I was speaking to a shopkeeper this morning who was complaining about the Labour Party's policy of a living wage exceeding £10per hour. He stated he had problems paying the current living wage and would have problems paying the additional sum. I expect other shop keepers and small business owners think like him.

In principal I support a living wage as I feel it would lift many people out of poverty and at the same time help circulate more money in the economy. However I recognise the fears of the shopkeeper. Therefore along with the introduction of the living wage there must be adjustment to taxation for small businesses and business rates which allows them to pay their employees a real living wage without having impacting on their overall expenditure. This combination would actually improve trade in our town centres.

One political philosopher that particularly inspires me is Carl Rosselli, someone that I feel has not had the recognition he deserves amongst the liberal left. Have others read his work and if so what are their thoughts?

Almost 3 months after the conclusion of the EU referendum, the UK still appears to be in a honeymoon period.


The dire predictions of economic contraction and recession have been avoided for now, if only because of prompt action by the Bank of England and a wait and see attitude by businesses.

The issues are now how and when to start negotiating our exit from the EU, and the sort of trade agreement we wish to entertain.

The Conservative administration does not appear to be in any hurry to start the process, not least as the establishment never imagined the electorate would vote Leave, and have been caught off-guard.

The general consensus is that the process will start in 2017, with a conclusion by 2019.

There is a considerable weight of opinion that the government will have to repeal the European Communities Act first, if only to be seen to be following procures and to allow MP’s a protracted debate, and their 5 minutes on TV.

This could be in lieu of a dedicated parliamentary debate and vote on BREXIT, since a majority of MP’s actually voted Remain.

The government would then presumable invoke Article 50, triggering a 2 year period of negotiations to dis-engage from Europe.

The first action that needs to be done at this time is the formulation of a negotiation position and the recruitment of trade delegations to facilitate negotiations

There are five recognised forms of trade agreement this country could ascent to, and the details below are taken directly from the following BBC article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36639261

The Norway Model - Member of European Economic Area, full access to single market, obliged to make a financial contribution and accept majority of EU laws, free movement applies as it does in the EU.

It could be argued that the UK electorate have already rejected this trading model and it would be unacceptable to a sizeable minority of the general public if only because free movement was one of the most contentious issues.

The Swiss Model - Member of the European Free Trade Association but not the EEA, access to EU market governed by series of bilateral agreements, covers some but not all areas of trade, also makes a financial contribution but smaller than Norway's, doesn't have a general duty to apply EU laws but does have to implement some EU regulations to enable trade, free movement applies though.

The Turkey model - Customs union with the EU, meaning no tariffs or quotas on industrial goods exported to EU countries, has to apply EU's external tariff on goods imported from outside the EU.

The major drawback is that it does not cover agricultural produce, or services.

The Canada option - Ceta free trade deal with the EU has yet to come into force, gets rid of most tariffs on goods, but excludes some food items and services, and stipulates need to prove where goods are made.

The Singapore and Hong Kong approach - City states do not impose import or export tariffs at all - a unilateral free trade approach. This is closest to a WTO framework, although there are issue with such a solution, since it reputedly contains many default tariffs.

The Liberal Party is fundamentally and robustly opposed to a revival of the Grammar school system whereby young people are segregated at an early age into schools for achievement and schools for the underclass.


We note that early segregation advantages those young people born into families with educational professional backgrounds and acts as a barrier to young children of all backgrounds who may be late developers.

Like previous intensions to expand Academy schools, this move was not part of the government’s electoral manifesto, and is being couched in such language as to avoid legislation prohibiting such institutions.

The Liberal Party affirms its believe that educational opportunity is vital to a vibrant society and growing economy and should be open to all irrespective of social background.

As such the party opposes such proposals, as it does private education, as it distracts from a level playing field in education and does not provide opportunity for all or social mobility.

The Liberal Party would therefore look to work with all likeminded progressive opinion whilst promoting an inclusive and properly funded state education system fit for all.

Youth unemployment is a perpetual problem, exaggerated in times of economic recession, but singular resistant to correction.

Unemployment in your youth can have a disproportional effect on long-term earnings and the accumulation of pension funds.

Our young people should in fact be the easiest to place in work, having low overheads and wage expectations, as well as low housing costs. Having said that, simply because they are young though does not mean we can simply treat them as a commodity to be shifted around like cattle.

The key elements of reducing youth unemployment are education and training, mobility and availability of entry level jobs and careers.

The Liberal policy of Universal Inheritance may create opportunities for young people by funding transport or accommodation, but it would be of only a short term effect and the age bracket of 25 delays its benefits.

Education and work experience play a vital part in reducing youth unemployment. Many employees claim school leavers lack basic workplace skills due to the academic nature of our education system.

The governments funding of its apprentice scheme via a levy on firms has not been universally welcomed.

We also need to understand that traditional apprentice scheme directed towards manufacturing do not reflect changes in the structure of the economy. Much of the economy is service orientated, and requires soft skills rather than industrial lath turning ones.

Another universal factor in persistent domestic unemployment is a lack of geographic mobility within some sections of the labour force.

It is hard leaving your local community and perhaps relocating to another part of the country, and requires a degree of maturity, but according to anecdotal economic research around two thirds of people never move more than 10 miles from their place of birth.

During the 80’s or 90’s the French government developed a domestic hostel system to tackle youth unemployment.  This provided unemployed young people with urban accommodation whilst they got a job, built up some savings and then found permanent accommodation.

One feature of these was there were no TV’s allowed, to prevent people loitering in the halls of residence, rather than looking for work!

The first drawback of such a scheme is government funding and organisation. It would require the building of a dedicated network of hostels.

There are areas of employment in the UK, such as the building industry, nursing and care for the elderly which provide entry level opportunities, but these are not necessarily areas people would be attracted to due to various aspects of the job.

The building trade is perhaps one of the easiest to get into given the right skills and can create openings into full time employment. There are said to be 200000 unfilled vacancies, and a workforce increasingly dependent on foreign nationals.

Having worked in the industry it has a high turn-over, and follows a cyclical employment pattern in parallel to the economy and seasons, but the high turn-over in part reflects people getting the skills and contacts needed to set-up as a private builder.

Of cause the building trade, with its high physical demands is certainly not suited for all people.
Other opportunities to start a career include the nursing profession and care for the elderly.  These are areas where there are both expectations of greater demand, and the prospects of a long-term and rewarding career.

But at the same time young people may have reservations at committing themselves to such demanding areas, which are emotionally demanding, and in the case of care for the elderly, not well paid.

Training for care for the elderly is not well regarded, and a career in nursing demands a degree qualification, with no vocational route into the profession. Indeed the previous coalition government cut the domestic budget for nurse training by 50% and has now extended the student grant scheme to student nurses.

Youth unemployment in this country is currently running at approximately 690,000. That does not mean they would displace a similar number of foreign born workers, but we must make the effort to highlight the causes and offer remedies to this social ill.

The regional BT broadband outage in July 2016 has highlighted one of a handful of unchallenged domestic monopolies still functioning in this country, and how dependent we are on keys infrastructure suppliers.


BT’s issues on consecutive mornings involved two different third party broadband providers having data centre failures. The fact is that for all the new entrance into the UK broadband market, companies such as Sky, TalkTalk and VirginMedia only actually provide a service from your doorstep to their local exchange.

All companies’ exchanges then connect to BT’s national Broadband backbone. This is a legacy of BT’s previous exclusive presence in the country. Despite the much lauded local loop unbundling, BT is the only company with a national infrastructure via its Outreach subsidiary, reportedly concentrated in 4 regional data centres.

The two other unchallenged monopolies with the same influence are National Grid PLC, which is a private company and Network rail, which is effectively in public ownership. These maintain the transmission grid and national railway infrastructure respectively.

The issue is how do you subject these sorts of domestic monoliths to competition at a domestic level? Dues to the modest size of this nation, regional based solutions may not be appropriate.

The US example where by AT&T was broken up into the ‘baby Bells’, probably wouldn’t work in this country do to the size of the domestic market. The breakup of BT into broadband and wholesale businesses has been rejected by the regulator.

For the national grid, there is no one regional customer base, and so no obvious way of dividing up the network. In fact having a single network has advantages in economies of scale and standards.

In Japan, for example the nuclear accident at Fukushima belatedly highlighted the fact that the countries two main islands have separate transmissions grids, running at different voltages and no feasible way of connecting them to share energy in times of acute need.
Network Rail is already in the public domain, and running at an arm’s length from government re-investing any profits, but is judged to be inefficient and passing on excessive charges to franchise operators and hence customers.

One solution might be nationalisation, on the grounds for example that communications are a natural monopolies and should be run in the public interest.  The counter argument raises objections to nationalisation on the grounds that this would mean significant capital borrowing to pay compensation, pushing up borrowing, and potentially depriving alternative infrastructure investment of funding.

Another potential solution is the creation of a franchise arrangement, but applicants may want more than a 5 year term. There is then the question of would we want regional train companies or electricity generators managing key pieces of infrastructure singly or collectively?

One answer may be more robust regulators. But imposing charging and pricing structures defeats the idea of free market forces. It would also require a fundamental change of philosophy for regulators and presumably changes to parliamentary legislation managing the regulators statutory role.

The Liberal Party notes with great sadness that the doctor's professional body, the BMA, is advocating a resumption of industrial action in response to government plans to change working hours and pay rates in the NHS.


The origins of this dispute lay in the Conservative government's desire to impose high street shopping style opening hours on hospitals, extending doctors standard working hours into Saturdays, whilst offering modest salary incentives as compensation.

Doctors, many of whom work long, arduous hours naturally have a right to have objections to such plans, some of which do relate to loss of salary. There are also questions over the realistic implementation of these changes when many hospital trusts are already under serious financial strains, with increasingly unsustainable demands of A&E services.

The Conservative parties default approach to almost all public sector disputes, be it nurses, teacher, the police and now medical professionals remains confrontational and to shout loudly, whilst claiming public support for the availability of medical services as a on demand service however impractical.

The Liberal Party calls for a more constructive and realistic debate on opening hours and hourly rates. The Liberal Part points towards its own Health & Wellbeing program as a first step towards a more realistic provision of services to the public.

The Bastille Day tragedy in France has again brought the subject of Islamic radicalisation to the fore in the debate on tackling middle-east orientated terrorism.

All religions are known for their historical excesses, and Islamic orientated terrorism is a challenge of our time.

When addressing the issue of radicalisation, we must first accept the hard truth that there are religious, ethnic and cultural aspects to the challenge, which simply can’t be ignored on the grounds of perceived racism or political correctness towards anything Islamic.

Middle-eastern cultures are more religious orientated than most western cultures. Hence the proliferation of Mosques, something they do share in common with the Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh faiths whilst such institutions as the Church of England are in decline.

They are also more family and community centric and integration into a wider secular society is an issue. The rise of faith schools could be seen as an obstacle to deeper integration into the wider secular society, contributing to the creation of in effect cultural ghettos.

Whilst security services can detect and neutralise most organised acts, the so called ‘lone wolf’ syndrome is a barely articulated nightmare. This is attacks such as those on Lee Rigby or the Bastille Day celebrations, where the perpetrators are unknown or virtually unknown and often citizens of a host country.

The first question is what turns people against their own nation and fellow citizens? 

Preserved domestic injustices and international conflict have alienated some youth. An inability to influence events or take part in the political debate has led to frustration.

Failure to integrate and the creations of insular communities is another aspect. People unwilling to leave their own communities, either because of cultural ties or language barriers need to be addressed.

There is a contrast between Eastern European and middle-eastern residents where by both have settled in this country, creating very closed communities, but have reacted differently to the wider secular culture.

History shows that where minorities reach 25% in an area there is often the danger of violent clashes. We need to address the issue of the creation of insular ghettos which contribute to the cultural divide.

It is easy to harm somebody when you do not speak their language, and do not understand their anguish or point of view. Therefore language integration is an important issue.

Radical material is widely available on the Internet, and closing down its availability challenges both the expression of free speech, and the open nature of the Internet. Similarly social media has played a prominent role in connecting up like minded individuals.

Schemes to tackle radicalisation are long term, requiring almost open ended commitments of resources, something politicians with a short-term mentality and agenda are not well equipped to absorb. 

The easiest route to tackling Islamic radicalisation is a policy of engagement in the community, schools and civic society. It should not be simply seen as a heart’s and mind campaign as this would imply the imposition of a point of view, not a meeting of minds and cultures.

They require the reaching out to communities and religions and discussing sensitive subjects as International relations and foreign policy, as well as clashes of culture.

The reluctance of some Imams to condemn violence, such as the murder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Glaswegian shopkeeper should be tackled head-on. Islam is fractured into multiple strands, Sunni and Shia, with many smaller sects viewed with disdain or open hostility.

Religious and communities should be challenged to disown those who advocate hate crime against white Christians or minority groups such as LGBT. A failure to do so both encourages further intolerance, and reinforces the negative perceptions of Islam.

Where necessary the rule of law should apply, irrespective of race or religion, to any group of individual promoting intolerance or violent to the detriment of other groups in society.

The subject of a Universal Basic Income(UBI) has now become a topic of public debate, featured in a recent 3 page report in The Economist and subject to a national referendums in Switzerland.


It is seen as a method of providing an income for all in society, addressing issues of wage inequality and income in a changing workplace, alleviating poverty and social depravation and an alternative to state benefits.

The Liberal Party has long offered an alternative in the form of a Universal Inheritance(UI). This would be funded by reform of UK inheritance tax, to provide a lump sum for each and every qualifying young person in this country.

The scheme would look to grant annual or one off sums of monies between 1000 and 5000 pounds, depending on the schemes final form. It has the stated aim to create an opportunity society for those coming of age and entering the workforce.

The two schemes both seek make for a better, more equal society, but differ radically in their philosophy, outcome and funding sources.

A Universal Basic Income addresses the issues of everyday income and standards of living. It does not in itself give people the opportunity to better themselves or improve themselves. It has been argued that as such, it is a disincentive to work and ambition.

It would also in theory also go to those who absolutely do not need it as well as to those who do, unless a form of means testing was introduced, which contradicts the Universal part of the scheme.

A Universal Basic Income is either enough to live on, or it is not, and need related benefits may be a   better solution, such as a better funded and more realistic state pension.

It is unclear how UBI it would be funded in the first instance, but it seems most commentators are looking to taxation. A form of Universal basic Income therefore does not specifically look to redistribute wealth.

Unfortunately increased taxation and potentially more public debt are not sustainable in our current economic climate.

Universal Inheritance, funded by the reform of inheritance tax, seeks to redistribute some of the 44% of this nation’s accrued wealth, currently held by the top 10% of society. These monies move from generation to generation behind an opaque inheritance system.

It is simply impossible to know what sums are involved annually, but government inheritance tax revenues are only around 4 billion pounds a year, equivalent to perhaps 2p on the basic rate of tax.

A Universal Inheritance would not contribute to debt or distort the tax system through higher rates, which can in itself be a disincentive for work. Instead it makes for a modest, but progressive redistribution of wealth in our country. Its source of funding is deeper and more sustainable.

The reach of Universal Inheritance does not extend beyond a narrow age band, thus a narrower application. Yet these are the people for whom it could make the most striking benefits, an enabling inheritance to create an opportunity society in line with Liberal philosophy of a hand-up, not a hand-out.

In the final analyst the wealth of this nation will not support both schemes, even though they are presumed to come from different sources.

Universal Basic Income looks to benefit all for the immediate future, Universal Inheritance looks to create opportunity for a section of the community for long-term benefit. It seeks to redistribute the ownership of unearned capital in each new generation in the interest of greater equality of opportunity.

Whether the debate continues to garner public interest depends on how realistic funding and distribution of the wealth can be most easily accomplished.

The Liberal Party views with much concern media reports that both the RBS and Natwest bank are warning business and commercial customers of the possibility of them being charged negative interest rates.


This would in effect charge these businesses, reported to between 1 and 1.3 million, for holding money in their accounts, as well as an undisclosed number of charities and community groups.

This move is being prompted by the potential cut of domestic interest rates to zero, leaving banks to fund the cost of borrowing and their own businesses, whilst receiving no interest on loans.

The Liberal Party understands the economic reasoning behind this move, but this simply adds further pressure to businesses struggling to survive in uncertain economic times, and re-enforces the common perception that banks are not there to help businesses thrive.

Although this move would not affect personal customers with savings or current accounts, it encourages the move towards fee based accounts, which discriminate against the poorest in our society.

The RBS and Natwest via its parent Lloyds bank are both still partly state owned, and should be challenged by the government and the general public on this counter-productive and damaging development.