Thirteen years of mixed messages.

Labour want to increase the number of Apprenticeships available to young people. Read the BBC article here. These are my personal views – particularly on Higher Education.

First off, Labour adopted a policy which stated that they aimed to achieve a figure of 75% (in their 2010 manifesto) of young people progressing to Higher Education. Teenagers are led to believe that Higher Education is the only realistic option, which has the Universities bursting at the seams, and Apprenticeships have gone mostly untouched. In 2009 Labour said;

“We want one in five young people to take up apprenticeship places within the next ten years. In order to fulfil our ambition for young people, we are increasing the number of apprenticeships for under 18s and are legislating to ensure every suitably qualified young person who wants to do an apprenticeship can do so. This year for the first time, we plan over a quarter of a million new apprenticeships.”

In 2009 Lord Sugar blamed the government for neglecting apprenticeships, despite being hired by Gordon Brown to promote his policies. It seems that Labour say one thing, and then say the other. Is there no middle ground?

Hayes has called it an “empty promise” by Labour, which is no doubt a knee-jerk reaction to the suggested increase in Neets, being 18 to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training – which has risen to more than 18% in England. The Coalition government is funding a record of 360,000 apprenticeships this year.

Undoubtedly the increase in funding for apprenticeships over the past thirteen years has done some good and the increase in the number of young people in Higher Education is a success, but there seems to be difficulty in balancing the two at any one time. Not that the Coalition have done brilliantly with Higher Education.

It seems that Labour and the term ‘middle ground’ don’t fit all too well. At one point they call for an increase in the number of young people in Higher Education (since the beginning of their time in government), and then realising that they have neglected Apprenticeships, make knee-jerk announcements.

2015 and party grassroots.

I had been thinking about putting a post together on where the party can go from here and how the party should approach the 2015 General Election and then I came across this on Lib Dem Voice, and decided to use this to emphasise my argument.

People – generalisation intended – have criticised Liberal Democrat MPs for voting for, then against government reforms for the NHS, calling it a ‘u-turn’, an attempt to gain public approval, and an attempt to show that the Lib Dems are different from their Conservative coalition partners. As Mark Thompson says however, that view undermines people’s understanding of Liberal Democrat politics and party politics as a whole.

The reason the Liberal Democrat stance on governmental reforms of the NHS changed was because of grassroot politics, which has seen a massive influx during recent years – even if it’s campaigning for certain policy areas or topics such as Voting Reform in May. The party’s grassroots gave party leadership the real view of NHS reforms – and as the party’s grassroots decide on party policy – the party leadership had to acknowledge party activist’s stance on the reforms. When we first entered government it was paramount that we dealt with the economic climate, putting political differences aside – which the majority of the party’s grassroots agreed on.

That is how we progress and tackle the next General Election – the party’s grassroots must be at the centre of the campaign, in terms of where the party was right, where it went wrong, and where it can improve. We take, what are normal people’s view, of this government and emphasise what we have done well over the course of parliament.

We emphasise the difficult decisions that we have made, and the impact that we have had on government policy, making sure that the coalition’s disagreements are known and how we would have done things if we had been in government. It is possible that the next campaign should outline plans for the net government, but should have far more emphasis on our first chance at governance and what we have done. Use our experience to prove that we can be trusted on more than constitutional reform and opposition.

Liberal Youth Executive Team

 

 

 

 

 

 

The youth branch of the party, the Liberal Youth, announced last week its new Executive Team for the 2011-2012 term. Here are the newly elected Liberal Youth Team;

The following have been elected for the 2011-2012 Liberal Youth Executive Term:

Chair

Tom Wood

Vice Chair

Charlotte Henry

Campaigns

Chris Ward

and

Catherine Smith

Communications

Bobby Dean

Events

Tom Hemsley

Finance

Chris Jenkinson

International

Harriet Ainscough

and

Sam Fisk

Policy

Sarah Harding

Non Portfolio Officers

Robson Brown

and

Aidan Flood

The following have been elected for Regions and States

England Convenor

Harry Matthews

Regional Chairs

North East

Hannah Claytor

North West

Neil Darby

East Midlands

Keiran Harley

West Midlands

Rory Roberson

South East

Jon Bates

South West

Dave Cope

Scottish Highlands

David Green

North Wales

Chris Twells

We will be inviting candidates for co-option for chairs of London, Northern Ireland, South Wales, Scottish Lowlands soon.

The following have been elected to Committees;

Policy Committee

Robson Brown

Jade Holden

Callum Leslie

Conference Committee

Stuart Brown

Aidan Flood

Jade Holden

Barbara Speed

Congratulations to all the candidates elected, and commiserations to those who were unsuccessful this time.

Lab-Plaid, four years on.

As Labour and Plaid approach the end of their joint administration in the Assembly, we should take a good look at our situation four years on.

Wales has a weak economy, under-funded schools, and an NHS that costs more but delivers poorer outcomes than the NHS in England. This is terribly disappointing for all of us in Wales. Admittedly, this isn’t a ‘Welsh situation’ and isn’t isolated to us here in Wales, Britain as a whole is faced with the same situation – but our situation is worse again.

The Assembly Government has spent more money on economic development than any other part of the UK, but Wales is the poorest part of the UK, and is getting increasingly poorer. The next Assembly Government must take much more care over how it spends money, targeting those areas that have been left to slip behind. Huge sums have been spent, of Welsh and EU money, but the outcomes do not reflect exactly how much money has been spent.

For the first time, the results from Welsh schools have fallen behind those of England. Many will blame individual schools, but that’s not the case: schools receive £600 less per pupil than schools in England. As for the NHS in Wales, there is more money allocated per person than the NHS in England, but we in Wales have longer waiting times.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats believe that Wales can do better. Our costed election manifesto will focus on the Welsh economy, health service and education. We believe that the people of Wales deserve a world class health service and education system, underpinned by a strong Welsh economy. We shall be campaigning to put these issues right in the forthcoming Assembly election.

Taxes and pensions. Lib Dem policies in the Coalition.

Embargo: None

 

25,700 receiving an Income Tax cut in Ynys Mon

From 6th April 2011, around 700 people in Ynys Mon will no longer have to pay Income Tax and a further 25,000 will get £200 extra in their pockets.

Liberal Democrats in Government secured a rise in the Income Tax threshold, the point from which people start paying their taxes, of £1,000 to £7,475 which comes into force today. Across Britain nearly 900,000 people will be lifted out of paying Income Tax while around 23m basic-rate tax payers will get an extra £200 in their pockets. This increase is the first step toward the Liberal Democrat commitment to raise the Income Tax threshold to £10,000, with a further rise of the threshold was announced in the budget for 2012.

Commenting, Ynys Mon Assembly candidate Rhys Taylor said:

“At a time when people are worried about their personal finances, this tax cut will help millions of people.

 

“In Ynys Mon, 25,000 people will get an extra £200 to spend this year and I know this will make a real difference.

“I am proud that thanks to Liberal Democrats in Government, almost a million people will be lifted out of paying tax altogether across the country, while 23m people will get a tax cut.

“One way we are paying for this is by taxing the banks more, £10bn more, so they pay their share.”

“This tax cut is straight from the front page of our manifesto to the pockets of 23m tax payers.”

Commenting further, Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg said:

“We have to make difficult decisions but we can still make life fairer and that’s what Liberal Democrats in government and across Britain are doing.

“From today Liberal Democrats have delivered a £200 income tax cut to every basic rate taxpayer, and there’s more to come – our ambition is a country where no one pays any income tax on the first £10,000 they earn.

“These are the kind of decisions Liberal Democrats are making in Government to make life just that little bit easier for people who are facing difficult times.”

 

Can you really blame someone for that?……..

You’ll have to ignore my bad wording on this one. If it makes no sense then, I apologise – it’s 14:20 and its already been a very long day. And this is my personal view on the matter.

The Coalition (or the Lib Dems, seeing as it’s a LD policy) have announced that they want to open up internships to individuals who would otherwise not be able to access such opportunities. But for some reason people are calling Nick Clegg hypocritical for endorsing a policy like this when his father helped him achieve his first internship. At least Clegg has been open and honest about it!

From my perspective, unfortunately that’s how the system works. If you know someone, it’s going to help you get places. It’s never going to change. Anyone who knows anything about sociology in education will have heard of Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital. It’s a given.

If your background, or parents, are able to assist you, why should you not make the most of that? Everyone should take any extra help they can get. What this policy tries to do is enable individuals of a different social background to those who are usually accepted for internships to have easy access to them – again coming back to the old Lib Dem ‘fairness’. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with the fact that, based on your family’s background and social status, individuals are given priority over others of a different social background and are, to put it in simple terms, given everything. Things like internships should be readily available to everyone – why should it matter if you’re accepted based on the fact that you could get it through a family connection, or through an application form?

People should not be blaming Clegg, or anyone else for that matter, for the family he was born into. This policy is all about fairness and giving everyone an equal start, either from birth or when they’re sat in an interviewing office; it’s high time people stopped picking at anything and everything in order to ridicule individuals and influence how people think.

The purpose of this blog.

I tend to read a lot of rubbish through Twitter, the news, and Facebook and often enough you aren’t able to properly express your views or get them across properly. I usually use Twitter to retaliate to things I’ve read but with only 140 characters it’s not enough. A certain post, titled “Lib Dem Hypocricy” – also a blog – finally made me put this blog together.

It will be rants about what I’m reading – they won’t be personal – and they will be based on politics or news stories that I’ve taken a particular interest in. I doubt anyone will read it, but there’s an element of personal satisfaction after properly voicing your own opinion on something.