearly all of them have since had to pay back money or had an expenses scandal come to light).

That was one of two key votes where Parliament had had the chance to clean up its act before media stories and public outcry forced it to do so. The other was about whether or not MPs’ expenses should be susceptible to Freedom of Information requests. There was an attempt to change the law to keep them secret, via a Bill introduced …

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