With equal marriage about to be a reality there have been quiet few reminiscences in the media about the journey from pre Wolfenden days to the success of Lynne Featherstone's Bill. Rev Richard Coles can still be heard on iplayer fronting a Radio 4 program Gay Rights: Tying the Knot and Mathew Parris writing in The Times about his plotting 25 years ago along with Ian Mc Kellan and Peter Mandelson to advance the cause. I want to go back before that -not as far as the Wolfenden Report or Roy Jenkins 1967 legislation- but to the Winter Garden's in ...
I spent the day at the launch of MindEd, which is a website aimed to give people who work with children and young people good advice on mental health issues. As its website says: You can use MindEd in many ways, but basically it is there to help you become informed and better equipped when dealing with children and young people. It is aimed at anyone and everyone working regularly with children or young people, 0-18 years of age. There are a range of materials extending from the general level to more specialised levels. The majority of children develop healthy ...
The former chief executive of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Andy Myles, has today confirmed that he is supporting the pro-independence Yes Scotland campaign. There are some for whom this will come as a surprise, although I am not one of them. Myles was a negotiator in the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which paved the way for devolution, and also in the coalition negotiations of 1999 and 2003. He has certainly been a key player in Scotland's recent political development. He was never, however, an instinctive devolutionist and in the last year or so it has become obvious in the many online ...
I was not even remotely surprised to wake up this morning to this headline. [IMG: Andy Myles joins Yes] Andy was Chief Executive of the Scottish Party from 1992-1997. He was then a special adviser to Nicol Stephen during the second term of the Liberal Democrat/Labour coalition. Sadly, he's no longer a member of the party, which is a great shame. We shouldn't be losing good liberals like him. I hope that at some point in the future he'll feel able to join us again. It's been clear from his always thoughtful and considerate posts on Facebook for some months ...
Blog Categories: My Degree Political Comment Vote: 0 votes + Vote up! - Vote down! In a brief respite between coursework and dissertation deadlines, I feel the need to reflect a little on the Ukraine situation. Actually it's not such a big diversion as it directly relates to two of my modules this semester as well, on democracy, civil society and governance and on human rights. I feel about as close as it is possible to be to have considered the issue, read and heard people on both "sides", and actually not be able to hold an opinion either way. ...
I popped into The Atkinson today after being alerted that they had new stock. The information/ticket office doubles as Tourist Information and they have always had old railway posters and other Southport memorabilia. It was good to see they had lots of postcards, mugs etc of some of the art works in the gallery -pride of place was clearly given to Lilith by John Collier. What caught my eye was a black and white notelet of a Prime Ministerial visit to Southport allegedly in 1910. I am just re-reading Roy Jenkin's biography of Asquith( the Prime Minister he 'truly loved' ...
[IMG: photo (91)]
Amid concerns that the Barnes Hospital development plans had stalled – potentially endangering the historical building – the the Lib Dem team have been pressing to clarify the situation and make sure the owner's duties to maintain the listed building are kept. We've now received a letter from the owners setting out their side. They say that they're spending over £100,000 a year on security and have spent over £250,000 on the planning process so far. They received final planning permission from the Secretary of State on 20th December 2013. They say they are still committed to delivering the project, ...
[IMG: Paul Tyler] Apologies Paul, I missed your Twitter debut earlier this year. The Lib Dem peer and political reform expert is @PTylerLords. As ever you can follow all the Liberal Democrat peers on Twitter via my list https://twitter.com/markpack/lists/libdem-peers.
Tue 25th
17:08
Kate Parminter writes ... Jumping in at the deep end: Lib Dem successes on the Water Bill
[IMG: Water pump] Today marks the first day of Report Stage of the Water Bill in the House of Lords. As the Party's Co-Chair on Environmental, Food and Rural Affairs I have been leading for the Lib Dem Group on the Bill. I wanted to share with you some of the work our team has been doing. I should start by saying that there are a great many aspects of this Bill which are thoroughly Liberal Democrat. The Bill's main focus is on aiming to meet our increasing needs for water, against a backdrop of limited water resources. The Bill ...
[IMG: welfare-vs-workfare.s600x600] Lib Dem HQ tells us that the number of workless households is falling. Over the last four years, under the Coalition, the number of households in which no-one works has dropped by 450,000, with a substantial drop of 137,000 in the last year alone. This outcome appears to validate the campaign to make work pay, so that people will always be better off in work than on benefits. I have a friend who was caught in the benefits trap until recently. She is a single mum and has a child with disabilities; she wanted to work but knew ...
Tomorrow, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg puts the positive case for being in the European Union, in the first of two debates with UKIP Leader Nigel Farage putting the negative case for Little-Englanderism (the other two 'Leaders' can't decide, so they've bottled it). That makes two headlines for What the Lib Dems Stand For: "Stronger Economy, Fairer Society" and "IN Europe, IN Work". So how do those two fit together? Here's my go at something slightly more than a slogan, but still punchy. If you like it, please borrow it to stick on a leaflet or add to a speech. ...
I had the great pleasure listening yesterday to the NHS blogger Roy Lilley demolishing the vacuous research by Portsmouth University for Panorama on the PM programme yesterday (40 mins in). The research suggests that there is around £5bn a year lost to fraud in the NHS every year, and another £2bn lost to financial errors. But there is a irritating circularity about the argument that appears to have gone over the heads of BBC producers. It suggests that we don't know how much fraud there is in the NHS, but can perhaps estimate it by looking at fraud in other ...
I know I had a bit of a go at Danny Alexander over the independence referendum yesterday, but one thing he can never be accused of is not having a sense of humour. We saw it when Harriet Harman called him a ginger rodent. The world got a new beer out of that one. He laughed his head off at a song which suggested that he be fed to the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo. Yesterday, Kermit the Frog did an interview for the Big Issue in which he said he was in favour of the UK staying together. This is ...
Last weekend saw me submit the second and final assignment for the Personnel Selection and Assessment (PSA) module. I can't say that I'm sorry to see the end of this module (I'm not!), but I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll get a reasonable grade for it having had a very pleasing result on the first assignment. Of the half-dozen compulsory modules on the Occupational Psychology MSc, PSA was the one that I was looking forward to the least. While it wasn't anything like as bad as I'd feared and parts of it, just like the curate's egg, were excellent, I did ...
Just a quick recap. I wrote back in February to the County Council objecting to the introduction of parking charges at the Cambridge Park & Ride sites. The points I raised as part of my objection were as follows; - This charge will increase congestion and create new on-street parking issues as workers act to avoid paying this new charge. There is no information on how this will be mitigated or even if it's been considered - The 12-hour limit before the huge (1000%) jump in the price makes no logical sense and practically guarantees appeals from people who just ...
Originally posted on herrkrishna: On social media sites, women have been posting 'no make up selfies' to promote breast cancer awareness. A lot of people have been complaining about our image-obsessed society, the fact that not wearing make up is seen as a challenge for some, and that we hate selfies. Other people have already...
Here's the gist of what the Electoral Commission is recommending (and this is an area where what it recommends is almost certain to happen): [IMG: Bank notes] To take into account the lengthening of the election timetable from 17 to 25 working days and the increased cost of postage, the UK Government should make the following changes to the UK Parliamentary general election spending limits for the period between the dissolution of Parliament and polling day (the "short" campaign): The current base amount of £7,150 for the short campaign spending limit should be increased by 47%. Rounding this figure up ...
The Times reports that Ed Miliband has been urged to stop dithering over the next Labour manifesto amid growing fears that he may duck radical measures and adopt a safety-first approach to next year's election. They say that friction has emerged between Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary and election co-ordinator, and Jon Cruddas, who is running the party's policy review, emerged over the scale of ambition for the manifesto. They add that the party has yet to fully set out its policies on issues such as social care, childcare, housing and the railways: Mr Cruddas is pushing the party ...
The Welsh Liberal Democrats are calling for the Welsh Labour Government to view spending on modern medicines as an investment, rather than just a cost. The party believes that this should be done by extending the Health Technology Fund to support the development of new medicines and to fund research into a stratified medicine approach. In budget negotiations in 2012, the Welsh Liberal Democrats proposed their idea of an innovative treatments fund, which the Welsh Government agreed to take forward with the creation of a £25million Health Technology Fund to fund medical equipment and IT over three years. While the ...
Our new Bruntwood Park BMX track opens on 5th April and there's already a BMX Club set up to join if you want to get involved – or you can just come along on the day and have a ride round. [IMG: bmx1] [IMG: bmx2]
New figures released today show that the number of households where nobody works has fallen by 137,000 in just one a year. The figures also show that there are now 450,000 fewer workless households than there were in 2010 when Liberal Democrats entered Government. There are also 290,000 fewer children living in households where no one has a job. A huge part of this has been thanks to the Lib Dem efforts to make work pay. For too long under Labour, people could actually lose money if they got off benefits and into work. Now, we have made sure low ...
My sources told me last week that the Gateshead Council Labour Group meeting before the council budget meeting was a great deal more heated than we had first been led to believe. I am reliably informed that an amendment was proposed that had curious similarities to our amendment we were putting together down the corridor in our own Lib Dem group meeting. Whilst the Leader of the Council, Mick
An annuity is a reasonable solution to an obvious problem. You don't know how long you will live in retirement, but an annuity provider can estimate this, take a risk, and sell you an income that lasts the rest of your life. In practise this hasn't represented good value for money, so I welcomed the budget announcement to give retirees more choice in investing or disposing of their own money. Yesterday Janice Turner argued for the Collective Defined Contribution pension model as another solution to the same problem. I have my doubts about CDC and I want to suggest another ...
With local parties across the country preparing activities to promote Liberal Democrat achievements in government on Saturday April 5th, Lib Dem HQ have circulated a message about registering all action days with them to ensure maximum support for these events. Message On the 5th April Liberal Democrats across the country will be going out in [...]
If you use any kind of social media it is likely that you will have seen LOTS of photos of women minus makeup. This is part of an effort to raise money for Cancer Research. For me this begged a question. Normally the things we do to fundraise – running marathons, shaving our hair off, [...]
Tue 25th
10:52The Independent View: Clegg can't just take on Farage - he also needs to spell out his own vision fo...
Like all political obsessives up and down the country I've stocked up on popcorn ahead of Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage's upcoming duels over Europe in anticipation of some captivating political theatre. However, from my more sober perspective as a political analyst, such a binary, 'all-or-nothing' debate over Europe is fundamentally flawed as it does not speak to where the majority of the British public are at. Polls have consistently shown that when respondents are offered options beyond staying in on the current terms or leaving altogether, the option of staying in a reformed/slimmed down EU proves the most popular ...
Opposition has brought a certain coherence to the British left. There is nothing like a hate-figure being in power to bring about a sense of unity. And the idea that runs through the left's thinking on the state is social democracy. But last weekend's electoral disaster for the French Socialists, and the rise of Marine Le Pen's National Front should give them pause. The left is becoming is becoming disenfranchised from the working class. What do I mean by social democracy? It is the coming together of several elements. The first is the conventional understanding of western democracy and the ...
I am hosting a public meeting tonight at Marley Hill Community Centre about the plans to opencast two sites in or near my ward. Both applications have been with the council for quite some time and I have been leading the battle against them. Both are due to come before the council's planning committee shortly so today's meeting is about raising the profile of the campaign before the final
[IMG: Protests in Ukraine] It is always tempting to view the world in black and white. When Good is pitted against Evil, who in their right minds would want Evil to succeed? We can all happily unite behind Good and therefore feel Good about that ourselves. Sadly, the world isn't like this. This may seem like an outrageously obvious statement, but it is not intended to be patronising. Reactions from various politicians to recent events have given the impression that many political conflicts are indeed black and white. When the Arab Spring began over 3 years ago, it was greeted ...
Here's my latest Ham and High column on my work at home and abroad to protect women and girls from violence. Also available here. Last week, I represented the UK at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. I have always been committed to tackling violence against women and girls - and since taking on a ministerial role in the Department for International Development, I have been able to make it a UK government priority. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have led to remarkable achievements in alleviating poverty over the last 15 years. But for all their good, the ...
BBC News - EU Debate: Your questions for Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage (tags: ) Properly designed financial institutions can provide an escape from the poverty trap Of course it's not just credit - EVERYTHING works out more expensive when you're poor, from utilities to boots, c.f. the Vimes' Boots theory of economics. (tags: ) New Story by Justin McKeating (tags: ) How rich are you? - Telegraph (I'm still in the bottom 10%) (tags: ) Everyone is Getting Turkey's Twitter Block Wrong interesting analysis here. (tags: ) Caron has a suggestion for all those of us annoyed by the ...
This week Nick Clegg announced a new childcare package to help millions of parents with the cost of living and give children the best start in life. The new tax-free childcare scheme, announced last year by the Liberal Democrats, will be worth up to £2,000 per child and the scheme will be brought forward to Autumn 2015. This means working parents, earning at least £50 per week will get 20% off the cost of childcare up to a limit of £10,000 for every child under the age of 12. Those working part-time, who are on maternity leave, or starting up ...
Willie Rennie is doing a live web chat with the BBC's Brian Taylor on Friday morning at 9:30 am, ahead of our Scottish Conference in Aberdeen. The BBC invites questions for him: As part of BBC Scotland's coverage, Scottish Lib ... Continue reading →
Headline of the Day turns out to be a win for the Northampton Chronicle & Echo.
With thanks to Suzy Scott of dundeebuses.info for the update, I understand that there will be some changes to the National Express Dundee services from 5th May 2014 that will improve bus access along the Perth Road area, with changes to service 5 and a new 5X. There will also be changes to other services in the West End including the Outer Circle services and the 14 (service is largely not in the West End but includes the Technology Park), 17, 22 and 51 services. New timetables and full details will be on www.dundeebuses.info from the evening of Monday 31st ...
I've written a few times about the problems with the ever-shrinking Parliamentary by-elections timetable: [IMG: Outlook calendar] The average length of Parliamentary by-election campaign has shrunk by four weeks since the 1970s, sharply narrowing the chance for the public to find out about the candidates presented to them and stifling openness in the candidate selection processes which frequently now have to be run at break-neck pace... At a time when nominally all parts of the electoral system are deeply concerned with increasing public interest and involvement in our elections, slashing the length of election campaigns runs in completely the opposite ...
Just a quick reminder that tomorrow night at 7pm LBC will be hosting a debate featuring Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage on Europe. The debate is available via Digital Radio or online via the LBC website; http://www.lbc.co.uk/ LBC has a section it's website in relation to the debate which allows you to send in your questions prior to the broadcast; http://www.lbc.co.uk/clegg-v-farage-the-eu-debate-86749 Looking forward to it!
