Tag Archives: the times

Comeback Clegg – the Times’ reasons to be cheerful about the Lib Dems

By Helen Duffett | Published 17th January 2012 - 4:49 pm

There’s a great article in today’s Times [£] praising the Liberal Democrats and fancying the party’s prospects between now and 2015.

Rachel Sylvester writes that although the received wisdom says coalition government has ruined the Lib Dems’ chances, it’s too early to write them off:

The Liberal Democrats could end up doing a lot better than most people currently think.

She cites encouraging signs in the polls:

A huge number of people still have no idea how they are going to vote and although only 12 per cent say that they would support Mr Clegg’s party if there were an election

…

Posted in News | Also tagged ed miliband, nick clegg, rachel sylvester | 25 Comments

Times: Lib Dems are right to maintain identity and policies in Government

By Caron Lindsay | Published 21st December 2011 - 8:55 am

The Times published a leader on Monday praising Nick Clegg for publicly challenging David Cameron and the Conservatives on certain matters of policy.

Nick’s robust statements on the subject of a tax break for married couples were welcomed by the paper as it also highlighted other Liberal Democrat successes.

The principle of a State that provides for its citizens but does not coerce them in matters of conscience and judgment is a precious liberal inheritance. Mr Clegg should emphasise it. He should also reflect on the importance of the role that his party performs in government. He and his colleagues rightly took the

…

Posted in News | Also tagged nick clegg | 1 Comment

Opinion: Liberal Democrats didn’t just avoid Murdoch, we tried to cut him down to size

By James Percival | Published 12th July 2011 - 1:53 pm

In my last post for Lib Dem Voice, I pointed out that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems had never courted Murdoch and his cronies.

Actually, that was just the half of it.

We didn’t just avoid him. We have tried, in different ways over a number of years, to cut the media mogul down to size and clamp down on the sort of abhorrent media practices that have been exposed of late.

As far back as 1994, the year before Tony Blair chose to fly to Oz to lick Rupert Murdoch’s boots, we were calling for the OFT …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged bskyb, communications bill, competition bill, ipcc, lord mcnally, press complaints commission, rupert murdoch, tony blair, vince cable | 38 Comments

Chris White writes: thoughts on the letter to the Times

By Chris White | Published 16th February 2011 - 1:25 pm

Last week saw much excitement when 90 leading Liberal Democrat councillors wrote to the Times criticising the leadership of Eric Pickles. I was not one of them.

In 2009 I thought long and hard about the circumstances in which such letters are appropriate and as a result offer 6 tests:

Is the objective clear?
Is the objective likely to be more achievable as a result of the letter?
Does it avoid attacking our own side?
Is the timing appropriate?
Is the medium appropriate?
Does it avoid looking elitist and self-regarding?

The letter to the Guardian from members of the Federal Policy Committee during the Autumn Conference …

Posted in Local government, Op-eds | Also tagged eric pickles, letter, Local government | 4 Comments

The Times’ advice to voters in Oldham: “They should vote Lib Dem.”

By Stephen Tall | Published 6th January 2011 - 9:10 pm

Well, here’s a bit of a turn-up… While the Lib Dems’ erstwhile friends, the Guardian and Independent, take delight in stilettoing the party, The Times has come out in support of the Lib Dems’ Elwyn Watkins in next week’s Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election.

No link, I’m afraid — blame the paper’s paywall — but here’s an excerpt the final line of which I imagine will find its way onto a few Lib Dem leaflets over the next seven days:

A Labour victory in Oldham might lead the party, quite wrongly, to think itself on the right course when, in fact,

…

Posted in News, Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged elwyn watkins, oldham east and saddleworth | 43 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 …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, media, news international, paywall, rupert murdoch, the independent, the sunday times | 8 Comments

Is the problem that people don’t want to pay for news or don’t want to pay for newspapers?

By Mark Pack | Published 15th August 2010 - 5:50 pm

Each round of newspaper circulation figures makes grim reading for anyone trying to balance the books at a newspaper. Month after month circulation is dropping away across the board. The usual explanation is that newspapers are suffering because so much free news is now available online, and there is certainly a large degree of truth in that.

However, there are two important caveats to that. First, the massive lack of trust in journalists, who are regularly rated one of the least trusted professions in the UK. As I wrote last year on this topic,

Isn’t a major reason that people increasingly turn

…

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged daily telegraph, journalism | 14 Comments

Paywall vs ‘Freemium’: why Parris, Finkelstein et al may rue Rupe’s decision

By Stephen Tall | Published 27th July 2010 - 3:20 pm

Will The Times’s paywall work? It’s the question that’s been asked ever since Rupert Murdoch’s News International announced its intention to place The Times and The Sunday Times websites behind a paywall, blocking any user not prepared to pay a subscription for access.

Last week saw publication of early unofficial statistics which were extrapolated at length in The Guardian and suggest The Times’s website now attracts somewhere between 84,800 and 195,700 daily unique users – compared with c.1.2 million daily unique users pre-paywall.

It’s stating the obvious to point out that’s a huge drop: after all, the point of the exercise is to make money from the few, not be free to the masses. So far, it’s understood there are 15,000 paying users – though whether that figure includes those who signed up for cheap one-month trial offers is not certain – in addition to 12,500 iPad users.

Assuming The Times can retain all those paying customers (which is a big assumption), it’s estimated the paywall could attract revenues of £1-2m a year. I’ve not yet seen, though, a reliable figure showing what the cost in lost advertising revenue associated with a fall in online circulation will total – which make it difficult as yet to work out if News International will generate an immediate net profit from the paywall. That, after all, would be Mr Murdoch’s ultimate response to the naysayers.

What I don’t understand is why News International decided to go all out for the paywall at The Times without at least first testing the market by adopting a ‘freemium’ model, making basic content available free, but charging for premium content.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged daniel finkelstein, featured, matthew parris, paywall, rupert murdoch | 4 Comments

A polite round of applause directed towards The Times

By Mark Pack | Published 8th February 2010 - 11:18 pm

I wasn’t expecting that.

The Times has reported its latest opinion poll. It has reported the changes in party share of the vote.

And then Peter Riddell has said,

These shifts are within the margin of error

Why’s that impressive? Because nearly every opinion poll only shows changes within the margin of error (you’ve usually got to look over a wider pattern to see statistically significant changes), but that doesn’t stop newspapers writing up their stories as if the changes in support are significant and therefore ones we can be sure actually happened.

It’s as if the newspapers think, “Look, we know the poll doesn’t …

Posted in Polls | Also tagged journalism, julian glover, peter riddell | 4 Comments

LibLink … Nick Clegg: The Liberal Democrats are not for sale

By Stephen Tall | Published 4th January 2010 - 11:50 pm

Over at The Times, Nick Clegg has penned an article setting out, perhaps in the clearest detail yet, exactly how the Lib Dems will respond in the event of a ‘hung Parliament’. He begins by noting the heat-without-light debate that the new year has brought:

Much of what we have heard so far is unsurprising: absurd pledges on spending, vitriolic attacks on cuts. But one development is new: both the old parties now claim to be almost identical to the Liberal Democrats. David Cameron and Gordon Brown are ostentatiously flirting with Liberal Democrat voters, clumsily trying to woo them —

…

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged hung parliament, nick clegg | 7 Comments

Times backs Jeremy Browne’s expenses appeal

By Stephen Tall | Published 18th December 2009 - 11:15 am

As LDV reported yesterday, Lib Dem MP for ultra-marginal Taunton is appealing against Sir Thomas Legg’s request for repayment of almost £18,000 in expenses which Sir Thomas says were against the rules.

Today’s Times carries a leader column backing Jeremy’s appeal – here’s an excerpt:

Take Jeremy Browne, the Liberal Democrat and the first MP to confirm that he would appeal. Upon entering Parliament, Mr Browne removed equity from a London home that he owned before he was elected and used it to buy a property in his constituency. He then claimed against his allowance for the (now larger)

…

Posted in News | Also tagged jeremy browne, mps expenses | 7 Comments

Times: Tories “give up” on Cheadle with Lib Dems digging in for victory

By Stephen Tall | Published 7th December 2009 - 10:15 am

Mark Hunter, Lib Dem MP for the Cheshire seat of Cheadle since 2005, could be forgiven for smiling like his county’s proverbial cat this morning.

Today’s Times reports that the Tories are scaling back their expectations of election victory in the light of a slew of polls showing the party’s support dipping:

The Conservatives are digging in for a six-week election campaign and are quietly withdrawing resources from some “landslide” seats to maximise David Cameron’s chances of winning a workable majority.

The well-sourced article highlights just one example of a constituency where the Tories are giving up the fight:

Cheadle, currently held by

…

Posted in General Election, News, Opposition watch | Also tagged cheadle, conservative party, mark hunter | 9 Comments

How The Times has left me worried I’m hallucinating

By Mark Pack | Published 16th November 2009 - 8:37 pm

Here’s the email I’ve just sent to The Times. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out I’m hallucinating and saw 175 mentions of Christmas where in fact there were none.

I’m really confused.

In your story “Christmas lights switch-on ceremony renamed ‘Winter White Night” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6915007.ece) you report that, “Christmas will not be Christmas in Dundee this year. All references to the religious holiday have been dropped from the switching-on ceremony for the city’s festive lights.”

Yet when I go to look up information about the ceremony online, I find the program at http://www.dundee.com/winter-light-night.html where “Christmas” is mentioned no less than six times.

…

Posted in News | Also tagged christmas, dundee council | 6 Comments

The Lib Dems: ahead of the curve or missing the moment? #ldconf

By Stephen Tall | Published 24th September 2009 - 10:25 am

The editorials of two newspapers today sum up the alternative ways in which this past week’s Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth has been regarded – both internally by party activists and externally by the media. (Who knows what those members of the non-politically obsessed public thought, if anything, of the whole thing?)

The Times is pretty scathing of the party’s week in its leader column, Missing the Liberal Moment:

This week has been an opportunity lost for the Liberal Democrats. As the week unfolded, the excitement dissipated. With an election on the near horizon, with the Labour Government’s lease on power coming to an end and the Tories not yet commanding enthusiasm, this week has been an object lesson in how not to seize the day. …

Posted in Conference | Also tagged bournemouth 2009 conference, the independent | 11 Comments

Media news from Bournemouth – and our media at its very best

By Mark Pack | Published 21st September 2009 - 10:01 am

A round-up of more media coverage from conference here in Bournemouth:

And finally, something to file in the “It makes you proud to have media like that in our country” corner. The Times runs a serious piece in education in this country and what we might be able to learn from Sweden. …

Posted in News | Also tagged bournemouth 2009 conference, david laws, nick clegg, richard dawkins | Leave a comment

Tag Archives: the times

Understanding those paywall figures

Search

Poll