Adnan, a young Syrian professional in his thirties, tells of his experience as one of hundreds detained in President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on dissent…
The whole experience is built around humiliation. We were blindfolded. We were shouted at. We were only allowed to the toilet once a day, for three seconds. We had to strip down to our underwear and someone would stand outside the door counting. If you didn’t finish within three seconds you were beaten. I often didn’t go; I was too worried. We were given water and food, but you don’t want to drink when
A councillor has quit the Labour party and told the Mercury that the Leicester group is riven by splits and factions.
A few days ago, local Labour councillor Ramila Shah did something she had been longing to do for two years. She cancelled her Labour Party membership.
It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders, she says. Finally, she felt, no more sniping. No more splits. No more bitching and backbiting.
This is a story of politics in Leicester – of a Labour group with such a large ruling majority that, according to Coun Shah, it is riven by
Today’s statistic is courtesy of the Office of National Statistics and their video podcasts (a rather unpublicised source of information given its clarity, relevance and yet low viewership figures).
This graph looks at pension savings for the age group 54 – 64 held by households and sorts households into deciles based on how much savings they have (not, as is often the case with similar graphs, by income or expenditure). As you can see the 10% of households with the most household saving actually have almost half of all household savings:
Jon Ashworth, Labour candidate for the Leicester South by-election (and, as Jonathan Ashworth, Labour leader Ed Miliband’s Head of Party Relations) is not exactly trying hard to back his ex-boss’s attempts to win over the Labour Party to AV. Asked whether or not he backed AV he told a public meeting:
Frankly, I don’t really care – I’ve got more important things to think about.
There are some good and genuine electoral reform campaigners in the Labour Party, but this dismissive comment from someone who – if there had been no by-election – would after all have been Head of …
Nick Robinson has returned to the radio for a second series of his short portraits of British Prime Ministers and in the list this time is Earl (Charles) Grey, one of the figures I’ve previously highlighted as a forgotten Liberal hero.
Robinson’s piece is history as light entertainment – so it starts off with the connection between Grey and the tea that we now know as Earl Grey and then moves on to his high profile affair before getting stuck into the more serious aspects of his record. But as a quick canter through his life in a style that …
I’ve been talking on the Pod Delusion again this week, this time about some of the processes involved in standing for election to your local council. It’s more complicated than some people realise, and my process piece explains some of the intricacies.
Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today – bar charts. Or, more precisely: why bar charts? Not, why push tactical voting and ‘we can win here’ messages, but why bar charts rather than pie charts, line graphs, scatter graphs or any of the myriad of other graphical devices available?
Scott Colvin’s book has a delightful title and does a good job of living up to the high expectations it sets. Though there are plenty of books about politics in general and also about organising community campaigns, what Colvin’s book tries to do is carve out a niche by looking specifically at how to influence politicians and (despite their omission from the title) businesses. Whether it’s saving a local Post Office or dealing with a customer service disaster from an airline, his book sets out how to go about getting the result you want.
That’s the Evening Standard headline about the latest tragedy in the London Borough of Haringey, home already to two of the most shocking and notorious failures in child protection in recent years:
A mother has been jailed for the abuse of 10 children in her care in Haringey, the borough at the centre of the Baby P scandal.
She left the children starving, smelly, crawling with head lice and covered in ingrained dirt.
One child was so hungry that when a foster carer fed her she pressed the milk bottle hard against her mouth, leaving a red mark. The skin beneath her
Yup, you read that right. No need to wait until the referendum. No need even for there to be a Yes vote in the referendum. For this week sees the start of voting for a new Parliamentarian, elected by the alternative vote.
For Wednesday sees ballot papers being issued that curiosity of an election, a by-election for the hereditary peers in the House of Lords. (Weird isn’t it how it’s the hereditaries get a form of election?) Elected by the alternative vote.
This follows the death earlier this year of Lord Monson, and as he was a Crossbencher his replacement will …
1. What’s your formative political memory?
The 2005 election was the one I was probably first properly aware of as a 15/16 year-old. I remember reading the Liberal Democrat manifesto and seeing posters up in my area (mainly Labour, though I’m pleased to say that’s no longer true, and orange diamonds are now far more pervasive during election campaigns).
2. When did you start blogging?
September 2009.
3. Why did you start blogging?
I’d been reading various blogs for a while, and had previously thought about starting my own, but the catalyst was probably chatting to a number of bloggers at Lib Dem Voice’s BOTY awards at the 2009 conference.
4. What five words would you use to describe your blog?
Straightforward, rational and occasionally random.
5. What five words would you use to describe your political views?
In every possible way: liberal.
6. Which post have you most liked writing in the last year (and why)?
Attending and blogging about the court case which ultimately led to Phil Woolas being kicked out of Parliament was obviously quite an experience, and I also particularly liked writing this post on a rather daft claim by Ed Balls, which was very short and simple but which, I think, demonstrates the value of blogging as a medium.
7. Which post have you most liked reading in the last year (and why)?
I hope the rules can be bent, as this was just over a year ago, but I found this post by Stephen here on Lib Dem Voice on why Clegg should rule out a coalition (!) extremely compelling. It was faultless in its logic, and I agreed with Stephen at the time, but its arguments were based on a number of assumptions which we all made but which ultimately proved to be false (particularly that the Conservatives would never give enough ground, including on electoral reform, to ever make a coalition even remotely possible). Speculating on what might have been had the Lib Dem leadership followed Stephen’s advice is an interesting game, and I can’t help coming to the conclusion that we would now be in a (perhaps significantly) worse position than that which we are currently in.
8. What’s your favourite YouTube clip?
My Twitter followers won’t be surprised that I’ve picked this clip from the magnificent West Wing, the script-writing and acting in which demonstrate just why the show is so brilliant.
I’ve mixed feelings about celebrities endorsing a campaign one way or the other. They certainly should be as free as the rest of us to express their views in public, but unless the cause of their celebrity gives them a particular expertise in the subject there’s no particular reason to be swayed by their views beyond those of anyone else.
However, there is one other exception to this, which is when a celebrity is so at least in part because they are an expert communicator – and then getting them to argue a case and so make use of their communications skills makes a lot of sense.
The initial promise of Canadian Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s campaign is fading badly as polling day approaches on Canada and one of the main reasons is one very familiar to British politics. It’s the failure to have a good answer to the question, “What would you do in a hung Parliament?”
As Adam Radwanski puts it The Globe and Mail when looking at how Ignatieff and Conservative Premier Stephen Harper are faring:
If the two men were being graded by civics teachers, Mr. Ignatieff would indeed be winning. His explanation of how another Conservative minority would work – the need
It’s not quite Jeremy Paxman vs Michael Howard, but there’s a definite echo of it with Adam Boulton’s repeated questioning and Baroness Warsi’s unwillingness to answer. So if you’ve missed it doing the rounds on Twitter and Facebook so far, here it is to enjoy (or is that suffer?):
22 voting theory specialists voted to select the “best voting procedure” to elect one out of three or more candidates.
Each voter chose from a list of 18 nominated voting procedures as many as she/he approved of. From a possible maximum of 22 votes, First Past The Post (FPTP) – also known as Plurality Voting – received no votes. Approval Voting won the contest with 15 votes. The Alternative Vote (AV) took second place with 10 votes.
I noticed that around half the recent stories about phone hacking on the Guardian website with photos feature a photograph of Sienna Miller. Does she make up around half of all the people whose phones were hacked?
Yesterday, David Cameron took up the issue of people on incapacity benefits, claiming that “We are finding a large number of people who are on incapacity benefit because of drink problems, alcohol problems or problems with weight and diet” (see footage here).
There’s only one problem with the claim.
He said “a large number”. Yet the Department for Work and Pension’s own figures show that it’s less than one in twenty of people who are on incapacity benefit for those reasons (3.9%).
So if 3.9% is “a large number”, what does that make the 96.1%? A huge, enormous, gigantic, big, …
A guide to the city mayoral election has been published without information about one of the leading candidates.
Tory Ross Grant is missing from the Your Vote Matters booklet, which has been sent to all 229,777 voters in the city.
The 11 people hoping to be elected mayor were invited to pay £250 to submit an address with details about themselves, their policies and why people should vote for them.
Councillor Grant did not provide any information and has been excluded …
He declined to tell the Leicester Mercury why he failed to submit anything for the booklet but it is
We’re trying something a little different today – three much longer posts than usual, all on the same policy theme. As the party currently has an Information Technology and Intellectual Policy Working Group at work, we’ve picked the same topic for today’s theme.
In a piece for Prospect magazine, published today, former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy gives his backing to the coalition government. Though Kennedy didn’t vote in favour of the coalition last May, abstaining instead, he now backs it:
I admit that this coalition wasn’t exactly my preferred option. I’ve always considered myself in the reforming, centre-left tradition, so a centre-right arrangement puts my compass in a spin … But those of us who genuinely wanted to explore other routes—from a rainbow coalition to a minority tory administration— were sunk when figures like David Blunkett and John Reid were so against
Radion 4’s Any Questions? is being recorded this Friday at the Brick Lane Music Hall in Silvertwon, London. Tickets for this show are normally in short supply, but thanks to it being a bank holiday weekend a few are still available. So if you are interested in going to see the show contact the Brick Lane Music hall for tickets – 020 7511 6655 and [email protected].
The show is live at 8pm on Friday 22nd April, arrive at 6.45 to submit questions. The BLMH is at 443 North Woolwich Road, Silvertown, E16 2DA.
Controversial Conservative peer Michael Ashcroft has done campaigners in all parties a service with the frankness of his book on the 2010 general election, Minority Verdict.
Though a short book, it contains some details of how the Conservative Party went about targeting swing voters in swing seats for last year’s contest. Aside from the subject’s inherent interest, this particularly caught my eye because part of what he recounts is the Conservative equivalent of what I was doing when working for the Liberal Democrats for much of the last Parliament.
The Conservatives took Mosaic data and then ran a detailed and expensive polling …
I’ve long been sceptical about the scope for online fundraising in British politics. That’s partly because I’ve seen a sequence of American political consultants come to the UK, say they know much better than Brits, promise lots and then raise not very much – across the political spectrum. I’ve also seen a sequence of people from Britain go, “Oooh! American! Shiny! Must be better!”, promise lots and then raise not very much – again, across the political spectrum.
Having been responsible for (along with Ashley Lumsden and Martin Tod) the first candidate website in the UK to take credit card donations, …
Back in the internet boom at the turn of the century, one of the popular debates was whether the internet would provide exciting new access to a diverse range of information or whether the internet’s ability to give you far more power over what information you see or read would result in a narrowing of horizons as people just go for what they already know and what they already agree with.
Cass Sunstein in particular made the case for that latter pessimistic view very forcefully in his Republic.com book and it’s a pattern you see often in, for example, choices over political blog readership where supporters of different parties particularly congregate on blogs that take similar lines.
Now, however, researchers have taken a close look at how news is shared on Twitter and come up with a rather more positive finding:
Indirect media exposure increases the diversity of political opinions seen by users: between 60-98% of the users who directly followed media sources with only a single political leaning (left, right, or center) are indirectly exposedto media sources with a different political leaning. In orderto reach this conclusion, we use public classification of news sources and infer the political preference of every audience member. One can only speculate about the effect of political diversity, because users do not necessarily read the complete Twitter timeline nor do they always prefer receiving diverse political opinions (Munson and Resnick 2010). Nonetheless our results show the power of social media, in that users are exposed to information they did not know they were interested in, serendipitously.
One of their other findings is that for all Twitter’s newness, the sources of information are mainly fairly traditional:
There is much about the media landscape in Twitter that is ‘old media’. Established media outlets retain the role of publishing news and stories without much interaction with readers. However, the features of the ‘new media’ age are reflected in the way journalists and audience engage in new communication patterns, communicating with each other directly, and tapping into breaking news.
With an impressive cast of contributors, including Peter Riddell, Carolyn Quinn and Michael White, the book has plenty of insider information, presented usually in the style of lively anecdotal chats. This is not a tedious career advice book nor a studious academic tone but rather something that gives a flavour of what it is like to be a political journalist and how to get there.
MP Adam Holloway’s contribution is the one that turns sour on political journalism, explaining how he became so disillusioned with coverage of himself that he not only ceased writing a column for the local newspaper but also stopped sending out local news releases.
Warren Bradley, leader of the Liberal Democrat group in Liverpool, has stood down as leader today after allegations about forgery on election paperwork for this May’s council elections.
His leadership was plunged into crisis after revelations today that he had witnessed an election nomination for his teenage son Daniel for the forthcoming local elections.
The candidate himself must also sign the form but the teenager has said he did not want to stand and that his own signature on the form is “a fake”.
The revelation leaves Cllr Bradley, 44, facing questions as to who he witnessed signing
It’s almost become a political cliché to quote the (apparently) (appallingly) (allegedly) low number of black students being accepted to Oxford and Cambridge Universities. But for all the widespread quoting of those numbers, there is very little done usually to put the numbers in context.
So here’s a simple chart that compares the actual admission figures for black students with what they would be if if the proportion of acceptances who are black was the same as the proportion of people who take GCSEs who are black or if it was the same as the proportion of people who get three As at A-level and are black:
Peter Davies @Kira Collins You seem to have missed the bit about raising tax allowances. That primarily helps those on low wages....
David Wright According to this well-argued article (by Lib Dem councillor Mark Ellis), a simple wealth tax wouldn't work, but tax on TRANSFER of wealth could, if current tax...
Kira Collins @Peter Martin
“ We should be encouraging them to use less energy. To do that, you should put standard rate VAT on energy and use the money to raise pensions,...
Simon Banks Why are we on the other side from the Tories? Because they stand for every kind of inequality, the gutting of local government and a narrow nationalism. We stan...
expats Vince Cable....Gordon Brown introduced formal fiscal rules in 1997 alongside the operational independence of the Bank of England: essentially, a commitment to b...
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Chris Isaak: Wicked Game
Brexit and summer holidays
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Peter Davies 
David Wright 
Kira Collins 
Simon Banks 
expats 