I'd like to propose a simple test for all proposed Lib Dem policy, one that should be incredibly easy to meet, but which is increasingly difficult to persuade people of: If the proposed policy is less liberal than the one ... Continue reading →
Only one council by-election this week, Farningham, Horton Kirby and South Darenth ward on Sevenoaks Council. It is a Conservative defence in a ward the Liberal Democrats last won in 2007 but which more recently has had two ex-Liberal Democrats as Conservative councillors. Partly as a result, the last two times out, there was no Lib Dem candidate in the ward. Krish Shanmuganathan was the Liberal Democrat candidate this week. He joined the party after the European election and in late 2016 ensured the party had a candidate in another ward that had not been contested by the Lib Dem ...
When I came across this old sign above the door of a cafe in Aylestone, I assumed that it was a rather fanciful add for Worthington's beer. But I was wrong, as a recent article in the Leicester Mercury by Jane Goddard showed. It began: We wonder how many of our readers recall Worthington's Cash Stores, the local chain of grocery shops with their memorable slogan, "Let Worthington's feed you"? By 1960, the company had 47 branches, the vast majority within Leicester, but also in the county, and in Coventry, Northampton, Nuneaton and Rugby. Founded by Charles T. Worthington in ...
Alice Thomas's piece on Lib Dem Voice today is about one of the most important set of decisions Lib Dem members have got to make at federal party conference in a couple of weeks. It's about our internal processes, which definitely can sound less than exciting (!). But it is about the party's disciplinary processes. Getting those wrong can (and has) made a massive difference to people whose lives are affected by them. The recent and current experiences of other parties, such as the SNP, Greens and Labour, are a warning to add to our own party's experiences of the ...
I love working with a party that is so committed to giving everyone in society a voice. At the moment, though, our disciplinary process doesn't live up to those values. Far too often it lets down those making complaints, those complained about - and the whole party. That's why I'm moving business motion F11: Reforming our Party's Disciplinary Processes at federal conference in September, a motion I hope you will support. This reform has been a long time coming: for many years now, experts (yes, we Lib Dems still think there is value in experts!) have been looking at our ...
The methods taken to protect against fraud in Ghana are often the complete opposite of those taken back when fraud was a widespread danger in British elections in the 19th century.
Crossens Saturday, 8th September, St John's Primary School, Rufford Road, Crossens, from 11am to 12 noon. Churchtown Thursday, 27th September, BoxTree Kitchen for Queenscourt cafe, Manor Road/Cambridge Road, roundabout, from 10:30am to 11:30am. We will be there to meet you and discuss any Council problems you may have. No appointment necessary. Just pop in.
Death haunts all our lives. It is the pervasive truth that stalks us through life: One day, we will die. There was a period where I wished that time to come sooner rather than later. As soon as the age of 14. In a period lasting close to five years, I decided to be cremated, my funeral music and as one point, turning my school tie into a noose. I survived that dark period and spent the following decade, battling with both a harshness of life and the whispering traitors within my mind. I studied through a BA in Creative ...
Today's letter from the Solar Trade Association, with hundreds of stakeholder signatories, calls on Energy Minister Claire Perry to confirm the continuation of the 'export tariff', which works alongside the Feed-In Tariff to ensure that small solar generators are remunerated fairly for the energy they feed into the grid. Ed Davey, former Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said:"After the blistering heatwave this summer, even Conservative Ministers should have realised the urgency of rolling out more green energy, especially small scale solar power but once again they're betraying our chance for a cleaner, safer future. "It's ...
Imagine if Theresa came on live TV at three o'clock this afternoon to say that, from seven o'clock this evening, all five and ten pound notes will be banned and cease to have any value as free currency. There would be mayhem. Now imagine if such an action was taken in a country with a population twenty times that of the UK, with an economy that is almost entirely cash-based – with virtually no card or internet transactions. Well that is what happened in India in 2016. I was there just a few days after the announcement. I wrote a ...
Thu 30th
13:30
Part 2: Why the Liberals Democrats should be the natural political home for Arts and Culture in the ...
Part Two - How We Can Support The Arts And Culture Industry In The UK [Part one is here] The Arts and Culture industry is currently wrestling with a plethora of issues that we already hold high on our agenda. Mental health still carries a stigma within the Arts, with performers and backstage workers, for example, knowing that were they to share their struggles with anxiety or depression, the chances of them being employed would be substantially reduced. Productions are run on a tight budget and timescale, and the risk of employing someone who may be in the eyes of ...
For as long as I've been active in politics people have complained they don't know what we stand for. We may have a reasonable profile for our position on Brexit, but the fact that we're only the fourth party in terms of MPs makes it even more difficult than usual to gain media attention. On top of that, the party has more than doubled in size over the last two and a half years, so we have a large number of new or newish members who aren't as familiar as many of us with the details of party policy or ...
Thu 30th
11:51Why the Liberals Democrats should be the natural political home for Arts and Culture in the UK
Part One - Why The Arts And Culture Industry Deserves Our Support The Arts and Culture industry contributed £11.8bn to the UK economy in 2017, grew by 10% (five times faster than the wider economy), employed over 674,000 people, and returned £5 for every £1 of Government funding. Creatives - certainly the ones I met in my fourteen years as an actor and director in film, TV and theatre - are predominantly liberal, progressive, and pro-EU. Now, more than ever, we should be their natural political home. The Arts do immeasurable good. As well as contributing greatly towards the economy, ...
Watch the new video from Amnesty International UK, about the very welcome news from Turkey over the release of Taner Kilic.
Wed, 12:56: Fantastic thread. https://t.co/C01tfqQvPP Wed, 16:05: The Story of Why I Left Riot Games https://t.co/ZFaeQkNmyS How tolerance of toxic sexism gets baked into workplace culture. Wed, 20:48: RT @SJAMcBride: For many people, Alasdair McDonnell is now seen solely through the prism of his ineffectual leadership of the SDLP. But a d... Thu, 09:44: How the problems of NI compare with those of Belgium https://t.co/R7HIZhFFWG More analysis from me, in @BelfastTelegraph this time. Thu, 10:45: Dud link and article paywalled anyway, but thread recaps 10 good questions, which should have been asked much soone... https://t.co/JdEftTPqDP
There is a very disturbing report in the Independent, which quotes research from the Chartered Institute of Housing in claiming that low-income tenants are having to choose between eating, putting on the heating and paying rent due to a freeze in housing benefit meaning that it is failing to cover even the cheapest rents. The Institute say that more than 90 per cent of Local Housing Allowance rates across the UK now fail to cover the cheapest 30 per cent of homes in any given area, as they were originally designed to do. As a result, this has put people ...
Thu 30th
09:56
Why the Graham Stringer deselection process is both so key to Labour's future - and confusing at the...
Graham Stringer, a career Labour backbencher who represents Blackley and Broughton in Greater Manchester, now faces a deselection process in his constituency. Enough members in his CLP are annoyed with Stringer for having sided with the government in a series of votes on Brexit. He joins fellow Eurosceptic Labour MPs Kate Hoey and Frank Field in genuine deselection proceedings being started against him. The threat of deselecting MPs has been in the air since Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party. Yet having the whole thing start with the three MPs that it has done is rife with massive problems ...
1st Division County Championship Cricket returned to Southport & Birkdale's ground yesterday. It was the first day of a four day game Lancashire V Worcestershire. The weather, so important to a cricket match, held too although it was a little chilly for the first hour of play. There was a big crowd too packed into the compact ground which is right next to the Liverpool – Southport railway line. Worcestershire batted first and they were all out for 222 with Lancs seemingly in difficulties at 96 for 5 at the close of play. The batsman of the day was undoubtedly ...
I am currently walking along Hadrian's Wall with my family, and very exhausting it is (in a good way), where once an early version of the European Union patrolled its northern border. I feel like I have learned a huge amount also about England and its poor governing system – more on that another day. [...] The post Thoughts from Hadrian's Wall: how to defend tolerant values appeared first on Radix.
The party has just published a comprehensive blueprint for replacing the broken business rates system. Ground-breaking research was led by Andrew Dixon, founder of the Lib Dem Business and Entrepreneurs Network (LDBEN), in response to mounting concerns about the negative impact of business rates on struggling high street businesses and the wider economy. The report - "Taxing Land, Not Investment" - calls for the abolition of business rates and its replacement with a tax on land values, the Commercial Landowner Levy (CLL). The levy would remove buildings and machinery from calculations and tax only the land value of commercial sites, ...
