Tag Archives: featured

97% of Lib Dem members back Nick’s call for raising income tax allowance to £10k as immediate priority

By Stephen Tall | Published 10th February 2012 - 7:55 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 570 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Overwhelming support for ‘further and faster’ tax-cuts for low-paid

LDV asked: The Coalition is committed to increasing the level at which income tax becomes payable, from its current £7,475 to £10,000 by 2015. The tax-free threshold was expected to rise by about £630 annually. However, in a recent speech Nick Clegg said, “I want the Coalition to go further and faster in delivering the …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged , , | 2 Comments

Campaign Corner: How can we be better at handling possible new helpers or members?

By Mark Pack | Published 6th February 2012 - 4:54 pm

The Campaign Corner series looks to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Do get in touch if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: Your mystery shopper survey of local parties criticises local parties for not treating possible new members better. We’re a small, struggling local party and it’s hard enough to run the basic operation. How can we be better without exhausting overselves?

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Posted in Campaign Corner | 5 Comments

Chris Huhne: the straight talking fighter faces his biggest battle

By Stephen Tall | Published 3rd February 2012 - 11:54 am

It was in May 2011 that the allegation first surfaced that, eight years previously, Chris Huhne had allegedly asked his then wife Vicky Pryce to take the rap for speeding points that would have seen the aspirant Lib Dem MP for Eastleigh lose his licence. It’s a charge Chris has strenuously denied ever since, always saying he welcomes the police investigation as a chance to clear his name. When asked whether he would resign, he has previously only ever had to answer hypothetically, as here when questioned by Andrew Neil:


(Available on YouTube here.)

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 52 Comments

Paddy Ashdown’s eight steps to winning a Parliamentary constituency

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd February 2012 - 8:25 am

In December 1976 Paddy Ashdown put to the local party in Yeovil a plan for winning the constituency for which he had been recently selected and where the party was third at almost every election. Thirty-five and a bit years on, it still reads as a pretty good plan.

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 5 Comments

The IFS’s verdict on Labour’s deficit argument is in – and it ain’t pretty

By Nick Thornsby | Published 2nd February 2012 - 3:54 pm

Yesterday saw the publication by the Institute for Fiscal Studies of its annual ‘Green Budget‘, which looks generally at the global and UK economic picture as well providing a detailed analysis of the UK fiscal position. The document is fascinating in many respects, but one of the parts that particularly caught my eye was its devastating take on Labour’s position on the deficit.

Since the Autumn Statement, when figures for the estimated size of the budget deficit in future years were revised upwards, one of Labour’s main arguments has been that by cutting “too far, too fast” the government has …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Pack & Tall Debate… Tuition fees: what should Lib Dem party policy now be?

By The Voice | Published 1st February 2012 - 1:50 pm

In the week of the publication of university application figures, LibDemVoice co-editors Mark Pack and Stephen Tall debate what it means for the Lib Dems’ future policy…

Stephen Tall: The publication of the University application figures for 2012 — the first year of the new £9k maximum fees regime — has something for everyone. Those who have always claimed the prospect of huge debt would deter potential students can point to the headline 8.7% decline in applications. Those who say the new fees repayments system …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , | 30 Comments

Understanding the university application figures

By Mark Pack | Published 31st January 2012 - 8:10 am

Ahead of the preliminary university application figures late last year, I posted five questions by which to judge them when they were published. The gist of all the questions was, “what do the figures really mean if you scratch beneath the surface?”. In particular, the big spike in applications in the last year before the new fee arrangements, coupled with the declining teenage population, means that crude headline number comparisons can be very misleading. As it turned out, the five questions were a pretty good guide to what the university application figures really meant.

Now that we have the …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , | 6 Comments

What happens if someone tries to join the Liberal Democrats?

By Mark Pack | Published 26th January 2012 - 10:55 am

No reply. That’s what happens a third of the time if a member of the public contacts a Liberal Democrat local party via the internet according to a ‘mystery shopper’ exercise I carried out earlier this month.

Taking the publicly advertised email addresses for 25 local parties, I tried sending them all a test email from someone asking about joining the party. Just under two-thirds responded within 48 hours, which is a good response time. However, beyond that there were only a couple of further replies and the others have, after more than two weeks, not replied at all.

It is a …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 34 Comments

Dealing with Labour’s mess, Part 93: Lib Dems secure future of post offices

By Stephen Tall | Published 24th January 2012 - 8:29 pm

Remember the last Labour government’s record on post offices? Their numbers fell by more than 7,100, or 38%. But not any more, as a result of Lib Dem action within the Coalition — as Lib Dem Voice first reported here almost 18 months ago.

This is how the Press Association reports it:

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

The best spoof political interview. Ever.

By Mark Pack | Published 18th January 2012 - 10:25 am

Earlier in the month I shared my two favourite clips of political canvassing going wrong from TV drama shows. Today it’s the turn of the best spoof interview, courtesy of Australian TV in the 1990s. Enjoy:

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Campaign Corner: How do I deal with information overload?

By Mark Pack | Published 16th January 2012 - 3:50 pm

The Campaign Corner series looks to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Do get in touch if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: Aarrgh! There’s just too much information online. How do I cope?

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Posted in Campaign Corner | 1 Comment

‘There but for the grace of…’ A couple of things Lib Dems should consider before joining the attacks on Ed Balls

By Stephen Tall | Published 16th January 2012 - 7:55 am

Tempting though the schadenfreude is, I think Lib Dems would be wise not to enjoy too much Labour’s discomfort at Ed Balls’ decision to declare Labour cannot promise to reverse any of the Coalition’s cuts.

I can of course entirely understand the urge to shout ‘Ha! Told you so’ at the shadow chancellor. In an interview for The Guardian published on Saturday, Mr Balls stated categorically:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , | 30 Comments

And the winner of our Liberal Voice of the Year award is… Mark Littlewood

By Stephen Tall | Published 15th January 2012 - 4:31 pm

It’s a fortnight since we launched our search for the Liberal Voice of the Year with the aim of finding the individual or group which has had the biggest impact on liberalism in the past 12 months. This is LibDemVoice’s fifth such annual award, and as is our tradition, we looked beyond the ranks of the Lib Dems to find the liberal who’s most impressed our readers and is not a member of our party.

We unveiled the shortlist here on New Year’s Day. In total, 903 readers cast a vote in the past two weeks. Here are the results …

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Posted in LDV Awards, News | Also tagged , | 67 Comments

Campaign Corner: How do we get more people to our next campaign session?

By Mark Pack | Published 9th January 2012 - 3:50 pm

The Campaign Corner series looks to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Do get in touch if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: How do we get more people to our next campaign session?

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The Liberal Democrat challenges for 2012: recap

By Mark Pack | Published 9th January 2012 - 11:55 am

To mark the start of 2012, last week we ran a series of posts on the main challenges for the Liberal Democrats in 2012. Here in one handy recap is the full list:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , | 3 Comments