Tag Archives: vince cable

Stuart Bonar

Opinion: Free our children to play tipcat

By Stuart Bonar | Tue 30th August 2011 - 12:24 pm

Laws are infringements of an individual’s liberty. Where they exist, they must be justified (and plenty of laws are perfectly justifiable), but those that cannot be justified should be ditched.

We have seen some of this work being done by the Coalition – through the Protection of Freedoms Bill and Vince Cable’s Red Tape Challenge (which is set to repeal the wartime Trading with the Enemy Act) – but there is a hidden layer of rules and regulations, much of it petty, obsolete or needless: council bye-laws.

Let me justify each of those criticisms with examples from the bye-laws currently in …

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Laura Chappell

The Independent View: Vince needs to consider his legacy

By Laura Chappell | Thu 25th August 2011 - 10:20 am

Plan A is looking shakier than ever. After a slow climb out of recession, growth is now stalling and unemployment rising again, the approach taken thus far – cutting the deficit, and waiting for a spontaneous boom in the private sector – feels ever more risky, both politically and for our pockets. Vince Cable, who has always looked uneasy with a “plan for growth” that involves little except sitting back with fingers crossed, must feel increasingly unnerved.

And he’s right to be worried. His credibility is on the line and his legacy at BIS is yet to be secured. Now is …

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Mike Tuffrey

Mike Tuffrey writes… London isn’t working – and the Mayor is asleep on the job

By Mike Tuffrey | Mon 8th August 2011 - 10:23 am

Today 397,000 Londoners are unemployed and looking for a job. As a region, we have the lowest level of skills in the workforce, based on NVQ Level 1 and above. And the problems are getting worse, as we fail to recover fast enough from the cardiac arrest that Labour’s last years in office dealt to the national economy.

Not a pretty picture for our great capital city, powerhouse (so we keep saying) of the whole UK economy.

In fact, weren’t the Olympics meant to help drive forward our economy? A couple of news stories from July sum up for me what’s wrong …

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The Voice

Vince: This isn’t a banking crisis, this is a debt crisis

By The Voice | Sat 6th August 2011 - 1:45 pm

Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable has sought to reassure the British public that the financial crisis currently destabilising the markets is substantially different to the 2008 crash which sparked the ‘credit crunch’ and recession.

While the Lehmans-triggered crash left the British economy reeling because of the knock-on effect on our banking-reliant financial services sector, notes Vince, this current crisis is the result of the markets’ failure to be convinced by the US and Eurozone efforts to curb sovereign debt — whereas the Coalition’s austerity measures to cut the deficit have the confidence of the markets.

Here is Vince speaking on the BBC today:

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes: Hargreaves and site-blocking: a good start

By Julian Huppert | Thu 4th August 2011 - 3:27 pm

I was pleased when Vince Cable announced, yesterday, the government’s response to the Hargreaves Report. Like many people who are interested in IT & IP, I was pretty worried that it might turn out to be another damp squib, where an eminent academic publishes a set of excellent proposals, only for the government to fail to act. This, of course, is what happened after the Gowers Review.

Thankfully the Coalition is supporting all ten of Professor Hargreaves’ recommendations. They are important copyright reforms that could add as much as £7 billion, or 0.6%, to the UK economy – …

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Duncan Stott

Opinion: Digital Economy Act – The fight isn’t over

By Duncan Stott | Thu 4th August 2011 - 9:23 am

It’s difficult to quantify the mess the Labour government left us in. Sure, the £158,000,000,000 annual deficit they left behind was one big quantity. But there were also the thousands of children being held in detention, our civil liberties in tatters, university finances out of control, record low levels of house building… the list seems endless.

But seemingly this wasn’t enough for Labour. In their dying breath they created yet another mess for the next government to sort. The Digital Economy Bill was forced through Parliament in its last week before recessing for the General Election campaign.

Grassroots Lib Dems made their …

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Paul Thompson

Vince Cable scraps Labour plans to block websites, outlines widespread changes to our copyright law

By Paul Thompson | Wed 3rd August 2011 - 3:13 pm

The government’s controversial plans to block unlawful file sharing websites were scrapped today by Vince Cable. Brought in by the last government in the hastily put together Digital Economy Act, the plans to force ISPs to block websites was shown to be unworkable in a detailed report from Ofcom.

The report, withdrawn embarrassingly hours after publication when it emerged that the redacted sections of the report could be read by simply cutting and pasting the document, detailed how website blocking as set out in the DEAct could be easily circumvented, would not be suitable for reducing copyright infringement …

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Nick T

“From hero to zero and back again” – Vince Cable profiled in the Independent on Sunday

By Nick T | Mon 1st August 2011 - 10:27 am

Yesterday’s Independent on Sunday featured a profile of business secretary Vince Cable. Vince’s stock certainly appears to risen in recent weeks, his reputation for prescience partially restored by the woes of the Murdoch empire.

But it is his real passion – economics – on which the piece focuses. With the spending review and tuition fees out of the way, what can Vince and his department do to improve the lackluster growth figures?

Well, George Osborne has his Plan A, but Vince has his Plan A+:

“Plan A+ is about really mobilising growth, thinking outside the box, not breaking your fiscal rules –

…

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Charlotte Henry

Opinion: Nick Clegg and the next parliamentary term

By Charlotte Henry | Fri 29th July 2011 - 11:54 am

It’s summer holiday time at the moment for MPs, a time to reflect on what has been achieved this parliamentary term, and what can be achieved in the next parliamentary term. For Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, the answer to these questions could have a profound effect on the future of our party.

Clegg showed strong, considered leadership over phonehacking, and must use this position of strength (and David Cameron’s relative weakness,) to influence even more policy than is currently happening. Key to this of course will be the economy. Slow, steady, growth figures will not be enough for us …

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Stephen Tall

News International tried to bully the Lib Dems, says Observer. It didn’t work.

By Stephen Tall | Sun 24th July 2011 - 11:25 am

News International ‘bullied Liberal Democrats over BSkyB bid’ is the headline in today’s Observer, with the paper reporting:

Rupert Murdoch’s News International launched a campaign of bullying against senior Liberal Democrats in an attempt to force through the company’s bid for BSkyB, high-level sources have told the Observer.

Lib Dem insiders say NI officials took their lobbying campaign well beyond acceptable limits and even threatened, last autumn, to persecute the party if Vince Cable, the business secretary, did not advance its case.

According to one account from a senior party figure, a cabinet minister was told that, if the government did not

…

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Helen Duffett

LibLink | Vince Cable: My brush with the Murdochs – and the lessons I learned

By Helen Duffett | Sun 24th July 2011 - 10:23 am

Business Secretary Vince Cable writes today at the Mail on Sunday on his own reaction to the “Murdoch mania” press coverage and his experiences of News International during his first year as a Cabinet Minister:

My own direct experience was as the Minister with responsibility for competition and takeovers.
I had to take a decision on whether to approve or refer the bid from News International to acquire the remaining (just over 60 per cent) shares in BSkyB that it did not already own.

My involvement started with a courtesy call from James Murdoch last summer telling me of the bid

…

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Stephen Tall

News International’s William Lewis, BBC’s Robert Peston, and the alleged act of theft which aimed to bring down Vince Cable

By Stephen Tall | Sat 23rd July 2011 - 4:27 pm

Rewind to December 2010, and you will recall the furore which greeted the revelation by the BBC’s Robert Peston that Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable had been secretly taped by undercover Telegraph hacks “declaring war” on Rupert Murdoch and his bid for BSkyB.

Vince was almost forced to resign, responsibility for handling the bid was handed over to a Murdoch-friendly Tory, and the Telegraph was embarrassed by the implication that they had censored the story in order to avoid assisting media rival News International.

A report in today’s New York Times sheds a new and extraordinary light on that sequence of events, and suggests that:

  • The Telegraph was not sitting on the Cable/BSkyB scoop, but was all set to run it as a follow-up to the paper’s initial story focusing on Vince’s forthright views on the Coalition;
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Paul Walter

Opinion: Hackgate – Who do you trust?

By Paul Walter | Thu 21st July 2011 - 10:53 am

5 Live Drive had a poll yesterday on “Who do you trust?”, particularly with Hackgate in mind.

Emerging, blinking, from two weeks of saturation “Breaking News”, answering that question is a good way to take stock of where we are.

Who do I trust?

Vince Cable is the first person who springs to mind. He (inadvertently publicly) “declared war on Mr Murdoch”. He was then forced to be “hors de combat”. He said “I think we are going to win” and we did. Murdoch is in retreat. Well done, Vince.

Tom Watson is the second person I trust as a result of this …

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Helen Duffett

LibLink | Vince Cable: I declared war on Murdoch… now everyone agrees with me

By Helen Duffett | Sat 16th July 2011 - 5:56 pm

Business Secretary Vince Cable has an interview in the Evening Standard, in which he discusses his declaration of “war” on Rupert Murdoch, his referral of the BSkyB takeover bid to Ofcom and Murdoch’s role in the phone hacking scandal:

…the Business Secretary also reveals for the first time that he considered resigning from Cabinet during the furore when he said he was “at war” with the media tycoon.

“I certainly felt rather low at the time because I was heavily criticised,” he said at the end of a week that has seen the tables comprehensively turned between the two men.

“And I

…

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Opinion: Liberal Democrats didn’t just avoid Murdoch, we tried to cut him down to size

By James Percival | Tue 12th July 2011 - 1:53 pm

In my last post for Lib Dem Voice, I pointed out that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems had never courted Murdoch and his cronies.

Actually, that was just the half of it.

We didn’t just avoid him. We have tried, in different ways over a number of years, to cut the media mogul down to size and clamp down on the sort of abhorrent media practices that have been exposed of late.

As far back as 1994, the year before Tony Blair chose to fly to Oz to lick Rupert Murdoch’s boots, we were calling for the OFT …

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Helen Duffett

Vince: Liberal Democrats will approach BSkyB takeover deal “without fear or favour”

By Helen Duffett | Mon 11th July 2011 - 5:47 pm

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Vince and Shirley’s war on Murdoch, while Nick savages PCC as “busted flush”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 9th July 2011 - 5:20 pm

There’s no doubt about the big story this week: Rupert Murdoch being forced to close the biggest-selling British newspaper in a brazen bid to ride out the illegal hacking story that threatens his media empire.

Vince Cable’s prophetic powers first came to prominence during the economic storm that came close to collapsing the banking system. Last December, he accidentally went on the record to make clear his wish to clip Rupert Murdoch’s wings. Ironically, it was the Telegraph’s widely condemned subterfuge which stopped Vince in his tracks, and prevented his ability to hold to account the company where illegal hacking was rife. Here’s what he inadvertently revealed to the Telegraph last year:

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Paul Braithwaite

Opinion: Our party must keep its Equitable pledge

By Paul Braithwaite | Fri 8th July 2011 - 8:31 pm

For a decade now I have been the general secretary of EMAG, the Equitable Members’ Action Group, a campaigning group for those who lost out because of maladministration and regulatory failure at the once venerable insurance firm Equitable Life. Our pursuit of justice for Equitable Life policyholders started in the summer of 2000. Shortly after, Vince Cable took up the cause and together we walked to Downing Street to deliver a protest letter to Gordon Brown on 6th August, 2001. It was the start of my personal politicisation and I became a Liberal Democrat Councillor in Camden in 2006. …

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Opinion: Nick Clegg didn’t suck up to Murdoch – that’s why his minions tried to destroy him

By James Percival | Fri 8th July 2011 - 9:22 am

There was a moment during the election campaign last year when many Liberal Democrats realised we had passed through the looking glass.

Nick Clegg’s performance in the first leaders’ debate broke the glass ceiling of British politics and, it seems, caused more than one Tory-supporting newspaper editor to wet themselves in fear.

Then, on the eve of the second debate, the right wing press let slip the dogs of war.

It wasn’t just the Murdoch papers that went for Nick, but they did and they did it viciously. The Sun ridiculed him, splashing outrageous and ridiculous headlines on their front page for days …

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Prateek Buch

Opinion: This is the Social Liberal moment

By Prateek Buch | Tue 21st June 2011 - 4:25 pm

After months of planning, and not inconsiderate last-minute scrambling, the Social Liberal Forum’s first ever conference took place at City University on Saturday; envisioned by Hackney’s Geoff Payne and put into action by the outstanding team he led, the conference (#SLFconf on Twitter) was a massive success from so many perspectives.

Firstly, there was the interest generated by having two Cabinet Ministers and the Party’s Deputy Leader speaking – Vince Cable’s speech was carried live by the BBC and Sky news was also filming throughout the day. Of course the Ministers were a significant draw, but the packed-out audience was …

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Mark Pack

Vince Cable on equalities

By Mark Pack | Mon 20th June 2011 - 1:54 pm

As part of the Social Liberal Forum conference last weekend, I took part in a blogger interview with Vince Cable and took the chance to ask him about his attitude towards equalities issues. My reason for asking is that I’ve always viewed Vince as a firm liberal on such matters (perhaps in part because of his own personal history) but there have been plenty of murmurings that his department are rather keen on abolishing regulations in this field.

His answer was very …

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Lee Dargue

Opinion: The Social Liberal Conference was a major success

By Lee Dargue | Mon 20th June 2011 - 9:41 am

The SLF conference was a major success. Yes, it was “full” – David Hall-Mathews careful not to refer to the event as “sold out”. Yes, lots of people debated and tweeted like crazy on subjects ranging from NHS reforms to the history of the American fridge. But it wasn’t the numbers or amount of talking we did which was the most important. It was the fact that there is still a groundswell of progressives alive and well in the Liberal Democrats. In fact, since entering government with the Conservative party, and with a recent “win” (yet to see how it …

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Mark Pack

News in brief: The disappearing alarm clock, Vince Cable’s favourite moment and more

By Mark Pack | Mon 20th June 2011 - 8:55 am

The police have returned the paperwork related to David Laws’s expenses – which suggests that they have not found anything in it worthy of legal action.

Asked by me at the weekend what his favourite moment had been since last year’s election, Vince Cable said it was getting drive an Aston Martin DB9 at 150mph. He swiftly added that this was on a racetrack rather than a road…

On a more substantive issue – he was also hopeful that a mutual buyer could be found for Northern …

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Dominic Mantle

Opinion: Cable’s GMB speech encapsulated coalition tensions

By Dominic Mantle | Sun 19th June 2011 - 7:56 pm

The Business Secretary Vince Cable’s speech to the GMB annual conference last Monday received significant attention. Some media coverage would have us believe that the senior Lib Dem had brazenly threatened trades unions with serious curbs on their strike powers. In fact, Cable had qualified his brief hint of this possibility with the admission that present circumstances merited no government action.

Within the context of unions’ criticism of government cuts to jobs and services, Cable’s introduction to the table of the possibility of changes to strike law may have been a strategic manoeuvre intended to dissuade industrial action planned …

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Stephen Tall

‘Renegades with a mission’ – the Sindy’s verdict on the Social Liberal Forum

By Stephen Tall | Sun 19th June 2011 - 11:43 am

The Social Liberal Forum — a group of Liberal Democrat members who advocate ‘that a democratic and open state has a positive role to play in guaranteeing individual freedom’ — met yesterday for their first conference on a high note: their mobilising role at the party’s spring conference is widely credited with having strongly influenced the Coalition’s changes to the controversial NHS reforms.

Here’s how the Independent on Sunday, with an inevitable nod towards stereotypes, reports the gathering:

Welcome to the first annual conference of the Social Liberal Forum – the home of “proper” Liberal Democrats. Not the quasi-Tory,

…

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Stephen Tall

Cable and Alexander on union strike threats: there’s got to be pensions reform, but we want to negotiate

By Stephen Tall | Sat 18th June 2011 - 8:25 pm

With trade unions threatening “sustained and indefinite” strike action if the Coalition goes ahead with its aims to reform public sector pensions in line with Labour peer Lord Hutton’s recommendations, Lib Dem cabinet ministers have been sticking to a simple message to calm the situation: there has to be reform, but we’re very hapy to engage in constructive negotiation.

Here’s Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable speaking today:

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Mark Pack

The Guardian cottons on to rise and rise of the Social Liberal Forum

By Mark Pack | Fri 17th June 2011 - 1:53 pm

The Social Liberal Forum got a profile in The Guardian this week, rightly highlighting its growing influence in the party (something I particularly noted over the Sheffield health debate):

In a tribute to the forum’s growing influence, cabinet ministers Vince Cable and Chris Huhne will attend the SLF conference on Saturday, with party deputy leader Simon Hughes.

The group claims about 1,500 members, and has no full time staff. It has only just appointed a director – Mark Blackburn, a former Lib Dem candidate for Westminster.

The group was set up after the party leadership won a vote at the 2008

…

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Helen Duffett

LibLink | Vince Cable: We agree to differ on restoring economy

By Helen Duffett | Sat 11th June 2011 - 3:21 pm

Business Secretary Vince Cable writes today at the Financial Times on the Coalition Government’s approach to deficit reduction, in response to the International Monetary Fund’s endorsement.

He explores the reasons for the financial crisis and its legacy, and suggests,

The only sensible macro-economic policy stance is a tight fiscal policy combined with a loose monetary one: Plan A.

He concludes:

Co-operation between the coalition partners remains vital for the good of the economy. While there is much common ground there are differences of emphasis. Liberal Democrats prioritise radical banking reform, progressive taxation and the green economy. Conservatives set greater store by corporate tax

…

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The Voice

LibLink | Vince Cable: “I can see another financial bomb going off”

By The Voice | Fri 27th May 2011 - 10:53 am

The New Statesman published an interview with Business Secretary Vince Cable yesterday, in which he talks about the current economic situation, the banks’ reluctance to lend, his political influences and his working relationship with Tory ministers.

Here’s an excerpt:

“If you’re trying to design a system from scratch,” he says, “what you probably want is a Danish-type model, which relates tax to property values. Council tax doesn’t work anymore . The link is broken. There are all kinds of technical problems about valuations; how you concentrate it at the top end with the bottom end. Those are the things we should

…

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The Voice

“Chris Huhne has achieved more in a year than most top politicians manage in a lifetime”

By The Voice | Wed 25th May 2011 - 9:48 pm

High praise from the Telegraph for Chris Huhne, and deservedly so. Environmental correspondent Geoffrey Lean says Huhne “has been playing a blinder” through the introduction of the Green Investment Bank and the fourth Carbon Budget:

Over the last two weeks, as the crisis he faces steadily deepened, he has been the driving force behind two of the most momentous decisions any administration has taken, ones that could shape Britain’s economic development for the rest of the century, and beyond.

Last week the government adopted the world-beating goal of cutting carbon emissions to half 1990 levels by 2025. No other

…

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