So this blog regulation thing right... I am, for the record, opposed to state-backed regulation of free speech, whether of press or blogs> — Stephen Tall (@stephentall) March 21, 2013
Following any budget there are always countless facts and figures flying around. I thought it would be really useful to let people know about the figures that will be affecting our region of Yorkshire and the Humberside. I wonder sometimes how people get these figures, and out of interest if you were to visit one pub a week in Yorkshire and the Humber it would take you over 100 years to see them all! Stronger Economy: National Insurance: £2,000 Employment Allowance 65,000 businesses will benefit, with 30,000 of these taken out of employer NICs altogether. Pubs benefiting from the beer ...
Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond announced today that the Independence Referendum would be held on 18th September 2014. Three and a half years of preparation and campaigning will come to an end and Scotland will decide whether its future lies within the UK or out of it. At the moment, the polls are looking pretty good for staying in the Union, but that is no cause for complacency. Every vote will have to be fought for across the whole country. It will be a very different sort of campaign. You would think, wouldn't you, that when you were deciding on ...
The video games industry has been lobbying for Games Tax Relief for a while now, and the Chancellor agreed it needs to come in. However, its scheduled arrival has been delayed by the European Commission. Yesterday, Dr. Richard Wilson, who is chief exec of indsutry body TIGA, described the impelentetation of GTR to me as ...
Caron's Musings claims that today is Twitter's seventh birthday. However, Lord Bonkers wrote as follows in June 2011: For some inexplicable reason, the belief that Twitter is a recent invention is now widely entertained. Nothing could be further from the truth. Though of late it has made use of the latest technology, the service was in widespread use as early as the 1920s. Several times a day, the Twitter boy would bicycle up the drive here at the hall in his buttoned suit and peaked cap, bringing a short message from one of my friends: "OMG Winston Churchill has rejoined ...
Next Tuesday, which is both my nephew's 14th birthday and the 32nd anniversary of the founding of the SDP, the Justice and Security Bill comes back to the House of Lords for consideration. Now, my esteemed colleague Mr Valladares has given a very helpful account of what the Lords can and can't do. He goes on to suggest that the Upper House will often back down in the face of pressure from the elected Chamber.If ever, though, there was a time for the peers to kick off, it is now, when the right to a fair trial remedy for those ...
Among the tangle of announcements in Wednesday's Budget was a statement to cheer the heart of real ale drinkers everywhere. As the Chancellor announced it: "We will now scrap the beer duty escalator altogether. And instead of the 3p rise in beer duty tax planned for this year I am cancelling it altogether. That's the ...
A Shropshire Star report on plans to reopen Jiggers Bank in Ironbridge (which wins our Road of the Day, incidentally) reveals that Telford & Wrekin Council has a Cuckoo Oak ward. It wins our coveted Ward of the Week award.
Next Tuesday, which is both my nephew's 14th birthday and the 32nd anniversary of the founding of the SDP, the Justice and Security Bill comes back to the House of Lords for consideration. Now, my esteemed colleague Mr Valladares has given a very helpful account of what the Lords can and can't do. He goes on to suggest that the Upper House will often back down in the face of pressure from the elected Chamber. If ever, though, there was a time for the peers to kick off, it is now, when the right to a fair trial remedy for ...
If there is one economic/industrial policy that defines our party surely it is employee ownership. From JS Mill to the Yellow Book, Ownership for All, Jo Grimond and on to Paddy Ashdown the central belief that those who work in an enterprise should share in its ownership and control is a constant. Nothing undermines that idea more that the barking idea promoted by Osborne that employees should swap their rights for shares and thus introduce Beecroft style management via the backdoor. It tarnishes the image of employee ownership. The good news the daft idea was defeated in the Lords last ...
Yesterday (Wednesday) I mentioned that Hacked Off was meeting with various civil liberty campaign groups regarding their concerns after Mondays vote. Take note, no one bothered going to Parliamentarians, they went to the campaign group - this shows the power of Hacked Off in this arena! TheOpen rights Group have a good summery of what happened on their site and one of the participants has blogged his views and given more detailed thoughts here What is interesting is that despite campaigning for the Royal Charter on Monday and actually being in the room when it was thrashed out, Hacked Off ...
My nearest and dearest treated me to a 4×4 off-road experience for Christmas. ...There was me expecting to be careering around at 50 mph – a real boys with toys adrenalin experience! In the event it was all done at 1 mph (I kid you not) and my foot only touched the accelerator four times in two hours. That said, it was a hugely educational and rewarding experience, greatly enhanced by listening to the instructor, who has lived and breathed 4x4s for over thirty years. Very interesting. ...And driving them is a bit of an counter-intuitive thing.... Here's a clip ...
Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond announced today that the Independence Referendum would be held on 18th September 2014. Three and a half years of preparation and campaigning will come to an end and Scotland will decide whether its future lies within the UK or out of it. At the moment, the polls are looking pretty good for staying in the Union, but that is no cause for complacency. Every vote will have to be fought for across the whole country. It will be a very different sort of campaign. You would think, wouldn't you, that when you were deciding on ...
So now I know what I'll be doing on the day before my 45th Birthday. Yes today it has been revealed that the last day that I am 44 is also going to be Referendum Day. Yes today it has been revealed that the last day that I am 44 is also going to be Referendum Day. On the day I turned 40 I was interviewing Nick Clegg ahead of Liberal Democrat federal party conference on the day I turn 45 I shall probably be exhausted and most likely at a count. At least there is the weekend to celebrate ...
Thu 21st
17:12
Roger Williams MP writes...Why I'm backing Tim Yeo's Energy Bill amendments - and urging my colleagu...
It's hard to believe, but more than a year has passed since Ed Davey stepped into Chris Huhne's shoes at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Ed has spent much of that time fighting George Osborne and the Treasury to ensure that the Energy Bill - a once-in-a-generation opportunity to direct £110bn of investment towards a clean energy future - achieves its stated aims: cut carbon, secure our electricity supply, and rein in household fuel bills. These are the aims of Liberal Democrats everywhere, and credit must be given to Ed for the vigour with he has pursued them. ...
I found time today to call into the Post Office to pick up a letter that had been directed to my regional office but had not been delivered as there was £1.50 to pay on it. It turned out to be a letter from the UK Border Agency concerning a constituent, responding to a query I had directed their way. Although the envelope was stamped that it had been processed by the Parliamentary estate's contractors, they had not put any postage on it. What is worse the letter told me that 'the Home Secretary takes the view that as immigration ...
Front page of this week's Broadway Ham & High, referring to Haringey Council: [IMG: Haringey Council in crisis - Ham and High]
House building fell dramatically following the financial crisis and hasn't yet fully recovered. Last year 118,900 new homes were built in England. But with the number of households predicted to grow by 232,000 a year for the next 20 years and thousands currently unable to get onto the housing ladder, we need to build more than double that each year to keep up with demand, but we also need to tackle the sluggish housing market. That's why housing was at the heart of the Budget yesterday, with more help for first time buyers and more money for affordable homes. The ...
Cyrpus's parliament couldn't have been much clearer in its rejection of the plan, negotiated between eurozone members, to bail out the country's failing banks. As a result, Cyprus is now turning from Brussels to Moscow for a lifeboat, and it looks like a deal might be done. Russia is demonstrating once again that is never backward in coming forward to build (or buy) new strategic alliances. Yet outside the markets pages of the Financial Times, the merits of the original plan seem to have been little-discussed, with the assumption being that the plan was a universally bad one. But actually ...
Wednesday: The mission: cure the patient without spending any money at all. Time to roll out the sugar pills! Yes it's Budget time again and Master Gideon's set himself the very high bar of not repeating last year's omnishambles. So it was a very Gordon Brown Budget, I'm afraid. Lots of hand-waving to "prove" the government's hitting its borrowing targets (by massaging the timing of a few payments and - quite rightly actually - clamping down on the end of year "we've got to spend the budget" splurge); a bit of rearranging the deckchairs; and a rabbit-from-the-hat ending. It's possible ...
Also on YouTube here.
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... Leader: Press reform is too important to be cooked up in a late-night deal Good on the New Statesman » Leader: Press reform is too important to be cooked up in a late-night deal http://bit.ly/16L9t1p And the real winner of yesterday's budget is...Nick Clegg « Labour Uncut .@PeterWatt123 goes further than I wd! » And the real winner of yesterday's budget is...Nick Clegg « Labour Uncut http://bit.ly/Ytcm0c Liberal England: New research into the benefits of chess in schools .@LordBonkers with the news story of the day [/bias] » New research into the ...
I am fearfully behind with Ros's contributions, and here's one from 27 January last year... The Public Services (Social Value) Bill was intended to encourage government procurement from smaller, local providers, as this would encourage a wider range of potential providers, countering the trend towards fewer, larger vendors and service providers. Ros's experience in local government, as well as the information that we picked up when touring the country during her Party Presidency, led us both to wonder whether opening up contracts might offer better long term value... Baroness Scott of Needham Market (Liberal Democrat) My Lords, I thank my ...
Has the Chancellor miscalculated with one of his personal schemes announced in yesterday's budget? George Osborne announced state funding for people who buy newly built houses - a measure that he said would stimulate the building industry as well as provide more homes. But it seems that Mr Osborne has failed to include rules which would prevent these new houses being bought as second homes. In effect, we could be seeing a subsidy for people to buy second homes in Cornwall. Liberal Democrats have worked hard in Cornwall to close the loopholes that give unfair advantages to second home owners. ...
So, it's 7 years today since the first Tweet was sent. Coincidentally, earlier this week, this happened to me: A kind of super diamond jubilee. I was quite pleased with myself but was soon brought back down to earth by this: @caronmlindsay @libdemvoice You need another hobby :-)At 30 secs each tweet 30K tweets= 21 full days on twitter! — Keith Steele (@KeithRSteele) March 18, 2013 I could never write about Twitter without mentioning the much-missed Andrew Reeves though. Some of you will remember the time we had to get him out of Twitter jail. He loved Twitter and it ...
Thu 21st
12:2056% of Lib Dem members say: let's now ensure no-one on minimum wage pays any income tax
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 650 party members have responded, and we're publishing the full results. 56% say: no income tax for anyone paid less than the minimum wage In 2010, the Lib Dems pledged to increase the personal income tax allowance to £10,000, cutting the tax bills of low- and middle-income earners. Which of the following personal taxation policies, if any, would you most like to see the party campaigning on at the next election? ...
We used to worry about hubristic technological visions. They haven't gone away. According to Evgeny Morozov, we just need to look in different places Alvin Weinberg was an unashamed technological enthusiast. He was from the generation of American boffins, brought together by the Manhattan project, who convinced themselves that modern science made almost anything was possible. As director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Weinberg led American post-war science policy debates. And even though his nuclear optimism grew outdated, his influence on science policy has remained through the terms that he coined: "Big Science", "Trans-science", the "Faustian bargain". Perhaps his ...
Next week is an intensive committee week as Members of the European Parliament return from a Strasbourg session. Chris will attend both the Fisheries and Environment committee meetings and in between sessions he will be hosting a seminar and meeting ... Continue reading →
Responding to the Budget Statement, North East Fife MP Sir Menzies Campbell said: "This is a steady-as-you-go budget in very difficult economic circumstances as world markets such as Europe and the United States continue to stagnate. But the Chancellor has sought to reduce the impact on families with the raising of the tax threshold to £10,000 by next year, cancelling yet again a fuel duty increase on petrol and tax-free childcare. In addition, he has pledged three billion to be spent on infrastructure to help to stimulate the housing market with mortgage guarantees and to cut corporation tax. Taken together, ...
As one might expect, groups within the Lib Dems are united in welcoming George Osborne's announcement that the coalition will deliver the Lib Dem policy of a £10,000 income tax personal allowance next year, earlier than previously expected. Both the Social Liberal Forum and Liberal Reform also agree that the chancellor needs to be more ambitious when it comes to stimulating economic growth, though the groups diverge somewhat on how to do so. First up, here's the SLF's response: The Budget contains some welcome measures, especially on childcare costs and raising the personal tax allowance to £10,000 next year. The ...
Ah well, the Budget. I am of course delighted that the Lib Dems have managed to keep their promise to make the first £10,000 we earn free of tax - which really is the kind of tax cut that can help the lowest paid. Equally I am pretty horrified at the planning permission for another nuclear energy white elephant, but relieved that it will probably never be built - it is just too expensive. But what bothers me most in the budget is the likely side-effect of the help for people to buy homes. Help like this can only increase ...
This letter was sent to Nick Clegg MP, and Deputy Prime Minister, and Martin Horwood MP, chair of the Lib Dem International Relations team, by Liberal Youth in an official capacity. Dear Sir, As a community of internationalist young liberals, Liberal Youth is deeply saddened by the litany of distressing news about the civil war in ...
Below are recently submitted Planning Applications in the Chorlton area. You can find out more information about any of the proposals on the City Council's Planning Portal at http://tinyurl.com/yv6lex or by contacting the South Area Planning Group Manager - Roger Hall; Tel: (0161) 234 4536; email: r.hall@manchester.gov.uk . You can also make a Planning representation (in support or opposition) to Mr Hall or the designated planning officer for each application. Please feel free to contact me on (07947383740; cllr.v.chamberlain@manchester.gov.uk) if you wish to discuss any application and please also send me a copy of any representation you make. 101690/FH/2013/S1 53 ...
I remember being on a conference call one Summer in the late naughties with other Lib Dem City leaders (remember them?) talking with Nick Clegg about various tax cuts and what would help residents in our areas. Raising the income tax threshold was discussed along with a number of other options and I readily agreed that taking low paid workers out of paying income tax would be a great policy especially for an area with low average wages like Hull For me this is not just a moral issue - Taxing low paid workers is just plain wrong but we ...
Labour Uncut says the real winner of the budget is Nick Clegg...
[IMG: Lib Dems deliver £700 tax cut for millions of ordinary people] The Liberal Democrats have delivered on a key front page manifesto commitment in full: millions of ordinary people will get a £700 tax cut compared to the amount of tax they paid under Labour, with many more lower paid people being taken out of paying tax altogether. Under the Coalition Government, the top 10% richest people are paying more tax than at any time under Labour and the poorest are paying less.
[IMG: childcare cost cut] This week Nick Clegg announced that families will soon be able to get up to £1200 off the cost of childcare for every child - needed relief for many in these difficult times. It will help parents make their own choices about how and when they return to work. Figures show that more than half of stay at home parents would rather work if good quality and affordable childcare was available. Many more would be able to increase the hours they work too. That's the kind of fairer society Liberal Democrats are fighting for in Government. ...
I Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter. I Am A Person. | The Belle Jar the problem with defining women by their relationships to men (tags: ) "You can't have a female lead character in a game!" (tags: ) Drastic changes to 6 Nations proposed | Scrum Queens :( (tags: ) British horror author James Herbert dies at 69 :( (tags: ) Factcheck: Budget 2013: where is the money coming from, and where is it going? | Full Fact Debt interest payments 7x what we pay to EU, and we don't get anything back on those. And yet Europe ...
I would like to thank everyone who has supported my campaign to stop another takeaway opening up in Gatley. In just a week we have got over 50 objections to the proposal registered on the Council website. That's fantastic and clearly shows the strength of feeling in the village. If you would like to register your comment, there is still time! Just go to the Council's planning webpage, scroll to the bottom and click on the link under Public Representations. But the objections alone are not enough. This application has to be decided, like all others, by planning law and ...
Here's an email I sent to the BBC's acting Director of News, Fran Unsworth, last night. Hat-tip to Richard Morris for highlighting the issue. Dear Fran, On the front of the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto were four priorities. The first of these was a pledge to deliver "fairer taxes" by raising the threshold at which people begin to pay income tax to £10,000. In his Budget speech this week, the chancellor stood up in the House of Commons and announced that next year the coalition will deliver this policy in full. It would not be an understatement to say, therefore, ...
Over in the Daily Telegraph, Professor Sarah Richardson has been writing about her discovery of some further evidence about women voting in British elections rather earlier than the simple history of female suffrage allows for: Occasionally, just occasionally, you encounter a document that radically changes your view of the past. This happened to me very recently. The source was just a few scraps of parchment in a box of solicitors' papers in Lichfield. But, at a stroke, it provided me with tangible proof that Victorian women were not only eligible to vote, but actually exercised that right, some 75 years ...
Guido Fawkes has launched a campaign to try and counter the moves towards blog censorship that were put out in the Royal Charter passed on Monday. The truth is this that the Leveson agreement was written in a rush, with little consideration of how the web will fit into the media landscape now and in ...
[IMG: Tax Threshold infographic] George Osborne's fourth budget saw him finalise the commitment to implement in full the Lib Dems' number one manifesto commitment: taking out of income tax all those who earn less than £10k a year. It prompted this post by my Co-Editor Caron Lindsay yesterday – Why it's worth being a member of the Liberal Democrats – recalling the recent history of this focus on raising the tax-free allowance. Which in turn triggered this comment by Alex Wilcock, recalling the slightly less recent history: The fact is, raising thresholds was party policy in the 1990s, then put ...
Freedom Fighters A plea from Azerbaijan. (tags: azerbaijan ) Could you drink beer instead of water and still survive? Answer: probably not. (tags: health ) About PhDs A different perspective. (tags: postgraduatehell )
It's both ironic and appropriate that George Osborne's budget should be presented on the UN's International Day of Happiness. Ironic, because, though disguised by slick and astonishingly confident presentation, for Osborne the budget is loaded with "news of fresh disasters,"(well, not exactly fresh, we knew already: growth forecast down, borrowing forecast up, AAA rating lost - though he didn't mention that last one.) Appropriate because, as every year, the budget produces an unedifying orgy of navel gazing as to who will gain (beer drinkers with a penny off the pint, ) and who will lose (public servants, with a wages ...
Oh, goodness, I didn't realize that it had been so long since I did an update. This isn't a real one, though, but I'll try to sum up the last THREE (ack, sorry) weeks of marathon training soon. But, tonight I had yet another one of those insane Hanson-approved tempo runs: 9 miles at marathon goal pace with 1 mile each for warm-up and cool-down. WHEN DID I BECOME THAT PERSON WHO PRACTICALLY RUNS A HALF MARATHON AFTER WORK ON A WEEKNIGHT? I loved that this felt a lot easier than last week's run, with the exact same workout. Once ...
I welcome the decision by the Education Minister, Leighton Andrews, to support a Welsh Liberal Democrat amendment which will ensure that Estyn, the schools inspection body in Wales, will report on how effectively schools in Wales are using the Pupil Deprivation Grant. The Grant, a Welsh Liberal Democrat policy aimed at pupils in receipt of free school meals, was implemented in Wales for the first time last year and it provides additional funding to schools to help raise attainment levels of children from poorer backgrounds. It was important that today's debate on the Estyn Report raised solutions as well as ...
I recently sought assurances from Royal Mail regarding their changes to mail deliveries across Dundee West that will start in the DD2 part of the West End next Monday. The DD1 part of our area is thus far not affected. The changes are part of the "Way Forward" introduced by Royal Mail and I sought assurances given the problems a similar introduction had caused some time ago in Dundee East. The response from Royal Mail is here: Dear Councillor Macpherson Thank you for your email of 8 March 2013 about mail services in the Dundee West area. Royal Mail is ...
Transport Minister and Lewes's Lib Dem MP, Norman Baker has received much publicity for his band's debut single - the Kinksesque 'Piccadilly Circus'. But he's not the first Liberal MP to seek chart success. In 1981 then Liberal Leader, David Steel, teamed up with Scots musician Jesse Rae to cut I Feel Liberal-Alright! I haven't been able to track down the track in its entirety - but there is some YouTube footage of HIGNFY featuring both Steel and I Feel Liberal-Alright! And it's nowhere near as bad as it should have been. For some reason I can't embed the video ...
Cornwall's Liberal Democrats have been named 'Opposition Council Group of the Year' by the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and Local Government Association Lib Dem group. The award, announced at the recent party spring conference in Brighton, was handed over to the group by Party President Tim Farron during his visit to Cornwall yesterday, 20th March. Receiving the award, Cllr Jeremy Rowe, Leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Cornwall Council, said: "The whole group was delighted to receive this recognition from the party. We are a close knit team of people determined to do our best for our constituents ...
Just a quick reminder that Bar Hill Parish Council is meeting tonight, the agenda is available below; Open Forum (Your opportunity to raise issues with the Parish Council) 1. To receive apologies for absence and any declaration of interest 2. Approval of minutes- To approve minutes of Parish Council Meeting held on 21st February 2013 3. Matters for discussion and decisions to be made from Previous Minutes 3.1 Midas Care Ltd - Signing of lease agreement 3.2 The Farmhouse - update on new tenant and requirements 3.3 Youth Provision 3.4 Village Hall - update 3.5 Wildlife Enhancement Scheme - update ...
