We are now beginning to get some insight into the fallout from the Government’s changes to the housing benefit underoccupation rules: the policy that Grant Shapps would like you to call the “spare room subsidy” but most people call the “bedroom tax”. It is a topic I’ve blogged […]
[Originally posted at Social Liberal Forum blog, 29/07/13] It’s being billed as a set piece set-to. The rapidly approaching Autumn Conference in Glasgow is of great significance. Discussions that shape the content of the next General Election manifesto will be at the core of the agenda. It would […]
I was intrigued yesterday when a tweet with the hashtag #freedomweek crossed my Twitter timeline. I was even more intrigued when I had a look at the hashtag itself. You may all know all about this already, but it turns out Freedom Week is a type of summer […]
Yesterday’s Week in Westminster on Radio 4 has generated a little bit of a spat in the Liberal Democrat blogosphere. Not so much because of what was said, but because of who said it. The BBC was looking to hear some grassroots Liberal Democrat opinion. The two contributors […]
The way the Liberal Democrat party leadership has handled the Justice and Security Bill seems little short of extraordinary. To depart so dramatically from party policy is one thing. It isn’t the first time it has happened during this Coalition. I’m sure it won’t be the last. But […]
The agenda for this year’s Liberal Democrat Spring Conference carries the strapline Stronger economy, Fairer society. Given the parlous state of UK plc, and the deeply inequitable impacts of the Coalition austerity policy, the strapline touches on two of the biggest issues of the day. So the unwary […]
It may be little more than an uncharacteristic outbreak of optimism on my part, but it seems to me that discussion in the corner of the internet that I inhabit is taking a turn towards the philosophical. And that’s no bad thing. Two developments make me say this. […]
It seems we can hardly move for news of sex scandals and allegations of sexually inappropriate behaviour at the moment. The cases may be in different sectors – the media, politics, the church – but they share two common characteristics. The first is that at the centre is […]
The formation of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was probably the only viable outcome of the General Election in May 2010. A coalition between two unnatural bedfellows in the public interest looked like the only plausible way forward. Coalition was always going to be […]
I don’t normally read the Times. But I bought it yesterday because it carried a half page opinion piece by Nick Clegg under the title Carping Labour must come clean about cuts. We’ve been told that 2013 is going to herald a stronger message from the Liberal Democrats […]
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