devilskitchen

From the Policies page.

So, liberals believe in freedom except where that is the freedom to keep what you earn.

Nice.

__________________
Unio Europaea delenda est

Tom Wilde

Boy, you ask big questions. I only have 10 mins!

The full sentence you've quoted from says:

This sentence is in two halves:

As regards the 'spread of wealth' bit, this can be achieved to a degree without taking money away from one set of people to give to another set, by spreading the opportunities for people to earn. Think of Thatcher's encouragement of a shareowning democracy, think of a better regulative environment for entrepreneurs and so on. However, the Libs do also believe in redistributive taxation of some sorts - though not excessive or punitive taxation. In this respect they are to the left of UKIP with its flat tax policy (was that ever adopted, by the way?)

As regards the second half, in common with almost every other political party including UKIP (but maybe not the Libertarians?) the Liberals support government provision of welfare services, which therefore necessarily involves taxation. Ensuring freedom from starvation, homelessness, ignorance etc therefore plainly involves a limited infringement of people's freedom to spend all their own money as they see fit.

I reckon it would be great if we could provide all those necessary goods (food, clothing, shelter, education, health care and the protection of the law) entirely from voluntary charitable efforts, to help those people genuinely unable to provide them for themselves. I think we should do our best to move towards that but failing that, I think some taxation is necessary.

Incidentally, note further down the same page of policies that:

cassie

I suppose you have to make the best of a bad job, but what is so special about Cornish opinion on these matters?


___

British-Conservatism

Problem is the Liberal party must decide if it is a Social Liberal or Classical Liberal party.

__________________
http://conservativedemocraticalliance.blogspot.com/

Dilke

Is this really something the continuity Liberals want to boast about. I suspect Paul did it to annoy his former colleagues in Cornwall.

Inconvenient truths are simply air-brushed out of history in a Stalinist fashion! The site indulges in a great deal of double-think. At least the Liberal Party’s national website admits the majority of Liberals, 88% voted for merger. Trying to pretend merger didn’t happen on the Cornish site is just silly.

Somebody needs to take some history lesions; (sic) The Liberal Party is the same party of Fox, Wilberforce…. When was Wilberforce a Liberal or even a Whig? The Kings party were Liberals! It is a surprise to me to see mention of a Northern Ireland Liberal Party, are they registered with the Electoral Commission ? Have they contested any elections? What’s their view of the LI affiliated Alliance Party?

In 1989 a few joined the con Libs for policy reason, you may disagree with them but you can’t argue that they aren’t real Liberals, most including Michael Meadowcroft are back in the Liberal Democrats and the party is the stronger for it. Many joined to embark on a pilgrimage of nostalgia, creating a heritage site of a political party, relegating Liberalism to a cherished relic of a bygone age, Paul I guess is one of them.

Tom Wilde

Yes, we're quite proud of the fact that we're doing well in the South West and won a seat on Cornwall County Council in a by-election. Shouldn't we be?

I'm peering closely at the photos on the website but haven't yet been able to spot any tell-tale signs of Photoshop work. Care to elaborate?

I haven't looked up the figures, but I imagine you mean 88% of those who voted? In any case, does it matter? Those who wanted to merge with the Social Democrats went ahead and did so, and formed the LibDems of today. Those who didn't want to merge carried on the old party as best they could. What's the beef?

History lesions? That's wounding!


I don't regard Wilberforce's political allegiances as a terribly pressing issue in deciding which party I should support. However, out of purely academic interest I browsed the relevant article on Wikipedia (where else?) and was surprised by the results. I'm sure I've read articles in which Tories claimed that Wilberforce was a Tory. However, the Wiki piece makes clear that he was an independent MP. He was a close friend of Pitt, and once acted as a sort of external supporter of Pitt's government (maybe this is where the 'Tory' idea comes from). However, later, after Pitt's death, he was much closer to Fox and the Whigs, mainly because Fox actively opposed the slave trade.

You seem to have us Liberals down as a bunch of nostalgics. I support the party not because I think it is the one true successor to the party of Gladstone etc, but because I think it has better policies than any other party including the LibDems.

Dilke

Doing well – not if you follow the logic of the website; the site claims the Liberal Democrats appeared from nowhere and have nothing to do with the Liberal Party, so the Liberal Party has lost all its Cornish Peers, MPs, and councillors bar two. Meanwhile a party that appeared as if by magic in 1988 has won all the parliamentary seats in Cornwall!

Wilberforce is clearly important to the Cornish con Libs, rather like the Mormons they wish to have him as a convert after death , along with the late Lib Dem peer Jo Grimond.

The Liberal Party is not a simple successor to the Whigs, it is the result of a merger of Whigs, Radicals and Peelites, however to admit that might legitimise a later merger so it is conveniently air-brushed out. I could go on, but what’s the point.

What’s my beef, by using the name ‘Liberal Party’ the con Libs are benefiting from the work of others and showing their contempt for democracy. At least some of these guys were moved to try and get the party to call itself “Radical Liberals” to avoid the dishonesty, but were voted down at Assembly.

I’m not too worried about the ‘museum curators’ of the continuity Liberal Party, stuck in a parallel universe numbering their Assemblies 123 or whatever you are up to now. Nor the ‘armchair philosophers’ ideological purists, who engage endlessly in sterile and impotent debates to define a perfect form of Liberalism.

No, it’s the bitter and twisted, mainly ex Lib Dem councillors, who seek to hurt the Liberal Democrats by joining the continuity Liberal Party, who get up my nose. Now for a party that claims to be undiluted and genuinely Liberal, you aren’t very fussy who you take. You’ve had some dodgy characters whose only motivation is to dis their former colleagues in the Lib Dems, (remember Tony in Chard).

Take the Bideford councillors less than six months after being elected as Lib Dems, they come and join the con Libs, because of a great matter of liberal principle, no because one of the Lib Dem councillors used to talk dirty down a phone line to some sad old gits, and their pastor told them to leave the ‘sinful Lib Dems’. (They clearly are unaware of Steve Radford’s views on legalising and regulating prostitution. I must enlighten them)

You Tom want an anti EU, yet moderate political party, however the con Libs were not formed as an anti EU liberal party, they fell out of love with the EU over a number of years. The commitment to leave the EU was a close run thing at Assembly, and if Radford is eclipsed as leader, it could all change back very quickly.

Tom Wilde

The merger was twenty years ago. When I said "doing well", I meant now, at the moment, and plainly I meant "doing well for a small party with no money and virtually no media coverage". The trouble with you LibDems is that you are stuck in the past! Are you going to keep on beating the Liberal Party up for being the smaller of the two parties to emerge from the events of 1998/9, or can we move on to more important matters?

Yes, that's right.

There isn't any. As I've already explained in my last post, I support the Liberals because they have better policies than the LibDems, not because I somehow feel that they represent a more historically authentic incarnation of the Liberal tradition! Maybe there are people in the Liberal Party who do feel that... if so why don't you go and find one and then have that argument with him/her rather than with me? You are barking up the wrong tree.

That's a bizarre assertion. Care to try to justify it, or are we just meant to engage in mindless mud-slinging?

Elected councillors have defected in both directions. I believe a few years back some city councillors in Liverpool went from the Liberal Party to the LibDems not long after being elected. I don't think they were turned away. These things happen, annoying though they can sometimes be. More recently, of course, most defections have been from the LibDems to the Liberal Party rather than vice versa, but I think there are reasons for that - most LibDem councillors are more principled than your party's leadership.

I doubt that. And why on earth should I care whether or not the Liberals were a pro or anti EU party back in 1988 or 89? It is their current stance that appeals to me.

Dilke

Sorry Tom, this isn’t personal to you. I don’t want to pick on you because your support for the con Libs is honourable and rational. However that isn’t ture for many in the party.

I saw to many good long standing councillors lose their seats by a handful of votes because a ‘Liberal’ stood against them. Ironically around the time the con Libs were founded (or re-founded depending on your point of view); one councillor refused to stand under the Lib Dem banner, and stood simply under the description ‘Liberal’ (in hindsight it looks as if he was trying goad the Lib Dem Assoc to expel him), the association didn’t stand a candidate against him, let members help in his campaign. After the election this gentleman joined the con Libs, and at the next year’s local elections arranged candidates to stand against some of the very people who had stood by him and helped him get elected.

When challenged that, all the con Libs had achieved was to un-seat good Liberal councillors their response was, because the Lib Dems were diluting Liberalism we were more dangerous than the Tories or Labour and the Lib Dems must be destroyed for Liberalism to flourish.

So if the con Libs want to justify their existence as an ideological pure Liberal party; then I feel it is warranted to point out their volt face on apparent ‘liberal principles’ like opposing referenda, and not using the Standards Board. If the con Libs want to justify themselves as a historical continuation of the pre 1988 Liberal Pary, as the Cornish site does, then it is fair to pick up on historical inaccuracies.