Category: News

“We are delighted one of the leading community campaigners, Cllr Charles Shaw,  in Lincolnshire has joined the Liberal Party after the Lib Dems have nailed their colours to the mast of ignoring and obstructing  the wishes of the British people to leave the EU”.

Cllr Steve Radford

Cllr Charles Shaw

Cllr Charles Shaw is a Town and Parish Councillor in Bardney Group and in Skellingthorpe, Lincolnshire and has a career background as a Youth and Community Worker, Interviewer and Company Secretary.

He spent a number of years as Director of a Voluntary Youth Organisation and is currently Chair of Lincolnshire CVYS and of One East Midlands the regional voluntary sector body. He is a former Vice-Chair of Voluntary Sector North West and as a Lay Minister served for some years on Lincoln Cathedral Council. 

He is married, to Daphne with three grown-up children who live respectively in Lincoln, Ashton under Lyne and Glasgow.  As a Youth Officer for a Council for Racial Equality, he led on integrated and respectful provision for a range of communities and believes community cohesion is best achieved by complete openness.  

Having joined the Liberal Party over 40 years ago and later becoming a Constituency Chair in the Liberal Democrats, County Chair and regional conference host he came to find the party increasingly centrist and conformist and not the wide church of views that the Liberal Party held and allowed to be expressed and found it formulaic and solely centred on its own interests. In the 2010 local elections, he came within 7 votes of unseating the now current MP for Lincoln Karen Lee whom he now liaises with on youth and community matters and worked cross-party in the 2016 referendum, having as a teenager been part of the Common Market Safeguards Group working with Wedgewood Ben and Peter Shore. Working regularly cross-party Charles has put Community and Voluntary Sector interest forward whilst maintaining a wide range of business contacts.

Charles is a Trustee of The National Association of Boys and Girls Clubs and a Board member of a range of Business Education bodies. Having been brought up in Preston but living in Lincoln he is an avid supporter of Preston North End FC and Lincoln City FC.

Reasons for leaving the Liberal Democrats

1. The party stance on Brexit and unwillingness to recognise and provide a platform for liberal leavers. 
2. The appalling internal communications emails which effectively make it almost impossible for activists and members to directly contact officers. 
3. The lack of promotion of Town and Parish Councillors on an equal basis with other member politicians. 
4. The lack of new selection procedures to abolish central approval lists and the drafting in of candidates nationwide (e.g like you did in Hazel Grove and other constituencies) 
5. Deliberate obstruction of electoral pacts with Liberals. 
6. Complete lack of public speaking out about the costs and political intentions of the EU and therefore miss informing young people of the dangers in the EU as opposed to the benefits and potentially surrendering constitutional independence and their future freedom and human rights in order to keep MEP’s, EU appointments and party funding.

They call themselves Liberal Democrats, they are neither Liberal nor Democratic in their stance for the EU election.

They seek to marginalise UK internationalism in an increasingly federal and protectionist EU, whilst plotting to overthrow the democratic decision of the people under the guise of a ‘People’s Vote’.

The key messages in their leaflet are:

A more prosperous Britain with Britain at the heart of a modernised EU. We have seen no modernisation in the 3 years since we voted to Leave, what delusion suggests that EU willingness to modernise might be possible? 

Tackling the Climate Emergency. Not only an EU issue. However, to have 28 countries of the EU, some who would use the power of veto to frustrate progress, would probably take longer and result in a more compromised set of solutions, than might be the case if defined and implemented by a UK government.  Also, EU Policy of product centralisation and subsidies, leads to massive and wasteful over production. Chemical treatments, storage, plastic packaging, preservation treatments and transportation of products from farm to consumer tables all over Europe, causes a huge amount of climate damage.

Protecting our Public Services. They can’t be serious? They kept the Conservative Government in power for 5 long years and supported the austerity cuts that resulted in the savaging of our public services! 

This group of charlatans has no rights of claim to Liberalism and their resurgence on the back of a divisive election campaign must be resisted. Their actions are set to divide our communities for years to come as they seek to profit politically by backing the narrowly losing side in the democratic EU referendum.

Make no mistake their intent is not honourable, it’s not to promote a confirmatory ‘People’s Vote’, it’s to Stop Brexit. It is the duty of every fair minded voter, who believes the LibDem approach is wrong, to reject their wicked and undemocratic intentions, which if successful will drive huge division between our population for years to come.Without adherence to the rules of democracy, we leave space for anarchy and extreme action.

Dear Fellow Liberals

Can I express a personal view

It is vital as a Liberal Party we make everyone welcome irrespective of whether they voted remain or leave

The Liberal Party and the Country needs to move  to over  beyond the debate over the EU

Any deal was never going to be perfect but the public voted to Leave and that ballot should be respected

My personal view was always an initial deal would itself not be a final stage but the first stage in a process to disengage from the EU

We at our assembly debated pragmatic ways to deal with the Northern Ireland border

At Liberal assemblies we have tried focus on some serious issues like leasehold reform, steps to save the environment , reform of the House of Lords to an elected Senate, help for small businesses and community charities

Let us all focus on issues of social justice strengthening small businesses , strengthening local and public  services, fighting crime but community policing and proactive youth services and wealth inequality

I pray and hope that a pragmatic balanced deal with the EU comes forward

Can I make it clear we have local elections where our distinctive commitment to building and strengthening communities must be at the forefront of our dialogue

Please support your nearest local government candidates

Warmest Regards

Steve

The Liberal Party notes with concern this announcement that Brilliant Energy has now entered administration.

The company will be the 10th small energy provider to have done so in the last 12 months, which included Spark Energy Supply Limited in November 2018 amongst others.

Although the regulator Ofgem will ensure no customer is left without a supplier, customers risk finding themselves matched to an energy provider at short notice with no opportunity to find an optimum tariff.

The failure of so many suppliers illustrates the difficulties new entrants have in the domestic and business energy markets and the difficulty of breaking the stranglehold of the 6 largest providers.

The Liberal Party believes that only the expansion of choice within the UK  energy market will lead to better price competition to the benefit of consumers.

The Liberal Party welcomes the news that the Parliament’s Treasury committee will investigate the issue of Business Rates in this country.

Bricks-and-mortar retailers in this country face a perfect storm of rising business rates, unrelenting competition from online retailers and declining footfall.

The party welcomes the government previous undertaking of business rates relief for half a million small retailers, whose business premises have a rateable value of £51,000 or less, but this fails to assist larger retailers and chains.

These face a multiplier on their rates equivalent to a 50 percent tax on their properties in the next financial year.

Lloyd Knight was elected to Cullompton Town Council in a tightly fought by-election in November 2017.

Lloyd is the Town Council Deputy Mayor and their representative on the Devon Association of Local Councils. He is committed to giving a voice to the people of Cullompton at both the Town and District level.

We are delighted Lloyd will be contesting Town and District seats for Southward Cullompton this May if you can help please email him on lloyd.knight@hotmail.co.uk or telephone 01884 563 462.

The Liberal Party welcomes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report’ Global Warming of 1.5°C, which gives stark warnings about the impact we are having on the earth’s climate and the consequences for human and other life systems if we fail to take radical and immediate actions to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty.

With the IPCC report in focus, the Liberal Party calls upon government to implement an immediate ban on all expenditure which supports new fossil fuel initiatives, both at home or overseas. To report and publish all funding already committed to support fossil fuel initiatives both at home and overseas and to review if those projects are consistent with our climate commitments.

Further we call on government to establish an All-Party Working Group, with assigned expert advisers from each potentially viable source, to define alternative non fossil based energy strategies, solutions and funding requirements to meet 100% of UK energy needs by 2030.

In-line with our demand for non-fossil fuel energy solutions, we call for an immediate ban on all Shale Gas exploration and the full restoration of land already impacted by the industry.