Welcome to the 123rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (21st-27th June 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down.

Over at LabourList, Nick Clegg pens a powerful post in favour of the strides taken in recent years to enshrine equal rights for gay people. Here’s an excerpt:

Like many people, in 1997 I hoped that with the right cast into the political wilderness a permanent victory for gay rights was in sight. But discrimination still lingers in the statute book, and homophobia still festers in homes, offices and classrooms. Gay rights, like all minority rights, should by now have become unquestionable. But in practice they are still too often treated like privileges, falling in and out of favour with politicians.

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We don’t do an LDV Daily View 2 x 2 round-up on Saturdays, so instead here’s an open thread. What stories have caught your eye? What issues are on your mind? Are you mourning Andy Murray’s Wimbledon semi-final defeat? Are you looking forward to the cooler weather? Or have you spotted an interesting political story, perhaps even one connected to the Lib Dems? And what do you make of Sarah Palin’s decision to step down as Alaskan governor? Discuss away in the comments below…

Welcome to this Friday edition of our new LDV feature rounding up some of the best/worst/most curious political videos. This week, in the absence of any contemporary videos grabbing my attention, I thought we’d take a trip down memory lane, and revisit party election broadcasts of the 1980s from each of the three main parties.

Labour party election broadcast 1987

The ‘87 Labour campaign has gone down in the history books as presentationally slick. You might doubt that from the first two minutes of this 10-minute film (yes, TEN MINUTES: what sort of attention span do these people think we have?) – a bizarre montage presumably meant to show Mrs Thatcher to be a heartless monster, but actually leaves the impression that she’s a damn sight more Prime Ministerial than Neil Kinnock. Stick with it (or fast forward) to the end, and it closes with a shot of the male-dominated Labour shadow cabinet in a dark, dour room. You look at it, and think, ‘Thank God that lot didn’t end up running the country.’ Just a shame which lot actually did.

Tory party election broadcast 1983

West Wing devotees will be familiar with the concept of ‘take out the trash day’ – it even has its own Wiki entry:

The title refers to the Friday press briefing wherein the White House releases information about several sensitive stories, thereby preventing discussion and reducing any probable impact in the media.

Donna: What’s take out the trash day?
Josh: Friday.
Donna: I mean, what is it?
Josh: Any stories we have to give the press that we’re not wild about, we give all in a lump on Friday.
Donna: Why do you do it in a lump?
Josh: Instead of one at a time?
Donna: I’d think you’d want to spread them out.
Josh: They’ve got X column inches to fill, right? They’re going to fill them no matter what.
Donna: Yes.
Josh: So if we give them one story, that story’s X column inches.
Donna: And if we give them five stories …
Josh: They’re a fifth the size.
Donna: Why do you do it on Friday?
Josh: Because no one reads the paper on Saturday.
Donna: You guys are real populists, aren’t you?

So here goes with our Friday round-up…

Those lovely people at Wikio have emailed The Voice with their list^ of the top blogs in the UK in June 2009.

(Lib Dem blogger Jennie Rigg has already published the list of top 30 politics blogs: below is the full list for all blogs, though there’s considerable overlap between the two owing to the dominance of politics blogs in Wikio’s weightings.)

Ranking by Wikio.

^ Here’s the Wikio explanation of their ratings:

2 Big Stories

Is homphobia still rife on the Tory benches?

That’s the allegation from Labour cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw:

Ben Bradshaw has said “a deep strain of homophobia still exists on the Conservative benches”. Mr Bradshaw, one of three gay men currently in the cabinet, made the comments as a new poll suggested more gay people were turning to the Tories. Chris Bryant, another gay minister, said: “If gays vote Tory they will rue the day very soon.”

For what it’s worth I suspect that equality for gay people is the one area where the Tories have genuinely changed over the years …

If this week’s weather hasn’t got you all hot ‘n’ bothered, then what better way of remedying that than by watching tonight’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm)?

David Laws, the Lib Dems’ children, schools and families, will be the party’s representative. The QT website gives his impressive pre-Commons bio: “Before his election to Parliament in 1997, he had a career in economics and business, during which he was vice president of JP Morgan, and head of US Dollar and Sterling Treasuries at Barclays de Zoete Wedd. He left in 1994 to take up the role of economic adviser …

The Eastern Daily Press has produced an intriguing analysis of last month’s local elections results, attempting to estimate how voting then might map across to the Norwich North by-election to be held later this month:

Calculating party support ahead of the by-election is difficult due to division boundaries overlapping constituency ones.

An approximation would give a line-up based on the June 4 results of: Conservatives 10,656 (40.1pc); Labour 4,953 (18.6pc); Lib Dem 4,371 (16.5pc); Green 4,251 (16.0pc); Ukip – standing in only four seats – 2,106 (7.9pc); BNP 228 (0.9pc). …

Labour, Lib Dems and Greens will be seeking to establish themselves

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Here are the allegations, as summarised in a Lib Dem press release issued this afternoon:

George Osborne used his second homes allowance on a London property and then switched it to a large farmhouse in his Cheshire constituency of Tatton. He bought the Cheshire residence ten months before he won his Tatton seat in 2001. Instead of taking out a mortgage on the farmhouse he increased the mortgage on the London property which he bought for £700,000 in 1998.

He designated the London house his second home, even though it was his main residence, so he could claim mortgage interest payments.

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Followers of Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone’s blog can’t have failed to notice her latest campaign – to bring in mandatory anonymous job applications “to end the subliminal discrimination that creeps in with some applications being discarded because of the names on them.” Specifically Lynne wants employers to remove names and replace them with a number on application letters/forms – otherwise “we end up with people not being discarded from the first sift of applications because their name shows they are black, female or old”. Lynne explained further:

… initial findings [from research by the Department of Work & Pensions]

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Apologies, dear reader, but I’ve been busy at work rather than watching Prime Minister’s Questions (so that you don’t have to). I will catch up with it later, but I have read the Hansard transcript. And if today’s PMQs is remembered for anything, I suspect it will be for this quite sublime Prime Ministerial line:

… total spending will continue to rise, and it will be a zero per cent. rise in 2013–14.

Yes, you read that right: 0% counts as a rise in total spending in Gordon Brown’s eyes. The Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh (admittedly not a Labour cheerleader) sums up his performance today:

It was worse than that: it was bad in an inept, jaded, so-grey-I-make-John-Major-look-colourful kinda way. This was a man with the stench of decay around him.

Don’t forget that the economy and figures are supposed to be Brown’s strong suit. If he turns in a performance like this, it suggests that the only real reason for keeping him – namely a possible economic recovery for which he will claim credit – is disappearing fast.

If I were a Labour backbencher watching today, I would have my head in my hands.

That’s certainly how it read.

When Nick Clegg’s turn came, he also asked about public spending, linking the issue (in his supplementary) to his newly-adopted policy of scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system. It was in his first question, though, that I think Nick did best, skewering the tortured efforts of both the Labour and Tory parties to avoid levelling with the British public how they will respond to the economics of recession. Full Hansard transcript of Nick’s exchanges with Gordon follow:

… We’d say a big thank you to the 37,801 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in June, our third highest total ever. That’s a slight dip compared with last month’s 41k+ figure, but is a whopping 125% increase on a year ago.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 July 2008 – 30 June 2009) to 286,739, an increase of 110% on the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 136,301.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

1. By-election results: Tories fail against Lib Dems (17th November 2006)
2. Tory claims for astrology CD …

2 Big Stories

British economy in worst state in over half a century

Perhaps it’s the sweltering weather, perhaps recession fatigue has set in, but there is little reaction to yesterday’s startling news that the British economy contracted by 2.4% in the first quarter of 2009 – the worst decline in more than 50 years. It isn’t the main story for even one of the newspapers, though it led all last night’s TV news programmes. Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable underscored the seriousness of the data:

The biggest three month fall in GDP in more than half a century is a clear

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There was a fair amount of mockery of the Government a couple of months ago when it was revealed that Labour’s flagship Mortgage Rescue Scheme, launched last autumn, had helped only one family up to the end of April.^

I said then that these things take time, Rome wasn’t built in a day etc. How prophetic, for today we discover that the figure of families helped by the Mortgage Rescue Scheme has rocketed … to six. Or 6 if you prefer. To be fair, that’s a 600% increase. On the debit side, the original intention was to help 6,000 families facing repossession.

Here’s what Our Vince had to say about it:

Helping just six families is absolutely pitiful and doesn’t even begin to address the scale of the problem. Vast reams of red tape stand in the way of families faced with repossession staying in their own homes. There are enormous time lags and the vast majority of people who think they are eligible find that they are not.

“Repossession is a ticking time bomb. Despite the predictions of a modest fall, the numbers of repossessions are likely to soar in the next two years because of rising unemployment. Temporary Government schemes are deferring the problem, not solving it. If interest rates start to rise next year, the problem will become even more severe.”

Vince was today leading a debate in Westminster Hall on this very issue of mortgage arrears and repossessions – you can read the Hansard transcript HERE. Here’s his conslusion:

Repossession is only really a problem because of the underlying lack of available housing, particularly social housing. If social housing was freely available, repossession would not be the tragedy and disaster it currently is. Are the Government, working with the charitable bodies, doing any research at the moment on what happens to people who become repossessed? I do not think that any of us know where those people actually go, although anecdotal evidence suggests that most of them go into the private rented sector, which of course presents problems of its own. Many people go into the private rented sector because they can then get housing benefit, which they found more difficult to get as owner-occupiers, but many of them are still in considerable difficulty.

There is still an issue about how to ensure greater availability of affordable housing in the long term.

Amother day, another nail in the coffin of Labour’s increeasingly half-hearted attempts to force the British people to carry ID cards and enrtust their personal details to a national government database. The BBC reports:

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. The cards were due to be trialled there – sparking trade union anger. … But Mr Johnson said the ID card scheme was still very much alive – despite Tory and Lib Dem calls to scrap it. He said the national roll-out of

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Today’s Times reports on the growth of Twitter and Facebook among councillors, noting in particular the work of one Lib Dem councillor/blogger, Daisy Benson:

Daisy Benson, a Liberal Democrat member of Reading Borough Council, used Facebook to encourage young people to take part in a scrutiny review of the standard of private rented housing in the area. “I used it because the issue we were looking at particularly affected students and young people and it’s a good way to reach them.”

Benson set up a Facebook group and listed the consultation questions. The group attracted more than 80 members. Among

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Gordon Brown yesterday set out his policy plans for the next year, with headline proposals including:

Here’s the Hansard transcript of how Nick Clegg responded for the Lib Dems:

Mr. Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): The Prime Minister and the leader of the Conservatives have just perfected their fake debate on public spending, yet both are treating voters as if they are children, too young to know the truth. This morning, the Government have reneged on their promise to hold a comprehensive spending review before the next election, and the Conservatives are not going to decide on their cuts until the day after it. Neither is willing to come clean on the difficult long-term savings we will need to make to balance the nation’s books. It is like a big hoax—they trade insults and numbers, but hide the truth.

There are some announcements—or, rather, re-announcements—that I welcome, not least the ongoing consultation to give local authorities control over housing rents and revenues, the proposals for an elected House of Lords and the commitment to give all young people under 25 a guaranteed job or training place. As ever, however, the devil will be in the detail. This is the 11th announcement on housing since September. The Government’s consultation on housing revenue has been grinding on since January, yet 1.8 million people are still waiting for a decent home.

We have been debating reform of the House of Lords—the other place—for more than a century, so now is the time for action, not simply more proposals. The Prime Minister is still silent on some of the wider more radical political reforms we need to clean up British politics once and for all. The hopes of young people to avoid the scrapheap of long-term unemployment must not be dashed in practice once again.

The BBC has the story:

The date for the Norwich North by-election, triggered by the resignation of Labour MP Ian Gibson, is expected to be set for 23 July. … He had a majority of just over 5,000 at the last election.

The BBC understands that the writ for the election will be moved on Tuesday, with the poll set to be held two days after Parliament breaks up for its summer recess on 21 July.

Clearly Labour wants to get the expected loss of this seat out of the way at the height of summer, when MPs are away …