Author Archives: Mark Valladares

It’s fairly quiet today, and I assume that you’re all still on page 273 of the Leveson report. Me, I’m waiting for it to come out on Kindle, preferably with clams…

However, we’ve got an early response to Leveson, just to give you an opportunity to vent, applaud, or even kibitz (in the nicest way), as well as a Danish perspective on press regulation, and doubtless there’ll be more during the day.

Otherwise, take a break, and drop in from time to time today for everything from rural policy to Europe, …

One of the things that I have discovered since moving from inner London to a small, rural village in a quiet corner of the English shires is that much that I took for granted about politics doesn’t apply terribly well once you escape the major conurbations. You might now expect me to grumble about the unfairness of it all, and you would be right. But not for the reasons you might expect…

William Langland wrote of “a fair field, full of folk”, and whilst the modern countryside would be unrecognisable to him, he would

Today’s events kicked off with the twice-annual meeting of ELDR Council.

The first item of business was the endorsement of the new Secretary General of ELDR, Jacob Moroza-Rasmussen, who took up his duties in September, coming to the organisation from a background of private enterprise and politics.

Next came new applications for membership from the Free Democrats of Georgia, the Civic List from Slovenia and, from the Czech Republic, LIDEM. The Georgians and the Czechs were approved enthusiastically, following some fairly gentle questioning. However, liberal forces are somewhat …

So, what will we be discussing today, here in Dublin?

There will be two working groups, one focused on the theme resolution, the other looking at a gamut of short(ish) resolutions on everything from tax policy to the preservation of birds. For now though, I’ll stick to the theme resolution.

The resolution, “Energy Transition: a liberal perspective”, opens with a tour de horizon of the current energy scenario, taking in existing targets (reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 20%, increasing the share of renewables in the EU’s energy mix to 20%, …

Welcome to Dublin!

Today, for the first time, Liberal Democrat Voice comes to you live(ish) from the Annual Congress of the European Liberal Democrats (ELDR) and, although we haven’t got a full team here to cover the event – the budget doesn’t stretch that far, I fear – I am hoping to provide updates throughout the day.

Highlights will include a speech from Nick Clegg, reports from the ELDR Council, the English Council equivalent of our European umbrella group, and a major policy debate on energy and the European dimension.

So, drop in throughout the day, and feel free to watch the live …

It would be fair to say that this week’s preview is, how should I put it, rather provisional, as a large chunk of next week’s scheduled business is… ummmm… no longer scheduled. That may have something to do with this week’s developments over the Election Registration and Administration Bill…

Election registration bill withdrawn from Lords business as Tories facing defeat over cancelling boundary review.They still won’t succeed.

— Chris Rennard (@LordRennard) November 1, 2012

However, here’s what we’re expecting…

It’s fair to say that Monday’s business has been gutted, following the temporary withdrawal of the Election …

There’s no doubt that one of the most controversial phrases in British politics is “hard working families”. Not because anyone has anything against hard working families, but because it excludes whole swathes of people who deserve the support of the state too.

So, when Party President Tim Farron used it recently, he really shouldn’t have been surprised to attract some criticism. As Jennie Rigg so forcefully put it;

The phrase Hard Working Families purposefully excludes and marginalises anyone who doesn’t have a job, and anyone who doesn’t have a

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In today’s Guardian, Paddy Ashdown responds to Matthew Oakeshott’s call upon party members to consider replacing Nick Clegg as Leader in typically direct style;

All party dissidents, minor or not, suddenly find themselves welcome on every front page and in every news studio. Opinion pollsters, out of business during the dead days of summer, suddenly find themselves able to use a late August poll to predict the outcome of an election still three years away. I remember one in 1995, two years from the election in which

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