Tag Archives: guido fawkes

The Liberal Democrat challenges for 2012: Communicative ministers

By Mark Pack | Published 7th January 2012 - 9:25 am

To mark the start of 2012, we’re running a series of posts over consecutive days on the main challenges for the Liberal Democrats in 2012. I’ve already written about the four priorities for the party’s new Chief Executive, Tim Gordon, but as the Liberal Democrats are more than just the one man whilst he has four, this series sets out six for the party.

Quite simply, too many Liberal Democrat ministers have too low a profile. If low profiles came despite working hard to get coverage and to communicate, that might be excusable. After all, that was the fate of some very hard working shadow ministers before 2010.

That excuse does not apply – for those with low profiles not only do not secure media coverage, they do not make use of the channels of communication open to them, such as emails to party members of guest posts on Lib Dem Voice. If you are not getting much coverage and not even taking the easiest steps, there is no-one to blame but yourself.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged lib dem challenges 2012, lynne featherstone | 2 Comments

Opinion: Overplaying the power of the “people’s petitions”

By James Fearnley | Published 5th August 2011 - 11:48 am

The e-petition mechanism to allow a new public petition service has gone live and media coverage about its merit and importance has gone mad. Let’s not over-emphasise the significance of this move and let’s not downplay the power of solid, rational argument.

I disagree with Sir George Young: this won’t give the public a megaphone as such and to say that it will is an exaggeration. What it may do is potentially provoke debate on contentious topics for which Parliament at present has neither the political will, nor the time, to dedicate to matters such as capital punishment, abortion, civil liberties …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged direct democracy, e-petitions, sir george young | 5 Comments

Opinion: Don’t make Guido’s day

By Simon McGrath | Published 5th August 2011 - 10:23 am

What an enjoyable holiday Guido Fawkes must be having. While he is sunning himself in France he is also managing to create a ludicrous fuss in the UK with his campaign to use the new e-petition website to ask for a vote in the Commons on Capital Punishment.

For some reason this seems to have got Lib Dems in particular into a tizzy – blogging, tweeting and generally upsetting themselves about this, to no purpose at all.

Here‘s the thing: there is no chance whatsoever of a vote in the Commons supporting the return of the death penalty. None. …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged amnesty international, capital punishment, death penalty | 30 Comments

Martin Shapland writes: A petition to retain the ban on capital punishment

By Martin Shapland | Published 4th August 2011 - 8:36 pm

You can tell it’s silly season. The top story today is that a petition on the Death Penalty is at the top of the government’s new e-petition site. You might not have noticed that the petition with the most signatures says – ‘Retain the ban on Capital Punishment.’

Yes I launched the petition; no this isn’t a vanity project. Paul Staines (AKA Guido Fawkes) and the Daily Mail, which have both launched campaigns to restore the death penalty, need to be opposed. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and most Members of Parliament happen to be on holiday.

It might …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged capital punishment, death penalty, e-petitions | 35 Comments

Tidy up the loose ends about that cycle route meeting

By Mark Pack | Published 28th May 2011 - 4:43 pm

(Warning: this post contains facts and documentation. If you are of a nervous disposition and are easily confused by evidence you may wish to skip the post before posting the obligatory comment saying ‘It’s all spin!’)

There are a couple of loose ends to tidy-up from the non-emergency, non-Liberal Democrat meeting featuring a cycle lane that Harry Cole and Guido Fawkes got so wrong during the week.

Getting a story wrong is, in itself, something many bloggers (including myself) have experienced. But even after having the errors in the story pointed out to him, Harry Cole has continued to try to …

Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne, harry cole | 6 Comments

Electoral Commission rejects expenses complaint against Chris Huhne

By Mark Pack | Published 27th May 2011 - 10:39 pm

The Electoral Commission earlier today rejected one of the complaints made over Chris Huhne’s election expenses. It was the complaint made by two former Liberal Democrat councillors who claimed the party had spent more than the legal limit.

However, as I pointed out at the time:

For somewhere such as Eastleigh with local elections on the same day as the general election last year, campaign activities could have had to count against the constituency expense limit (Chris Huhne’s), the council ward expense limits, the general election national expense limit and even – in a few cases – the law says that

…

Posted in Election law, News | Also tagged chris huhne, electoral commission | 1 Comment

Better news for Chris Huhne; more bad news for Guido

By Nick Thornsby | Published 27th May 2011 - 11:43 am

Here’s what Guido eagerly reported yesterday:

Hot on the revelation that Vicky Pryce has signed an affidavit confessing to have taken Chris Huhne’s points…

But today comes a complete volte-face:

Guido understands that both the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday have evidence that is not in the form of a “sworn affidavit” as was claimed yesterday by rivals the Telegraph.

I think that’s the closest Guido ever comes to saying, “I was wrong”.

Meanwhile, there appears to be some better news for Chris Huhne in today’s Telegraph, who are reporting that his ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, is now refusing to confirm to the police …

Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne, daily telegraph | 15 Comments

What Guido Fawkes didn’t tell you about the Eastleigh meeting last night

By Mark Pack | Published 26th May 2011 - 6:04 pm

Yesterday Guido Fawkes excitedly blogged that “Eastleigh LibDems Holding Emergency Meeting … Guido has just heard they are holding an unscheduled meeting” and went on to claim in a subsequent post that Chris Huhne’s election expenses were “top of the agenda”.

Alas, Guido’s source is not exactly up to top-notch standards on this one.

Let’s take it one by one.

Was it an emergency meeting? No, it was a previously scheduled one.

Was it a Liberal Democrat meeting? No, it was a meeting of the Eastleigh and the Bishopstoke, Fair Oak and Horton Heath Local Area Committees to which council officers and non-Liberal …

Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne | 38 Comments

Chris Huhne’s election expenses: once again, nothing to see here, move along

By Mark Pack | Published 25th May 2011 - 11:38 pm

(UPDATE: This complaint was indeed rejected by the Electoral Commission. See also my more recent post about how Guido Fawkes’s source confused an election expense return with a cycle path.)

After all the excitable tweets over the weekend and the dramatic rhetoric about having been researching the topic for a year, you might have thought that when Guido Fawkes blogged today about Chris Huhne’s election expenses there’d be some solid evidence and a plausible complaint.

But no.

In fact, the complaint is so riddled with obvious errors that one’s tempted to say a hacker has snuck into Fawkes Towers and …

Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne, harry cole | 60 Comments

Dealing with the political weather: three lessons to learn

By Mark Pack | Published 25th May 2011 - 11:18 am

Chatting recently to a Liberal Democrat colleague, I fear we sounded like a second-rate version of the Monty Python four Yorkshireman sketch. That there were not four of us, none of us are from Yorkshire and I’m no John Cleese probably didn’t help the imitation as we exchanged tales of past poll ratings (10%? I remember when we used to dream of 10%) and the travails of leading figures (Speeding? You were lucky – what about missing Parliamentary debates due to drink? Pah, that was luxury. What about conspiracy to murder?).

Exchanging stories of past problems can be fun – especially …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged chris huhne, david laws, featured, paul rainger | 18 Comments

Hmmm, Guido – forgotten to declare your interest?

By Stephen Tall | Published 12th January 2011 - 7:55 pm

It’s rare for Paul Staines, the founder of the Guido Fawkes blog, to express warm and positive views — yet today’s an exception, with the launch of the No2AV campaign’s website winning his plaudits:

Promising stuff from the No2AV campaign as their website goes live today, plenty more to come too apparently.

Indeed, so excited was Paul that he completely omitted to declare his own interest in No2AV’s website. Instead we have to turn to The Guardian to find out that it was designed by MessageSpace, whose majority shareholder — the company’s website tells us — is “Global and …

Posted in News | Also tagged no2av, paul staines | 25 Comments

Do Tweets win seats? – Micro-blogging and politics

By Helen Duffett | Published 28th September 2010 - 11:37 am

Politicos use Twitter to communicate with voters, activists and the media. It’s sociable and fashionable. It’s useful but it has its limits.

And if this was Twitter I’d stop there, for the paragraph above is a 140-character summary of the popular micro-blogging service and its emerging role in politics. Having the luxury of a whole chapter, rather than a couple of lines, I can expound a bit. But sometimes I relish Twitter’s brevity and the way it gives me both the discipline and the excuse not to write at length.

Twitter was to the 2010 General Election what blogging had been to the previous one: novel, topical, conversational, personal. Blogging, in long and short form, is good for quickly spreading campaign messages, news and rumours and it’s freely accessible for anyone with an internet connection.

When I first subscribed to the service a couple of years ago, few news outlets or political candidates were tweeting, although the three main parties were already using it to link to party information and election results.

Over the past year, Twitter has been increasingly taken up by MPs and councillors, bloggers and journalists, even government departments, but crucially by thousands of people who are none of the above, but want to converse with them on an equal footing.

The parties continue to tweet, but now candidates, MPs and party leaders themselves are using the medium, with varying degrees of skill.

Posted in Online politics, Op-eds | Also tagged #cashgordon, alberto nardelli, caron lindsay, david eaves, facebook, john dixon, leaders debate, nick clegg, rachel gibson, richard osley, romford, sophocles, stella creasy, stuart maclennan, tweetminster, twitter, willie rennie | Leave a comment

Naughty, naughty, Guido – let’s check that poll again, shall we

By Iain Roberts | Published 7th September 2010 - 1:24 pm

Paul Staines, who blogs as Guido Fawkes, seems very keen indeed to persuade his readers that the public’s right behind him on his pursuit of William Hague over the allegation of improper activities with his former special advisor.

Keen enough, it appears, to take a rather inventive approach when it comes to interpreting the opinion polls.

When you ask a question in a poll and the result comes back as 46% yes, 12% no, most of us would take that as an indication that the public’s in the “yes” camp.

Not Staines. He’s taken all the “don’t knows” – many of whom may …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged william hague | 15 Comments

Paul Staines, William Hague and questions for bloggers

By Iain Roberts | Published 1st September 2010 - 7:44 pm

Allegations have recently been posted on Paul Staines’ blog Order Order (where he blogs under the pseudonym Guido Fawkes) about a relationship between William Hague and one of his special advisors, Christopher Myers.

These allegations have led to Myers resigning from his post and to the Hague’s releasing a full and frank statement which include revalations they would, I’m sure, have rather remained private about the problems they’ve had in their attempts to start a family. The allegations have been categorically denied by William Hague.

We at Lib Dem Voice wish both the Hagues and Christopher Myers well.

Claims are often made for …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged william hague | 36 Comments

Mad, mad, you’ve all gone mad

By Mark Pack | Published 20th April 2010 - 8:04 pm

Look, I can understand a good TV performance boosting the Lib Dems in the polls.

I can just about understand having several young kids running up to me in the street, looking admiringly at the stakeboard poster and one saying, “Are you voting for that Nick Clegg? I like him!”

At a stretch I can even understand The Sun running a positive story about the Liberal Democrats.

But Guido producing a wholly positive film about Nick Clegg? That volcanic ash must be hallucogenic.

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