Catchup, 28th November
Written by Alex Foster on 28th November 2008 – 6:29 pmWelcome to the Catchup posting in its new regular time slot at the end of business on Friday.
We start this week where we started last time with the ongoing repercussions of the death of Baby P. Our own Alix Mortimer laid out a series of constructive steps concerned people could take themselves. Mark Pack gave us news of what social workers themselves think of the situation. And barrister and Euro candidate Antony Hook wrote an explanatory piece on the role of anonymity in the criminal justice system, partly in response to the Baby P case.
The tragic, untimely death of a friend and colleague to a great many of us has dominated our thoughts this week. Dozens of Lib Dems and others from around the country have been paying tribute to Neil Trafford, councillor and campaigner, who died in a car accident last weekend.
On the other side of the pond, the Obamania continues. We covered the emerging new liberal order - Helen Duffett promises a generation of ruling Democrats - Richard Huzzey brought us a staggeringly liberal response to the Californian gay marriage ban, and the strange tale of how the Lizard People Party missed out on a vote.
With the credit crunch over there and over here getting more and more complicated, we called on the services of tame economist Tim Leunig to explain it all to us. We’ve run five articles this week with a sixth to follow tomorrow. They were: Bank bailouts, bank lending, fiscal policy, interest rates, tax policy and tomorrow’s final article will be the long term picture.
In other economic news, Vince Cable warned we could be in recession for a decade, Alix Mortimer live-blogged the Pre Budget Report, and Stephen Tall provided an instapundit roundup and launched a new poll. And a week ago, David Allen played The Economy Game.
Our most-commented thread this week followed an op-ed from someone on the librarian libertarian wing of our party in Welcome to Nursery Britain by Matt Michael. A robust discussion of over 250 comments ensued.
News of the BNP’s membership leak was discussed in Hywel Morgan’s defence of BNP members’ rights and Simon Titley’s views of lessons the Lib Dems should learn.
In Welsh news, both of the candidates for the leadership of the party in Wales, Jenny Randerson and Kirsty Williams. And we also reported the launch of a new service for bloggers in Wales. (And I’ll take this opportunity to restate - we welcome all contributors to LDV, but we are particularly conscious of a lack of perspectives from the nations of Scotland and Wales and the non-London regions of England. If you’ve something to say, write for us!)
Finally, we heard from Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament this week: Lynne Featherstone urging us not to moan about the media, Danny Alexander asking for our help to win the battle of ideas, and Don Foster, erm, urging us to go down the pub.
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Posted in A weekly catchup
28th November 2008 at 11:59 pm
Until I had googled them, I thought that the Lizard People Party was a new threat to the LibDems in Cornwall.