Lib Dems – idealists or realists?

March 25, 2012 by 1 Comment

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Image © Liberal Democrats

Laurel

Like many people I am not a member of a political party but did vote for the Lib Dems on the grounds of their opposition to the Iraq war and their promise to abolish tuition fees.

In an article (Times 14th) Daniel Finkelstein took time out to refer to the historic march against the Iraq invasion and said ‘Almost ten years ago, idealists young and old congregated in capital cities all over the world to protest against the forthcoming invasion of Iraq’. Well, sorry Mr Finkelstein, but events have shown that we weren’t the idealists, we were the realists. The idealists who took us to war have created a situation where, following the chaos created in Iraq, Iran fills the vacuum and threatens to become the dominant, nuclear armed, state in the region.

Many of those who marched were from the middle classes and many duly voted for the Lib Dems because of that party’s opposition to the war and because of the party’s promises to eliminate tuition fees.

Yes, tuition fees again, but this time the issue is what it did to the party.  Mr Clegg took those (middle class) votes and used them to gain his party a position where they could hold the balance between the Tories and Labour. But when it came to the crunch he used those same votes to turn his back on promises he had made over tuition fees. From that moment on he lost the support of thousands if not millions of middle class voters.

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Could it happen again?

March 5, 2012 by

Laurel

Image © Ell Brown

On 30 March 2001 the BBC carried an article discussing the Department of Trade report into the Robert Maxwell affair. This involved Maxwell taking over £400m from his company’s pension fund, leaving 32,000 pensioners fearing for their future financial security.  The BBC asked ‘Could it happen again?’

11 years later on 4 March 2012 the Sunday Times Business section leads with the headline ‘Osborne grabs £28bn windfall.’ This is the plan by the Conservative government to take over the Post Office pension fund. According to the Sunday Times, the pension fund has a net deficit under current accounting rules (as applied in the private sector) of £4.6bn, but for government accounting purposes (which it attributes to ‘quirks’) the liabilities of some £32.6bn will not appear as liabilities on the government’s books. The assets, however, of some £28bn, will be regarded as a ‘surplus’ and will be liquidated ‘creating a new pool of cash for the chancellor to play with.’

Apparently some conservatives would like the money to be used to invest in infrastructure projects, such as roads power stations and railways. This is despite the fact that pension funds typically do not invest in such schemes until they are completed, because of the high risks involved.

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Tuition Fees: Human Rights and Wrongs

December 16, 2011 by

Laurel

Image © Monika Ciapala

A few weeks ago the Foreign Secretary William Hague, in a speech at the Foreign Office, declared: “As a government we understand how important it is that we not only uphold our values and international law, but that we are seen to do so.”

This may have come as a surprise to those who are acquainted with the UN International Covenant on Economic Cultural and Social Rights. The Covenant, signed by the UK, states in Article 13 that: “Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education.”

The UK Government appeared puzzled by this and, in a submission to the UN Committee in 2007, wondered:

whether this paragraph is intended to mean equal access to higher education by: (i) the progressive introduction of free higher education, OR (ii) the progressive introduction of free education up until the point at which higher education commences. The Government’s position on financial provision for higher education students would conflict with interpretation (i) because the Government does not provide free higher education. However, higher education is equally accessible to all in the UK on the basis that fees are not charged at the outset but paid by means of loans at a later stage in the student’s life. If interpretation (i) is correct, the Government believes other State parties (such as Australia and New Zealand) would also have problems with the implementation of Article 13(2)(c). Read more of this post

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