Tag Archives: liberal democrat manifesto 2014

Ed Long

Opinion: A ringfence is not enough for the science budget

By Ed Long | Wed 27th August 2014 - 11:28 am

The party has recently been trailing hints of the content and priorities of the new manifesto. One released last week was an announcement touting a ringfence of the science budget. They write:

The manifesto plans include ringfencing the science research budget and introducing a green innovation arm to the British Business Bank.

It’s great that the manifesto team have chosen to flag investment in science and innovation as a reason to vote Liberal Democrat in the 2015 general election, but what a meagre and unambitious announcement this was. One worrying sign is the wording mentioning only the ‘research budget’, which raises the concern that this ringfence might be a fig leaf hiding underspending in capital investment for science, as we saw in the early years of the current coalition government – though the 2014 budget went some way towards plugging the gap in capital spending in the sector.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 10 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Times reports Lib Dem “infighting” but misses out David Laws’ dismissal of their “highly misleading” story

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 19th February 2014 - 9:52 am

Yesterday, the Times reported that the Liberal Democrat leadership were preparing to ditch policies from our manifesto which wouldn’t get agreement from either the Conservative or Labour parties. I wrote of the dangers of such a move, arguing that our manifesto needed to be brimming with liberalism.

David Laws, who chairs the manifesto group, wrote on the party website that the Times story was highly misleading.

The latest example of this is the highly misleading article on the front page of today’s Times (18 February) under the headlines ‘Lib Dems Axe pledges for coalition deal’ and ‘Lib Dems seeking policies to

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 24 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • paul barker
    All the figures on Immigration are more than a Year out of date, there are figures which are only 6 Months behind but they are Projections. What we know from ...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    Thank you Tom. As an immigrant who built a business here, this resonated, particularly the line about controlling immigration not being the same as condemning i...
  • Jana
    “ The interesting thing was it was not 9-0 given that the language in the 14th Amendment could not have been clearer.” With due respect, it was precisely...
  • Keith Legg
    Please read the article carefully - Roz doesn't just say the referendum should be on PR, but on a whole package of issues of which PR is one. However, I won...
  • expats
    The folly that was Brexit should make everyone very, VERY reluctant to contemplate referendums.. What could be simpler than a 'Yes/No' question? In fact, the l...