9 Comments

• Eddie Sammon 28th Oct '15 - 8:47pm

  According to YouGov Tim’s approval rating is on -18, nearly as bad as Jeremy Corbyn’s on -20. Maybe his hard line on tax credits will win him some support, but he seems to be slipping back into his Tory bashing comfort zone.

• Shaun Cunningham 28th Oct '15 - 8:50pm

  Lost for words……just seen Tim on Channel 4.

  Well, here is one party member not going to support Tim’s campaign. Tim does not speak for me and l will make that point very clear on the door step and before others on here start howling I know other local party members share my view.

  Will I be greeted with dismay or anger from the public I am trying to win over, the answer is NO.

  Time this party got real and started to listen to the public, but perhaps the thought of winning again is just too much to bear.

  The honest truth is this party is fast becoming a clone of the Labour Party in that our policies are not in tune with the public, born out by looking at the national polls.

  This party needs to wake up, we got hammered in May did we not and if we are not careful we get another one next May.

  Let us start listening to the public instead of talking to ourselves and start building a party of the centre where we meet the aspirations and values and more importantly we can start connecting to the public. Presently, this party remains unplugged from the electorate and is going nowhere fast. We should stop this ridiculous wave of high emotion and stop pretending all these economic migrants are genuine refugees …they are not.

• Tim13 28th Oct '15 - 9:24pm

  When all said and done, Shaun, we are the leading Liberal Party in the UK. We cannot play the role of “refugee denying”. My understanding is that the majority of people moving across the Turkey – Greece – Balkans route are Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and those from Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea, all of whom have bitter wars of varying degrees of intensity, and/or severe repression as in the case of Eritrea. Of course people wish to go to a country where they feel safe and are able to earn a living and help family back home as much as possible. We cannot, in Europe (or other economically developed countries) ignore the plight of people in this condition. What do you imagine will happen as climate change takes even more severe hold? Do we just allow the world around us to descend into widespread war, while keeping the fortress drawbridge firmly up?

• Tim13 28th Oct '15 - 9:29pm

  Further to my post, I have listened to Tim’s words – he has in fact refrained from “high emotion”, and has tried to put the situation in very bald and matter of fact terms – something he does very well, in any case.

• nigel hunter 28th Oct '15 - 10:33pm

  18 to 20 ,coming up from behind ,win in the race.! Bash the Tories, great fun, they need it. We have been here before, welcoming the refugees in the 1st war, people fleeing Russian pograms. Hitler’s evils and others. The world does not seem to learn. However the wars will end, no thanks to the mistakes of the past. Who will we resent then? We are becoming an insular society but the world is growing smaller we cannot avoid it. Are the libs interested in power for powers sake, as I believe the opposition is or do we reach out to the world to make it better and more Liberal?

• John Bland 28th Oct '15 - 11:30pm

  Shaun, a couple of years ago I would have agreed with you. There were migrants making the journey by boat from Turkey to the Greek Islands then in a far lower number – I was in Kos on holiday at the time when there was one such arrival. I heard about it from a waiter in a restaurant. I have no doubt that they were economic migrants.

  However since then we have seen Isis increase in strength & witnessed the atrocities in Syria. Is it little wander that those who can afford to have sought refuge? Where there is conflict, it is inevitable that you will get refugees. This is what we have now. The Greek Islands are struggling to cope with the numbers simply down to scale & logistics. I can assure you that there were not people camped on the sea front of Kos Town 2 years ago. Please listen to the words of Donald Tusk yesterday to the European Parliament and also on Monday following a Balkans region National Leaders meeting http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/european-council/president/ The rise of Nationalism is a concern & both Donald Tusk & Tim have flagged this up.

  Surely, we as a country should be offering to help our fellow Europeans cope with this humanitarian crisis & offering to take in 3,000 children whose immediate families have lost their lives would be a signal of solidarity. Is there support for it on the doorstep? The fact that this crisis is being played out in a very popular holiday destination must surely bring things closer to those who have holidayed there – it certainly has to me.

• John Marriott 29th Oct '15 - 8:58am

  I saw Tim get to ask a question on PMQS yesterday. I can’t remember the detail of what he asked, as I tend to switch off when the words ‘refugees’ or ‘migrants’ are used. But I did remember Cameron’s comment about his support, or, looking at the TV pictures, his apparent lack of it from his fellow Lib Dem MPs in the chamber. Besides John Pugh, where were the others? Paying him back for the kind of loyalty he failed to show to the party on occasions during the last parliament?

  Perhaps I am doing Tim and the other chaps a disservice. Perhaps they were indeed scattered around the chamber. However, were that the case, as a PR exercise, they might have tried to sit together for the cameras. Some MPs, like Nigel Huddleston from Mid Worcs. and the MP for Erewash, always seem to manage to be sitting attentively behind Dave when he is picked up by the new camera at floor level. Perhaps they get up earlier. You see, it’s first impressions, no matter how seemingly irrelevant to some of the more cerebral amongst us, that count with viewers.

• Mike Biden 29th Oct '15 - 10:00pm

  There is no doubt there is a humanitarian crisis unfolding before our eyes. It is also a. Political crisis and one that threatens the very existence of the EU. That is what Putin intends. He wants the EU to disintegrate. By increasing his military action in Syria he is encouraging hundreds of thousands if not millions of people to flee Syria and seek refuge in the EU., thus he hopes guaranteeing its self- destruction. Maybe he knows that the Roman Empire collapsed in part because the Rhine froze in 406AD and some 300,000 barbarians simply walked into the Empire. Within four years the legions were gone from Britain and Rome was sacked a few years later. Mass immigration is immensely destabilising, better to take the 86 Greek residents and generously resettle them elsewhere in Greece and use Lesbos as a holding camp where we can care for these people and decide calmly what is to be done next. Care and compassion absolutely – permanent citizenship on an equal footing with those born of generations in our own country? No. For if we do we devalue our own citizenship.

• Denis Loretto 30th Oct '15 - 12:09am

  Apropos PM’s questions, given the paucity of opportunities there are now going to be for Tim Farron or indeed any of our MPs to be called by the Speaker why on earth was Tim not flanked by his colleagues? Cameron should never have been given the grounds for his snide comment.

  If any of the missing MPs are reading this, could they please explain?