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Stephen Williams entices us with the prospect that the general election of 2024 will see the collapse of the Conservative Party.

Ruxunda Teslo offers a bracing outsider's view: "Trains do not arrive in time, houses are getting old and you cannot build new ones because of weird regulations, wages are stagnating and so on. Britain, captured by the comfortable illusion of its past, seems to observe the world's relentless march from afar, reluctant to emerge from the cocoon of inaction."

"Co-operatives fix things. Co-operatives share power as well as wealth. We prioritise social good and generate substantial social impact and we reinvest in our communities. I'm inspired every day by the actions and activities of our members attempting to fix things, to solve problems and not just for today, but laying the groundwork for tomorrow." Rose Marley from Co-operatives UK on the prospects for the sector.

Rachael Allen reflects on being a working-class academic: "One of my most eye-opening experiences as a working class person moving into educated and middle class spaces was the correction to my misconception that wealthy people are clever. I held onto this misconception for longer than I should have, because, at university, and then into my professional life, I was surrounded by the rich."

"These days Gervais’s adoring fanbase seem more enthusiastic at the prospect of upsetting their political opponents than about the material itself." James Bloodworth says Ricky Gervais is a reactionary bore.

"It’s always annoyed me when people ... dismiss voice-overs as a failure of storytelling, as if cinema was a pure art form and not a mongrel one made up of all the others, plus that little bit extra, that alchemical magic. There are tons of sloppy voice-overs, of course, but the best add mood, poetry, depth and complication. Voice-overs and narration have been so essential, in fact, to so many great films the history of the medium would be immeasurably poorer without them." Brian Phelan speaks up for the use of voice-overs in films.

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Stephen Williams makes the case for abolishing Bristol's elected mayor.

Samantha Rose Hill examines Hannah Arendt's writings on the links between loneliness and totalitarianism: "Arendt’s argument about loneliness and totalitarianism is not an easy one to swallow, because it implies a kind of ordinariness about totalitarian tendencies that appeal to loneliness: if you are not satisfied with reality, if you forsake the good and always demand something better, if you are unwilling to come face-to-face with the world as it is, then you will be susceptible to ideological thought."

With evidence for efficacy so thin, and the stakes so high, why is electroshock therapy still a mainstay of psychiatry? John Read explains.

"Nottinghamshire has a long history of libraries, from the old penny libraries prior to the establishment of a public library service. If none of these had existed and I could design a new world the first thing I would want in my utopia is a place where knowledgeable staff help you choose books you can read *for free* then take them back for someone else to have the same pleasure." Ross Bradshaw on the wonder of public libraries.

Aris Roussinos.argues that Paul Kingsnorth has emerged as Britain’s foremost critic of industrial modernity and the  literary heir to a strain of thought that has survived in the English imagination, on both Left and Right, since the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Didn't you used to be Josh McEachran? The former Chelsea starlet reflects on his career and why things did not work out for him at Stamford Bridge,

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"Margaret Wintringham was elected in a by election in September 1921, succeeding her deceased husband in the Louth constituency of Lincolnshire. She followed the Tory Nancy Astor as the second woman to take her seat in the House of Commons." Stephen Williams celebrates a near century of women Liberal and Liberal Democrat MPs.

"The Institute for Public Policy Research reports that public spending in the south has risen by £3.2bn since 2010, against a fall of £6.3bn in the north." Simon Jenkins says the extra billions announced for Crossrail emphasise Britain's north-south divide.

Owen Bennett-Jones looks at Auntie's many problems: "The BBC has papered over its failure to challenge authority by developing a house style of aggressive interviewing which gives the impression of holding power to account without actually doing so."

Richard Florida asks if the great Jane Jacobs predicted the rise of Donald Trump.

"The Box of Delights has something far more important than money or gloss. It has magic, a commodity that can’t be bought and which enables almost every flaw to be forgiven." James Oliver celebrates the BBC's adaptation from the 1980s- a modern Christmas classic.

Inesemjphotography takes us around the Ring of Kerry.

When Mark Littlewood was the Coalition's "Red Tape Tsar"

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The Tobacco Tactics site reminds us of a piece of recent political history:

In September 2011, Littlewood, wrote on his Daily Mail blog that the "Coalition’s war on red tape is just hot air". Less than two months later, Littlewood was appointed as an independent adviser to the government’s Red Tape Challenge for Disruptive Business Models. Speaking on his appointment, Littlewood said: 

The IEA has sought to educate people over recent months about the burden which red tape and regulation places on businesses in the United Kingdom. Holding back enterprise through unnecessary bureaucratic intervention lowers employment and stifles economic growth.

Questions were raised over Littlewood's independence. His position as a Red Tape advisor is unpaid, so his government work is effectively being subsidised by the IEA. 

In March 2012, the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Smoking and Health asked Vince Cable, the Trade and Industry Minister, for “reassurances” that Littlewood would not be advising on tobacco-related matters because of his “clear conflict of interest”. 

The committee chairman, Stephen Williams MP, said in a letter, quoted in the Independent. 

He clearly has a pro-tobacco agenda and has campaigned for a number of years against regulation of the tobacco industry. He could not, therefore, fulfil the remit of an independent adviser to the Government. 

In a statement to the Independent newspaper, the Department for Business said that Littlewood would not be involved in any tobacco-related matter. 

On 24 March 2012, Vince Cable confirmed this in a letter. Cable wrote to Stephen Williams, the chair of the APPG, confirming that 

Mark Littlewood is an independent advisor to the team running the Disruptive Business Models theme of the Red Tape Challenge … Tobacco-related matters are not part of the Disruptive Business Models theme.

While excessive regulation can operate as a barrier to new producers entering a market, when the right talk of "red tape" they generally mean hard-won rights for the average worker.

We Liberals should defend those rights.

Lib Dem candidate is the favourite in West of England mayoral race

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The Bristol Post has promising news:

Former Bristol West MP Stephen Williams has been chosen as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Metro Mayor election in May – and has immediately become the bookies' favourite to win. 

Mr Williams, a former Local Government Minister, was nominated by party members after a vote between himself and former Bristol cabinet councillor Simon Cook.

According to the Post, Ladbrokes is quoting the following odds for the contest to be mayor of the West of England:

Stephen Williams (Lib Dem) - Evens
Conservative - 11/10
Labour - 7/1
Green - 50/1
Ukip - 100/1

I am not the greatest fan of elected mayors, and the idea of a mayor for the West of England sounds silly.

But it turns out to cover a sort of Greater Bristol, taking in the Bath & North East Somerset and South Gloucestershire council areas as well as the city itself.

Liberal England wishes Stephen the best of luck for the contest (and hopes he will now drop the 'MP' from his Twitter handle).

If you want to help him win, Andrew Brown on Lib Dem Voice tells you how.

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Stephen Williams suggests that a progressive alliance could transform British politics.

"The lesson I take from what’s happened in both our main political parties is that you never win an argument by pandering to it, or ignoring it and simply hoping it goes away. You win by taking the argument head on." Read the keynote speech to Reform's 2016 annual dinner by Liz Kendall.

Jonathan Fryer explains why he has written Eccles Cakes - a childhood memoir.

"Bands now look at ticket sales, or engagement on social media as indicators of their reach and impact. And those are the things, rather than hit singles, which traditionally sustain careers." Mark Savage says the singles chart is now almost irrelevant.

Join A London Inheritance on a photographic exploration of the building of the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank after the Second World War.

Paul Talling discovers the source of the River Lea and traces its early course through Luton.

Stephen Williams says the public must get a share of the Lloyds and RBS sell-offs

A report on the Guardian website this evening quotes Stephen Williams, the Lib Dem MP for Bristol West, talking about how of Lloyds Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland should be returned to the public sector:

"My Lib Dem colleagues and I will not stand by and watch private investors reap all of the benefits once the banks are taken off taxpayer intensive care. The public must get their share."

Back in 2011 Stephen wrote a pamphlet for CentreForum which called for every British adult to be given shares in banks that had been rescued by the government.

At the time I quoted him talking to the BBC:

"Every citizen would have the same rights as shareholders at the moment, so they'd have the rights to get the company annual report. They could turn up at the AGM.

"What might happen, for instance, is there could be shareholder associations set up of citizens who own these shares, who will put pressure on the banks to change their behaviour. Banks and all other companies are meant to be owned by their shareholders and to respond to their shareholders' wishes."

The Guardian report says that the Policy Exchange, the influential Conservative think-tank, has now taken up the idea.

In the early months of the Coalition I hoped that the more thoughtful elements of the two parties might find common cause. Perhaps this is one example of that happening?

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"An independent cafe has little in the way of clever ruses to dodge taxes.  But multinational chains can siphon off profits via various company charges to head office for use of the brand name, loan interest or inflated prices for raw materials." Stephen Williams MP will not be buying his lattes from Starbucks for a while.

A Lanson Boy describes his part in the downfall of Alec Robertson, Conservative leader of Cornwall council...

...and Computer Weekly gives the background to Robertson's demise.

Where now for Public Service Broadcasting? Professor Peter Lunt, Head of the University of Leicester's Department of Media and Communication gives his answer on Leicester Exchanges.

"It is often stated that the Union Flag should only be described as the Union Jack when flown in the bows of a warship, but this is a relatively recent idea. From early in its life the Admiralty itself frequently referred to the flag as the Union Jack, whatever its use, and in 1902 an Admiralty Circular announced that Their Lordships had decided that either name could be used officially. Such use was given Parliamentary approval in 1908 when it was stated that 'the Union Jack should be regarded as the National flag'." Cdr Bruce Nicolls OBE RN (Retd) nails a modern myth for the Flag Institute.

The Passion of Former Days has some photographs of St Andrews in the 1840s.

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Stephen's Liberal Journal has some advice for Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who made a fool of himself on the fringes of the Conservative Party Conference today.

"All of this sound familiar? - a well funded group of free market believers taking over a party" Birkdale Focus draws parallels between the Liberal Party history of the 1950s and the Liberal Democrats today. Note the name check Edward Rushworth - William Wallace's father-in law and three times Liberal candidate for Harborough.

Stephen Williams MP (Lib Dem, Bristol West) pays tribute to the Chartists.

Writing on the British Politics and Policy at LSE blog, Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, looks at the disjunction between Tory preoccupations in Birmingham and the more fundamental challenges the party actually faces.

Female genital mutilation is child abuse and nothing less, says Alan Wardle from the NSPCC on Huffington Post UK.

Learning from my mistakes: an English teacher's blog does not believe learning can always be fun: "I am not sponsoring a Pepsi Zero approach. A sugarless experience. We need lessons to be ‘fun’ at times to hook students in, but it is the spoon of medicine after the fun that is the most important thing as it is challenging, thought-provoking, demanding, effective and occasionally boring."

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Keith Nevols reviews the alternative Queen's Speech being promoted by Conservative Home and the Tory right: "The alternative speech claims to be ‘popular, pro-poor and broadly based’. Unfortunately, this is not so much a programme to encourage jobs and growth but more the reiteration of a right-wing agenda that would have made Mrs Thatcher blush."

The council election results in Gwynedd sound like the plot of an Ealing Comedy, says What You Can Get Away With,

Stephen Williams, Lib Dem MP for Bristol West, looks back 20 years to his first election: "Our volunteers delivered two leaflets and knocked on every door in the ward. The leaflet text was composed on a typewriter and the black and white photographs were turned into dots for printing by a photo bureau.  The canvass cards for door knocking were made by me and my agent ... spending two evenings cutting up the election register and pritt-sticking each street onto card. The results of the canvassing were written up by hand onto triplicate carbon paper, to be used when 'knocking up' supporters on polling day. All of this now belongs in the museum of electioneering."

"Goodbye Tories, hello Liberal Democrats," says Blue Liberalism.

Unpaid internships are bad for students, bad for workers and bad for society, argues Derek Thompson on The Atlantic.

The BFI's Sight & Sound magazine reports on the opening up of the lost continent of British silent films  at a festival in Cambridge last month.

Barbara Janke to stand down as leader of Bristol City Council

From BBC News:

The leader of Bristol City Council has announced she is to step down. 

Barbara Janke said she would stand down as council leader and as leader of the Liberal Democrat group. 

Ms Janke announced her decision to the Lib Dem-controlled authority's cabinet earlier. She said she made the decision as she approached her 65th birthday. 

She said it had been an "enormous privilege" to serve as council leader in 2003-2004, 2005-2007 and from 2009 to the present. 

She will remain leader of the Lib Dem group until the group's annual meeting on 8 May, when a new leader will be chosen.

Barbara was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames from 1986 to 1994 and stood unsuccessfully as Lib Dem candidate for Surbiton at the 1992 general election. She then moved to Bristol and was elected to the council in 1995, taking over as Lib Dem group leader from Stephen Williams (now MP for Bristol West) in 1997.

In a comment piece on the same page Paul Barltop, the BBC's political editor for the West of England, says:

The fact that Bristol's no longer notorious for its high council tax and poor schools is a legacy she'll hope to be remembered by.

Liberalism and banning smoking in cars

When I saw the headline:

Bristol MP backs BMA call for smoking ban in cars

I had a sinking feeling. Sure enough the MP in question turned out to be the Liberal Democrat Stephen Williams.

When asked, we Liberal Democrats usually say that we stand above all for individual liberty. But the reality is that some of are always to be found on the side of the argument that wants to curtail liberty for the sake of other desirable goals.

The problem is not, as Liberal Vision claims, that Stephen Williams is not a Liberal. It is that we have too weak an idea of what it means to be a Liberal in the modern world.

There are parallels with our lack of a clear idea of what Liberal economics look like. Perhaps we should deliver fewer leaflets and spend a bit more time thinking?

Edmundo Ros: I didn't know he was still alive until he died

Yesterday Stephen Williams, the Lib Dem MP for Bristol West, marked the death of Edmundo Ros. It is always good to see that an MP has a hinterland, as Denis Healey once termed it.

And, as I have often discussed with Disgruntled Radical, it is sad when you do not realise that someone is still been alive until you hear of their death - if you see what I mean.

To counter this, The Oldie has a feature called "Still With Us", which carries profiles of people you might think are dead but are not. Until the other day, Edmundo Ros would have been a good subject.

As ever, the Daily Telegraph has the best obituary.

Nick Clegg's bank shares plan and North Sea oil

Nick Clegg has endorsed the idea, promoted by his fellow Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams, of giving the public shares in the banks that their taxes helped to rescue.

Earlier this week Andrew Hill, writing on the FT Business blog, pointed out that a similar plan for shares in North Sea oil had been promoted in 1978 by Samuel Brittan and Barry Riley.

Brittan was the liberal older brother of the Conservative home secretary Leon Brittan. Indeed a whole generation of commentators could not take Leon wholly seriously because they remembered him as Samuel's ink-stained little brother.

Andrew Hill reminds us that direct distribution of shares was not the route that Mrs Thatcher took. He goes on to say:

But Sir Samuel has not abandoned hope. When I asked him on Thursday what he thought of the Clegg plan, he told me: “If I were an independent MP, I’d vote for it.”

Stephen Williams' plan to give away bank shares may go ahead

In March Stephen Williams wrote a pamphlet for CentreForum endorsing a plan drawn up Portman Capital partners, under which each UK citizen would receive about 1450 shares in RBS and 440 in Lloyds. These would be worth more than £900 at current market prices.

A story on the CNBC site today suggests that the government is also attracted to the plan:

Government ministers and civil servants have been concerned by the possible effect a mass sell-off of the state's shares would have on the overall market and in particular on the banks in question.

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Lorna Spencely has sympathy for an old adversary, Robert Halfon, is under threat of legal action from Liverpool John Moores University over views he has expressed in the House of Commons about that university and Libya.

This is not the only case in which Parliamentary privilege must be defended. In a post everyone should read, Anna Raccoon writes; "Mr John Hemming, MP for Yardley in Birmingham, rose to his feet and used parliamentary privilege to list some of the secret prisoners, the people who have lost their liberty in the UK behind closed doors; the court orders which detail the secret injunctions – not for the benefit of footballers or bankers ... but the injunctions, not mere ‘super-injunctions’ that the media could not mention, but ‘hyper-injunctions’ which even prevented the aggrieved citizen from appealing to their MP for help."

Don't look to headteachers to defend our liberties: TES Connect reports they are about to complain that requiring schools to obtain parental permission before gather biometric data on children will impose a "huge bureaucratic burden".

Stephen Williams, Lib Dem MP for Bristol West, has been out meeting the city's homeless.

With everyone's attention turned to Libya, The Daily (Maybe) has a digest of reports of protest and repression elsewhere in the region.

Good news from Unmitigated England: Peter Ashley has a new book coming out. Cross Country looks at "Southwest Cumbria, Herefordshire & Shropshire, North Norfolk, Romney Marsh & Dungeness, North Cotswolds, Essex Estuaries, Wiltshire-Dorset Borders, North Cornwall Coast and High Leicestershire (of course)."

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Richard Morris take A View from Ham Common and finds he rather likes Stephen Williams' plan for distributing shares in the banks that were rescued by the taxpayer: "the government may well get a greater return on its investment than a 'conventional' privatisation as well, and everybody, not just those with capital to invest, owns the banks".

A Scottish Liberal reflects on a year of blogging.

"Hundreds of witnesses and suspects have already been interviewed, right up to the highest levels in the former HBOS, as part of what has been described as 'the largest fraud investigation in UK history' by one of the police officers involved." Naked Capitalism on a story that has barely been covered in the mainstream media.

Isabel Ashdown considers Twitter etiquette: when should you follow and when should you unfollow?

"Take a tour with an ex miner around Snibston's former colliery buildings, visit a restored mill at Hough Hill at Swannington, search for the houses built from giant bricks at Measham, or find the framework knitters' cottages with long narrow windows in Melbourne." Go Leicestershire invites us to explore the industrial heritage of North West Leicestershire and South Derbyshire.

Meanwhile, Ancient Hackney has found three stone circles in the borough.

Stephen Williams proposes giving bank shares to every British adult

The connection between the Liberal Democrat think tank CentreForum and the concerns of the wider party has sometimes been difficult to discern. So it is good to see them publishing Getting Your Share of the Banks: Giving the banks back to the people by the Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams.

The pamphlet endorses a plan, drawn up by the corporate finance firm Portman Capital Partners, under which every British adult would be given shares in the banks that were rescued by the government. As the Daily Telegraph says:

Under the plan, each UK citizen could receive about 1,450 shares in RBS and 440 in Lloyds – worth a total of more than £900 at current market prices.

"Every citizen would have the same rights as shareholders at the moment, so they'd have the rights to get the company annual report. They could turn up at the AGM," Mr Williams told the BBC this morning.

"What might happen, for instance, is there could be shareholder associations set up of citizens who own these shares, who will put pressure on the banks to change their behaviour. Banks and all other companies are meant to be owned by their shareholders and to respond to their shareholders' wishes."

The idea of these shareholders associations is attractive, but I suspect that most shareholders would sooner or later take the money, as happened when the building societies were demutualised. And, given the pressure on public finances at present, there is a case for the government getting every penny it can for these bank shares when it comes to sell them.

But I find this plan attractive. It is, as I heard Stephen Williams say on television this evening, a way of ensuring that poorer people, whose taxes helped to bail our the banks, see some benefit when the shares are sold. If the are simply sold on the open market, this will not happen.

You can download the full pamphlet from the CentreForum site.

Liberal Democrat MPs are revolting

A striking observation from revolts.co.uk:

there now remain very few Lib Dem backbenchers who have remained loyal to the Coalition. Just nine backbench Lib Dems have not voted against the whips in this Parliament. Of these, four – Lorely Burt, Simon Hughes, Tessa Munt and Stephen Williams – abstained on tuition fees.

That leaves five Lib Dem MPs on the backbenches who have remained wholly loyal to the Coalition thus far. In addition to David Laws, they are Tom Brake, Malcolm Bruce, and Don Foster (all of whom voted in favour of raising the cap on tuition fees on Thursday) along with Sir Robert Smith (abroad on business at the time of the tuition fees vote).

Thanks to a tweet from the London Review of Books. It does not seem possible to link to individual posts on revolts.co.uk, but this one is on top at the time of writing.

Easier exams make it harder for A level students

First, let's get the obligatory photograph out of the way.

Thank you. As is well known, all A level students look like this.

How did the results of A levels - and to a lesser extent SATs and other public examinations - come to be seen as a barometer of national well-being. When I was at school, these exams were essentially a private matter. You were bright or you weren't, you worked hard or you didn't, and you more or less got what you deserved. Now great issues of public policy are assumed to be involved.

The explanation, I suspect, is twofold. First, the results come out at just the right time for a 24/7 media world that is desperate for content in the summer holiday months. Second, the collapse of the idea that politicians' role is to run the economy has led them to seek other areas of national life to colonise, and education has become one of them.

Part of this annual festival of concern about exam results is a ritualised debate. One side says they are examinations are getting easier: the other says that students are working harder than ever before.

I have come to the conclusion that both sides are right.

The evidence that exams are getting easier comes in a report (pdf format) prepared for the Office of National Statistics.

As Burning our Money writes of the report:

Its approach is to compare the A Level performance of pupils with the same pupils' performance in a standardised test of academic ability known as ITDA (International Test of Developed Academic Ability). The data has been collected every year since 1988, and currently covers 1400 schools ...

Thus, for English Lit, pupils with the same ITDA score are now getting an A Level over one grade higher, and for Biology, nearly two grades higher. For Maths, the increase is an astonishing three and a half grades. Overall, the change is about two grades, as reported.

Thus, for English Lit, pupils with the same ITDA score are now getting an A Level over one grade higher, and for Biology, nearly two grades higher. For Maths, the increase is an astonishing three and a half grades. Overall, the change is about two grades, as reported.The authors of the study conclude:

"A level grades achieved in 2006 certainly do correspond to a lower level of general academic ability than the same grades would have done in previous years. Whether or not they are better taught makes no difference to this interpretation; the same grade corresponds to a lower level of general ability."

(Thanks to Tim Worstall for the links.)

My impression is that, while for years liberals and the left have hotly denied that exams have been getting easier, it will soon be widely accepted that they are. (It is remarkably how quickly the unthinkable can become the new conventional wisdom.) Certainly, the Guardian piece, published the other day, which tried to uphold the no-fall-in-standards thesis was so flippant that you sensed the author had really given up the ghost.

So does this mean that today's A level students have it easier than my generation did?

Not a bit of it. My rather guilty impression is that they work a good deal harder at school than my friends and I had to at that age.

It sounds like a paradox, but it isn't.

What will the more sought-after universities do if more and more young people start getting two or three good A levels? Will they reason that with so many talented candidates around it does not much matter whom they chose?

Of course they won't. Instead they will start to ask for four good A levels. Or they will start looking for more evidence of achievements outside school, turning students' leisure time into a competitive field too.

So there you have it. A levels are getting easier and students are having to work harder to distinguish themselves as a result.

And that, incidentally, means a greater volume of work rather than work at a higher, more stimulating level. Which also helps explain my generation's prejudice that, while we did not work so hard, we were more intellectually advanced. For we had more time to read outside the curriculum and follow our own interests.

Traditionally, the Lib Dems have been at the forefront of those denying that exams have been getting easier. So I was cheered by the media release from Stephen Williams today calling for an independent review of standards.

Although the tone is still all about attacking the "carpers", it may a sign that the party is beginning to think for itself on education rather than taking its lead from the teachers' unions, as it has tended to do in recent years.

If the outcome of that review were to be harder and fewer exams for A level students, I would be very pleased. If exams are getting easier, it is the young people taking them who are being shortchanged.