The latest episode of Never Mind The Bar Charts features Paula Surridge once again, who since last time has been promoted to Professor – congratulations! We talk about what's driving British politics, whether the Conservatives can win next time – and what lessons she sees in the data for the Liberal Democrats. Feedback very welcome, and do share this podcast with others who you think may enjoy it. Show notes Some of Paula's previous appearances: on the role of values, the Lib Dem win in Tiverton & Honiton and how Boris Johnson won the 2019 general election. How the polls ...
Liberal Democrats call on Sunak to commit to maintaining fracking ban The Liberal Democrats have called on the Prime Minister to personally commit to maintaining the ban on fracking after Liz Truss praised his watering down of key clean energy pledges and urged Sunak to lift the ban on fracking. Liz Truss's premiership ended last year following chaos around a Labour opposition day motion on fracking. Liberal Democrat Climate and Energy spokesperson, Wera Hobhouse MP said: Rishi Sunak seems hellbent on taking his policy cues from the worst Prime Minister in living memory, Liz Truss. There is no telling how ...
Buddy Anderson traces his path from Conservative voter to Liberal Democrat councillor - and a Liberal Democrat councillor in Market Harborough at that. One flew east, one flew west, One flew over the Conservatives nest. Like many who perhaps now find themselves more like conservative Liberals, I once was a liberal Conservative - a title that David Cameron had imposed upon himself even before his bromance with Nick Clegg. Something resonated with me back then at that idea. Labour had supposedly spent all our money, and everybody was jolly fed up. Along came the new 21st-century Tories who apparently didn't ...
Thu 21st
20:29
The Independent View: WASPI is relying on the Lib Dems to lead the way for 1950s-born women
It is now eight years since we set up the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI), to represent women born in the 1950s, whose state pension age was increased without proper notice. As astute Lib Dems will know, the law was changed by John Major's government in 1995, but neither his nor Tony Blair's administration saw fit to tell women about these changes. P60s were duly issued by HMRC each year, without a word about how women's retirements would be affected. The DWP website continued to say the state pension age for women was 60 until 2016! Liberal Democrats have ...
Shropshire Council today noted that the budget for the North West Relief Road (NWRR) could require a "budget uplift for funding gap" for the four-mile road. The not inconsiderate sum of £95 million. The funding will come from a loan from the Public Works Loan Board or from "alternative funding options". I had already decided to vote against the capital expenditure plans as I object strongly to the NWRR. I also believe Shirehall should be refurbished rather than an unaffordable new civic created on the shopping centres site it bought at a cost £53 million. I thought the extra £95 ...
We have potholes. They have craters. We have a cost of living crisis. They have a cost of dying crisis. We have hospital waiting lists. They have a list of bombed hospitals. As I write this in Kyiv, Vladimir Putin is trying to kill me. Not just me but everyone in the Ukrainian capital. To be fair, Russia's hypersonic missiles, sorry, elderly Russian ironmongery, keep getting shot out of the sky. But the war in Ukraine is not over by a long chalk. The charge sheet of Russian barbarism gets grimmer by the day: targeting civilians, torture, execution, rape, castration. ...
Chinese President Xi told President Putin at their summit in Moscow this year: "Right now, there are changes, the likes of which we have not seen for 100 years. And we are the ones driving these changes together". Repressive regimes - such as China's under the CCP, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others – are linking up. Democracies around the world are being subverted. War is raging in Ukraine. China and Russia are in cahoots together, in particular enlisting many developing countries from the Global South to their cause through their disinformation and misinformation campaigns. That's why the FCC ...
I first visited Hong Kong in the summer of 1989, a few weeks after the massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. At the time the people of Hong Kong feared for their future, whilst the rest of the world considered how to deal with a regime prepared to shoot its own people to remain in power. Over the next decades I would come to work and live in China, receiving the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2002 for developing the Economist's business in China. Whilst recognising that we were dealing with an autocratic state and rightly concerned at its human rights ...
In a futile attempt to prevent Boris Johnson's defenestration last year Jacob Rees Mogg tried to browbeat his ministerial colleagues by demanding that a change of Prime Minister required a General Election. Johnson himself seemed equally deluded that he had achieved a personal mandate in 2019 to which no successor could lay claim. Our constitution - at the moment at least - doesn't work like that. We don't elect a President. We vote for individual MPs who collectively give authority to an executive team, and (in theory) hold them to account. But is it working like that ? In recent ...
Our Liberal Democrat London Mayor challenger Rob Blackie, wrote a great article on determination to meet housing targets. His first statement "Britain spends more on housing benefits than any other rich country," hits the mark on the choice we can make: increase home ownership and maintain a fair democracy for Britain. We can continue spending on housing benefits, but our current model has a few issues. First, our social housing strategy has shifted towards rental accommodation in the private sector. No longer are councils owning sufficient housing to provide affordable rentals. This meant shared ownership and social credits to rent ...
The Liberal Democrat History Group has just produced a new publication - What Have the Liberals Ever Done for Us? From the very earliest days in the seventeenth century through to today, the Liberal values of liberty, equality, community, internationalism and environmentalism have underpinned what Liberal governments achieved in power, what Liberal and SDP and Liberal Democrat MPs fought for in opposition, and what Liberal Democrat ministers achieved once more in government. This booklet is a concise summary of Liberals' and Liberal Democrats' greatest achievements over 350 years of Liberal history. Chapters cover human rights, fair votes, government reform, gender ...
Liberal Democrat Newswire #176 takes a look at how unusual this Parliament has been along with all the latest Lib Dem news.
The Mirror reports that a Tory donor whose company was awarded £160 million worth of PPE contracts has been appointed to a top Government trade role. They say that David Meller, who is a former chairman of the scandal-hit Presidents Club, has given almost £70,000 to the Conservative Party and politicians since 2009, and is now one of 13 people appointed to the new-look Board of Trade by Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch: The board is an influential body which advises the Government on policy. Anneliese Dodds, Labour Party chairwoman, said: "The message from the Conservative Government remains clear: ...
While Labour strategists will tell you that nothing can be taken for granted, the bulk of the media and much of the rest of the Westminster bubble has already declared Labour the winner of the next general election. With still probably one year to go before the voters get a look in, it is striking how much the opposition is able to set the political agenda. Journalists remark on the sense in which the opposition now seems to be making the political weather, as if this happens entirely independently. To paraphrase Boris Johnson, 'the herd has moved'. Cheered on by ...
As I have been writing this column since before most of my readers were born, it seems allowable to repeat an old joke from time to time. Besides, the Rutland partridge is an important part of the county's upland fauna. Its numbers are believed to be kept in check by the descendants of escapees from the safari park that Lord Bonkers ran for many years until its sudden closure. ("I still maintain that those nuns were the authors of their own misfortune.") Tuesday The Glorious Twelfth? I don't find it glorious at all. Shooting grouse is like shooting fish in ...
Let's face it: the Independent isn't what it was. But it's still managed to win our Headline of the Day Award. The judges add that they have long been reading about the potential of phages in fighting infections, so they are pleased to see a practical application of them. Me? I think we used to write 'pooh' rather than 'poo'.
Michael's surgeries take place today and every Thursday during school term time. They are as follows : Thursdays at 5.45pm prompt - West End Campus (come to reception area of St Joseph's RC and Victoria Park Primary Schools) Thursdays at 6.30pm prompt - Harris Academy reception area All welcome - no appointment necessary!
