Tag Archives: the observer

News International tried to bully the Lib Dems, says Observer. It didn’t work.

By Stephen Tall | Published 24th July 2011 - 11:25 am

News International ‘bullied Liberal Democrats over BSkyB bid’ is the headline in today’s Observer, with the paper reporting:

Rupert Murdoch’s News International launched a campaign of bullying against senior Liberal Democrats in an attempt to force through the company’s bid for BSkyB, high-level sources have told the Observer.

Lib Dem insiders say NI officials took their lobbying campaign well beyond acceptable limits and even threatened, last autumn, to persecute the party if Vince Cable, the business secretary, did not advance its case.

According to one account from a senior party figure, a cabinet minister was told that, if the government did not

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Posted in News | Also tagged david yelland, media, news international, the sun, vince cable | 12 Comments

Interview: Nick Clegg’s year in the eye of the storm

By Nick Thornsby | Published 5th May 2011 - 2:21 pm

Sunday’s Observer featured a lengthy interview with deputy prime minister Nick Clegg from its chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley. Rawnsley takes a look at what has been a tumultuous year for the deputy PM, covering a whole variety of topics along the way.

Here’s a short extract from the interview:

His very existence as deputy prime minister is a daily reminder to the Conservatives and their tribalist mouthpieces in the media that the Tories failed to achieve a clear election win, even against an opponent as unpopular as Gordon Brown. For many on the left, Clegg is the great betrayer who sold

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Posted in News | Also tagged andrew rawnsley, nick clegg | 10 Comments

LibLink: Chris Huhne – AV referendum: why progressives must unite to vote yes

By Nick Thornsby | Published 2nd May 2011 - 7:25 pm

On Sunday, Liberal Democrat energy secretary Chris Huhne joined the Green’s Caroline Lucas and Labour’s John Denham to pen a piece for the Observer, calling on all progressives in Britain to vote Yes in the Thursday’s referendum on the voting system. It garnered headlines on the day thanks to a paragraph critical of the Tories, but it actually makes some very sound points about why all those who see themselves as on the ‘left’ of British politics should be voting Yes (as, incidentally, did Will Hutton in the same newspaper on the same day).

Here’s a sample of what Huhne, …

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged av referendum, caroline lucas, chris huhne, john denham | 67 Comments

The Observer catches up with the news, two months on

By Mark Pack | Published 27th February 2011 - 11:04 am

Readers of today’s Observer story by Toby Helm regarding Lib Dem ministers contributing 10% of their salaries to the party may have thought it had a familiar ring to it. That’d be because it was first reported back in December, as we blogged back then. Ah well, nothing like old news

Posted in News | Also tagged toby helm | 3 Comments

How the media loves mixed messages (when they suit their own message)

By Stephen Tall | Published 10th October 2010 - 1:25 pm

‘Conservative spending cuts are worse than Thatcher’s, says Alan Johnson’ shouts today’s Observer, reporting the paper’s interview with Labour’s incoming shadow chancellor.

If the election had turned out differently — if Labour had won, rather than suffering one of the worst defeats in its history — the headline could have read a little different… Imagine this headline:

Alistair Darling: we will cut deeper than Margaret Thatcher

But wait, we don’t have to imagine that headline: it already exists, and was used by the Observer’s stablemate The Guardian back in March when reporting the then Labour chancellor’s realistic appraisal of the …

Posted in News | Also tagged alan johnson, alistair darling, chris huhne, danny alexander, deficit, media, the guardian | 13 Comments

Opinion: Observer’s dishonesty doesn’t disguise party challenges

By Chris White | Published 28th June 2010 - 11:20 am

I was out drinking with a couple of Tory councillors the other day. This is not a frequent occurrence and has become no more frequent since the Coalition.

I learned that one of their acquaintance had resigned her Conservative Party membership because of the Coalition. She is a Thatcherite.

The days and weeks after the toughest budget for several decades were bound to be uncomfortable. None of us expected to see our Party lauded by the press.

The Guardian lambasted the budget for its effect on the poor, the Mail for its effect on middle England. I gave up and bought …

Posted in Op-eds | 26 Comments

The Observer endorses the Liberal Democrats

By Mark Pack | Published 2nd May 2010 - 10:11 am

Following on from The Guardian‘s endorsement, The Observer becomes the second newspaper to back the LibDems:

The vital context for this election is the twin crises in our economy and our politics. On both issues most credit accrues to the Liberal Democrats. Their Treasury spokesman Vince Cable was prescient in warning of an unsustainable debt bubble; Nick Clegg pushed for greater openness about expenses long before the scandal erupted.

The Lib Dems have in recent years developed a habit of getting things right. They were first of the big three to embrace environmentalism, first to kick back against the assault on civil

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged independent on sunday, sunday people | 5 Comments

Girls in crisis? Hold on a minute.

By Iain Roberts | Published 22nd February 2010 - 12:51 pm

…it is becoming increasingly clear that teenage girls are a stand-alone demographic in crisis

So says a report in Sunday’s Observer, looking at the pressures faced by teenage girls and the effects it has on their lives, and it’s far from alone.

As Mark Pack reported here on Sunday, the Evening Standard and Telegraph both reported on concerns of girls becoming sexualised at ever younger ages.

Just hold on a moment, though.

Yes, teenage girls have problems. And it may well be that there are specific measures the State can take to reduce those problems, such as the regulation …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged evening standard, real women, the telegraph | 8 Comments

LibLink … Nick Clegg et al: An appeal for the victims of Gaza

By NewsHound | Published 27th December 2009 - 3:30 pm

Nick Clegg is a lead signatory for a letter in today’s Observer calling on the international community to exert pressure on Israel to abide by UN security council resolution 1860 and bring an end to the suffering of the people of Gaza. Here’s what it says:

One year on from Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government continues to imprison 1.5 million Palestinians and prevent the rebuilding of its shattered infrastructure.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza, described by the UN fact-finding mission as “collective punishment”, stops reconstruction materials and humanitarian aid from reaching those who so desperately require it.

As a result

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged gaza, israel, nick clegg, palestine, united nations | Leave a comment

Lib Dem PPC Ed Fordham makes Observer’s 2010 Hot List

By The Voice | Published 27th December 2009 - 2:25 pm

Lib Dem candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, Ed Fordham, is cited by today’s Observer as one of the rising stars of British politics:

“It will be a barometer seat without a doubt,” says Liberal Democrat Ed Fordham of his battle against veteran Labour MP Glenda Jackson in Hampstead and Kilburn. The 38-year-old, a former Lib Dem campaigns officer who is expected to play a major part in shaping the party’s future agenda, needs an estimated gain of 474 votes to be elected, in one of the closest-fought battles of the coming election. Fordham, has already won some influential supporters. Former

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Posted in News | Also tagged ed fordham, hampstead and kilburn | 1 Comment

Daily View 2×2: 4 December 2009

By Helen Duffett | Published 4th December 2009 - 8:27 am

It’s December 4th, and 210 years since the day William Pitt the Younger introduced income tax to help pay for the Napoleonic Wars. By that time, The Observer (the world’s first Sunday newspaper) was already celebrating its ninth birthday.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Sally Bercow is only human like the rest of us
Mark Thompson speaks up for the Speaker’s wife’s right to speak up.
There Have Been Too Many Goodbyes….
Stephen Glenn speaks up for anonymous blogs, and laments the passing of another one.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

MPs to go clubbing to investigate cocaine trade

The Commons home affairs committee, led by Labour’s Keith Vaz, will look at what goes on during “student nights”.

Members will look at the latest cocaine-detecting technology and talk to anti-drugs campaigners.

Labour MP Gwyn Prosser has already spent time outside a nightclub in Maidstone, Kent, as part of the committee’s preliminary research. [BBC]

Posted in Daily View | Also tagged evolution, keith vaz, mark thompson, sally bercow, stephen glenn, william pitt the younger | Leave a comment

Does it matter if The Observer closes?

By Stephen Tall | Published 5th August 2009 - 11:00 am

Much speculation this week that The Observer, Sunday sister paper of The Guardian (both of which are owned by Guardian News and Media under the beneficent custodianship of The Scott Trust), is on the brink of being closed down, and perhaps converted into a weekly news magazine. This follows some disastrous financial results for the Guardian Media Group, which recorded a pre-tax loss of almost £90m in 2008-09, £37m of which was contributed by GNM. As the Financial Times reported earlier this week:

GNM has started work on a three-year strategic plan, including radical measures aimed at assuring the future of The Guardian, the group’s daily newspaper, a senior figure in the group said.

The plan is aimed not so much at addressing a fall in newspaper advertising revenues caused by the economic downturn but at surviving the effects of a longer-term shift by readers and advertisers to the internet. …
No decisions have been made on the future of The Observer under the strategic plan but closure of the title in its present form has not been ruled out. According to a person close to the management of The Observer, staff became alarmed last week when they discovered a secret “dummy” of a weekly news magazine with their own title’s branding on it.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged kamal ahmed, roger alton, sunder katwala, sunny hundal | 13 Comments

Guardian endorses Lib Dems in Euro elections (more or less)

By Stephen Tall | Published 2nd June 2009 - 9:54 am

Following the endorsement of its sister paper the Observer and its leading columnist Polly Toynbee, the Guardian editorial today all-but formally recommends its readers vote for the Lib Dems in this Thursday’s Euro polls:

The case for supporting the Liberal Democrats is now very strong. Anyone who believes Britain should be an engaged member of the European Union – who does not believe scare stories about the Lisbon treaty and who wants to back a party that campaigns on this – should vote Lib Dem. So should anyone who cares about constitutional renewal. Nick Clegg’s party has ancestral

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged european elections, newspapers, polly toynbee, the guardian | 11 Comments

What’s the significance of today’s Observer editorial?

By Mark Pack | Published 31st May 2009 - 6:07 pm

The Observer coming out today and urging a vote for the Liberal Democrats will have put a spring in the step of many deliverers, canvassers and poster teams around the country, especially when combined with the news of the Telegraph ICM poll putting the Liberal Democrats in second place.

In the past both the sister papers – Guardian and Observer – have toyed with urging Liberal Democrat votes, saying nice things about the party and urging tactical voting whilst falling short of the sort of clear support for Lib Dem votes that today’s Observer has. Indeed, it’s easy to joke …

Posted in News | Also tagged the guardian | 21 Comments

The Observer says: vote Liberal Democrat

By Mark Pack | Published 31st May 2009 - 9:17 am

From today’s leader:

Nick Clegg is the most instinctively European leader at Westminster. That is currently a lonely position, but the Lib Dems have a decent record of taking minority stands that are later vindicated. On the environment, on civil liberties and on the mounting debt bubble, the Lib Dems were quietly but consistently ahead of the Westminster curve.

Likewise on transparency. In 2007, they opposed the Conservative move, tacitly encouraged by Labour, to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act. The Lib Dems alone took a party line for openness…

While MPs from all parties are tainted, the parties themselves

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Posted in News | Also tagged european elections, local elections | 11 Comments

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