Tag Archives: vince cable

Mary Reid

GCHQ apologises to gay people

By Mary Reid | Mon 18th April 2016 - 4:53 pm

 

The boss of GCHQ has apologised for banning gay people from working for the organisation right up until the 90s. Robert Hannigan was speaking at a conference run by Stonewall, when he referred to a spy called Ian who was sacked in the 1960s for being gay.

After seven years of exemplary service, with very strong prospects for the future, he was interrogated on suspicion of being homosexual, he was summarily dismissed and escorted out of the building. He got no support from anyone in authority at all, even his union, and no-one ever followed up to check on his well-being or to show any compassion. Not surprisingly, his health suffered and the psychological effects of that humiliation were long-lasting.

… Their suffering was our loss and it was the nation’s loss too because we cannot know what Ian and others who were dismissed would have gone on to do and achieve.

Whenever a group of people are excluded from areas of employment and expertise for reasons that have nothing to do with their competence, then we have to ask what could have been achieved if they had been included in the pool of talent. There is always the question about ‘what might have been’ if the organisation had been completely free to choose the best candidates for a job.

What caught my eye, though, were the references to Alan Turing in Hannigan’s speech:

But in our building he is revered as a genius, as a problem-solver who was not afraid to think differently and radically – an example to others. And in the horrifying story of his treatment, a small ray of light is that he was not abandoned by all of his colleagues at GCHQ – many stood by him and our then Head of Cryptanalysis – chief code breaker – testified at his trial.

… We did not learn our lesson from Turing.

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The Voice

LibLink: Vince Cable makes the case for TTIP and free trade

By The Voice | Thu 14th April 2016 - 9:36 am

Vince Cable, who was involved in negotiations over the proposed EU-US trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, in his role as business secretary, has been writing about the issue, and that of free trade more generally.

Vince first summarises the rationale for TTIP:

The European Commission has prioritised a bilateral agreement with the USA: TTIP, which is proving a source of unexpected controversy, although negotiations are still at an early stage. The underlying objective is to apply, on a transatlantic basis, the same approach that helped to create the EU Single Market. Since, as within the EU, tariffs and quotas are no longer a major issue the emphasis has been on preventing differences in standards, mainly technical, acting as a barrier to trade. There are, for example, different specifications for seatbelt design and testing that make it difficult to export in both directions. In effect, a different production line is required to sell into the USA, which can be prohibitive, especially for low volume manufacturers.

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Caron Lindsay

Tim Farron on tax: “We must not miss this opportunity to change the system”

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 10th April 2016 - 5:03 pm

Tim Farron by Paul WalterTim Farron has written a note about tax on his Facebook page. As party leaders publish their tax returns, (including Willie Rennie, that’s 5 minutes of your life you won’t get back if you choose to read this unremarkable document), he says that it’s actually the system you need to change. He’ll publish his in the next few days, but that is not really the point. Here are his comments in full:

The politics of envy helps no-one, but trust in politics does.

I have no desire to poke around in the Prime Minister’s private wealth, and definitely have no desire to force him to relive the pain of losing his father, having to confront that time all over again through the pages of national newspapers.

It is absolutely essential that British people have full confidence in our leaders, and that when decisions are made and Budgets are written there is not even a slightest hint of a conflict of interest or personal gain. But we are now in a position where people no longer have complete faith in this Government’s decisions.

Trust in politics and our ability to get things done is taking another hammering. It’s an poor indictment of our political system that the demand is now so great for the public to see politicians’ tax affairs. Are we now in a world where there is an assumption that a politician is doing wrong, or is playing the system?

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Caron Lindsay

Is it Game Over for Cameron?

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 8th April 2016 - 10:24 am

A few years ago, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives had to resign effectively because he’d taken a few taxi journeys that he shouldn’t on parliamentary expenses. This was the result of the much stronger freedom of information rules in Scotland and was part of our own expenses scandal in 2005.

If those are the standards which merit resignation, David Cameron should perhaps have been a little more careful over the statements he made earlier in the week over his personal financial dealings. He might have told us that he didn’t have any shares now, but holding back the information that he had held shares in his father’s offshore trust for 13 years before selling them just before he became Prime Minister demonstrates a lack of candour. Why couldn’t he just have been up front about it at the beginning of the week? We should expect more from our political leaders.

Tim Farron agrees, telling the Mirror:

The Prime Minister has for days denied that he had offshore funds but has been dragged to the truth.

For ordinary taxpayers to have faith in the system they have to be able to have faith in their leaders. They deserve better than half truths and qualified statements.

It might be an idea for the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to review the matter to make sure that Cameron always kept to the rules on registering these shares. At first glance, it looks as though he did. The rules for registering shareholdings are as follows:

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Nick T

What Cameron and Osborne said about Vince Cable’s proposals on corporate transparency

By Nick T | Thu 7th April 2016 - 12:58 pm

Given this week’s coverage of the so-called Panama Papers — the cache of 11.5m confidential files from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca — this week, it was interesting to come across this account in David Laws’s book, Coalition, from a meeting in 2013:

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George Kendall

What do you think will happen to the Centre-Left?

By George Kendall | Fri 11th March 2016 - 7:35 am

At conference, this Saturday, Vince Cable and Roger Liddle will respond to the question, “where now for the centre-left?” It is a good question.

Around the September conference of last year, Vince Cable wrote “progressive centre-left politicians from Labour and the Liberal Democrats need to ‘come together’ to stop the Conservatives monopolising power in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s victory.”

That sounds to me like a repeat of the 1980s, with either an Alliance, or a new merged party.

Shortly after, Tim Farron pointed to a possible future where disaffected Labour MPs would switch directly to our party.

He made an open pitch to Labour’s members and elected politicians to jump ship to the Liberal Democrats, and he also invited disaffected Tories. In his leader’s speech, he said “if you are in your heart a liberal or a social democrat, you have a home in the Liberal Democrats.”

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Nick T

Was Vince Cable proved right on austerity?

By Nick T | Thu 18th February 2016 - 8:42 am

When the histories of the coalition government come to be written, those chapters focussing on the role of Vince Cable will be some of the most fascinating. Vince’s fierce intelligence combined with a (perhaps deliberate) flair for the enigmatic meant he was involved in some of the most interesting of the coalition’s key moments.

One area of particular significance is likely to be the analysis of his views on austerity. Throughout the coalition Vince was often portrayed in the media — and by some Liberal Democrats — as a brave warrior fighting an axe-wielding Tory-Lib-Dem cabal of ideological austerians. Yet this seems to me to be precisely wrong.

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NewsHound

Vince Cable is working on a novel

By NewsHound | Thu 24th December 2015 - 3:35 pm

According to the Daily Fail, Vince Cable is working on a novel, a political thriller:

Cable, 72, is already deep into the tome, having already bashed out 40,000 words.

It will apparently be a political thriller, set around a controversial arms contract affecting India and Britain. Details thus far are scant, but a friend informs me the prose will be quite ‘pared-back and spare’, in the style of Irish novelist William Trevor. Cable certainly has insight into Anglo-Indian relations, not just because he is a former government minister. His first wife Olympia, who passed away in 2001, was Goan. ‘I am indeed well advanced on a novel,’ Cable tells me sheepishly. ‘But there are a few hurdles before it gets to publication stage.’

Paddy Ashdown apparently had a 120,000 novel turned down for publication. We’d be happy to serialise it, of course…

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The Voice

A tale of two Lib Dem knights

By The Voice | Fri 18th December 2015 - 7:14 pm

Twice in the last 8 days a former Liberal Democrat Cabinet Minister has headed to the Palace to kneel before Prince Charles to formally receive their knighthood.

Last week it was the turn of Sir Danny Alexander, who said:

It was a great honour and a wonderful ceremony and it’s all rather humbling.

It was something I didn’t expect but it is a real honour to have the recognition for the work I did in the coalition government – turning the economy around and getting the country on the right track.

Today, Sir Vince Cable had his big day. The Yorkshire Post has the story:

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Nick T

IfG interviews former Lib Dem ministers, feat. Browne, Swinson, Hughes, Featherstone, Cable, Huhne

By Nick T | Thu 17th December 2015 - 9:24 am

The Institute for Government did a lot of work during the coalition looking at how this (by English standards) unusual arrangement was working, and could work better. Now we have (for now at least) moved beyond coalition, the IfG has been interviewing ministers who served in the last government, seeking their reflections on their time there.

The IfG website has transcripts of a number of interviews with both Conservative and Lib Dem former ministers. The Lib Dems featured are:

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News Meerkat

Vince Cable on “decaying” relationship with “bloody-minded” Osborne in government

By News Meerkat | Tue 8th December 2015 - 7:15 pm
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NewsHound

LibLink: Vince Cable: Britain’s economic recovery is precarious and an economic storm is coming

By NewsHound | Sun 15th November 2015 - 11:13 am

Vince Cable has form for predicting economic disaster, so you take notice when he says that there could be another one on the horizon, even if he qualifies it with an anecdote from his professional life:

I use the word “could”. I am always mindful of the day 20 years ago when I was greeted in my role as chief economist at Shell with a plaque, in Arabic, which translated meant “Those who claim to be able to forecast the future are lying even if, by chance, they are later proved right”. The reputation of economic forecasting as a science, which makes astrology looks respectable, reflects the same scepticism. And that scepticism was greatly reinforced by a total failure of standard economic models based on efficient financial markets to anticipate the last disaster.

Writing in the Independent, he outlines the factors which could indicate that all is not well: the high level of debt, the asset bubbles which have been created particularly in housing and the international economy, particularly any shock waves from a Chinese slowdown.

One side-effect of keeping economies growing through cheap money and credit creation through quantitative easing has been the generation of asset bubbles, especially in property markets. Britain demonstrates the problem in an extreme way, magnifying underlying imbalances between housing demand and supply. Double-digit housing inflation is not merely creating appalling social problems and division between classes and generations but grossly distorting investment from productive activities to property holding. The Bank of England has tools of macro-prudential management to curb this inflation but the extreme timidity in using them reveals the high level of dependence on this precarious and dangerous form of growth.

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The Voice

Cable: Counter-extremism bill will lead to “bland exchange of views” in universities

By The Voice | Wed 28th October 2015 - 8:33 am

The Guardian reports:

The onus placed on universities by the government’s new counter-extremism strategy will lead to inoffensive and bland campus debates without preventing any student radicalisation, according to the former business secretary Vince Cable.

The former Liberal Democrat MP instead says that banning extremist speakers from universities may in fact exacerbate the problem by driving underground hitherto non-violent extremists.

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Merlene Emerson

Vince Cable’s “After the Storm – The World Economy & Britain’s Economic Future”

By Merlene Emerson | Mon 5th October 2015 - 9:00 am

after the stormWider in scope and more ambitious in its reach, “After the Storm” is the acclaimed sequel to “The Storm” published after the financial crisis of 2008.  Having spent the last 5 years as Business Secretary within the Coalition Government (2010-2015), Vince has the added clout of first-hand experience introducing economic policies that have steered us out of the storm, not least an industrial strategy.

His professed motivation for penning a sequel were to update readers on the state of Britain’s economy in “a climate of guarded optimism,” and to share his insights, no longer bound by collective responsibility as Secretary of State at the Department of Business Innovation and Science.  Whilst the US and UK are expected to record 3% growth this year, Vince’s previous analysis of the underlying weaknesses still apply, such as UK’s over reliance on the banking sector and on the housing market for recovery and growth.

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NewsHound

Vince Cable co-authors anti Trade Union Bill article with TUC chief

By NewsHound | Fri 11th September 2015 - 11:11 am

Well, there’s a turn-up for the books. A former Business Secretary teams up with the head of the TUC to warn about the draconian effects of the Trade Union Bill introduced by the Government.

In an article for the Guardian, Vince Cable and Frances O’Grady say that the Bill is trying to resolve a problem that doesn’t exist. Anyone who was brought up in the 70s would surely find it hard to argue that today is even remotely as bad as it was then. They say:

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Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable’s take on tribal Tories and the tyranny of the Treasury

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 6th September 2015 - 10:01 am

Vince Cabe has nothing to lose. He’s (sadly) not an MP any more. In his new book, he could have gone absolutely to town trashing everyone’s performance in the coalition. But he didn’t. In an interview with the Guardian yesterday and an extract from his forthcoming book, he gave a thoughtful critique of the coalition years.

While Nick Clegg was right to have “the quad”, he and Danny Alexander gave too much power to the Treasury and didn’t challenge it enough, says Vince. That is a reasonable criticism.

On the Tories

Vince also talked about the tribalism of the Tories and h0w “vicious” they could be if their vested interests were challenged but rather than criticise them for it, he suggests that we might have been too nice:

The Tories collectively could be appalling, with some ugly tribal prejudices, and when their party interests were directly challenged, they could be vicious. During the alternative vote referendum, they channelled funding to Labour-led groups that specialised in scurrilous personal attacks on Nick, which led to one of the few cases of real verbal fisticuffs in Cabinet. But as individuals they were invariably courteous, professional, often likable.

This ability to operate on different levels is part of the modus operandi of the House of Commons. But the Tories appeared to have an exceptional ability to compartmentalise, to commit political murder with a charming smile. I worried that, in its rapid ascent from the Championship to the Premier League, my party hadn’t acquired this ruthlessness, and has now paid the price.

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NewsHound

Vince Cable and Chuka Umunna criticise Government’s industrial strategy in Independent article

By NewsHound | Fri 4th September 2015 - 10:49 am

Vince Cable has teamed up with Chuka Umunna in an Independent article that warns of the likely consequences if Vince’s former department of Business, Innovation and Skills suffers the massive cuts predicted. It’s not a protected department, so its budget could be cut by up to 40%. That would make it difficult to continue Vince’s successful industrial strategy:

One of the positive legacies of the Coalition government was the establishment of an ‘industrial strategy’ with the same objectives. It was successful in attracting a lot of support from business in general and in key sectors like automotive, aerospace, bio-tech, creative industries, energy and railway supply chains and construction. In vehicles and aerospace, especially, a large amount of private sector and government money was committed to R&D. The approach was flexible, accommodating and welcoming of disruptive technologies and the emergence of new industries. Before the election, the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems (and the SNP) subscribed to the industrial strategy.

There has been a deafening silence since. We are now past the first 100 days: the government’s honeymoon. There is no excuse for lack of clarity over a key area of government policy. There may be an innocent explanation: a wish by the Conservative government to rebrand the industrial strategy as part of its ‘Long Term Economic Plan’, while work quietly proceeds in the background. A more worrying possibility is that the ideologues in government have got their teeth into it believing, against all previous experience, that market failures will correct themselves and that the UK economy will achieve balanced, sustained, recovery thanks to resurgent banking and app start-ups in Shoreditch.

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Sarah Noble

Breaking the Establishment

By Sarah Noble | Thu 23rd July 2015 - 2:05 pm

House of Commons. Crown Copyright applies to this photo - http://www.flickr.com/photos/uk_parliament/4642915654/“We stand up for the outsider instead of the establishment.”, Tim Farron said during the leadership rally last week. For party members who were rather discouraged by our missteps in coalition, that line gives us hope.

Our failings in the Coalition can be traced to one key fault: after speaking out against the establishment, we were seen to be now a part of it. There are so many bills that we extracted key concessions on, but we were not able to communicate that. How could we, after all? We were bound by Cabinet collective responsibility. But it was never designed to operate the way it did in coalition.

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Paul Walter

Something for the weekend: the great and glorious Lib Dem game of “what if?”

By Paul Walter | Sat 27th June 2015 - 11:20 am

At the Glasgow conference in October 2014, there was something of an organisational snafu surrounding the BOTYs (Liberal Democrat Voice Blogs of the Year) awards ceremony. At the start of the session, the actual awards themselves, were not in the conference room where they needed to be. They were in a room upstairs in the hotel. The snag was that the room in question was locked. And the only person who we knew had a key was inside the room sleeping the sleep of the righteous – no doubt smilingly cuddling up to all our shiny BOTYs.

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Caron Lindsay

Guardian revelations about Clegg, Cable and the Lib Dem election catastrophe

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 24th June 2015 - 11:05 pm

Well, as the ballot papers get sent out in the leadership election, the Guardian publishes a series of revelations tonight about the last year of the coalition and the aftermath of the European elections.

Apparently Nick Clegg was ready to resign in the wake of the European elections and was talked out of it by, among others, Paddy Ashdown and Tim Farron. Certainly at the time, the feedback that Federal Executive members gave at our post Euro disaster meeting was that there was no appetite in the wider party for a leadership election, but they did want things to change.

Vince Cable, it transpires, did know about the Oakeshott polls.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Vince Cable: Charles Kennedy: he was left of Labour maybe, but always a true liberal

By NewsHound | Wed 3rd June 2015 - 7:59 pm

Vince Cable has been writing about Charles Kennedy for the Guardian. He mentioned Iraq and was honest about his own role in confronting Charles towards the end of his time as leader. It was this passage on Charles’ ideas and philosophy that caught our eye, though.

In the early Blair-Brown years, when Labour successfully colonised the centre ground, Charles took the Liberal Democrats into territory described as “left of Labour”. This reputation was underlined when we were joined in the run-up to the 2005 general election by a defecting leftwing Labour MP, Brian Sedgemore, and others with similar views.

But this was also the period when the Orange Book, edited by David Laws, to which I contributed, was produced as a counter view, with more economically liberal arguments.

As our party’s shadow chancellor at the time I had doubts about the wisdom of promising a range of free things – university tuition and personal social care, for instance. But it is wrong to portray Charles as a socialist. He had come into parliament as a social democrat and remained one. Like me, he joined the SDP in the early 1980s when Labour was anti-Europe, anti-Nato and was looking back nostalgically to the era of state control and trades union power. For those of us who were attracted to the ideals of social justice, and wanted an alternative both to Thatcher’s Conservatism and to what Labour then offered, the SDP then the Lib Dems offered a way forward.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable’s zero hours contract ban now in force

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 29th May 2015 - 2:52 pm

The Liberal Democrats may no longer be in government but laws we made are still being implemented. Earlier this week, Vince Cable’s ban on exclusivity contracts in zero hours contracts came into force.

It was pretty ridiculous that a company could both have no obligation to provide work and to require that their employees didn’t work for anyone else.

The CIPD, the organisation for HR professionals, wrote about the change on their blog;

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Caron Lindsay

Five Liberal Democrat ex-MPs turn down the ermine

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 16th May 2015 - 2:55 pm

Honourable mentions for Messrs Cable, Laws, Alexander, Baker and Hughes who have, according to the Guardian, turned down or said they are not interested in offers of peerages in the dissolution honours:

Four senior Liberal Democrat politicians defeated in the general election, including former business secretary Vince Cable, have turned down offers of a peerage from Nick Clegg in the dissolution honours list. It is understood that David Laws, the former education minister, Simon Hughes, the former justice minister, and former Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander have also decided to reject a chance to sit in the House of Lords.

The Lords is likely to be a battleground for the government since the Conservatives do not have an overall majority in the upper chamber, even though in practice there are strict limits on how far peers can resist central planks of legislation agreed by the Commons. The Liberal Democrats currently have 101 peers, Labour 214, the Conservatives 178 and crossbenchers 224.

Hughes, a former deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, who lost his Southwark and Bermondsey seat to Labour, told guests at a recent birthday party: “I don’t believe in an unelected second chamber. When you see the list I will not be on it. I am not going there.”

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NewsHound

Greg Mulholland: “We beat the British establishment”

By NewsHound | Wed 29th April 2015 - 11:38 am

The Casked CrusaderWe will never miss an opportunity to show off this amazing photograph from the Sun showing Greg Mulholland as the Casked Crusader, the guy who did more than anyone else in the last Parliament to help publicans by campaigning for them to have more power against exploitative measures by large pubcos.

There is an argument that anyone who likes going to the pub in Leeds North West needs to vote for Greg. In fact, there’s an argument that anyone who likes going to the pub should vote Liberal Democrat given the valiant work by Jo Swinson and Vince Cable in the face of strong Tory opposition.

Greg has written for the Publicans’ Morning Advertiser about the things he and the Liberal Democrats have been able to achieve and the mountains they had to climb to do it.

The Parliament started well, but then reform plans hit troubled Tory waters with a u-turn on plans to regulate the industry.

Diligent research by Greg and his colleagues got the issue back on the political agenda and a long campaign finally led to that amazing victory last November.  Greg says:

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Caron Lindsay

Caroline Lucas: Vince Cable could make you think eating babies was ok

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 4th April 2015 - 4:41 pm

It’s fair to say that this is not a headline I ever thought I’d be writing, but there you go.

The Guardian decided that it might be a good idea to take ten politicians and send them on a “blind date” with someone from a different party. They didn’t exactly push the boat out with this. The MPs met in the cafe in Portcullis House which is ok, but I prefer the public one off Westminster Hall. It’s always a joy to see what food combinations they come up with. They had an Earl Grey cheesecake one time I was there, which was a bit lacking in flavour, if I’m honest.

Probably the closest match politically was between our Vince Cable and Green MP Caroline Lucas. Afterwards, each MP had to say what they thought of the other. Caroline was generally very positive about Vince but made a bit of a strange comment:

My overriding feeling about Vince is that he’s so reasonable and so plausible that he could make eating babies sound an entirely rational thing to do.

The only thing is that Vince is generally right about stuff. If she thought that what he was saying about things like tuition fees and austerity was rational, it’s because it was. I was a bit miffed on Vince’s behalf by the baby-eating comment. She could have chosen a better analogy.

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Caron Lindsay

The attacks on Tim Farron need to stop – Vince Cable should know better

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 24th March 2015 - 11:23 am

Tim Farron Social Liberal Forum conference Jul 19 2014 Photo by Paul WalterNot even a charming account of his Friday dance class as reported by Buzzfeed’s Emily Ashton can assuage my annoyance with Vince Cable this morning. I have to say that he is an unusual candidate for my ire. His work rate of good, decent, liberal stuff in this parliament from stopping the Tories allowing employers to hire and fire people at will to strengthening consumer rights, tackling payday lenders and bringing in shared parental leave has been excellent. His economic wisdom and willingness to call out the Tories on their silly immigration targets has been much appreciated, as has his honesty about the realities of being in coalition with the Tories.

But he’s been the target of enough critical press briefings over the past five years to be aware of how destructive they can be. The fact that he’s prepared to put his name to trashing Tim Farron’s reputation and prospects doesn’t make it that much better. Speaking about the interview in which Farron was reported as saying that he’d give 2/10 for our handling of some aspects of the coalition (which is so totally out of character for Tim that I doubt its accuracy), Vince said:

“It wasn’t at all helpful,” Cable says bluntly. “I mean, he’s a very good campaigning MP, but he’s never been in government and has never had to make difficult decisions and I think his credibility isn’t great. You know, he’s an entertaining speaker and has a bit of a fan club. But I suspect he would not be seen as a very credible leader, at least now. Maybe in five, 10 years’ time, things are different.”

Credible politicians must be more consensual than extreme if they want to get things done, Cable suggests. He says pointedly: “The closer we get to an election and the more uncertain it seems, the more people will want people who are seen to be competent and reliable.”

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NewsHound

Cable: No room for “pre-election bonanza” budget

By NewsHound | Sat 14th March 2015 - 2:23 pm

The Guardian reports:

Vince Cable has warned that George Osborne has no room in next Wednesday’s budget for a substantial pre-election giveaway, but acknowledged that there was some headroom in the public finances for modest tax cuts or an increase in public spending.

The Liberal Democrat business secretary indicated the chancellor had a sum estimated at £5bn – that could be used to increase the personal allowance tax threshold or to row back from plans to cut public spending back to the level of the 1930s in the next parliament.

In an interview with the Guardian a few days before the last major financial event of the coalition government, Cable said: “This budget, I think there is a common agreement across the coalition, cannot be some kind of pre-election bonanza because that would completely undermine credibility.”

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Caron Lindsay

Davey and Cable defend free speech at universities from Tory attack

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st March 2015 - 10:19 pm

Vince Cable Social Liberal Forum conference Jul 19 2014 Photo by Paul WalterWe know that during the passage of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act, Liberal Democrat peers Sal Brinton and Margaret Sharp tried to amend the bill to strengthen the duty on universities to preserve freedom of speech. Senior Tories couldn’t see why that was so important, sadly.

The Observer reports that Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers, especially Vince Cable, disagree about the planned guidance to be issued to universities about what they can and can’t allow on campus.

In the Sunday

…

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David Grace

Opinion: Tax more and spend less

By David Grace | Fri 6th February 2015 - 12:00 pm

Nick Clegg with 2010 manifesto at Glasgow 2014 by Liberal Democrats

The 2010 election was notable for the failure of the three main parties to spell out clearly how they would reduce the budget deficit.  No-one wanted to scare the voters away.

2015 is already proving different. Nick Clegg has announced that Liberal Democrats would increase taxes by at least £8 billion and bring in a further £6 billion by tackling tax avoidance. There would still be up to £16 billion cut from  expenditure, £12 billion from government departments and £4 billion from welfare. Whilst not exactly a return to Keynesian economics, this is nevertheless a huge step away from the Tory approach which seemed to have dominated coalition fiscal policy. The balance between expenditure cuts and tax increases under Tory plans for the next parliament would be 98:2 whereas we will be proposing 60:40.

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Paul Walter

LibLink: Vince Cable – Why is Labour planning changes to tuition fees that benefit higher earning graduates before lower earners?

By Paul Walter | Tue 3rd February 2015 - 10:14 am

Writing on the Guardian’s Comment is Free, Vince Cable takes Labour to task on their developing plan to reduce the tuition fees cap to £6,000. He culminates with this question:

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    Thank you Sir Vince for a useful survey of the history of "austerity" and the political difficulty of implementing the simple solution to our present social an...
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