"A refreshing addition to the world of think-tanks" Daily Telegraph, 18/10/2007
PROGRESSIVE views on ...
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MEDIA COVERAGE
9/5/2008
24dash.com reported on Progressive Vision's
response to Gordon Ramsay's call to for legislation to ban restaurants
from selling fruit and vegetables which are out of season. It reported:
"Responding Ramsay’s suggestion, Mark Littlewood, communications
director of liberal think-tank Progressive Vision, said: 'The idea that
law enforcement officers should ensure that the right type of
strawberries are sold at the appropriate time of year is utterly
ludicrous.
23/4/2008
Progressive Vision's
comment on the teachers' strike was the lead item on Educate Online.
It reported: "Shane
Frith, director of Progressive Vision said: 'It is utterly ridiculous
for pay deals affecting hundreds of thousands of teachers to be
negotiated by union bosses and government ministers in Westminster. How
on Earth can a handful of senior trade unionists and politicians
credibly decide how much each and every teacher should be paid? With
such an antiquated, centralised system, it is a miracle that our
children’s education isn’t disrupted on a more regular basis.'"
28/3/2008
The Daily Mail
reported on Progressive Vision's Freedom of Information Act
request to discover how much the BBC spent securing the rights to
broadcast Formula One. It reported: There have been claims that the BBC
has been spending excessive amounts on its sports coverage. Last week it
was revealed that the corporation had paid around £200million for the
rights to screen Formula One - £50million more than ITV paid for its
current deal - despite having no rival bidders.
25/3/2008
Metro reports on Progressive Vision's
response to calls to ban the display of cigarettes
and vending machines. "Mark Littlewood of the think tank Progressive Vision
condemned the proposals as 'petty, pointless and patronising'. He added:
'It won't prevent a single young person from taking up smoking, and
would put retailers and adult smokers to considerable inconvenience.'
25/3/2008
The Birmingham Post reports: "Mark Littlewood,
communications director of liberal think tank Progressive Vision, said:
'Cigarettes are a product for adults and steps need to be taken to
prevent youngsters buying them. But banning the display of cigarettes
would be petty, pointless and patronising.'"
25/3/2008
The Daily Star reports on Progressive Vision's response to
calls to ban the display of cigarettes and vending machines. "Mark
Littlewood, communications director of classical liberal think tank
Progressive Vision, said: 'Banning the display of cigarettes and
vending machines would be petty, pointless and patronising. It won’t
stop a single young person from taking up smoking. It’s typical of a
Government which seems hell-bent on intervening in every single aspect
of our lives.'"
25/3/2008
The Yorkshire Post reports on
Progressive Vision's response to calls to ban the display of
cigarettes and vending machines: "Mark Littlewood, communications
director of think tank Progressive Vision, said: 'Cigarettes are
a product for adults and sensible steps need to be taken to prevent
youngsters buying them but banning the display of cigarettes and vending
machines would be petty, pointless and patronising.'
24/3/2008
The Telegraph published a letter from Shane
Frith: "Francis Maude's interview (March 22) should strike fear into
anyone seeking a more prosperous and fairer Britain. His only concern
appears to be the election of a Conservative government, with little
care as to what it might do when there.
11/3/2008
The
Birmingham Post reports Progressive Vision's slamming of the recent
schools admissions statistics as a "scandal". Shane Frith, director of
Progressive Vision is quoted as saying that children who missed out
should receive the equivalent value of their education to spend at a
school of their choosing.
4/3/2008
Mark Littlewood
appeared on Newsnight to discuss the Liberal Democrats' position
on a European referendum. He said the Liberal Democrat leadership should
not abstain on the issue of whether there should be a referendum on the
Lisbon Treaty.
21/2/2008
Jonathan Isaby's blog
reports on Progressive Vision's response to calls by Tesco for
the Government to regulate the price of alcohol. He says: "The call this
morning by Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco for the Government to ban the sale
of cut-price alcohol has prompted a bumper reaction here at
telegraph.co.uk.
But perhaps the most robustly hostile response to his comments that I
have heard so far comes from the recently-established classical liberal
think tank, Progressive Vision.
'This is yet another example of treating British citizens as children
rather than as responsible adults," blasts Mark Littlewood, the think
tank's Communications Director. "Taxes on alcohol are already too high
and everyone knows that drinking to excess can cause serious health
problems.
'People should be left alone to drink as much as they wish as cheaply as
they can – but must bear personal responsibility for the consequences
and costs of their behaviour. The idea that the authorities would start
to police happy hours and promotional offers is offensive, patronising
and completely unworkable.'”
14/2/2008
In the Yorkshire Post,
James Reed cites Progressive Vision's position on the
government's proposal to have students engage in five hours of culture
per week. he says: "And even if there is a crisis among the young
when it comes to accessing the arts, is the Government dictating what
culture is and how it should be enjoyed the way to generate new
interest?
10/2/2008
Mark Littlewood, appeared on the Politics Show,
giving his ideas on how Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg should
modernise his party. Mark argued that the Liberal Democrats should
support a reduction in the overall level of taxation and overhaul their
own antiquated policy-making process. Presenter Jon Sopel began his live
interview with Nick Clegg by pressing him on Mark’s case for lowering
the tax burden.
5/2/2008
The Mail reported
on Progressive Vision's criticism of
Sir Mark
Moody-Stuart's, chairman of Anglo-American plc, call to ban large and
performance cars: "The free-market think tank Progressive Vision
attacked his comments as 'rank hypocrisy' and 'puerile' and asked how
many executive jets he used in the course of a year.
5/2/2008
The
Times reports: "Shane
Frith, director of Progressive Vision, the liberal think-tank, said: 'If
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart is so concerned about climate change he should
start by insisting that his own staff and clients never use executive
jets and only fly economy class.
1/2/2008
The FT reports on
the growth in the treatment of obesity drugs. It quotes Shane
Frith: "The enormous rise in the costs to the National Health Service of
obesity drugs is an unacceptable burden on those who choose a healthy
diet. People should be entitled to make their own lifestyle choices but
they cannot expect the rest of us to pay for it.”
31/1/2008
Shane Frith commented on the news that more than 1 million prescriptions
were made for obesity drugs last year. He said that obese people
should be paying for these drugs themselves or finding other ways to
lose weight. Obesity is a product of too much of the wrong kind of
food or a lack of exercise. He said that the obesity debate is allowing
bureaucrats in London to tell people how they should live and it was
time people took personal responsibility for their lifestyle choices.
23/1/2008
The Yorkshire Post
reported on Progressive Vision's opposition to the Government's
directive to provide all student's with cooking lessons: "However, for
everyone who supports the plans, there are others who've questioned the
sense of ploughing millions into cookery in the hope it will somehow
reducing the nation's waistline, when in some areas standards of maths
and English have fallen through the floor.
'A centralised diktat forcing kids to cook for a few hours a year will
do nothing to stop them munching on burgers and fries the rest of the
time,' says Mark Littlewood, communications director of liberal think
tank Progressive Vision."
17/1/2008
Mark Littlewood is quoted
criticising the government's proposed crackdown on internet extremism.
He said: “The idea that terrorism can be thwarted by seeking to shut
down extremist websites is absurd and dangerous. 'It is easy to host
such sites outside of British jurisdiction or to relaunch a website that
is closed down, literally within minutes.’’
17/1/2008
Mark Littlewood is quoted criticising the
government's proposed crackdown on internet extremism. He called the
proposals "an incoherent recipe for disaster".
18/12/2007
Communications Director,
Mark Littlewood commented on the new leadership of the Liberal
Democrats. He called for the new leader to pursue true
liberal policies such as lower taxes an
more personal freedom.
11/12/2007
Communications Director, Mark Littlewood, is
quoted in the Daily Express
calling for the Olympics to be abandoned: "Mark
Littlewood, of the think-tank Progressive Vision, said: “This obscenely
expensive project should be abandoned immediately.
“The overall expenditure could now be over £10 billion. That is 12 times
the money wasted on the Millennium Dome. The cost is the equivalent of £150 for every man, woman and child in
the country. Incredibly, the bill for the Olympics could now exceed that
of the Iraq war. The Government should save itself any further
embarrassment – and the taxpayer any further expense – by cancelling the
Games forthwith.”
The growing criticism is a far cry from the wild celebrations of 2005
when London won its bid.
The original estimate for the event when the bid was launched in 2003
was just £2.37 billion.
See also:
politics.co.uk
Evening Standard, p.34
7/12/2007
Shane Frith, Director of Progressive
Vision, is quoted on the front page of Metro responding to the attack in
Parliament by John Grogan MP on Tesco over binge drinking. He was
quoted: as saying that Tesco
"deserved thanks" for
selling cheap alcohol in the run-up to Christmas. He added: "Responsible
adults should raise three cheers for Tesco and two fingers to the nanny
state."
See also:
Yorkshire Post
BBC, Radio Scotland
25/11/2007
Communications Director, Mark Littlewood appeared on GMTV to discuss Progressive Vision and the Liberal
Democrat Leadership race. He argued that liberals in the
Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have more in common than is
often admitted.
18/11/2007
Communications Director, Mark Littlewood presented
a lengthy segment on the BBC Politics Show discussing the
policies the next Liberal Democrat leader should follow. Watched by the
two leadership candidates,
Mark urged them to follow truly liberal policies
including, lower taxes, repeal of the smoking ban, lower gambling laws,
and "three cheers to extended drinking hours".
12/11/2007
Communications Director, Mark Littlewood has a letter in the
Independent on farming subsidies:
"The European Commission's plans to place a
limit on Common Agricultural Policy payments to the uber-rich should be
welcomed. But it represents only the most modest of steps towards the
desired arrival point – scrapping the CAP entirely.
Pledging to reduce the handout to the British
monarch – from a bit over half a million pounds to bit less than a third
of million – does not constitute radical reform. That's loose change to
Her Majesty the Queen. The people we really need to focus on are food
producers in the developing world who cannot trade freely or fairly
because of the European Union's extreme protectionism in this area."
15/11/2007
Communications
Director, Mark Littlewood commented on the Politics Show website
on the leadership race for the Liberal Democrats.
30/10/2007
Communications
Director, Mark Littlewood has a letter in the Guardian on the
BBC: "The
successful global expansion of BBC Worldwide, the corporation's
commercial arm highlights the increasing absurdity of a compulsory
licence fee in a multichannel televisual market. The BBC's
high-quality programme output does not deserve to be protected from the
full impact of market forces, but neither does it need to be. The
revenues generated by the corporation's flagship productions, such as
Doctor Who and the Teletubbies, should persuade even the most
ardent supporter of the Beeb that an enforced annual subscription of
£135 is an anachronism. A wider concern must be the apparently limitless
proliferation of BBC channels. This doesn't provide the public
with the sort of programming that isn't available elsewhere, but makes
it harder for independent channels to compete. The BBC has the
reputation, the personnel and the expertise to stand on its own feet. It
needs to be broken up into sensible constituent parts and encouraged to
do so."
27/10/2007
In an
article on the housing crisis, the Daily Telegraph quotes Shane
Frith, director of Progressive Vision: "The growing crisis in the
housing market is caused by too much red tape and too much regulation."
26/10/2007
In an article on house building, Southern Housing quotes Shane
Frith, director of Progressive Vision:
“No one should be
surprised that a government-led drive on housing will fail to meet
public needs. The last thing that is required is for the public purse to
start paying subsides to local councils. The growing crisis in the
housing market is caused by too much red tape and too much regulation.
If the property market was liberalised, the profit motive would provide
a far, far better incentive for tackling the housing shortage than any
number of expensive, ineffective government programmes.”
18/10/2007
The Daily Telegraph Spy column welcomes the
launch of Progressive Vision: "A refreshing addition to the world of
think-tanks this week: Progressive Vision, which aims to bring
together freedom-loving liberals from the Conservative and Liberal
traditions. It has been founded by Mark Littlewood, the former Liberal
Democrat spin doctor, and Shane Frith, former chairman of the
International Young Democrat Union, which has strong links to the
Conservative Party."
17/10/2007
Mark
Littlewood, Progressive Vision's Communications Director, appeared on
the Doughty Street News Hour, hosted by Iain Dale. Liberal MPs Paul Rowen and Nick Harvey both backed Progressive Vision's calls for
the Liberal Democrats to support a reduction in the overall tax burden.
16/10/2007
Communications Director,
Mark Littlewood appeared on Newsnight to discuss the future
leadership of the Liberal Democrats and said that the party should
advocate a lower tax burden than the Labour and Conservative parties.
21/9/2007
Communications Director,
Mark Littlewood appeared on Newsnight to discuss the government's
response to the Northern Rock crisis.
19/9/2007
Communications
Director, Mark Littlewood appeared on the World at One to
discuss the implications of a hung parliament.
6/9/2007
Director, Shane Frith had a letter published in the Times:
"Conservative proposals to give taxpayers’ money to assist people to
purchase their rented accommodation is counterproductive and ignores the
real problem – a shortage in the supply of housing. More state spending
only serves in keep taxes and interest rates high, disadvantaging more
than could be hoped to be helped by this policy.
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