Tag Archives: the independent

Lord Ashcroft, Panorama and a herbivorous Liberal Democrat Peer

By The Voice | Published 1st February 2012 - 4:26 pm

Yesterday’s Press Gazette  highlights that the Panorama programme broadcast, entitled Secrets of the Tory Billionaire, on Monday night may help the Independent defend the libel case brought against it by Lord Ashcroft.

In a development that you couldn’t make up, the Independent, in its own coverage of the programme,  referred to Lord Ashdown when talking about the Conservative Party’s major benefactor.

This prompted our own Paddy Ashdown to write to the paper with, The Voice suspects, his tongue firmly wedged in his cheek

“It is one thing to misrepresent my position on the benefit cap as you did last week,

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Indy splashes on Lib Dem Voice members’ survey findings

By Stephen Tall | Published 6th January 2012 - 2:25 pm

Our latest Lib Dem Voice members’ survey (the final results from which will be published this weekend) has generated ample coverage in today’s Independent — including this rather splendid graphic showing who you chose as the top/bottom 5 performing Lib Dems:

Here’s some of what the paper wrote about the findings (and, don’t forget, you can catch up on all the survey results here on LibDemVoice):

[A] survey of 564 members by the Liberal Democrat Voice website shows that Mr Clegg’s standing in his own party has recovered a

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged | 3 Comments

Opinion: Lobbying scandals strengthen Lib Dem calls for reform

By Caron Lindsay | Published 7th December 2011 - 1:27 pm

The Independent’s expose of the tactics used by the lobbying firm Bell Pottinger to impress potential clients shines the spotlight again on the lobbying industry.

A team from Bell Pottinger was filmed pitching to journalists posing as representatives of the Uzbekistan Government, a regime which, as Amnesty’s 2011  report shows, has an atrocious human rights record. The lobbyists boasted of virtually instant access to the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet.

If I were James Dyson, I would not be happy that my PR company were citing access to the Prime Minister on my behalf as part of …

Continue reading »
Posted in News, Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Why Simon Kelner is wrong to defend Johann Hari

By Stephen Tall | Published 29th June 2011 - 9:25 am

Johann Hari is used to provoking controversy – as the Independent’s most outspoken left/liberal columnist its his stock-in-trade – but yesterday found himself on the receiving end of criticism of his integrity.

The reason? His repeated borrowing of quotes from interviews published by other journalists which he then drops into his own interviews as if they had been made directly in conversation.

The accusation first surfaced last week on the DSG blog concerning an interview Mr Hari undertook with ‘Italian communist and every ultra-leftist’s favourite “psychopath”’, Toni Negri. And the accusation went mainstream after Yahoo editor Brian Whelan’s demolition …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , | 28 Comments

What has the DPM done for us?

By Helen Duffett | Published 15th June 2011 - 3:37 pm

Lib Dem blogger Matthew Gibson has blogged Nick Clegg’s achievements as DPM over the past year, as viewed by the mainstream media.

Matthew’s been monitoring the papers for months, noting all the positive stories about the Deputy PM and Lib Dem leader.

He splits these up by the common themes that have emerged: leadership, competence, being principled and standing his ground.

Here’s a taster:

Competence

The Independent praise Nick Clegg’s simple and direct language in his speech at Conference concluding ‘Clegg knows what he is doing – quite unusual for a leader of a party’ (see here).

The Daily Telegraph believe

…

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Royal Family, freedom of information and the rest of the story

By Mark Pack | Published 12th January 2011 - 1:25 pm

At the weekend The Independent ran a piece very critical of the Liberal Democrats in government:

The Royal Family is to be granted absolute protection from public scrutiny in a controversial legal reform designed to draw a veil of secrecy over the affairs of the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William.

Letters, emails and documents relating to the monarch, her heir and the second in line to the throne will no longer be disclosed even if they are in the public interest…

The decision to push through the changes also raises questions about the sincerity of the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to government transparency.

And …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , | 14 Comments

The Independent. It isn’t.

By Stephen Tall | Published 5th January 2011 - 2:15 pm

‘Lib Dem support hits all-time low’ shouts the front page of the Independent today. It’s a bit of a rum story for two reasons.

First, because it’s not true — though I recognise that’s rarely a reason for a newspaper not to run a story. Those who doubt my word can read Anthony Wells’ UK Polling Blog post, pithily titled: Lib Dem support NOT at all-time low.

And, secondly, because even if it were true it’s not really news — we all know Lib Dem poll ratings have taken a battering. We also all know how fickle have been the opinion polls over the past 12 months. A year ago, many were writing off the Lib Dems’ chances because we were regularly polling below our 2005 general election figure. The came ‘Cleggmania’, and our ratings rocketed — only to subside by polling day itself. And since then they’ve been on a downward trend.

What will be the position by May 2011? No-one really knows. Our opponents and pessimistic supporters will assume we should get used to low ratings; those who are optimists among our ranks will look forward to our ratings increasing.

Continue reading »
Posted in News, Polls | 46 Comments

Why a part of me is cheering on Rupert Murdoch

By Stephen Tall | Published 5th November 2010 - 11:57 am

At face value, the figures released by News International this week showing that The Times and Sunday Times had registered some 105,000 customer sales since its paywall was erected in July sounded like good news. As analysts attempted to decipher the company’s ‘fuzzy numbers‘, doubts began to creep in.

Understanding those paywall figures

The reality appears to be that roughly 50,000 individual users have subscribed to gain access to the newspapers’ content, whether online or through the iPad app or the Kindle edition. The other c.50,000 customer sales are for single-use or pay-as-you-go access to the website, and will …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Do the polls matter?

By Mark Pack | Published 10th August 2010 - 9:00 am

Today’s Independent runs quotes from Sandra Gidley, Lembit Opik, Bob Russell and myself alongside their latest poll report. Here’s the full length (i.e. 3 sentence rather than 2 sentence) version of what I said to them:

Politics isn’t about winning elections, it’s about implementing policy – and Liberal Democrat ministers are getting to do that day in, day out regardless of what that week’s opinion polls say. Winning elections certainly also helps in politics, but with the next general election years away, national voting intention questions don’t mean very much this far out. After all, three months after the 1979

…

Continue reading »
Posted in Polls | 23 Comments

Top Lib Dem asks: was Ashcroft’s peerage given under false pretences?

By Stephen Tall | Published 7th March 2010 - 3:35 pm

Today’s Telegraph reports that Lib Dem peer Lord (Matthew) Oakeshott has called for all documents relating to Tory donor Lord (Michael) Ashcroft’s peerage to be made public to establish whether the Queen conferred the honour under false pretences:

Lord Oakeshott, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, wrote to Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, urging him to publish all relevant papers as a matter of urgency, to make clear whether the monarch had been misled. … William Hague, the former Conservative leader, said that he discovered only a few months ago that Lord Ashcroft had enjoyed ”non-dom” tax status for the last 10

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , | 4 Comments

LibLink: Lynne Featherstone: You Ask The Questions

By NewsHound | Published 18th January 2010 - 12:25 pm

Lynne Featherstone takes to her keyboard to respond to the Independent’s questioning readership.

You can read her answers here.

Lynne doesn’t exactly get an easy ride. Those questions which aren’t of the form “Why don’t the Lib Dems pack up and go home?” are all specifics about how much her expenses were:

Why did you think it reasonable to spend £22,000 of our money on stationery for your office? Hannah Farthing, London

When I was elected in May 2005 I promised to be one of the “hardest working MPs – ever”. If you look at my record, you will find I have delivered

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged | 1 Comment

Clegg calls for full gay equality – what will Cameron do?

By The Voice | Published 13th January 2010 - 8:45 pm

Nick Clegg has taken the opportunity of an interview with The Independent’s Johann Hari for Attitude magazine to lay out a comprehensive range of measures to promote gay equality – and has laid down the gauntlet to the Tory leader David Cameron to justify his ‘liberal Conservatism’ by following suit.

Here’s how the paper summarises Nick’s proposals:

* Force all schools – including faith schools – to implement anti-homophobia bullying policies and teach that homosexuality is “normal and harmless”.

* Change the law to allow gay men and women the same marital rights as straight couples, including the symbolic right to use

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , | 55 Comments

Media to start getting marked for quality of opinion poll reporting

By Mark Pack | Published 11th January 2010 - 12:20 pm

The quality of traditional media coverage of political opinion polling has been a common cause of complaints amongst political bloggers. The most obvious problem is when an opinion poll from one polling company is compared not with the previous poll from that company but against an older one because the intervening one happened to have been published by a different media outlet.

Whilst comparing, say, the latest ICM poll with the previous ICM poll is the most useful comparison to make, if that previous ICM poll appeared elsewhere, in the part it has got airbrushed out of report of the latest …

Continue reading »
Posted in Polls | Also tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Is this the laziest piece of political journalism ever?

By Stephen Tall | Published 5th January 2010 - 8:05 pm

Well, no, it’s probably not. But it must at least qualify for the laziest piece of journalism this decade. I refer to today’s Independent article, ‘Clegg faces party backlash over Tory alliance’, by Nigel Morris and Michael Savage. Oh, go on, then, here’s a link if you must; though I begrudge handing them the traffic. The opening para gives a flavour of the kite-flying, unsourced speculation:

Nick Clegg faces a backlash from grassroots Liberal Democrats if he moves his party too close to the Conservatives in a hung parliament.

Well, yes, he probably would. Which is why he won’t. Unless the …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Since when is something debated in public, in front of journalists called “hidden”?

By Mark Pack | Published 26th November 2009 - 9:20 am

Since yesterday, in fact. Because in an otherwise thoughtful piece on hung Parliaments in The Independent, Steve Richards made this comment:

If there is a hung parliament there will almost certainly be no formal coalition government, even if Nick Clegg and Vince Cable would like to join one. Clegg is trapped by what is known as his party’s “triple lock”, a hidden rule that might become of vital relevance. Before entering a coalition he is bound to secure the agreement of his MPs, other national representatives and the membership.

Credit to Steve Richards for knowing about this rule. But “hidden”? It …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , | 3 Comments