The Liberal Democrats Account system (LDA) allows party members to create one username and password which then work across a range of different party sites - including the members only site, the OurCampaign online petition tool, Flock Together (scroll down on the front page to the section just underneath the map and postcode search box), our new letter-writing tool, our online surveys tool, Liberty Research, and the brand new LibDig tool announced earlier this week.

LDA usernames are only available to party members, and each time you login the system checks that you are a paid-up member - so remember to keep your subs up to date to benefit from access to all these websites.

The party’s extranet is a resource for party activists, elected representatives (including councillors) and staff and the home for artwork, campaign materials, policy briefings and also resources to accompany the party’s major national campaigns, such as the environment campaign and the 1 million doors challenge.

Access is open to all party councillors, staff, approved Parliamentary candidates, local party Chairs, EARS officers and Membership Secretaries, trainers and up to eight other nominated people per local party.

Full access details are on the site and if you’ve not yet registered, you can kick off the registration process online too.

A Twitter update from someone at a fringe meeting at Conservative Party conference addressed by Nadine Dorries MP:

#cons08 blogging mp nadine again comments about the number of times the chief whip has told her to remove a blog post (Source)

Hat-tip: Tim Ireland

Internet users - myself included - have got used to relying on free online services which rely heavily on either online advertising or investors being willing to put up large pots of money even when there isn’t a clear way of turning users into income.

Many of the services have become such a key part of their users’ lives that their failure is often unthinkable to people. What would happen if you woke up tomorrow and discovered Facebook or Flickr or Twitter or Google or one of a score of other major free services had gone bust?

Well, you’d probably  have more time on your hands to get away from the computer and enjoy a bit of walking in the fresh air … but it would also cause widespread disruption and angst.

Looking at the current economic outlook, it’s hard to see how we can get through the next 18 months without some dramatic fall out.*

There is a double-squeeze building up for internet firms. The credit crunch has not yet had much of an impact in restricting the availability of funds for the high-tech sector, but as it continues to bite and financial institutions look to rebuild their balance sheets, it is easy to see how the flow of new finance could dry up.

Second, there is no reason to think that internet advertising will be immune to general economic slowdowns. In previous recessions the fallout for the advertising industry has been quite vicious in many sectors; for example, a good rule of thumb for local and regional newspaper advertising has been that in downturns you lose 50% of your ad revenue in the first year, and a further 50% the next year for example. The length of time since the last serious advertising recession, combined with the youthfulness of many internet firms and their staff, means it would be no surprise if we find out that several have financial models which are essentially based on the assumption that the bad times are no more.

If a major free internet service faces going bust, it may be bailed out by another firm, but there’s no guarantee - and no certainty that everyone’s data will be seamlessly moved over to any new, merged, ongoing service. So in the meantime - an extra backup or two may be a wise move.

* Note: please bookmark this post and in 18 months time come back to it and either say, “Why, that Mark was a damn fine sage, wasn’t he?” or “Someone must have really disliked Mark to hack into the website and plant such a daft story as that in his name.”

Haivng criticised the polling firm BPIX yesterday for - uniquely amongst those doing published political polling in the UK - not being a member of the British Polling Council and not even getting anywhere close to its standards for transparency, I thought I’d have another try at contacting them today.

They’ve never replied to any of my emails sent to the address on their one-page “under construction” (for several years) website, so I thought I’d see what contact details there are for their domain registration:

Domain name:
bpix.co.uk

Registrant:
British Polling Index

Registrant type:
UK Individual

Registrant’s address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their
address omitted from the WHOIS service.

A “non-trading individual”? I think not. Clerical error? Incompetence? Conspiracy? Who knows?

Footnote: BPIX is an internet pollster. Ooops.

The headline says it all really, so watch, enjoy and learn:

I’m occasionally asked for advice by Liberal Democrat bloggers, particularly those just starting up, on how they should approach comments. Should they allow them all? Or moderate just those that are libellous? But what about abusive ones? Or ones that might not be from who they say they are? Or comments from political opponents? And so on.

My general advice is:

• Moderate comments that just contain abuse - because they don’t add anything, and often put other people off from commenting (though that won’t stop someone occasionally accusing you of being the worst censor since the invention of the written word just because you didn’t publish their comment saying YOU’RE A LOSER HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
• Moderate comments that pretend to be from someone they’re not - e.g. a Conservative councillor pretending to be an unhappy Liberal Democrat member. (Who know why it seems to be Conservatives that are so keen on this, but in just about every case where someone has been tracked down, it was a Conservative rather than a Labour activist.)
• But do allow people to use a pseudonym as there are all sorts of reasonable circumstances in which someone may wish to not use their real name (e.g. a teacher who wants to keep their online political discussions private from the children they teach).
• Allow comments from political opponents, as long as they don’t fall foul of any of the above.

But what are your views. Would you alter any of these? Or add anything to the list?

Carshalton and Wallington Labour Party has lost a case over the suttonlibdems.org.uk domain name, which it had registered.

Gerry Jerome from Sutton Liberal Democrats took the case through Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service, which concluded that Labour’s action in registering the domain name and using it to urge people to vote Labour amounted to an “abusive registration”.

Unless Labour appear by 10 October, the domain name will be handed over to Sutton Liberal Democrats.

(Gerry is happy to advise any other local parties in similar situations; just let me know.)

Liberal Democrats have had an interesting relationship with the government’s policy of turning NHS hospitals into ‘Foundation Trusts’. When the government first proposed them in 2002, we opposed the legislation in Parliament - so you might expect us to be straightforwardly against them.

But in fact the picture is a little more complicated than that - because at the time what we were in fact saying was that the freedoms which the government proposed to give only to Foundation Trust hospitals, in fact ought to be available to all NHS hospitals. And the government’s policy is indeed now that pretty much all NHS trusts should become Foundation Trusts, so you might say that we have had something of a victory there.

A central part of the Foundation Trust (FT) structure is the idea that these hospitals should be more accountable to local people, and less to the national Secretary of State in Whitehall - all of which is of course a good idea and thoroughly in accordance with Lib Dem policy. In practice I think that they fall considerably short of the ideal here: they are supposed to be accountable to local people who have signed up as ‘members’, but typically you need only about 1% of the relevant local population to sign up as members to convince the regulator that you have enough local support to become an FT.

The only real benefit of becoming a ‘member’ is that you then get to vote for the members of a hospital council (the precise term varies from hospital to hospital, but they are often called things like a Governors Council or Members Council). Even in these days of low turnout and political interest it is rare to get a turnout of local people, even for local elections, of less then twenty times this, so this is a pretty ultra-lite form of ‘local accountability’.

Nevertheless, this obviously is an attempt to engage local people in running their local hospital, which - as far as it goes - is a good thing. Some Liberal Democrats have therefore, like myself, stood for election to the Council of Governors for their local hospital, and been elected (and when you stand you are obliged, incidentally, to identify yourself as a member of your political party if you are a member of one). Others have been appointed as members of the hospital’s Council by the local authority that they sit on as councillors. And so as a result, up and down the country there are now a range of Liberal Democrats sitting on bodies with some responsibility for their local hospitals.

But so far, we don’t quite know who all these people are, and there is no opportunity for them to exchange experiences, good practice and generally support each other. And so to facilitate this, we have set up an email discussion list for Lib Dem governors of NHS Foundation Trusts.

If you are a Lib Dem sitting on such a body, either directly elected by members of the trust, or appointed as a councillor by your council, and would like to be able to exchange ideas with other Liberal Democrats in the same position, please let us know so that we can add you to the list. (In fact even if you would prefer not to go on the email discussion list it would be helpful if you could get in touch so that we can know you exist).

Please send an email with your name, email address and hospital you are a governor of, to (The list is intended specifically for Lib Dems involved in running Foundation Trusts, not for members of local councils’ health overview and scrutiny committees).

Also, if you know any Lib Dems who are in this position, please pass this request on to them. We hope this list could be a useful way to provide mutual assistance and support to other Liberal Democrats, and to spread experience and good practice.

* Jeremy Hargreaves is a Vice Chair of the Federal Policy Committee and a governor of the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust

A rather illuminating decision by Rochdale District Labour Party: on their website, they have a sizeable photograph in the middle of their front page.

Is it their leading local member? No.

Is it the Prime Minister? No.

It’s David Miliband, MP for nowhere near Rochdale:

(Click on graphic for full-size screenshot)

Is Gordon Brown mentioned anywhere on the site? No.

A clue as to who Labour members think is and isn’t popular perhaps?

Wait, come back! It’s me, Helen, and I’m not going to blind you with science – just give you a guide to the craze that swept this year’s Liberal Democrat Conference. Or at least among its Twitter users. By the final day of Conference it had gained national media coverage. Because I slipped it into an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live!

It’s pretty simple: Twitter is a micro-blogging service which lets users send each other text-message-length updates. This can be done by sending an SMS to Twitter, or by logging on to www.twitter.com and posting there. Then your friends can follow them on the website, and in some countries (but no longer in the UK) receive a text containing your latest offering.

These short posts are known as ‘tweets’ and the overall effect is like being surrounded by birdsong; various voices calling back and forth. Bursts of communication that let others know, ‘I’m here.’
Read more »

Here is the piece I wrote for the Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging about what bloggers should do when bad news about themselves breaks.

When things go wrong or bad news breaks, it can be tempting to hunker down and say nothing. If you’re a blogger, particularly one who allows comments, the idea of having to write something for your blog can be very off-putting. The thought of ignoring the keyboard and just wishing that time would move on more quickly can be very alluring.

But is that the right response? It is a situation on which I have advised various people over the years, and nearly always the best advice is actually, “keep blogging”. That is for a mix of three main reasons: your own blogging credibility, the opportunity to put your case to friendly ears and the need to put the facts on record for future search engine queries.

The clearest illustrations of the issue of blogging credibility and often those where an election result has gone against you or your party. If you do not talk about the bad news at all, your credibility when talking about subsequent good news will be much diminished. Labour minister Tom Harris’ response to the SNP’s victory in the July 2008 Glasgow East by-election is a good example of the art of blogging on regardless. There really was not much good that could be said, so he wrote:

I’m now in a huff. Please respect my raw feelings and post only sensitive, supportive, sympathetic comments. I will get round to approving them at some point, in between avoiding media coverage and ignoring my phone.

As Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone put it:

It can get difficult – when your party is going through convulsions and you would rather not be accessible or saying anything – you have to be true to the blog. You can’t pick and choose and ignore the embarrassing or the challenging.

By hitting the keyboards and keeping blogging, you can put out your side of the story, making it readily available both to journalists who might want to follow up on the news and also to colleagues and supporters who may be looking for information and reassurance about what had happened. Read more »

You may have noticed a new set of buttons appearing at the foot of stories on Liberal Democrat Voice (thanks Ryan!).

These buttons allow you to share our stories on some of the most popular social bookmarking sites, such as Digg and Del.icio.us. (What is social bookmarking? It’s a way of saving links to stories that you like, but in a way which lets your friends also see what you’ve saved - and in turn you can see what has caught your friends’ fancy. The BBC site has a neat short introduction to the topic.)

In order to bookmark a story on Digg or Del.icio.us you have to have registered first on their site, but there’s no cost as these are all free services. (The party also uses Del.icio.us for our collection of the latest Nick Clegg media coverage.)

There are also buttons to share a story on Facebook, on Twitter or to just email it to a friend.

So if you love or hate a story - please use the buttons to help publicise our stories.

Lib Dem Conference:
On Lib Dem Voice: Reportage | LDV Events | Contribute
On the official party website: Conference home | Vote-by-vote coverage

The Tweme site I have been linking to over the last few days to show how hashtags work also has a photo section which works with the photo sharing website www.flickr.com

So, when I uploaded this photo I took of the hardworking Voice team yesterday afternoon, (including volunteer Gavin Whenman, recently co-opted Voicer Helen Duffett, multiple-award winning Alix Mortimer and in the distance suitably aloof commissioning editor Stephen Tall) I tagged it with #LibDem08 and it showed up on the website along with all the exciting Twitters.

So, if you’re using Flickr from conference, please think about tagging your photos similarly and we can all share and share alike.

It would work equally well with del.icio.us as well, but - confession time - that’s a technological hurdle I haven’t quite cleared yet.

You, too, can join the growing team of conference reporters, and take advantage of our internet connection and free coffee. All you have to do in return is write up a fringe event or a debate for this website. And not hog the internet for too long as we only have a limited number of cables. To volunteer, email our conference go-to girl, Alix Mortimer,

 

 Blog Awards 08: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (434)

Last night, one of the team hurried home from the bar to bring you the exciting news of the winners of the 2008 Blog of the Year Awards, or “BOTYs”

Now, in the cold light of day we can bring you much fuller coverage, with a podcast recording of the entire evening, just as earlier in the year we brought you a recording of the Campaign for Gender Balance Blog Awards.

I hope the ceremony makes sense as an audio recording but if any of the jokes seem obscure, feel free to ask for clarification in the comments.

And if you were there, and taking advantage of the excellent free ALDC/LGA sponsored wine, do please download the file and listen again. Put it on your iPod and listen to it the next time you take a bundle of leaflets out for delivery. I think the speeches were excellent, and well worth listening to sober too.

A word of warning, however - do be careful if you listen to this recording through headphones. I am a far from expert sound-recordist using clearly sub-professional equipment, and I’m not good at levels. Sometimes, the applause is (deservedly) deafeningly loud.

In the aftermath of Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s Vice-President running mate, the coverage I came across was dominated by the possible drawbacks of her selection.

In this coverage the McCain campaign seemed to be failing very badly when it came to framing the discussion around her selection, but I didn’t read too much into it because after all the UK media across the political spectrum is very favourably disposed towards the Obama campaign and nearly everyone I know involved in US politics is on the Democrat side. Perhaps what I was hearing said more about where I get my US political news from than about the reality on the ground in the US?

However, taking a look at what is happening online, it looks like the McCain campaign has made a serious blunder. When there is a big news event, many people go to the internet for more news, and all the more so when the news involves someone or something they had not previously heard about.

And so, unsurprisingly, after the Sarah Palin news was announced, there was a huge surge in search traffic on Google with people looking for information about her. Indeed, the surge was so huge and sudden, Google Trends categorised the search as “volcanic”.

But the McCain campaign has failed to ensure that its version of the Sarah Palin story comes out well in search results. They not only haven’t been taking the opportunity to run good online ads targeted at people searching out information on her (as detailed over on TechPresident), but they haven’t managed to get decent entries into the search results either. Read more »