Lib Dem Voice now has a page on the social networking site Facebook - you can find us here - and show your support by becoming a fan.

If the social networking revolution has so far passed you by, you can still join Facebook for free here.

32 on-the-ball Facebookers have already marked themselves as fans on Facebook even before this official launch, as news of the new page spread like wildfire through people’s recent actions, profiles and newsfeeds.  Now the rest of us can join in as we take LDV to never-before imagined heights.

You can use the Facebook site to publicly show your support for us to your friends and contacts, and there’s a facility for you to share news stories with us that you think we should be covering.  And finally, we also hope to use the list of fans to ask you for stories occasionally.  Remember, it’s YOUR Lib Dem Voice and we are always interested in submissions and ideas for stories.

There’s an interview with Nick Clegg gone up on the Wardman Wire this morning. Arty black and white shooting. Here’s a copy.

Lord Lester had an interesting exchange with a minister in debate last week.  Lord Lester, you may remember is the Lib Dem peer who embarrased the Labour government into finally bringing forward legislation for civil partnerships in the UK by writing his own bill on the subject.  When Labour finally acted to introduce the unions for gay couples, it was following Anthony Lester’s model.

It appears the Government are actively arguing at European level that there should be fewer protections for gay people and gay couples.  The Government does not believe that rights to family life should be extended through court action to the gays.  The exchange, taken from Public Whip, follows after the break

Read more »

LIBERAL Democrat leader Nick Clegg has been blocked from holding a meeting at Pershore Care Centre

The Evesham Journal has all the details.

It seems the case that councils are all to ready to overlook their rules on political meetings when its ministerial visits to highlight achievements, and much less forgiving when it’s opposition parliamentarians visiting to highlight problems.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has launched a site for young people to let her know their thoughts on ID cards.

As you’d expect from any government website, the site is neutral, presents the arguments for and against in a balanced and responsible way, and allows young people themselves to do most of the talking.

Erm… well, it’s not like that at all.

The site is so much in favour of ID cards that it wouldn’t be too much to accuse them of astroturfing.  Clicking on “Info about ID Cards” brings up a page called “Myths about ID Cards” which even to my untutored eyes seems a little happy-clappy.  “Police will have no new powers in relation to ID cards” it trumpets - erm apart from the new offences of failing to register and so on.

The site is having a little technical difficulty at the time of writing and the forums and comments on blog posts turn up as unavailble when you try and click them. But reports from friends earlier this morning suggest that the forum is full of people pretending to be significantly younger than they really are.  There’s certainly an irony in people obfuscating their ID on a site about ID - and it’s far from reassuring that the Government can’t keep even simple websites like this one running.

The government has a plan to sort out prison crowding.  It appears representatives of Britain’s justice system are unimpressed.

I was particularly chuffed with

o Parliament has been extremely poor in not predicting the impact of its own legislation or acting on any predictions of prison population it has made, and improvement is highly desirable.

Catchup has been away from our screens following a writers strike. In the three weeks since you last heard from me, here’s what’s been happening.

There’s been a by-election. The best place to catch up are a series of post-mortem posts, including what party chief exec Lord Rennard emailed to members, and LDV staffer Stephen Tall’s response. A wide ranging debate followed on both threads - and Chris Rennard followed closely too - and posted his own response.

Just hours later, we heard that there would likely be a by-election in Glasgow East, so I asked those calling for a change in tactics to put their money where their mouths were and suggest a strategy. Debate ensued on the thread - and still more debate continued in the hallowed halls of our members’ only forum.

And aside from Glasgow and Henley, and Crewe just a few weeks ago, we also have Howden and Haltemprice. We spent the day we heard about the news covering the arguments: Simon Hughes defended the party line and Darrell Goodliffe took the opposite view. And Alix Mortimer looked into the opposition.

Apart from the hundreds of comments on various by-election posts before and after the result, the last major comment-drawing thread was Laurence Boyce taking an outrageous policy position and then needling fellow Lib Dems in the comments.

We brought you three podcasts from the ALDC/LGA Lib Dem Group conference. My favourite was the lunchtime recording with star turns from Prof Steve Webb MP and Chris Huhne MP.

The government’s pork barrelling over 42 days happened in our catchup period.  Chris Huhne wrote us a piece, Nick Clegg had a go the following day at PMQs, and Stephen Tall questioned what the Tories really think.

Finally, there’s a weekly chance to see the world through Will-tinted specs in his Something for the weekend pieces, which I can’t recommend highly enough.

The last 24 hours have seen many suggestions from readers about the conduct of by-elections.

Now it seems that the opportunity to put these suggestions into practice is coming up quicker than expected.

David Marshall MP has told his local Labour party that he will stand down because of his worsening health.

The results last time:

Party leader Nick Clegg made his first speech on foreign affairs today at Chatham House.

The highlights are given in the press release on the party site, and his words are covered by the BBC here.

We’ll bring you the full text when the technology permits, and when the bulk of the Voice team aren’t on trains. The speech focussed on Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, but for now, here’s Clegg’s views on the Lisbon Treaty

Like the French and Dutch voters who rejected the draft EU Constitution in 2005, Irish voters have given few pointers to the EU leaders on how to decipher their grievances - they are disparate, and point in several directions at once.

But this is no excuse for carrying on regardless.

That would only confirm in the minds of millions that the EU is ploughing ahead without any concern for the reservations of European citizens. Pro-Europeans - above all others - must not take this path. Read more »

 

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Continuing our series of podcasts from the ALDC / LGA Lib Dem Group conference last Saturday (part 1 / part 2) we bring you a recording of the final session of the day.

Cllr Sue Anderson, Birmingham City Council cabinet member for health and adult services talks of her work; and Julia Goldsworthy MP lets us know what she’s currently working on in her role as Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

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As we heard yesterday, the party held a local government conference in Birmingham over the weekend.

Today’s podcast contains the keynote speakers from the lunchtime session. The star-studded panel included Cllr John Commons, Mayor Dorothy Thornhill, Shadow Environment Secretary Prof Steve Webb MP and Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne MP.

As you’d imagine, both Steve Webb and Chris Huhne give entertaining and useful accounts of their work recently.  Webb talks about his campaign for 80% and Huhne gives more details about the battle for 42 days, and tells us what he really thinks about David Davis.

 

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Lib Dem Voice went to the combined ALDC and LGA conference yesterday - and had a marvellous time. It’s a shame the event seems to have gone largely unremarked on the blogs. Maybe our councillor corps are still licking their nibs whilst deciding what to type.

So you can judge for yourself what a time was had by all, LDV is bringing you three podcasts of the event, recorded from the floor in the large hall where the plenary sessions where held. Because of the day’s diary, with many different events scheduled at the same time as the only way to fit it all in, this might even be the first time the attendees heard the keynote speakers.

First thing, we had Cllr Sarah Boad opening conference and showing us a film about the Lib Dem Council Group of the Year awards held annually at conference (full results of the award here). The morning session continued with speeches from Cllr Paul Tilsley, Andrew Stunnell MP, Baroness Ros Scott and party president Simon Hughes MP.

The second instalment will follow tomorrow.

Hearty congratulations to Iain Dale, who has announced today he is getting married on Sunday.

I’m sure our readers here will join us in wishing him every happiness.

This Saturday, the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors are holding their second annual local government conference at Birmingham’s ICC.

Find out more on their website.  There was a real buzz about this event last year, so we are all looking forward to the event again this year. The programme is jam-packed with sessions, with many events happening simultaneously.

We here at LDV will have a stall at the conference.  We’ll be reporting live during the day, and I will have my trusty recorder.  I’ll be taping several sessions and podcasting them later for any of our readers or users of the ALDC website unable to make the event.

And if you can’t make it to Birmingham, don’t forget the Liberal History Group’s event at the LSE commemorating the 1958 Torrington by-election.

Guardian Politics is currently leading with a story about the Conservative candidate in Henley - who works with a planning consultancy specialising in with a firm that builds on the greenbelt. This is rather unfortunate for a campaign where greenbelt development is particularly controversial.

Henley byelection: Tory candidate lobbying for planning firm while backing green belt

John Howell, the Conservative candidate in the Henley-on-Thames byelection, is campaigning to keep the green belt while acting as a lobbyist for a planning company that advises housebuilders on contentious land and property deals.

Howell, who is citing fighting development in Oxfordshire’s green belt as one of the key reasons to support him in the byelection on June 26, was accused of “grade-A hypocrisy” by the Liberal Democrats.

Coincidentally, this unfortunate fact also appears on the front of the next Lib Dem newspaper, and electronic copy of which also dropped through the electronic letter box of Lib Dem Voice. Read more »

Sitting at my computer, the breaking news of the Government’s win on the 42 day detention vote comes through to me via Twitter.

joswinson: angry that the Government have just won the 42 day vote with a majority of just 9, only winning due to the support of the DUP

After a brief hiatus, Weekly Catchup returns.

Guest writers brought us:

• Alex Folkes on Votes at 16
• John Dixon on Political Correctness
• Staffers at Reform urged us to seize the educational reform agenda.

Loads of comments on:

• Our new poll on Road Pricing
• Charge of the Lib Dem Brigade by Paul Reynolds
• Trouble for the Tories in Henley by Mark Pack

The regulars brought you:

• Nick Clegg on education, from Alix
• The Voice team as a whole brought you our first campaign - on Database Britain
• and Mark Pack brought news of a fluffy toy with bank account issues.

And of course, there’s the news from Henley:

• Elephants interviewing parliamentary candidates
• A question of Alan Duncan’s policy
• Neil Fawcett outlining some of our key themes for the by-election

A short guide to the best of Lib Dem Voice

In the final full week of campaigning for the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, we featured heaps of stories about the goings-on. There’s trouble for the Tories, consideration about whether it’s better for Labour to win or lose - given the calibre of their leaflets, they deserve to lose.

Away from the campaign coalface, Tim Leunig reviewed a Clegg speech on Lib Dem plans for the city; Laurence Boyce recounted an interview with the man himself - and large numbers weighed in in the comments.

Jake Holland brought us new information about the Lib Dem group in the Lords - and how they’re working harder to tell us what they’re up to.

We also covered David Howarth’s campaign for fixed term parliaments and of course the ongoing fall out of the 10p tax ferrago.

Tune in next week, etc,

Our belated guide to the highlights here at LDV. Read this if you don’t read anything else this summer:

Our guest contributors included

• Alexis Rowell, exhorting us to eat less meat
• Neale Upstone’s review of our performance
• Martin Turner’s consideration of Apathy in the UK

You, our readers, weighed in with dozens of comments about

• Linda Jack’s article about child poverty
• Our new poll about the next general election
• Of course - our Question Time open thread

There was also lots and lots of by-election news from Crewe and Nantwich (polling this week! Go there if you possibly can!) and slightly less news from Henley.

News reaches The Voice of the death of Peter Thurnham who was a Lib Dem MP for just a few months after his defection to the party in October 1996.

You can read more about his career, and tributes from colleagues, in the Manchester Evening News