Tag Archives: southport murders

Mark Valladares

21 January 2025 – yesterday’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Wed 22nd January 2025 - 10:20 pm
  • Unemployment: Reeves must scrap jobs tax
  • Southport Inquiry: Must get us answers to avoid future failures
  • WASPI: More than 300,000 women in Scotland “betrayed” by Labour decision
  • Welsh unemployment rise: Labour must scrap their Jobs Tax
  • Cole-Hamilton: SNP have left A&E in state of perma-crisis
  • McArthur: Community orders should be credible solutions to prison overcrowding

Unemployment: Reeves must scrap jobs tax

Responding to the latest figures showing unemployment at 4.4%, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

These latest figures are concerning. The government’s misguided jobs tax is already scaring off small businesses from hiring new people and being able to better serve our communities.

The Chancellor talks about growth but her Budget measures are acting as an anchor against just that.

After years of the Conservative Party’s economic vandalism we cannot see this new government repeat their mistakes. That is why Rachel Reeves needs to scrap her jobs tax to get our economy growing again.

Southport Inquiry: Must get us answers to avoid future failures

Commenting after Starmer’s press conference following the government’s announcement of an inquiry into the Southport murders, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

The Liberal Democrats welcome this inquiry, which must not shy away from asking tough questions about what went wrong.

This was an utterly horrific tragedy. My thoughts go out to the bereaved families, who lost three young daughters to such brutal violence. We need to ensure that such a senseless attack cannot happen again.

We must learn from these events, and the inquiry must urgently get us the answers we need to avoid future failures.

WASPI: More than 300,000 women in Scotland “betrayed” by Labour decision

Speaking ahead of a Scottish Parliament debate on compensation for WASPI women, Beatrice Wishart MSP has said her party will “fight for WASPI women” as data from the House of Commons library estimated that an estimated 331,780 women in Scotland could be affected.

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Posted in News, Press releases, Scotland and Wales | Also tagged , , , , , , , , and | 1 Comment
Richard Kemp

The role of social media – a crisis of conscience for Lib Dems?

By Richard Kemp | Tue 6th August 2024 - 10:25 am

One of the issues that has come to the fore following the appalling murders then just as appalling lawlessness in Southport earlier this week is the question of free speech. There can be no doubt that misinformation has caused much of the rioting and sheer criminality of the past few days. There are a lot of similarities between what happened in the 1981 Toxteth riots and what happened in 2024 in Southport but there is one crucial difference – social media and the various mobile phones and appliances that supercharge them. 

Just to recap within a couple of hours of the murders false information was put out through social media that the person who committed the murders was an immigrant who came over on small boats and was a Muslim. The Police are bound by law to restrict information about suspects, but they did release one nugget of information that, in a rational world, would have shut down the rumours. They said that the suspect was from Rwanda. 

The UK has few Rwandan refugees, and they came over 30 years ago at the time of the massacres and genocide in that Country. Rwanda is a member of he Commonwealth of Nations although we were not the colonial rulers. Commonwealth membership gives Rwandans greater rights to come to our Country just as we Brits have greater rights to go to their countries. So, the perpetrator was not a ‘boat person,’ his family came here with the support of the UK government all those years ago and was not a Muslim. 96% of the population of Rwanda are Christian and only 2% is of the Islamic faith.

I believe that this means that we must think carefully of the advantages and disadvantages of social media. I use social media a lot. I blog for example. I tweet. I regularly communicate with my grandchildren, using facetime. I email which is a process which saves so much time and paper. So social media must stay but there must be constraints on it.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 24 Comments
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Recent Comments

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    I'd be interested to know if Daisy Cooper thinks that just cutting taxes will create economic growth. Would that growth increase activity enough to compensate...
  • Nigel Jones
    Likewise the many passages in both Old and New Testaments that show God's strong care for the poor. Then there are the prophets' attacks on leaders who don't ca...
  • Nigel Jones
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  • Peter Davies
    @Roland Absolute poverty in India has dramatically declined since 1993. A new rich and a large middle class has emerged but the poor are better off too....
  • Roland
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