PM must not jeopardise economic recovery with threat of no-deal Lib Dems report "appalling" frontpage to the independent regulator Lib Dems set out Five Point Plan to help pupils back to school Govt's refusal to extend transition period risks UK's return to sick man of Europe Govt must set out whether regional lockdowns will come into force PM must not jeopardise economic recovery with threat of no-deal Responding to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) statistics out today that show the UK's economy shrank by 20.4% in April, Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey said: We face the ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Democrat Voice

Rod Argent cannot decide whether this was the second or third song he ever wrote.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
Fri 12th
20:39

Six of the Best 934

Helen Belcher writes an open letter to J.K. Rowling: "Trans women come under huge pressure to conform to gender stereotypes - driven by a fear of what might happen if we don't. So does Sophia Grace, who reckons she is the only professor of philosophy in the UK who is also transgender. "Yes, in 1831 William did speak in the Commons in favour of compensation for slave owners. It was his first speech in the Commons and he was still in thrall to his father. By 1850, he was a changed man and in Parliament he described slavery as 'by ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

This post first appeared on the Radix UK blog... There is quite enough about mobs and mob rule at the moment without me needing to join in. The starting point of this post is the effect this has on governments, and UK governments in particular. I have written before about the bizarre way in which UK governments, certainly back to the Gordon Riots of 1780, have lived with this underlying fear of the mob - an affliction known as enochophobia. That manifests itself mainly in the bizarre snobbery which the establishment treats anyone outside itself, whether it is people from ...

Posted by David Boyle on The Real Blog

Hello! I'm Mark Pack, author of 101 Ways To Win An Election, and the maintainer of the largest database of national voting intention polls in the UK, stretching back to 1943. Although most attention understandably and rightly is on other things, the polling companies running semi-regular voting intention polls. Below the table, you'll find the option to sign up to email updates about new polls and also a set of answers to frequently asked questions about political polling. General election voting intention polls Pollster Con Lab LD Grn BXP Con lead Fieldwork Survation 42% (+1) 36% (-3) 8% (+1) 4% ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

In the wake of George Floyd's murder, I have been sharing my experiences as a black Briton with my white friends. It has shown me that we need to educate our country on our past. We must develop our history curriculum and widen the outlook of our galleries and museums. While it took a century to move from landowners voting to universal suffrage, in our digital age, change should be much swifter. We are an evolutionary not a revolutionary country. The Colston statue incident has shown us how the failure of democratic action results in the use of force. As ...

Posted by John Armah on Liberal Democrat Voice
Fri 12th
17:19

October 2006 books

The major personal developments for me in October 2006 were breaking the news of my imminent job change to colleagues and friends, and also finding a daycare place for B, whose behaviour was becoming too difficult for her special school to cope with. We had some diversion also at work when it was rumoured that we might get the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. (We didn't.) My foreign trips were a rather weird one-day trip to Ankara, Turkey, (the only time I have been there); a much less weird conference in Chişinău, Moldova; and a half-term visit to my sister in ...

I've posted before about my Dad and Grandmother, on his side of the family, being openly antisemitic and how I put a stop to racism in my generation. I'm also proud of the fact that our daughter Jen will have nothing what so ever to do with racism either. But the other day my mate Phil said to me, in relation to the BLM campaign and a debate we were having about it, that he feared that some folks could end up being blamed for the 'sins of their fathers'. Not surprisingly having had racism present in my own family ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

I had a real adventure today – unlikely as it may seem, it was a visit to the dentist. Back in April a crown dislodged itself, leaving me with a rather poor bite on one side of my mouth. I knew that dental treatment under lockdown was strictly limited to emergencies, so I kept the crown safe and waited. I didn't attempt a repair myself, as some people have done. At the time, local dentists were, I think, able to prescribe painkillers and antibiotics remotely but, for understandable reasons, were unable to work on teeth directly. Regional Urgent Dental Care ...

Posted by Mary Reid on Liberal Democrat Voice

This is the first of a series of three posts about the right to die, end of life care and its legislation. Assisting someone to take their own life is punishable by up to 14 years in prison. In Sept. 2019 yet another case of assisted suicide hit the news: Mavis Eccleston was cleared of manslaughter and murder after admitting to giving her husband an overdose of medicine being used to treat the pain of his terminal cancer. The Crown Prosecution Service said "There was sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction... it was in the public interest ...

Posted by David Harding on Liberal Democrat Voice
YouGov

Responding to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) statistics out today that show the UK's economy shrank by 20.4% in April, Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey said:"We face the most serious economic challenge in generations. This is not a time to exit the world's largest market. This is not a time to increase trade barriers. This is not a time to deny business skills they need with a damaging new immigration system."Liberal Democrats will continue to make the case for a Green Recovery Plan and policies that back responsible businesses."We can create jobs and protect the environment ...

Posted by Aberavon and Neath Liberal Democrats on Aberavon & Neath Liberal Democrats
Fri 12th
12:15

The beacons of change

There is controversy around the decision to rename Gladstone Hall at Liverpool University, citing the fact that Gladstone's family earned their wealth on the back of the slave trade and that as a young Tory politician, in 1831 Gladstone spoke in favour of compensating slave traders for the loss of their income. It is my understanding that the decision to rename Gladstone Hall was taken democratically within the rules of the Liverpool University, and I find myself on the same side of this debate as the Gladstone Library who have stated that: ... if it is the democratic will, after ...

Posted by Iain Donaldson on Liberal Democrat Voice
Fri 12th
11:54

Suburbicon (2017) ***

The 1950s were a period in which American suburbia really came into its own. Acre upon acre of neat little houses surrounded by unfenced "yards", a big car in front of the garage, the wife in the kitchen and a new supermarket just a few minutes drive away. Such is the setting for George Clooney's [...]

Posted by jonathanfryer on Jonathan Fryer

30 April saw a Motion to Take Note, moved by Dominic Addington from the Liberal Democrat benches. Here's what Ros had to say...We live in an age where we have an obsession with numbers—that is, analysing and counting—but we occasionally forget what really matters: the outcomes. As inspiring as it was to see 750,000 volunteers come forward for the NHS, the fact is that many of them have been given no tasks to perform. In the meantime, 1.5 million of our most vulnerable shielded citizens have not been receiving the support that they were promised. Volunteers need to be organised ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Bureaucracy
Fri 12th
11:00

My tweets

Thu, 12:56: RT @make_trouble: Fascinating. Spain was main source virus import to UK, followed by France, major sporting events had "negligible" effect,... Thu, 13:25: RT @Keir_Starmer: This moment must be a turning point. #PMQs https://t.co/4w9HiLiJwq Thu, 14:12: RT @davidallengreen: A thread on slavery and property https://t.co/okEmFezu10 Thu, 15:03: RT @Carter_AndrewJ: Since JK Rowling has blocked any reply to this litany of half-truths and transphobic dogwhistles, I thought I'd catalog... Thu, 16:05: Daniel Radcliffe Responds to J.K. Rowling's Tweets on Gender Identity https://t.co/Oj4ZOQlOW6 Good man. Thu, 16:27: RT @ChairmanYaffle: I didn't quite realise how bottomless a feeling of shame I would ...

His premiership has gone so differently than I'm sure Boris Johnson imagined. Some of that is fair enough; he couldn't have foreseen a pandemic. A lot of what has transpired was less difficult to predict, however. In February, which seems like a very long time ago now, I wrote an article on here about how I wouldn't be at all surprised if Johnson's time in Number 10 was brief, even going as far as to speculate he could be out within a year. I got a lot of people telling me I was talking out of my arse at the ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

Queen Elizabeth I was appalled when she was told that Sir John Hawkins had gone into the slaving business. The venture "was detestable and would call down the vengeance from heaven upon the undertakers," she said. Then Hawkins showed her the accounts. The Queen immediately invested in his next slaving voyage. That pretty much sums up the English attitude towards slavery. It was "detestable." But they held their noses because the trade made shedloads of money. Slavery helped finance Britain's industrial revolution and stately homes as well as providing the economic foundation stone of colonial America. The British did not ...

Posted by Tom Arms on Liberal Democrat Voice

The Guardian reports that local authorities have called on the government to suspend the controversial "no recourse to public funds" immigration status for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, to prevent thousands from falling into destitution and homelessness. They say that hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the UK have an immigration status that allows them to work here, but which prevents them from accessing most benefits should they become unemployed. Many have lost their jobs because of the Covid-19 pandemic and are struggling to feed their families and pay rent. Many face losing their homes once restrictions on evictions ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

I mentioned recently my concerns as a cyclist (and those of pedestrians) about how the Alt junction has been reconstructed and here's a link back to that posting:- Sefton Council had told me that two additional pieces of work were to be undertaken along with the junction 'improvements' to improve cycling access. So far with contractors having left site one has only been partially done and the other has not been done at all. The major cycling work is to extend the cycle path/route which comes from Switch Island so that it reaches the Alt Junction. Clearly some works ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

Over on the Liberal Democrat website you can now read about some of our best colleagues, volunteers who have been doing amazing things in their communities to help deal with coronavirus.

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack
eUKhost

2 big stories The Economist has launched its prediction model for the 2020 US Presidential election (registration required), and it makes for optimistic reading if you're a liberal, with the current prediction suggesting that based on electoral college votes, the key state is Pennsylvania. The thing about that is that the current prediction indicates that Joe Biden has a 75% likelihood of winning Pennsylvania and, indeed, if their predictions are accurate, Biden is leading by 330 electoral college votes to 208. Will it stay like that? With five months still to go until polling day, it's unlikely, but if Donald ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Democrat Voice
Fri 12th
07:00

Book delivery service

The following update is from Dundee Volunteer and Voluntary Action with grateful thanks - I am delighted to see this service being launched as I have had a number of constituents asking about how to access library books and this service will be a real help : "Lots of the Older People's Network told us that they were looking for books or jigsaws to keep them busy during lockdown whilst the library service is unavailable. We are working with the HOPE Project, Grey Lodge Settlement and Dundee West Church who have these items available. If you or someone you know ...