Author Archives: Mark Pack

From today’s Independent:

The sports car giant Porsche has pulled off one of the greatest share killings of all time in a coup that has left some of the world’s largest hedge funds nursing combined losses that could total $20bn (£12.6bn).

The vast sum was won and lost in bets on the share price of Volkswagen. While Porsche has been building a secret 74 per cent stake in its rival, the hedge funds have been betting that the shares will fall. The shares soared by 400

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Given the current debate in the party over membership and over supporters schemes, it seems a good time to give another airing to this article which (minus a few minor updates) first appeared in Liberator last year.

People often draw a pessimistic picture of the state of politics based on the declining membership totals across all political parties and the contrasting much larger membership figures for some pressure groups. For example, the RSPB on its own has more members than all the UK political parties combined – and political party membership is on a long-term downward trend. So is it all doom and gloom?

By coincidence, shortly after reading such an article in Liberator last year, I came across membership and local group numbers for Friends of the Earth, and they suggest a rather different perspective.

First – those Friends of the Earth figures. Its membership currently is roughly the same as the Liberal Democrats. The RSPB may have more members than all parties put together, but one of the leading environmental campaign bodies does not even have a clear membership lead over the smallest of the three main parties.

And get beyond membership figures into active local group figures and political parties come out even better – for the Liberal Democrats have roughly double the number of active local parties compared with Friends of the Earth’s active local groups.

So yes, the biggest and most successful pressure and lobby groups do very well compared to political parties in terms of headline membership figures, but is that the right comparison to make? The RSPB is unusual, even amongst pressure groups, in being so very large – so people who use it as a yardstick for judging parties need to justify using it rather than a smaller more typical organisation.

Second – what has really happened with the overall level of political activity over the last few decades? Again, the normal picture painted is one of declining activity – how many campaigns these days aim for a 100% canvass for example? Throw in a few anecdotes about how hard it is to find tellers and how few window posters appear these days and the case appears conclusive.

But scratch under the surface, and there has been a major change in the sort of activity that campaigns – particularly in the Liberal Democrats – involve.

The Bank of England Act 1998 requires the Bank of England to “publish minutes of the meeting before the end of the period of 6 weeks beginning with the day of the meeting”.

It could have said “publish minutes of the meeting within 6 weeks of the day it took place”. Shorter, clearer and with the same meaning.

Does this sort of clunky …

No: No e-voting for next year’s elections
Yes: Edinburgh Council by-election to use electronic voting

So says The Guardian.

Norman Fowler, a former chairman of the Conservative Party, writes for the Financial Times:

Public money already goes to the parties at Westminster but the prospect of increased state funding is guaranteed to provoke objections. Why should the taxpayer be forced to make a contribution to a party he or she hates? It is a powerful argument. I know – I have used it in the past.

The public needs to decide whether it is content with the present tarnished system where the suspicion remains that, politically, money talks. It also needs to decide whether there is any other way of

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Via kotaku.com:

On this site you can read a lot of lecturing about how others should do their jobs. Well, when an elected official shows that he can take games seriously, instead of personally, he should get credit for that. Unfortunately for Americans, this guy is a member of the UK Parliament. But here’s what struck me about Don Foster of Bath, in his remarks to The Guardian backing the gaming industry as an important part of the British economy:

“I hardly play any games, I’m not from that generation, but because of my job, I had to research the

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Back in September I blogged about how the BBC was taking the view that it didn’t matter if one of its news stories wasn’t accurate; being amusing was a good enough excuse to cover getting the facts all wrong.

Good news now though: the BBC has ruled on a complaint over its story and decided that, after all, a news story should be accurate.

Neil Williams, a Liberal Democrat councillor in the London Borough of Haringey, has the story of how the Labour-run council is so desperate to avoid mentioning Liberal Democrats in its publications that it edited out a Liberal Democrat councillor from a photograph.

This follows hot on the heels of the news that local MPs have been mentioned eight times in the council’s official magazine in the last three years. All eight have been of the borough’s Labour MP though; the Liberal Democrat MP (Lynne Featherstone) not getting one single mention.

From Politics Home:

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has attacked thinktank Policy Exchange over its call to boycott the upcoming Global Peace and Unity event in London.

The thinktank had circulated a dossier questioning apparent extremist background of several of the events speakers. However Mr Clegg, who is due to speak at the event accused the thinktank’s director of “bizarre and underhand behaviour”, and questioned the validity of the evidence.

Nick Clegg’s letter reads:

I am writing to ask you to retract an offensive dossier that Policy Exchange has been privately circulating condemning the Global Peace & Unity Event scheduled for the coming weekend in London.

This is the fourth year of this conference. It will be attended by 30,000 people and is geared towards promoting harmony and dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The Policy Exchange briefing I have seen seeks to raise alarm over a number of the speakers planning to attend the conference. The accuracy of the allegations is variable, with a notable lack of evidence to support many of the claims.

In particular I was appalled to see ‘evidence’ quoted from the Society for American National Existence, an organisation which seeks to make the practice of Islam illegal, punishable by 20 years in prison. I need hardly point out how illogical it is to attempt to criticise one set of extreme views by citing another.

In a gloriously muddled performance, Labour minister Phil Woolas managed to both deny and confirm that the government has pledged to keep Britain’s population under 70 million in a radio interview this morning.

In an interview last week with The Times, he said, “This Government isn’t going to allow the population of this country to go up to 70 million.”

Interviewed on the Today program this morning, however, he said, “We don’t think is appropriate.” So this extract from the Times interview was quoted back at him, producing this wonderfully bizarre attempt to claim that quoting back to him what …

The possible widespread use of full-body scanners at airports, which show people’s bodies in some detail, have been in the news recently. London MEP Sarah Ludford is interviewed over on the ITV Local site about her concerns and what steps should be taken to protect people’s privacy.

From the Reading Chronicle:

ENERGY companies are raking in immoral profits from their poorest customers – that was the charge made by Nick Clegg in Reading at the weekend, as he called for tax cuts for low earners and a 2% cut in interest rates.

The Lib Dem leader, speaking at his party’s regional conference at Woodley’s Oakwood Centre before a public meeting at Reading Civic Centre on Saturday, declared: “It is immoral, it is wrong for the big six energy companies to have received, as they in effect have, a £9bn windfall subsidy

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Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osborne is coming under further fire in the Oleg Deripaska affair. It turns out that he failed to declare the free family holiday he was on at the time he met the controversial Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Oops.