Tag Archives: nick clegg

Caron Lindsay

Clegg on Marr: Liberal Democrats are the guarantors of fairness and home rule for Scotland

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 18th May 2014 - 12:45 pm

st Andrews flag saltire scotland Some rights reserved by Fulla TNick Clegg was interviewed by Andrew Marr this morning. It was wide ranging. It appears he’s back on the cigarettes again, but that’s hardly surprising given his hectic schedule. He also said he wanted the Chilcott report into the Iraq War published as soon as possible, “s the leader of the party who opposed the headlong rush to war.”

Here’s my Storify thingy of the event – and a few additional comments.

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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem MP on post-22 May leadership speculation: “Ashdown would cut my balls off if I criticised Clegg”

By Stephen Tall | Sun 18th May 2014 - 11:45 am

Paddy Ashdown talks on "The global power shift" in Brussels March 1st 2012 - Some rights reserved by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE Lib Dems are braced for a tricky week. This Thursday will see the first UK-wide election since 2010, with voters choosing who represents them in the European Parliament. Many voters across England will also get to decide who runs their local council.

Votes for the local elections will be counted on that night and throughout Friday. If this year follows the pattern of the previous three years, the Lib Dems could …

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg on the benefits of being in the EU, cheese, football and UKIP fruitcakery

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 14th May 2014 - 12:55 pm

FruitcakeNick Clegg did a further Twitter Town Hall session yesterday. I did a quick Storify thingy. The order is not quite right because of some technological gremlins I am not clever enough to sort, but I think all the questions are there. There’s also a beautifully illustrated piece in the Independent which you might like to have a look at.

There’s quite a good balance between banter and serious questions and he’s actually quite good with the quick fire summarising in 140 characters. It’s not easy to do, especially as he can be over-wordy at other times.

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Guy Russo

Opinion: Labour’s cheap attacks on Clegg’s integrity reflect badly on them

By Guy Russo | Mon 12th May 2014 - 2:15 pm

Labour broadcast Shrinking manThe word appalling doesn’t even begin to cover Labour’s most recent campaign video. It’s a spiteful attack ad on the character of Nick Clegg, and in case you haven’t seen it, you can find it here. Feel free to grab something to vomit into beforehand.

I’m a 16 year old student, and I joined the Liberal Democrats in 2013 for three reasons. I believe passionately that democracy in Britain is failing, and the Liberal Democrats are the only party that seek that cause with integrity. I couldn’t deal …

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Stephen Tall

Battle of the Election Videos: Lib Dems’ “Incredible Silent Man” v. “Labour’s Un-credible Shrinking Man”

By Stephen Tall | Thu 8th May 2014 - 4:20 pm

So Labour’s party election broadcast then… Titled The Un-credible Shrinking Man it mocks Nick Clegg as a deluded patsy of the posho Tories. He starts off being offered a biscuit and ends up being chased across the cabinet table by a big cat. Because he’s shrunk, y’see. And naked. I’m not sure I’m doing its nuanced subtlety justice. It’s sort-of funny, at least if you enjoy laughing at one-dimensional caricatures which fit your pre-existing bias – a bit like a sketch for Radio 4’s The Now Show. You can watch it for yourselves here.

Kudos to the Lib Dem team at Great George Street who immediately re-packaged the party’s own video The Incredible Silent Man chiding Labour leader Ed Miliband’s reluctance to take the fight to Ukip or make the case for Europe:

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Nick Clegg: This knife crime law won’t work

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 8th May 2014 - 8:55 am

Police motorbike - Some rights reserved by Metropolitan PoliceOn Monday, I wrote about the reported Coalition tension over Tory plans to bring in mandatory 6 month jail sentences for carrying a knife. I said that:

It’s important that Liberal Democrats stay in this debate and make the evidence-based case. Nobody else will do it for us. We may not be able to stop a bad law being passed, but we need to oppose it calmly, clearly and without rancour.

I would not suggest for a minute that the two events …

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The Voice

Nick Clegg unveils Council waste and incompetence

By The Voice | Tue 6th May 2014 - 12:10 pm

wasteToday Nick Clegg launches the Liberal Democrats’ local election campaign with a fascinating round-up of Tory and Labour ‘achievements’.  As he writes:

If you want to understand a political party’s values, look at one thing: when they are in power, how do they spend your money?

Here is a sample of the worst or daftest excesses:

Labour Councils

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Caron Lindsay

Could Labour and Tories unite to pass tougher knife crime sentencing? How should Liberal Democrats react?

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 5th May 2014 - 11:30 am

FSI working at crime sceneLast Friday, Joe Otten wrote about the leak of letters  revealing that the Liberal Democrats were opposing Tory plans to introduce a six month mandatory sentence for those convicted a second time for carrying a knife.

Today’s Daily Mail makes two claims. The first is that Labour is getting ready to “humiliate” the Liberal Democrats by siding with the Tories and they could pass this together. Secondly, they say that Nick Clegg was “bouncing off the walls” when he discovered the leak.

We know from the feature on …

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Caron Lindsay

Malcolm Bruce: Britain needs Lib Dem MEPs

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th May 2014 - 12:52 pm

malcolm-bruce-2Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Malcolm Bruce went on the Sunday Politics today to highlight the work that Liberal Democrat MEPs did in terms of working with others for reform across Europe. He said that Liberal Democrat MEPs were the hardest working of all British MEPs, a fact backed up by actual evidence, as revealed on Lib Dem Voice by Giles Goodall last month.

The European Parliament takes decisions that affect us and the people who are working hardest to ensure that British national interests

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Paul Walter

Nick Clegg’s Twitter Townhall as it happened

By Paul Walter | Thu 1st May 2014 - 7:26 pm

nick clegg live tweet town hall 1st may 2014Today, Nick Clegg took part in a remarkably simple and accessible Twitter Q&A on Europe, dubbed a “Twitter Townhall”. Via Storify and the LibDem party website, here below is the official version of how it happened, (almost) tweet by tweet.

Over on Caron’s Musings, LDV Co-editor Caron Lindsay gives her take on the event and presents the complete, unofficial version of the tweetery.

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The Voice

Nick Clegg to host live Twitter Q & A at 2:30 pm today

By The Voice | Thu 1st May 2014 - 12:30 pm

Nick Clegg will be taking to his keyboard for what he described as a “Twitter Town Hall” at 2:30 pm this afternoon.

We’ll bring you the highlights later, but if you want to ask him something, it couldn’t be simpler. Why not take a few minutes out of your lunch hour to send him a question?

 

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Mary Reid

Nick Clegg announces £500million investment in green cars

By Mary Reid | Tue 29th April 2014 - 2:58 pm

POD-PointThe Liberal Democrats have just announced a new Government initiative to encourage the use of electric cars.

Drivers of electric cars already benefit from zero road tax and zero congestion charge in London, as well as the knowledge that they are helping to reduce air pollution. But they have also had to plan journeys carefully so they can find charge-points when they need them.

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Spencer Thompson

The Independent View: Lessons for Clegg – we need to be more innovative on maternity and paternity pay

By Spencer Thompson | Tue 29th April 2014 - 11:14 am

Nick Clegg in a London schoolLast week, Nick Clegg gave a speech at the launch of the Cityfathers, a network of working dads based in the Square Mile and Canary Wharf. In it, he focused in particular on changes to parental leave coming into force next year, which will allow couples to transfer a portion of their maternity leave entitlement to fathers after two weeks. While the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has argued that we should go further, creating a ‘use it or lose it’ block of leave for fathers, in general the Coalition’s move has been regarded as at least a first step in the right direction for parental leave policy.

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The Voice

Lib Dems pay tribute to Oliver Thomas

By The Voice | Tue 29th April 2014 - 9:37 am

logo_lg new Liberal Democrat logoFive people lost their lives in the helicopter crash in Afghanistan last week.  Amongst them, sadly, was 26 year old Lance Corporal Oliver Thomas from Brecon, who had worked as a researcher for Roger Williams in his Westminster office.

Tributes have been paid by a number of leading Liberal Democrats.

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Stephen Tall

++BREAKING: Antidisestablishmentarian Times and Telegraph reveal new danger posed by 150 year-old Liberal pledge for separation of Church and State

By Stephen Tall | Fri 25th April 2014 - 10:15 am

times tele disestablishmentIs there no actual news happening today? Sounds a stupid question. I mean, the US has accused Russia of deliberately destabilising Ukraine, affordability tests for new mortgages are going to be toughened, and the state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland has vetoed big bonuses for staff. All important, interesting stories.

Then I looked at today’s Times and Telegraph, both of which lead on whether the Church of England should remain the established state church.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s a diverting issue. A little over five years ago, …

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Caron Lindsay

In Full: Nick Clegg on tearing down the barriers facing women at work and the £23 billion boost if we get it right

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 24th April 2014 - 9:04 am

Clegg Speech 40I have always said that if I had to pick one policy enacted by the Coalition that summed up our liberal values it would be the revolution that Nick Clegg and Jo Swinson have enacted on parental leave. From next year, parents will be able to choose how they split parental leave following a birth or adoption between them rather than the mother having to take it all. It’s the stronger economy, fairer society and enabling people to get on in life all in one.

Yesterday, Nick Clegg made a …

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The Voice

LibLink: Where would you rather live – Great Britain or little England?

By The Voice | Tue 22nd April 2014 - 9:46 am

clegg farage lbcNick Clegg asked this question in The Guardian yesterday, and robustly attacked Ukip’s position:

The isolationists have been allowed to peddle their myths unchallenged for decades. Of all Nigel Farage’s far-fetched claims – and there are many – the most outlandish is the idea that Ukip’s call for an exit is the insurgents’ battle cry. European withdrawal is presented as a great revolutionary promise, held in stark contrast to the status quo upheld by a homogeneous political elite.

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The Voice

Labour’s “Easter Clegg” – that’s grown up politics for you

By The Voice | Sun 20th April 2014 - 8:57 am

Screen Shot 2014-04-20 at 08.14.13Labour’s Easter weekend headline grab isn’t about their policies. It doesn’t tell you why you should vote for them, why their vision is any good.

Oh no. It’s a highly personal attack on Nick Clegg in the shape of a chocolate Clegg. All very mature.

From the Mirror:

But the packaging warns the Clegg Eggs are “guaranteed to leave a bad taste in your mouth – and like the Deputy PM himself – are “completely hollow”.

The slogan for the campaign on Twitter suggests the eggs, shaped in the image

…

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Stephen Tall

Daily Mail attacks Nick Clegg for Cyril Smith RIP tribute. Why?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 16th April 2014 - 9:00 am

mail cyril smith lib dems‘Squirming of the Lib Dems’ is the Daily Mail’s front page splash today. It’s the second successive day the paper has tried, a bit desperately, to pin blame on Nick Clegg for the extensive abuse allegedly committed by former Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith in the 1960s and ’70s.

The basis for the paper’s accusations is that Nick Clegg issued a tribute on his 80th birthday and when Cyril Smith died. As Nick has pointed out, “I would never have dreamed of saying the things …

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Stephen Tall

The verdict of Philip Collins, chief speech writer for Tony Blair, on Nick Clegg: “the Deputy Prime Minister should be applauded by all liberal voters”

By Stephen Tall | Tue 15th April 2014 - 5:45 pm

Nick Clegg Q&A 19Philip Collins uses his column in today’s Times to write something not often written on that paper’s pages (or anywhere else for that matter): praise for the Lib Dems in Coalition. Here’s the paywalled link, and here’s a glimpse behind the paywall of what he has to say:

It is therefore a serious defence of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to commend them for things that would have happened had they not been there. It is in the nature of things that have not happened that we

…

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The Voice

A message from Nick Clegg for Passover

By The Voice | Tue 15th April 2014 - 2:36 pm

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The Voice

Clegg announces three new garden cities to be built

By The Voice | Mon 14th April 2014 - 2:00 pm

Nick Clegg Q&A York Some rights reserved by Liberal DemocratsThe BBC reports:

Up to three garden cities, each with more than 15,000 homes will be built to help deal with a “chronic” housing shortage, Nick Clegg has announced. The deputy prime minister promised “high-quality homes in thriving new communities”, on potential sites yet to be identified.

Funding from an existing £2.4bn pot will be made available for developments being built up to 2020. Councils will be asked to raise any concerns over the schemes.

Last year 109,370 new homes were completed in England, …

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The Voice

In full: Nick Clegg’s speech to Welsh Conference

By The Voice | Tue 8th April 2014 - 8:55 am

Nick Clegg speaking York Some rights reserved by Liberal Democrats“We meet on the eve of a new tax year” is no conventional beginning to a political speech. However, Nick Clegg spoke to Welsh Liberal Democrats as taxpayers were about to get a Liberal Democrat tax cut which they’ll notice in their pay packets in 3 weeks’ time. He went on about it for quite some time, as you would expect, given that it was a major pledge on the front of OUR manifesto. He said that Cameron and Osborne, who are …

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The Voice

The three things Nick Clegg would change about the EU

By The Voice | Mon 7th April 2014 - 1:17 pm

Nick Clegg York Q&A Some rights reserved by Liberal Democrats13 hours after leaving the debate stage last Wednesday night, Nick Clegg was back on his regular Call Clegg radio show. The show had been nominated twice in the Radio Academy Awards to be presented next month.

The first caller, Caron from West Lothian, (who might she be, I wonder?) made the point that she was highly amused by David Cameron trying to pretend that he was the voice of reason on Europe when his plan was to sell all our employment rights down the river and then give us a referendum.  Her question to him was that although he’s a powerful advocate of the EU, he acknowledges that it’s not perfect,

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Stephen Tall

The Nigel Farage Paradox: the higher his public profile, the lower is public support to leave the EU

By Stephen Tall | Mon 7th April 2014 - 9:45 am

Nigel Farage

Here is the Nigel Farage paradox: the more that Ukip’s media profile, poll rating and party membership has grown over the last two years, the more that support for the party’s core mission – that Britain should leave the European Union – seems to have shrunk.

    Sunder Katwala, director of British Future (New Statesman, 3 April 2014)
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Stephen Tall

Chart of the day: how spending on day-to-day public services will have been cut by 37% by 2018-19

By Stephen Tall | Fri 4th April 2014 - 1:55 pm

It is simply not true – as our critics on the left pretend – that we are slashing and burning the state. By the end of this Parliament, public spending will still be 42% of GDP. That’s higher than at any time between 1995 and when the banks crashed, in 2008.

    Nick Clegg, 10th March 2013

It’s a soothing line from Nick Clegg, designed to reassure Lib Dems that the Coalition’s austerity programme is simply curbing the spending excess of the Blair/Brown years.

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Caron Lindsay

Nick v Nigel: What the commentators say – and don’t say

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 3rd April 2014 - 1:12 pm

Farage cleggWell, there’s a surprise. After last week’s largely positive stories, the headlines aren’t so good this week. It’s interesting to see that those who called for Nick to be more passionate and to go less on the detail weren’t satisfied when he did just that. I wonder if last week’s coverage prompted too much of a strategic rethink to an approach that was working fine. In my opinion, the only thing that needed changing from the LBC debate was a stronger answer on the referendum question, especially as it …

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Caron Lindsay

Party gets smart over fundraising

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 3rd April 2014 - 9:19 am

Pound coins with no dateWe know that the Obama campaign made great use of micro-fundraising during its two successful campaigns. If you are signed up to the emails, you’ll know the kind of thing. You get an email asking you to donate $5 before midnight to get a chance to have dinner with Obama or some (other) celebrity.

The Liberal Democrats have been experimenting a lot with that sort of thing. During the Eastleigh by-election I had a whole host of emails, with increasingly emotional appeals, designed to get me in my …

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NewsHound

Nick Clegg talks of shock and disappointment at Sheffield’s Labour council refusing to accommodate vulnerable Syrian refugees

By NewsHound | Wed 2nd April 2014 - 3:33 pm

Syrian refugee children fleeing the violence in their country with their families pose for a picture on February 20, 2012 at a partially set up camp in Mafraq city, near Jordan's northern border with Syria.From today’s Guardian:

Nick Clegg has accused Labour council leaders in Sheffield of refusing to take a single refugee from Syria under the coalition government’s vulnerable persons relocation (VPR) scheme.

The deputy PM and Sheffield MP is furious that Labour put pressure on the coalition government to do more to help Syrian refugees but is refusing to offer practical help locally. Refugees have been arriving from Syria in the past few weeks under the government scheme.

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Caron Lindsay

Liberal Democrats put mental health on the agenda in Holyrood and Cardiff

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 2nd April 2014 - 12:30 pm

Phrenology head - mental health - Some rights reserved by evansvilleWe know that mental health has always been one of Nick Clegg’s top priorities. His first major speech as Liberal Democrat leader was on the subject. In the coalition, he, Paul Burstow and Norman Lamb have been pushing forward improvements to mental health care from making sure people in crisis see health professionals and not the inside of a Police cell, to a massive expansion of talking therapies to action to tackle the stigma that still exists.

A friend of mine has recently had some time off work for Depression. She wrote on Facebook, and asked people to share, the following:

What I do want to say is that until being off work for eight weeks with depression is regarded on equal footing with the same period of time off with a physical ailment of any kind ( from a hip replacement, to heart attack,stroke, badly broken limb, severe diabetes, or any of countless medical conditions ) then we will all suffer individually and as a society.

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