West Herts Liberal Democrats - Working for Hertfordshire, for Britain and for You!

The By-Election had been called after the sad death of Alan Fantham, the long-serving local councillor on both DBC and on Northchurch Parish Council. Alan was born and bred in Northchurch and had been a local cricket star.

Alan had served on DBC as a Conservative, but the party could not find anyone locally willing to stand for them. They had to ask an Aldbury resident to be their candidate instead.

Thanks to all members and friends who made it possible for the Liberal Democrats regain Three Rivers District Council.

Congratulations to the winning councillors and to the whole team.

On the third Tuesday of each month we have our Supper Club here in Berkhamsted.

We discuss politics and anything else we choose to talk about.

It gives us the chance to get to know each other and to put the world to rights.

We welcome all Lib Dem members - and anyone of a similar mindset - who would like to join us.

Pat Howell has been a Rickmansworth resident for more than 30 years.

Many local families will know as the former Head of Sixth Form and Maths Teacher at Rickmansworth School.

Her involvement with young people and their families has made her very well aware of the need for better facilities for young people, and her pastoral experience has convinced her of the importance of strong, supportive local communities.

Pat has been a keen recycler and environmentalist for many years.

Pat is a talented singer. She is a member of the BBC Symphony Chorus and is a strong supporter of Watersmeet.

She was delighted when the Liberal Democrat-run council was able to give it a new lease of life.

Pat Howell is a long-standing member of the Liberal Democrats and looks forward to being able to represent and work for her local community of Rickmsnsworth.

Robert Johnston has lived in South Oxhey for more than 10 years and he and his wife Anka have brought up their family there.

He is a scientist and engineer whose work has been in materials science as well as in, mathematical modelling, control theory, artificial intelligence and information systems security.

He holds a 1st Class Honours degree in Physics as well as a Diploma from Imperial College in Mathematical Physics and a Ph D in Theoretical Physics.

The Banking Crash of 2008/9 could have been an utter disaster personally for millions of families. While we can criticize Brown's Labour Government for its "light touch" banking regulation - which contributed to that crash - we must also be immensely grateful that they they acted so promptly and decisively when disaster struck. Huge sums of money were pumped into the banks to keep them going and many were effectively nationalised. However this was very expensive indeed because most of that had to be borrowed - at high interest rates. Then for several years the high interest rates meant the debt continued to rise slowly.

The following Conservative government's response was, reasonably enough, to reduce government spending, but they also - unreasonably - refrained from putting up taxes and in fact reduced a few. Worse than that, because they imagine you can operate the UK economy like a 1950s housewife controlled the family budget. And they think that there's a simple relationship between government spending cuts and deficit reduction. There is not. The relationship is complex and involves several negative feed-back loops. So they were disappointed in the results time after time and piled cut upon cut.

They froze public sector pay, cut benefits, starved the NHS of cash to help cope with the ageing population, cancelled infrastructure projects and withdrawn the Rate Support grant from local councils - leaving them barely able to cope. They have softened Inheritance Tax, maintained pensions and resolutely shunned any income tax rises.

In other words the Tories have punished the poor, the disadvantaged and the sick and rewarded the prosperous, elderly middle-classes - plus of course that large group of the elderly middle-classes that think they're prosperous or have illusions that their children might be one day. Good politics if you have a Tory mind-set, but socially unjust and perhaps not sustainable for very long.

And the feed-back loops? Well, government spending actually ends up in private pockets. Pensioners and benefit claimants have more money - and more money to spend. More doctors, nurses, teachers mean more people with wages or larger wages - and more money to spend. Companies doing work for the government get paid - and that means more money for a bigger or more hard working labour force. Again, more money to spend. In this way a £1 increase in government spending can produce an increase of between 50p and £1.70 in national income. The exact figure depends on how willing the population is to spend, rather than to save. However in the UK we are very good at spending and very poor in saving. The so-called "multiplier" can in practice be well in excess of 1.0. The point is that this works in the other direction too. So a cut in government spending of £1 can result in a reduction of 50p to £1.70 in national income.

So what is it in the UK in the recent past? Well, right-wing people and right-wing institutions - like the International Monetary Fund - believe the multiplier is less than 1.0 and so they would say the UK government has done the right thing. On the other hand many econommists say that the consistent errors in UK Treasury and IMF forecasts of future growth in the UK economy show that the Treasury and the IMF are using a multiplier which, for the UK at least, is far too low and must be greater than 1.0. This seems to be the case for the USA as well. Possibly 0.5 might be the right figure for the German economy, where people save a lot more of their income than we do.

Here in the UK we have the OBR - the Office of Budgetary Responsibility - a government department suppopsedly independent of the Treasury. However the OBR has used the Treasury figure of 0.5 for the multiplier to make forecasts - so it's not a surprise really that successive chancellors, Osborne and Hammond, have had to keep revising their economic forecasts downwards. The figure they used implies they're doing the right thing (of course) and that their austerity has not been doing our economy much harm. However, now even the IMF has moved it's estimate of the multiplier for the UK up to a range of 0.9 - to 1.7. In 2017, the TUC has calculated that if you use the IMF mid-range value of 1.3 - more realistic and consistent with the USA - then you can see that the Tory austerity has damaged our economy to the tune of £76 billion, just for the 5 years from 2010 - 2015.

The damage of Tory austerity has been at least 1% less for our GDP each year - in addition to the stress and hardship for the low paid, the disadvantaged and the sick.

Now we're asked to rejoice at a small reduction in borrowing. But slower and steadier might well have achieved a better result with less human cost - and how will we fare if interest rate rises suddenly make servicing the debt more expensive and start pushing the deficit back up again? This Tory government seems to have only one strategy for the economy - based on a biased assumption and consequently doing more harm than good. It's like taking some toxic Victorian potion in an attempt to regain good health!

Three Rivers District Council Elections on 3^rd May 2018 - Liberal Democrat Candidate for the Moor Park & Eastbury Ward

The Liberal Democrat candidate is Dr Jeremy Edmund Campion Asquith who lives in Moor Park. He works as a Dental Surgeon at a practice in North London where he is the Principal Dentist. He is a long term member of the Liberal Democrats. As such he has assisted Liberal Democrat M.P.s in the coalition government with health policy.

Dr Asquith has been actively involved in his profession at both a local and national level for many years. He has been a member of the British Dental Association (BDA) since 1978 and has chaired various dental committees including chairing the Middlesex and Hertfordshire Branch of the BDA.

Principal Council by-election results from 2017 to now.

The Liberal Democrats winning seats across the country.

At a meeting of the Education, Libraries and Localism Cabinet Panel on 18th of April 2018, the Liberal Democrat team voted against the County's plans to outsource their much loved and highly popular Library Service.

The Labour Group Leader abstained.

However, in spite of Liberal Democrat protest, the Conservative led Panel agreed to the County developing a detailed business case before finally deciding whether to go ahead with the scheme.