I read with interests this week the outline of the SNP election manifesto, and its spending commitments.

Unfortunately although many of the ideas taken individually and in unison are sensible, together they potentially represent a unaffordable wish list both in the manner they are portrait and the funding expectations that go with them.

We do in fact have the accumulated wealth in this country to meet many of the manifesto commitments, but we have two factors inhibiting this.

The first is our an obsession with often punitive upper tax levels, which potential discourage investment and hard work.

Secondly as a society we have developed a singular blindness to the huge amount of wealth moving from generation to generation via loopholes and exemptions in our inheritance regime. This is often accrued and not earned wealth.

As a result  we are simply failing to make the countries wealth work for all to create the  opportunity society which the Liberal Party believes is wholly affordable and in step with our constitutional commitment to a
society where all its citizen shall possess liberty, property and security, and none shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.

As the election campaign nears it final week, I see that Ed Miliband,
the leader of the Labour Party, has chosen to revisit his earlier
suggestion of rent controls for the private sector.

Although that may be welcome news to tenants, it does nothing to
address the obvious cause of higher rents, that of a scarcity of
supply.

This country has not built a sustainable number of homes for decades,
and is struggling to even reach the pre-recession peak of 183000 news
starts. This is still far below the estimated 225000 new homes needed
annually just to keep pace with normal demand.

The Conservatives have proposed building 100000 affordable homes, a
target later doubled in size, but this is a one off plan, when what we
need is this number year on year almost indefinitely.

And simply selling off the countries housing association stock at a
discount without like for like replacement, as the Conservatives are
suggesting, will simply compound the scarcity of supply.

A new homes initiative which includes a concerted effort to return
900000 empty homes to the market would both provide affordable
accommodation, as well as provide a spur to economic activity and
employment at the economy struggles to maintain headway.

May 2015 has indeed seen an historical Conservative win in the general
election, but a dispassionate analysis of the results shows something
remains amiss in our first past the post electoral system.

The conservative parties slender parliamentary majority, is actually
based on just 36.9% of the national vote. That equates to 32244 votes
per elected MP.

By comparison the populous, insurgent UKIP, which took third place in
the general election with 12.7% of the national vote, needed 3.8
million people simply to elect one MP. The corresponding figured for
the Green Party was over 1.5million, yet the figures for Labour and
SNP were 40292 and 25972 respectively

The fairest solution to this issue is an advanced form of proportional
representation termed the Single Transferable Vote. Existing single
member constituencies would be replaced by multi-member constituencies
returning 4 or 5 MP's. Each constituency would be based on natural
communities, rather than unnatural constituencies that happen to be
the right size to return one MP.

Moreover, electors would no longer vote with an inflexible "X" - the
mark of illiteracy - but would number their candidates in order of
preference and the ballot would be counted in a way that would ensure
that their votes would be utilised as fully as possible.

That is an electoral system in which the Liberal Party would like to
see all voters believe their vote matters, and is not 'wasted' on any
party who national popularity is crowded out locally.

I read with interest your correspondents recent musings on the
creation of an new centre-left political entity(Radical idea
for a new party, 13th May).

In fact a centrist, mildly Eurosceptic alternative, explicitly
promoting an opportunity society by the modest redistribution of
wealth already exists. That alternative is the Liberal Party.

When the Liberals and SDP voted to merge in 1988, they created a fresh
party and registration with the electoral commission, initially as the
Social and Liberal Democrats. Remember that?

In fact many members of the two parent parties resisted the merger,
and my understanding is that within a year, the Liberal Party had
relaunched itself and we can claimed with considerable justification,
to be the continuation of that radical, centrist Liberal tradition.

The political experiment that is the LibDems, a compromise between
Liberals and Social Democrats, now appears to be drawing towards its
inevitable conclusion. It was a dead-end which seems to think it can
re-invent itself by simply calling its Liberal.

That is a name and philosophy the real Liberal Party will never
surrender and where out constitution explicitly states  that the
Liberal Party exists to build a Liberal Society in which every citizen shall
possess liberty, property and security, and none shall be enslaved by poverty,
ignorance or conformity.

Your recent piece on the perilous state of the LibDems(“Not Dead
Yet”,May 16th) speculated that the party may fall back on a change of
name to the Liberal Party. Unfortunately for them that name is already
taken.

When the Liberals and SDP voted to merge in 1988, they created a fresh
party and registration with the electoral commission, initially as the
Social and Liberal Democrats. Remember that?

In fact many members of the two parent parties resisted the merger,
and my understanding is that within a year, the Liberal Party had
relaunched itself and we can claimed with considerable justification
to be the continuation of that radical, centrist Liberal tradition.

The political experiment that is the LibDems, a compromise between
Liberals and Social Democrats, now appears to be drawing towards its
inevitable conclusion. It was a dead-end which seems to think it can
re-invent itself by simply calling itself Liberal.

That is a name and philosophy the real Liberal Party will never surrender

I have read with interest the latest proposals from the Conservative Party to raise the threshold for paying inheritance tax and exempting homes valued less than 1 million pounds. 

Although the Liberals Party does not begrudge people earned wealth, these proposal do nothing to address the corrosively increasing and much talked about inequality of wealth in our country.  The top 10% of our society have reputedly accumulated 40% of our nation’s wealth, transferred from generation to generation beyond the visibility of the inheritance systems.

The far sighted traditional constitution of the Liberal Party, unlike the cobbled together Liberal Democratic Party, calls for ‘Liberty, property and security’ for all.  It is the only UK political party to adopt a proposal for the reform of capitalism to bring about genuinely greater equality. 

 Some inherit billions of capital free of tax, due to exemptions from an Inheritance Tax which is charged on what is left or given, while others never inherit any capital at all.

The Liberal Party proposes that the taxation of inheritance should be reformed by reducing Inheritance Tax rates and exemptions while introducing a progressive tax charged on cumulative lifetime totals of what is inherited or received. This in turn would help finance a gradually increasing capital endowment for all UK-born UK citizens at the financially responsible age of 25.

The Liberal Party prides itself on supporting the creation of an opportunity society with the widest benefit for all of society.

I read with interest your correspondents letter in the Newbury Weekly(30th April) expressing his anguished disappointment with the Libdems in West Berkshire prior to the national and local elections.

As it is my initial draft response has been over taken by an election result which has decimated what I presume
was their former party. Unfortunately your correspondent made the all too common mistake of
incorrectly calling his former party by the name Liberals, when there remains fundamental differences between the two parties.

When the Liberals and SDP voted to merge in 1988, they created a fresh party and registration with the electoral commission, initially as the Social and Liberal Democrats. Remember that?

In fact many members of the two parent parties resisted the merger, and my understanding is that within a year,
the Liberal Party had relaunched itself and we can claimed with considerable justification to be the continuation of that radical, centerist Liberal tradition.

The political experiment that is the LibDems, a compromise between Liberals and Social Democrats, now appears to be drawing towards its inevitable conclusion. It was a dead-end which seems to think it can re-invent itself by simply calling itself Liberal.

That is a name and philosophy the real Liberal Party will never surrender as we strive for a better society, and where our chief care is for the rights and opportunities of the individual and where in all spheres we set personal freedom first.

No-sooner has the Conservative Party been returned to power, then The Independent(11th June) is 
reporting attempts to fast track test drilling for shale gas by dropping the requirement for public
consultations when issuing drilling permits.

The Liberal Party is opposed to any restrictions on the rights of individual communities to meaningful
consultation over fracking franchise in their geographical area.

As discussed at the Liberal Parties Party Assembly in 2013, we remain unconvinced of the economic
benefits of fracking, and remain concerned at the potential for environmental damage.

Our national addiction to 'cheap' energy means that we seem willing to despoil out own countryside with
no concern for the long-term consequences for the environment, as further emphasised by the
reported discovery of oil in the vicinity of Gatwick and prospective drilling off the Isle of Wight.

Our country relies heavily on ground water sources and bore holes which supply drinking water to the
general public with no guaranteed way of preventing contamination by the cocktail of chemicals injected
into the ground to flush out shale gas.

As popular support ebbs away for fracking, the government instead seems determined to press ahead
with a deaf ear to public opinion.

Recent weeks has seen the undignified and ugly face of European migration, with the virtual siege of the channel tunnel complex in France by waves of migrants seeking a better life in our country.


The Sangatte refugee camps, with their third world poverty have been a fixture of the French side of the channel for some time, as both the French and British authorities have simply washed their hands of their responsibilities and hoped the problem would simply go away.

These men and a few women, most with barely the clothes on the backs and pitiful few possessions, have now reached such a sustained level that regional governments are now publically falling out with each other over their treatment.

These people have little if anything to offer to European economies and job markets, yet they appear to be caught up in some sort of migration frenzy. One does have to ask to what extent global communications and globalisation has convinced people from other continent’s to attempt a vast human migration in search of some fabled garden of Eden.

No doubt regional conflict, economic hardship and unreasonable expectations about employment in Western Europe have all played a part in this mass movement of humanity.

There is no possibility on Gods earth of holding back this tidal wave of humanity with fences, teargas and batons and the reality is that the only practical solution for the UK and French governments is to detain, registration, accommodate and then swift repatriation to their homelands of those deemed economic migrants. And all this will have to be done at the tax payer’s expense.

Anything less will simply been a rejection of our humanitarian duty.

Recent weeks have seen a series of senior police officers telling the general public nationally that changing police priorities now mean that we no-longer expect a proper response to such bread and butter policing issues as attempted burglaries if you live in an odd numbered home or have a missing person to report.


Such a high handed approach simply confirms the long held suspicion that the Police would rather not have to deal with the more mundane issues of everyday society, and the public in general and would rather be chasing terrorist and other nebulous criminals in cyberspace.

No one can argue that Police budgets haven’t been disproportionately cut in the name of austerity, perhaps in the region of 20%, with further deep cuts forecast, but this no excuse for abandoning the basic provision of community policing we all justly expect.

Thames Valley Police chief constable Francis Habgood is quoted as saying in a BBC interview that the general public will now have to deal with “lower level crime”. This instead risks exposing the general public to the vagaries of the law when the authorities already takes a dim view of people taking the law into their own hands when defending their own homes and property.

It also says much about senior police officers regard for their local Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), that they and not our elected representatives are now dictating priorities again. This is the direct opposite of what we had been lead to believe our elected representatives would be doing, that is localising policing priorities to address local needs.

Stephen Graham
Newbury Liberal Party(Organiser)

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This letter was printed in the local media and was followed by a promptly printed reply from the Thames Valley PCC himself listing the various % cuts in types of crime set against cuts to police budgets which had been achieved whilst he had been in elected office.