Author Archives: Mark Pack

Mark was the Liberal Democrat Head of Innovations until June 2009 and is now at Blue Rubicon. He also lectures at City University and is co-author of 101 Ways To Win An Election. He blogs at www.markpack.org.uk and is on Twitter as @markpack. He likes chocolate. Lots of it.
Mark Pack

The Parliamentary Boundary Commission for Scotland impresses…

By Mark Pack | Thu 20th October 2011 - 9:56 am

… with its rather nifty interactive online tool for examining the details of its draft proposals and commenting on them: https://consultation.scottishboundaries.gov.uk/.

The Scottish Boundary Commission has an advantage over the one for England in having a much better IT (GIS) system, courtesy of proper geo-coding of the electoral register to deal with previous reviews at other levels of election and the more unified handling of the electoral register across Scotland compared to England. That is why they are able to provide tools like this and also why the Commission has the level of accurate data which means they can split …

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law | Tagged , , and | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

In other news…

By Mark Pack | Wed 19th October 2011 - 11:31 pm

On the NHS:

Liberal Democrats may win a key concession on the controversial Health and Social Bill before the legislation is passed, PoliticsHome has learned.

Sources have indicated that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, including key rebel Baroness Williams, have struck a deal which would allow Lib Dem peers currently opposed to the legislation to secure changes to the role of the Health Secretary. They are currently concerned that the Bill will mean the Secretary of State is not responsible for ensuring that patients across the country receive the same services and standards of care.

PoliticsHome understands that the responsibility of the Health

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Who are the two Ministers who have the Daily Star on order each day?

By Mark Pack | Wed 19th October 2011 - 8:23 am

A simple quiz question for you: courtesy of some Freedom of Information requests we know which newspapers are delivered to Ministers’ offices each day. Two of them have the Daily Star on their daily order list. Which two?

(Answer after the jump)

Continue reading »
Posted in News | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Local liberal heroes: Tracy Ismail

By Mark Pack | Tue 18th October 2011 - 10:25 am

Earlier in the year, I penned a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten – such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP.

There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure – those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are often …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Lynne Featherstone vs Steve Hilton on maternity pay

By Mark Pack | Mon 17th October 2011 - 7:25 am

From yesterday’s Observer:

In a wide-ranging interview with the Observer, Featherstone said it was vital the coalition delivered on its family-friendly rhetoric … In a forthright attack on some of the advisers shaping government policy, she criticised the role of Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist tasked with reporting to the prime minister on how to cut regulation on business. Beecroft is understood to have recommended a U-turn on government policies on shared parental leave and flexible working.

The proposals, outlined in a white paper, would allow couples greater freedom to co-ordinate maternity and paternity leave. A separate proposal would make it

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Campaign Corner: What does research tell us?

By Mark Pack | Sun 16th October 2011 - 3:50 pm

Welcome to a new series of posts, each of which will look to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Do get in touch if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: What can Liberal Democrat campaigners learn from research that academics and others have done into British politics?

There is a huge literature of potentially relevant research, especially if you also cast your net outside Britain or look at research in other fields that is also applicable to politics. But for three good starters I would pick out:

  1. Voters want “local” candidates – quite what “local” means

…

Continue reading »
Posted in Campaign Corner | Tagged | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Personal Demographics Service: Department of Health

By Mark Pack | Sun 16th October 2011 - 9:50 am

I’ve blogged before about some of the security issues around the NHS’s Personal Demographics Service – a mammoth database with 80,000,000 personal records in it, yet with 700,000 people granted access to it – and with such limited auditing systems that experts have concluded it is “incredibly difficult if not impossible” to detect or trace misuse of the data.

So it was good to see Julian Huppert take up with issue with a Parliamentary question, asking the Department of Health what assessments it has made of how adequate the safeguards in the PDS really are at preventing illegal access to …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg backs campaign to ensure PR industry interns are paid

By Mark Pack | Sat 15th October 2011 - 8:53 am

PR Week reports:

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has thrown his weight behind a campaign being launched this week by PRWeek and the PRCA to end the practice of unpaid internships.

To launch the campaign, the PRCA will today take the step of placing a list on its website of all PRCA member agencies who commit to paying at least the National Minimum Wage to interns.

The list, researched in June, includes just 21 out of 264 member agencies – a mere one in 13. Among the handful of big agencies committed to paying up are Cohn & Wolfe and MHP

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

What do you think was the second most important reason why people didn’t vote Tory in the Cotswolds?

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th October 2011 - 5:50 pm

Between us, Stephen Tall (he of the Oxford Comma cartoon) and myself (purveyor of news about commas in election law and academic research), appear to be carving out a niche in political punctuation coverage.

I fear it is all going to end in tears when someone puts our own punctuation habits under the microscope, but before it does I have exciting, related news to report.

I have blogged before about the fall-out amongst Cotswold Conservatives following their big losses to the Liberal Democrats in May’s local elections, including their fear that they are seen as “toffs legislating for …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Boundary Commission for Scotland publishes its initial proposals

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th October 2011 - 11:50 am

As ever remember that (a) these proposals are draft and (b) many a person has made a fool of themselves with crude projected vote figure calculations.

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law and Scotland | Tagged , and | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Commons votes to allow Twitter but MP demands minister communicates via letter

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th October 2011 - 8:50 am

Yesterday Parliament voted by 206-63 to allow MPs to (continue to) tweet from the Chamber, by rejecting an amendment that would have gutted this proposal, subsequently passed:

That this House notes the Third Report from the Procedure Committee on Use of hand-held electronic devices in the Chamber and committees, HC 889; and resolves that hand-held devices (not laptops) may be used in the Chamber, provided that they are silent, and used in a way that does not impair decorum, that Members making speeches in the Chamber or in committee may refer to electronic devices in place of paper speaking notes and

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News and Online politics | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Sadiq Khan, master of political caricature, I salute you

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th October 2011 - 7:59 am

Listening to Deputy Prime Minister’s Question Time and also the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s hearing this week, I was tempted to blog about how in a throwback to the worst of New Labour, many Labour MPs seemed to be confusing something being a “civic duty” with it being a legal requirement. After all, it doesn’t say much for your idea of “civic duty” if you think it is synonymous with “legal requirement”.

I didn’t have time to blog about this… but then today Sadiq Khan writes for The Guardian:

The compulsory nature of our interaction with registration officers may seem

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 28 Comments
Mark Pack

Gay marriage, animal insults and a pair of Conservatives

By Mark Pack | Thu 13th October 2011 - 7:25 am

Conservative Councillor James Malliff  is in trouble with his party after attacking David Cameron’s support for gay marriage, saying that you “may as well legalise marriage with animals”. The Conservative Party says that action is being taken against him for “completely unacceptable” language.

But wait, rummage through your political memories and recall this?

If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.

That would be one Mr B. Johnson, subsequently twice appointed …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Where Lynne Featherstone leads, David Cameron follows – once again

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 7:36 pm

We’ve covered before on Lib Dem Voice the campaign by Lynne Featherstone and others to end the built-in sexism in the rules of Royal succession, whereby men automatically come ahead of women in the line of succession (‘Royal primogeniture’), a cause which has overwhelming public support.

One complication is that our monarch is also the monarch of other countries, which makes changes the rules a matter of both international diplomacy and domestic action. So good news today with David Cameron’s decision to write to 16 Commonwealth leaders about getting the rules changed.

As Lynne Featherstone put it previously about …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Bromley Council pulls a controversial novelty with a lollipop lady petition

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 1:50 pm

Tsk, tsk, Bromley Conservatives.

There is a council by-election campaign underway in Shortlands ward, Bromley where the excellent Anuja Prashar is the Liberal Democrat candidate. (So excellent, I’ll forgive her for organising a raffle once that broke all my Lib Dem raffle rules.) She has been campaigning against council plans to axe the lollipop ladies at two local schools and, as part of that, presented a petition signed by 283 residents to the council.

And then things started being done differently…

For the first time, Bromley Council decided to respond personally and directly to all the signatories on a petition, posting out …

Continue reading »
Posted in Local government and London | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Media spin, 1966 vintage

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 11:55 am

Hello again to an old story which I came across in the archives whilst looking for something else. Trust me, it’s more interesting than the Something Else which, even with the use of capital letters and ominous music, turned out to be a damper squib than the empty chocolate wrapper left in the work kitchen last week.

So instead… it’s back to 1966, again.

During the 1966 general election campaign, Prime Minister Harold Wilson visited the Birmingham Rag Market for a public meeting (scene of a famous* public meeting in the 1964 campaign when the then Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home got shouted …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Will polling stations start being moved to raise turnout at elections?

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 10:55 am

I’ve blogged a few times before about the way that increasing the number of polling stations, or locating them better, can increase turnout, by reducing the average travel time for (non-postal) voters to get to their polling place.

However, whilst things that involve technology and electricity (text voting, internet voting et al.) tend to grab the headlines and get demands for action (usually from people who haven’t noticed the previous British trials which showed their failure to have a significant impact on turnout), the rather more prosaic act of wondering about which school halls to use and where to locate …

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Can you guess who said what?

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th October 2011 - 7:10 pm

Take two people: one a successful female businesswoman and one a male Tory MP.

Then take two public statements: one calling female Cabinet members “an ugly bunch” and “I could not look at them”; the other calling for companies to be better at ending the male dominance of the boardroom.

Who do you think would have said which…?

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

After the Coalition: A Conservative agenda for Britain

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th October 2011 - 10:25 am

Collections of policy essays from new or junior MPs rarely have much of an impact or shelf-life in British politics, but however fallible their predictions for the future they can be illuminating about the current state of the authors’ party and its broad ideological direction.

So it is with After the Coalition which is very different in tone and hope for the future from last year’s Which Way’s Up? by Nick Boles. The contrast is there in the sub-titles for the two books. Boles had “The future for coalition Britain” whilst the five authors behind this volume have gone for …

Continue reading »
Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Ed Miliband certainly got one thing right in his reshuffle

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th October 2011 - 8:25 am

Though others are viewing the demotion of Angela Eagle from Shadow Chief Secretary as a move by Ed Miliband to clip the wings of Ed Balls, it does mean Miliband has sacked from his Treasury team one of the Labour MPs with the most dramatically wrong track-records when it comes to economic predictions.

Keeping her well away from future economic policy it would seem is no bad move at all on Ed Miliband’s part.

Posted in News | Tagged , and | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

Once again, Osborne is the obstacle to green action

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 11:17 pm

Today’s Times reports how:

The Chancellor has infuriated No. 10 and Cabinet colleagues by refusing to endorse a key component in the policy to boost renewable energy.

In an extraordinary move last week George Osborne was rebuked by David Cameron’s aides for failing to come on board for a key green policy.

At a meeting on Monday the prime minister’s most senior official, Jeremy Heywood, gave a dressing down to an Osborne adviser over the Chancellor’s failure to rubber stamp the new price that power companies will pay for renewable energy such as solar, wave and wind power.

Osborne has form on this, for …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

BNP accused of fraud over false invoices

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 6:11 pm

The BBC reports:

The British National Party is under investigation by the European Union and the Metropolitan Police for alleged fraud and breaches of electoral law.

The dual investigations come as a former BNP administrator told the BBC’s Panorama programme that she was instructed to falsify invoices.

Those invoices were then submitted by the BNP to the Electoral Commission.

The BNP has strongly denied any suggestion of wrongdoing…

Former party worker Marion Thomas said after the 2010 general election she was instructed by the party’s treasurer, Clive Jefferson, to alter invoices and in at least one case stamp an outstanding invoice as “paid”.

The invoices were

…

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg: Lib Dem MPs are ‘too male and too pale’

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 6:06 pm

The Daily Telegraph reports:

The Deputy Prime Minister said he was ‘ashamed’ at the lack of women Lib Dem MPs and their absence from the Coalition cabinet.

“It is a very serious problem,” he told an audience at Cheltenham Literature Festival.

“It is a source of endless shame to me that the Liberal Democrat party I lead, which believes in the diversity of Great Britain in gender and everything else does not represent contemporary Britain in Parliament.

“We are too male and too pale.”

Only seven of the current 57 Lib Dem MPs are female. The Conservatives have 49 women MPs, while Labour have 81.

Earlier

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Ten tips for running a better local party AGM

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 11:50 am

Despite the weather’s recent best efforts to pretend we are currently in June and in the south of France, the encroaching nights mean that local party AGM season is nearly upon us.

To help local parties get the most out of them, I’ve written in conjunction with London Liberal Democrats a simple factsheet giving 10 tips to lift an AGM from being a boring, business meeting that no-one comes to into an interesting and successful event. Though written for London, the tips are applicable elsewhere.

Hope you find it useful – and of course please do share this post (or this pdf) with whoever is involved in organising the AGM in your own local party.

Continue reading »
Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

MOO giveaway with Liberal Democrat Voice

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 9:50 am

We’re pleased to be working alongside the team at MOO in offering a competition to win some great MOO products for our readers. The grand prize winner will get 100 of MOO’s business cards (a product which I’ve been a happy user of for many years) and a ShowCase business card holder. Two runners up will be receiving 100 business cards each.

Who is MOO?

In case you’ve not come across MOO before, they are business card printing experts, but also do stickers, greeting cards, MiniCards, labels and …

Continue reading »
Posted in Site news | Tagged | 36 Comments
Mark Pack

Michael Meacher has me confused over individual electoral registration

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 7:50 am

Dear Michael Meacher,

I’m puzzled by your views on individual electoral registration. You call it “insidious”, “underhand”, “utterly anti-democratic” and “Tory”. Yet the legislation for it was introduced by a Labour government, Labour’s 2010 manifesto boasted about Labour’s achievement in passing that legislation and – as far as I can see – you didn’t rebel once over the legislation when it was going through Parliament.

Of course there are issues about whether or not electoral registration should be voluntary and whether the annual canvass should be kept in 2014, but those are not the target of your written ire. Your …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

What’s the point of switching to individual electoral registration?

By Mark Pack | Sun 9th October 2011 - 5:50 pm

As some background to the current debates, I thought it useful to revive and update an old post of my on the subject as there has been relatively little coverage of the reasons why it has been supported by all parties (including Labour, who even talked up their achievement in introducing the first legislation for individual electoral registration before 2010, in their last general election manifesto).

The current electoral registration system is based on one registration form being delivered to each household, with the head of the household completing the form on behalf of everyone there and sending it back (“household …

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Campaign Corner: What to do on the doorstep

By Mark Pack | Sun 9th October 2011 - 3:50 pm

Welcome to a new series of posts, each of which will look to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Thanks to Louise Shaw for prompting the idea and also supplying some of the questions I’ll be using in the next few weeks. Do get in touch if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: Not many people in my local party like canvassing and when we go door knocking the ‘outs’ always seem to win by a mile. How can we make better use of our time?

1. Get more people door knocking: …

Continue reading »
Posted in Campaign Corner | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Oyster Card survey shows heavy interest in cutting coverage or raising prices

By Mark Pack | Sat 8th October 2011 - 10:25 am

During the week I got an email in my inbox asking me to take part in a survey on behalf of the Passenger Demand Forecasting Council (“a body consisting of Transport for London and other industry bodies”) about the future of the Oyster touch in/touch out travel card used in London.

The email went a little overboard in emphasising that the survey was just about finding out people’s attitudes and possible future behaviour and that there are no current plans etc etc. To which my obvious response was to wonder why they would be so keen to say this…

And looking through …

Continue reading »
Posted in London | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Should the Liberal Democrats contest police commissioner elections?

By Mark Pack | Sat 8th October 2011 - 8:55 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 550 party members responded, and we’re currently publishing the full results.

Yes is the answer according to the latest Liberal Democrat Voice survey of party members:

Support: 57%
Oppose: 24%
Net: 33% in favour

The party has been putting in place the necessary procedures to fight these elections, such as making decision over candidate selection rules. However many influential voices have also been raised against the party putting up candidates and with the delay in the …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • David Allen
    A clear, credible, principled strategy from the Yorkists! Makes a welcome change. Sadly, followed by twenty below-the-line posts, providing nearly twenty ve...
  • Simon McGrath
    so we get a permanant increase in costs for these subsidies based on ( alleged ) windfall profits. Its another big increase in spending -how is it to be paid ...
  • Peter Davies
    @Kira CollinsThat assumes we want to help people more with their energy bills than with all the other bills they may be struggling with. There is no reason why ...
  • Rob Heale
    Agree that we need to focus on strategy and have clearer messaging:- 1. We MUST prioritise membership recruitment in all we do, including PPB's, most leaflets...
  • Kira Collins
    Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...