February | 2013 | Liberal Conspiracy

Have Taxpayers Alliance paid for using HMRC copyright?

by Sunny Hundal February 26, 2013 at 2:26 pm

As we all know, the Taxpayers’ Alliance are a very well-funded organisation. They have a lot of researchers and employees, though curiously won’t go into detail of who gives them their money.

Anyway, you would also think they’d do everything by the book.

So they have a new campaign, launched today, against the Beer Tax. I’m sure they were for deficit reduction, but it looks like they may be confused. Or they would rather that benefits for disabled people be cut than taxes rise on beer.

Here is one of the images they’ve been using in their promotional material.

I believe that’s their chief executive Matt Sinclair.

So I called them about half-an-hour ago to ask if they’d paid to license the image of the taxman from the HMRC. Hector the Taxman was the ‘advertising figurehead’ of the Inland Revenue under the Labour government.

I’ve not heard back yet from the TPA. A simple yes or no will do guys!

11 Comments ¦ 26th February

Shameless Tory men use Lib Dem scandal for politicking

by Sunny Hundal February 26, 2013 at 9:29 am

You can tell that the Conservatives are taking the issue seriously in its own right…

Fighting a Positive Campaign here!!!! #Eastleigh twitter.com/Mike_Fabricant…

— Michael Fabricant (@Mike_Fabricant) February 24, 2013

18 Comments ¦ 26th February

The strange death of Labour “realists” who thought Osborne was a genius

by Sunny Hundal February 26, 2013 at 8:45 am

You don’t hear that phrase being bandied about much any more. I’m almost starting to miss being called a ‘deficit denier’. Sometimes I was a ‘flat earther’ – which was funny too.

The UK’s AAA downgrade wasn’t just a nail in the coffin of Osbonomics, it was also a much-needed kick in the groin to those on the right of the Labour party who thought opposing austerity was political and economic madness.

The fearless Dan Hodges, the man willing to tell the truth to the Left (a truth usually also echoed by the Conservatives), was a vigorous soldier within the pack. He was scathing – ‘Time for Labour’s flat earthers to get real‘! He was unrelenting – calling Polly Toynbee “High Priestess of Flat-Earthism” and me “editor of Flat Earth Times“!

How we laughed. You know, those were fun days. All this shouldn’t come as a surprise – Dan Hodges knows less about economics than Lib Dems do about managing allegations of sexual harassment. Nowadays he’s reduced to poking a stick at Nick Clegg.

There were others too. Rob Marchant similarly criticised me on the grounds that the most likely outcome of Osbornomics would be a bit of pain and then back to normality. Someone else also needs to pick up an economics text-book I think.

But those two strategy geniuses weren’t alone of course – others who should know better also joined in.

Let’s not forget Black Labour – who published a pamphlet in 2011 saying Labour should ‘place fiscal conservatism at the heart of its message‘. How’s that working out for you guys?

Since Osbornomics has comprehensively blown up, Black Labour have avoided answering two key questions:

1) why should Labour sign up to the kind of austerity now shown to be choking off our economic recovery, and keeping millions of people jobless?

2) if you think deficit reduction is important when times are good (agreed, with caveats), why were you promoting that message at a time when the focus should have been on growing the economy, not more cuts?

I’ve not seen an answer to either of those questions.

That Osborne’s economic plans have blown up isn’t just a tragedy for this country, it also undermines George Osborne and those in the Labour party who endorsed his strategy. I admit, I’ll miss their childish jibes though.

Update: Both Anthony Painter and Hopi Sen now claim they haven’t actually called for cuts. Which is bizarre given Painter’s own words earlier:

Hard realism is essentially the position outlined in the In the black Labour paper and variants. You have to be clear about your fiscal approach in 2015 with rules attached, specify the cuts you would make in the meantime and beyond as clearly as possible, and be clear about your priorities in a constrained fiscal environment.

One of these days I want to write a short pamphlet and make it so vague that I can keep claiming others haven’t read it when they point out inconsistencies.

91 Comments ¦ 26th February

What happens to deathrow inmates found innocent?

by Shantel Burns February 25, 2013 at 3:59 pm

Since the death sentence was reinstated in the US in 1976, 140 people on death row – one in ten – are exonerated after their innocence has been proven.

What do the people who were wrongly imprisoned, sometimes for decades, on death row, say once they are found innocent?

One for Ten is a series of interactive, short documentary films which will tell the stories of ten individuals, from all across the US, that have been freed from death row after their innocence has been proven.

The films – which will be produced and broadcast over five weeks between April and May 2013 – aim to be an interactive documentary series by using social networking, user generated content and a strong media and charity coalition to allow others to be as involved as possible.

All films will be free to watch and share and will be made ‘live’, shot one day, edited the next and then uploaded online for people to comment, pass on and contribute with interview questions, music and artwork.

The team will be travelling across the US, from New York to California, in order to interview people found innocent and produce a new short film for release online every Tuesday and Friday.

Each of the films will look at a different failing in the American capital justice system that led to the wrongful conviction and incarceration of each of the individuals interviewed as part of ‘One for Ten’.

The pilot film shows ex-death row inmate Ray Krone talking about his time on death row and the injustice he was faced with during his trial:

‘One for Ten’ have just launched their crowd funding campaign to raise the much-needed funds to get the project on the road, for which you can donate here.

89 Comments ¦ 25th February

Sex, lies and Liberal Democrats: What I knew about what happened

by Ellie Cumbo February 25, 2013 at 8:50 am

For 11 months from September 2006, I was the day-to-day organiser of the Lib Dem Campaign for Gender Balance, the party’s internal initiative to mentor, train and network female would-be candidates for Parliament.

Though managed by Jo Swinson MP, I was actually based in the party headquarters, my desk sandwiched between those of the Candidates and Campaigns teams, on the floor above the office of the then Chief Executive, Chris Rennard.

In my own life, these were important months. Galvanised into membership as a student by the heat of my opposition to the Iraq war and plans for 92-days detention, it was only when working right next to them that I saw how much else was missing that I also cared about- like class, redistribution and solidarity. Oh, and actually taking women’s under-representation seriously enough to do something about it that might work.

And it was also during this time that inappropriate sexual touching by Chris Rennard of Alison Smith was alleged to have taken place. I don’t now remember where I first heard about it, but I do remember the phone call when Jo told me she had spoken to Alison herself, and that the information had been passed to Paul Burstow, the Chief Whip. And I know that key members of staff at Lib Dem HQ were also aware of all this.

Naïve as it now sounds, I believed it was being dealt with, and that what I had to do was make sure Alison knew she would still get the campaign’s help if she chose to look for another seat. I left shortly afterwards, to become a law student and a Labour activist – things I now struggle to remember a life without.

Almost six years later, I was emailed by a researcher from Firecrest Films, who said she wanted to talk to me about “a possible short film looking at gender balance in political parties”. I could not have been more thrilled: the level of women’s representation in our Parliament is both embarrassing and damaging to sound policy, and cannot be fixed alone.

I wanted to talk about liberal ideology and its innate misunderstanding of positive discrimination, and the more prosaic issue of complacent local party officers who pay zero attention to the diversity of their membership until longlisting day. And yes- I wanted to talk about the questionable attitudes that some male politicians – in all parties- have towards young women.

But, of course, this wasn’t actually the purpose of the meeting at all. As I wittered on about shortlisting quotas and the great I Am Not a Token Woman scandal of ’01, it was impossible to miss the recurring theme of her questions. Those training events that in my view focused on the wrong aspects of what it takes to be a candidate- did, erm, did Chris Rennard usually come along? And did he stay over? Not even my hilarious Lembit Opik anecdote could throw her off.

So I adjusted my expectations, and told her what I knew. And having learned that, as far as we can tell, nothing was done about the allegations, I am wholly supportive of the Channel 4 investigation and the mounting pressure on the party leadership to explain who decided what.

What worries me now is that, as the coverage ramps up and up, and becomes increasingly politicised, we risk taking our eye off the wider issue of culture in all our political parties. Sexual harassment is hard to report anywhere- but it’s borderline impossible in a world where success means avoiding embarrassment at all costs, where new recruits can expect to be tested on their loyalty at least as much as their talent, and where employment rights don’t exist, because candidates are not employees.

There are answers to be developed here – from a cross-party protocol for handling allegations of candidate mistreatment, to opening up the remit of the existing Parliamentary regulators – but this won’t happen if scrutiny gives way to scandal. The commentators- from both politics and the media- must not look solely what was done, but about what will be done differently in future. And, in case any researchers want to hear my Lembit Opik story – I still think that short film on gender balance is a good idea.

18 Comments ¦ 25th February

Statement from Clegg on harassment allegations

by Newswire February 24, 2013 at 7:45 pm

Statement from Nick Clegg:

The allegations made on Channel 4 concerning Lord Rennard last Thursday were extremely serious and distressing to the women involved. It is critical they are investigated thoroughly and dealt with properly and they will be.

But I would like to make one thing crystal clear. I did not know about these allegations until Channel 4 informed the party of them shortly before they were broadcast. I have today spoken to one of the women in the broadcast who I respect and admire and who confirmed that she had never raised the issue with me.

I am angry and outraged at the suggestion that I would not have acted if these allegations had been put to me. Indeed, when indirect and non-specific concerns about Chris Rennard’s conduct reached my office in 2008, we acted to deal with them.

My Chief of Staff at the time, Danny Alexander, put these concerns to Chris Rennard and warned him that any such behaviour was wholly unacceptable. Chris Rennard categorically denied that he had behaved inappropriately and he continues to do so. He subsequently resigned as Chief Executive on health grounds.

As my office only received concerns indirectly and anonymously, as those involved understandably wanted to maintain their privacy, there was a limit to how we could take this matter forward following Chris Rennard’s resignation. It is incorrect to state that there was any other separate inquiry by my office or anybody in it.

I recognise from the Channel 4 broadcast that there are legitimate concerns that issues raised with the party were not handled as well as they should have been. In particular the suggestion that a complaint was made but was not dealt with as a formal complaint. I am therefore determined that we carry out a thorough investigation into our procedures and how we applied them at the time to ensure we have a full and clear picture of what happened and the lessons that we need to learn. This review will be independently chaired.

A separate investigation into the specific allegations about Lord Rennard will take place under our disciplinary procedure. It is essential that this is carried out with due process and for that reason I cannot provide a running commentary on it. But I am absolutely determined that both these investigations will be carried out thoroughly and comprehensively. These investigations may well reveal flawed procedures, and clearly the women concerned feel they were not properly listened to. But I totally reject the insidious suggestion that my office or I are responsible in any way for a deliberate cover up.

The full truth of what happened and what failed to happen and who said what to whom will be revealed by these investigations.

But in the meantime, I will not stand by and allow my party to be subject to a show trial of innuendo, half-truths and slurs. The important thing is that we respect the women who have come forward and do everything to get to the truth. That is what will now happen.

(via LibdemVoice)

UPDATE: here is Labour’s response, from Kate Green MP

After days of total denials – some only hours ago from LibDem MPs Vince Cable and Jeremy Brown – Nick Clegg has now been forced to admit that he did know of what he calls ‘indirect concerns’ about Lord Rennard in his role Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats.

Nick Clegg’s statement raises more questions than it answers about his judgement and the willingness of the Liberal Democrats as a party to properly investigate such serious allegations at the time they were made.

At issue is not just a series of serious allegations from a number of women, but how the Liberal Democrat Party responded to those allegations.

Only with a fully independent investigation can the public have confidence that the truth will prevail and lessons learned for the future.

9 Comments ¦ 24th February

One way London Councils could deal with the coming Housing Benefit crunch

by Guest February 24, 2013 at 6:41 pm

by Alex Harrowell

Over the 20th century, the UK made a political choice that we probably never articulated as such.

That is, we decided that the huge expensive city in the lower right-hand corner of the map had to remain a proper city, rather than shipping out its working class to a concrete jungle on the M25 and giving over the centre to the role of a dead museum, sorry, an exciting retail and heritage offer for high-value tourism, and the City and the East to the banks.

At the same time we decided that the outward sprawl had to stop, halting at the green belt. The solution, up to the 80s, was to make housing in the major cities into a public service. Since the 1980s and the key decision to sell the council properties accumulated up to then, the policy changed; instead of taking housing out of the market, we would instead subsidise it. As Tory minister Sir George Young said, housing benefit would take the strain.

Now, the strain will no longer be taken. Local housing allowance – it’s housing benefit but for people in private rentals – is to be drastically cut.

If the tenants can’t pay, they will get the stick. Councils are actively planning to rehouse over 100,000 people outside London.

Of course, faced with this prospect, people will try to survive somehow. On the tenants’ side, some of them will try to disappear in the black economy and tolerate back-garden sheds, friends of friends’ sofas, or perhaps squat in repossessed property rather than be shipped away from their jobs. (Yes, their jobs; housing benefit is mostly paid to people in work. Surely I don’t need to say this.)

On the landlords’ side, they will tell themselves that of course they can find new tenants. They will juggle financing between properties, personal loans, their credit cards, etc.

But there is a solution. Under Eric Pickles’ Localism Bill, councils get to keep their income from rent rather than giving it to the Government.

So, let’s buy the houses, quick. I propose that the London Labour councils, and indeed any others who want to join, launch a jointly-owned company to buy up the BTLers’ property and to manage it as social housing. We could organise this via London Councils itself, as it is now Labour-controlled.

How much is that again?

There are 52 weeks in a year, 133,000 households claiming, so that estimates the flow of housing benefit into rents for the people involved at £2.3bn a year. That’s quite a lot of money. There’s also a £2bn “affordable housing” fund controlled by Boris Johnson we might bid for.

Councils can borrow money from the Government at a 2.8% interest rate, being the rate the Government can borrow for 10 years plus 1%. This isn’t actually all that good. There is an enormous demand for safe assets that actually pay a coupon at the moment.

Some councils, therefore, have decided to issue bonds on the open market instead. At 2.5% for 10 years, the stream of housing benefit would be enough to pay off a £22bn bond issue.

This isn’t a new idea. In the 1970s, a lot of rental property was bought up by London Labour councils’ housing departments and they’ve still got more of it than you might think.

—
A longer version of this piece is at Alex Harrowell’s blog.

8 Comments ¦ 24th February

We need to unite and mobilise against the rise of neo-fascists across Europe

by Guest February 24, 2013 at 11:14 am

by Claude Moraes MEP

We must continue to build a movement in the UK that understands and takes action on the many ways neo-fascist groups operate across Europe and in EU countries.

As we have seen with Greece’s Golden Dawn, they do it frighteningly at street level but they can also convulse politics at national and even European level. It is to try and understand these different levels and how we can respond that is important.

The rise of such overtly fascist currents in Europe and possible solutions will be a major theme of the Unite Against Fascism and One Society Many Cultures joint conference in London on Saturday 2 March. It will hear first-hand from some of those opposing these neo-Nazis.

The relentless rise in support for Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, its violent attacks on mainly Pakistani immigrants, creation of ‘no-go’ areas controlled by its uniformed street gangs, collusion of the Greek police and thuggish interventions against trade union and leftist demonstrations, has been seen as a specifically Greek problem.

But while the rise of the neo-Nazis in Greece have not escaped attention, neo-Nazis, fascism and the far right have been advancing elsewhere with less fanfare and international concern.

The elections due in the next few days in Italy are also seeing unprecedented activity by fascist and ultra-right currents, alongside the rehabilitation of the record of Italian fascism by mainstream politicians. In the Nordic countries only Sweden so far has rejected the extreme right, while Norway’s Progress Party, the True Finns and the Danish People’s Party have all registered a marked advance.

I have seen how the far-right have influenced mainstream political debate and the direction of national government thinking and policy. A good example is Hungary, a centre right government heavily influenced by far right thinking in its anti-democratic policy on a day to day level in relation to minorities, the Roma and its anti-democratic activity in the judiciary, as well as activities against journalists and the media.

The mainstreaming of the far right movement is quickly becoming a critical issue across the EU and it is important we have a unified stand against their extremist rhetoric.

The conference on Saturday 2 March is not just for the committed activists, but a necessity for all those of goodwill to come together to discuss how to counter this threat in Europe which we thought had been eliminated forever in 1945.

Details: www.uaf.org.uk

34 Comments ¦ 24th February

Who actually managed to predict the global financial crisis of 2008?

by Guest February 23, 2013 at 5:10 pm

by John Clarke

So Gordon Brown’s still to blame for the Coalition’s current economic disaster? According to the Telegraph’s Iain Martin, in the wake of Britain’s debt downgrade, Brown should be mostly blamed because he was unprepared for the global financial crisis.

He’s not the only one to have criticised Brown in this way. Brown himself admitted he should have better regulated the banking sector. Even David Cameron apologised.

But what unites critics of Brown and the man himself? None of them predicted the crisis.

Hardly anyone did. This academic paper puts the number of people who predicted the crisis at 12 (PDF). Let’s have a look at this list and see if George Osborne or any other of Brown’s critics are on it. The list is: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Steve Keen, Jakob Madsen & Jens Kjaer Sørensen, Kurt Richebächer, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller. No, I can’t see them either.

It’s a short list isn’t it? Not many people predicted the financial crash. Given that these 12 are such a small group I think it would be fair to call them Geniuses of Foresight. They’ve now been joined by a much less exclusive club – Geniuses of Hindsight. This band of intellectual giants managed to predict the crisis after it happened. It’s a great skill. They have got closing the door after the horse has bolted down to a fine art.

To properly blame Brown there needs to be a proper appreciation of what options an alternative government would have taken, and in fairness to Iain Martin he has criticised Tory politicians as well. So what did the Conservatives say about this?

In March 2008 David Cameron told senior figures from the City of London: “As a free-marketeer by conviction, it will not surprise you to hear me say that a significant part of Labour’s economic failure has been the excessive bureaucratic interventionism of the past decade too much tax, too much regulation, too little understanding of what our businesses need to compete in the modern world.”

That’s pretty unambiguous and there are more instances like it. Conservative ministers are, understandably from a political perspective, ignoring all this. Canada and Australia are offered as alternative models that could have been followed despite there not even being much of a debate a financial regulation in the UK prior to the crisis.

Of course, Brown was the person behind the desk at the time during the long boom, and automatically attracts the lion’s share of political blame. But to criticise him for following what everybody else believed is just plain wrong. It’s also, to be blunt, intellectually dishonest unless the person making the claim had the foresight to see what was happening.

Anyone blaming Brown for this needs to take into account the group euphoria surrounding financial markets that everyone, including the majority of commentators, was fooled by.

—
John Clarke is chair of Islington Fabians. He tweets from here and blogs here.

35 Comments ¦ 23rd February

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