17 Comments

• Julia 14th Dec '11 - 5:03pm

  I was in two minds for how to answer the “Spending money on 35 new road and rail improvement schemes”. I would suspect that had you asked this as two separate questions the answers might be rather different to what you have above; I’d have been in Oppose for the first and Strongly Support the second. Regardless of spending and growth considerations, some of us still have environmental principles and a weak economy is no justification to turn a blind eye to bulldozing valuable sites for dubious gains.

• John Doran 14th Dec '11 - 5:31pm

  Unfortunately the questions weren’t nuanced enough. As usual. For most of them I answered positively but only because it was better than nothing. If there had been an option to vote for manifesto policies (e. g. reduction in train fares) I would have done so.

• Foregone Conclusion 14th Dec '11 - 5:50pm

  Do we really hate public sector workers that much as a party?

• Foregone Conclusion 14th Dec '11 - 6:13pm

  Also, I think a regional breakdown for the water question would be interesting…

• jason 14th Dec '11 - 7:02pm

  No one mentioned the broken promises on ‘Child Poverty’?

• John Richardson 14th Dec '11 - 7:06pm

  The result so far are pretty disappointing. Backing Tory policies, like a four year public sector pay freeze, as part of a coalition process is one thing but outright support? I wonder if the results would be same if we were not in government. Is the party suffering a degree of cognitive dissonance?

• Daniel Henry 14th Dec '11 - 7:35pm

  @Foregone Conclusion
  I prefer pay freezes to making people unemployed.

  I prefer our manifesto promise even more though – cap increases at £400 – more than 1% for the lowest paid and less for the highest.

• paul barker 14th Dec '11 - 7:49pm

  On The Pension age I feel we need to develop a Consensus that there should be a rise of at least one Year in every Parliament.

  On Council Flats I feel pulled both ways. Obviously we need to expand the provision of Social Housing, especially outside Big Cities. But, living on a Council Estate I would like to increase the numbers of Middle Class people , one Class ghettos are not a good idea.

• John Richardson 14th Dec '11 - 7:55pm

  Pay freezes v redundancies is a false dichotomy. The chancellor has any number of other options. The main reason he’s extending the pay freeze from 2 years to 4 years is to pay for the failure of his economic policy in the last 18 months. This, on top of increased pension contributions and high inflation, will make an enormous difference to the income of public sector workers. Possibly as much as a 20% real-terms pay cut. The manifesto proposal was reasonable for 2 years but not 4 and not in conjunction with the other measures. I’m sure the public sector unions are going to have a lot more to say about this in the coming months and years.

• Simon Shaw 14th Dec '11 - 8:47pm

  @John Richardson
  “Pay freezes v redundancies is a false dichotomy. The chancellor has any number of other options. The main reason he’s extending the pay freeze from 2 years to 4 years is to pay for the failure of his economic policy in the last 18 months.”

  Are you saying that public sector pay rises of more than 1% in years 3 and 4 had previously been announced, but that they are now being scaled back? I don’t think that was the case.

  In my view, the key issue is whether the public sector is having difficulty recruiting and retaining staff. The simple fact is that it isn’t. If that changed in the future (even in years 3 and 4) then higher pay awards would be appropriate.

• David Rogers 15th Dec '11 - 7:58am

  I agree with ‘foregone conclusion’ about a regional breakdown of responses – not just for the water bills question. It would improve what I think is called the granularity of this survey, as would an indication of how closely the age profile of responses matches that of the party’s membership as a whole. Or indeed, that of the country!
  In my view, on the water question, there would be almost total support from LDV members living in the southwest, where so much of the region’s coastline is enjoyed by visitors from elsewhere in the country – but the clean-up costs are not shared equitably…..
  However, there are always other questions which are wholly or mainly of interest to only one region – usually London – or the nations of Scotland/Wales. They are about political instituions which are unique to those areas, which have little impact on the rest of us. It would be useful to see how metropolitan attitudes differ from those of us who live in the real world, even (as I do) relatively near the capital compared with most.

• Glenn 15th Dec '11 - 9:05am

  There is no sign that Osbornes measures aince 2010 are actually working.The autumn statement was less harsh than it could havr been, Dut does anyone really believe they’re ever going to deliver? The tinkering at the edges is welcome up to a point..

• Liberal Neil 15th Dec '11 - 11:06am

  @Foregone Conclusion – I said that I opposed the public sector pay restraint as Osbourne has set it out for the following reasons:

  1 I don’t believe that we can afford to increase the amount we pay on public sector salaries overall at al.

  2 If there is any rise it should be limited in cash terms not percentage terms, so that it helps those at the bottom, not the already well paid. In fact I think we need a policy of deliberatly reducing the packages for those at the top of the public secor pay scale to fund cash rises for those at the bottom.

  3 For every 100 people employed in the public sector a 1% salary rise means someone loses their job. I would rather see 100 people employed on 100% of their current income than 99 people employed on 101% of their current income.

• Liberal Neil 15th Dec '11 - 11:09am

  On the degree to which these surveys represent the party membership, I suspect they aren’t fully representative. They are almost certainly skewed towards younger members who spend more of their time on the internet than the average member.

  However that doesn’t mean they aren’t a reasonable indicator where the results go very heavily one way.

  I’m sure they also serve a useful purpose in driving traffic to the site!

• Geoffrey Payne 15th Dec '11 - 4:25pm

  I think a better question would be “Do you prefer freezing the pay of public sector workers or do you prefer taxing the rich more?”
  it seems grossly unfair to me that mostly low paid workers are being targetted for paying off the government debt caused in large part by greedy bankers.

• Oranjepan 15th Dec '11 - 7:11pm

  @Liberal Neil
  “younger members… spend more of their time on the internet than the average member.”

  You appear more engaged than most, do you consider yourself ‘younger’ or ‘average’?

• David Allen 15th Dec '11 - 11:34pm

  The majority of the questions were about motherhood and apple pie. Few would even think of opposing “Raising the levy on bank profits”, for example. The conclusion that “Lib Dem members give thumbs-up (mostly) to Osborne’s autumn statement” was a…. well, see the name of commenter number 3!