On Wednesday evening I went to a Frontline Club event titled Who is winning the media war in Afghanistan? and was reminded of the way what journalists call “the kinetic stuff” (that is soldiers and shooting to you and me) dominates mainstream TV footage. The set of clips shown to set the scene at the start of the event were all of the kinetic kind and although during the event some journalists made the point that other types of footage is also used – they also conceded that those other reports are not the ones which grab the public …
Speaking at tonight’s Yes to Reform! rally at the Liverpool LibDem conference, Nick Clegg was joined by Jo Swinson MP, former independent MP Martin Bell, actor Art Malek and others. You can also now download campaign materials and find out more about the Fairer Votes Referendum at www.libdems.org.uk/fairervotes.
This was the text of Nick’s speech:
The last few months have been some of the most remarkable in the history of our party. I’m proud that for the first time in our party’s history Liberal Democrats will be addressing a party conference as Secretaries of State and government ministers. And it’s fantastic to …
Earlier today the Liberal Democrats kicked off the process to revise the party’s policy on information technology and intellectual property with a consultation session at the party’s Liverpool conference. Technology is also a theme explored in the Litmus newspaper jointly produced by Lib Dem Voice, Left Foot Forward and Conservative Home, with pieces from Tom Watson, Stephan Shakespeare and Richard Allan on this topic. We’ve reproduced Richard’s piece below and you can read the full newspaper either via the hard copies in conference registration packs or online at www.litmustest.org.
I’ve decided which political cliché I most hate. It’s “it would send a strong signal…” along with its sibling “it would send the wrong signal” and its cousin “it would send the wrong message”.
Government is not just about money and regulation decisions; inspiring, questioning, warning and all manner of rhetoric have their role.
But don’t call for money or regulations just to signal something.
If the substance is right, justify the money or regulations on those grounds. And if you only want to send a signal, don’t summon up the law makers or accountants – summon up a good speech writer. If …
The local Labour party in Bury has suspended one of their councillors, Tamoor Tariq, and Manchester police are investigating following the discovery of a series of confidential electoral documents dumped in Brandlesholme.
Election canvas sheets containing hundreds of names and addresses of Redvales residents and details of how they intended to vote at the last election — postal General Election ballot papers — a confidential letter from the Governors of the Derby High School — documents and letters addressed to Cllr Tariq at his home in Gigg Lane, Bury — unopened letters addressed to
Today’s Guardian is reporting that David Miliband,
… would like to persuade Nick Clegg to pull out of plans for a referendum on the alternative vote next May.
Instead, Miliband wants the Liberal Democrat leader to consider his proposal of a joint referendum on the House of Commons voting system and an elected House of Lords on the same day – something Miliband has called a democracy day.
Pause for a moment to recall that the Conservatives have agreed to introduce elections for the House of Lords, and by Proportional Representation no less.
Welcome to a series where old posts are revived for a second outing for reasons such as their subject has become topical again, they have aged well but were first posted when the site’s readership was only a tenth or less of what it is currently or they got published and the site crashed, hiding the finest words of wisdom behind an incomprehensible error message. Today’s is a comment Gordon Brown made in 1997 that now, looking back after his Premiership, looks all too prescient about his own time at the top.
Speaking to Paddy Ashdown in 1997, Gordon Brown said:
It’s a fair bet that much of the media coverage of Liberal Democrat conference will be of the form ‘THEY’RE DOOMED!’, with the more subtle coverage for the more discerning journalists being ‘Are they doomed?’.
That has, after all, been the standard media fare since long before the Coalition, since before Nick Clegg became an MP, since before David Cameron became an MP, since before Tony Blair become Labour leader and since before John Major became Prime Minister. My money isn’t on the old standard formula changing this time round for …
An opinion poll of over 500 Liberal Democrat party members carried out by YouGov for Greenpeace has found that 7% said they supported a like-for-like replacement of Trident.
The key question asked was:
As you may know, there is currently debate about whether or not the UK should replace its Trident nuclear weapons system. Current policy is to replace the Trident submarines with a new fleet of boats, and to replace the ballistic nuclear missiles they carry at a later date. Which of the following options would you favour most?
Replace Trident with a broadly comparable system: 7%
Replace Trident with a cheaper system: …
In a statement to Parliament yesterday, Mark Harper (Minister for Constitutional Reform) announced that the Government will speed up the introduction of individual electoral registration by axing Labour’s plans for an interim phase of voluntary individual registration. Instead, individual electoral registration will be introduced in 2014.
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
The BBC is reporting that the Government is set to put off a decision on replacing Trident until after the next general election. This move would both assist government finances over this Parliament and would sidestep the division on the Trident in the coalition which pits Liberal Democrats and some Conservatives against Defence Secretary Liam Fox and other Conservatives.
Nicolas Sireau’s study of the Make Poverty History campaign follows the campaign through its creation and then year of existence in 2005. Sireau analyses a number of tensions in the campaign, in particular between those from a marketing and branding background versus those sceptical of such corporate processes and between those who took an insider or moderate approach to the campaign – seeking to win over political decision makers – and those who took …
The Commons public administration committee, chaired by Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, has launched an inquiry into “What ministers do?”
The MPs are investigating whether there are too many ministers, what they actually do, whether they should be appointed from Parliament or outside and the impact that the number of ministers has on the public purse and effective government if the number of MPs is cut from 650 to 600.
Mr Jenkin added: “Clearly if the House of Commons gets smaller and the number of paid ministers increases or stays the same, it means that
Last week Malcolm Jack, the Clerk of the House of Commons, got a little flurry of media coverage for his evidence before a Parliamentary committee considering the proposed legislation for fixed-term Parliaments. “Parts of the government’s plans to bring in fixed-term parliaments are vulnerable to legal challenge” was how the BBC reported it.
It is understandable why that got the headlines, but lurking in the detail are important questions about how Parliament operates and whether its administration is competent. Jack’s evidence, and concerns about the legislation, really fall into three parts.
First, as might be expected from an official whose …
Welcome to another in my occasional series on useful, interesting or controversial findings from academic studies. Today it is a study into the impact of public service broadcasting which looked at the US, the UK, Denmark and Finland.
These four countries were chosen because Denmark and Finland have a very strong TV public service approach, the US close to a pure-market based system and the UK is somewhere in-between.
TV news in Denmark and Finland was more likely to have hard news (“news reports about topics such as politics, public administration, the economy and science”), with the US and UK lower. Denmark …
Monday sees the start of a court case against Labour MP Phil Woolas alleging false statements were made about his Liberal Democrat opponent, Elwyn Watkins, during the general election earlier this year.
The case will involve a court judging on how far it is acceptable to go in very robust election literature and involves the rarely used provision in Section 106 of the 1983 Representation of the People Act which covers false statements about candidates:
(1) A person who, or any director of any body or association corporate which—
(a) before or during an election,
(b) for the purpose of affecting the return of
Here on Liberal Democrat Voice we’ve often covered the work of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), including the motion being proposed at party conference on it and a response to motion piece from the PCC itself.
It isn’t only on Liberal Democrat Voice that the PCC has been given a full column to express its views. Last week’s edition of the party’s newspaper, Liberal Democrat News, also contained a column from the Press Complaints Commission, this time in the form of its chair Baroness Buscombe.
On reading it I was moved to pen the following letter, which appears in the …
A YouGov poll commissioned by The Sun and carried out over Monday / Tuesday finds:
The editor of the News of the World at the time, Andy Coulson, denied knowledge of the phone tapping operation, but accepted the “ultimate responsibility” as editor and resigned. He has since taken a job as David Cameron’s Director of Communications. There have recently been allegations from former employees of the News of the World that phone tapping was more widespread at the News of the World and that Andy Coulson was personally aware of the tapping. Mr Coulson has denied allegations that he was …
A quick update about Walsall Conservative councillor Mohammed Munir, whose suspension from the party after postal vote fraud allegations were made we previously covered. His case has now gone to court and he was found innocent.
Yes to Fairer Votes, the group being created to campaign for a yes vote in the electoral reform referendum, has unveiled its steering committee:
Pam Giddy, Chair John Sharkey, Vice Chair (and former chair of the Liberal Democrat general election campaign) Neal Lawson, Compass Peter Facey, Unlock Democracy Willie Sullivan, Electoral Reform Society Carina Trimingham, Electoral Reform Society
The initial version of the campaign website is also up and running at www.yestofairervotes.org – and you can sign up to support the campaign and offer your help.
I read your speech from Thursday to the Committee on Standards in Public Life with interest. It is good to see the progress being made in many areas of political reform, including the commitment made in the speech that, “in the New Year we will produce draft legislation to complete the modernization of the House of Lords”.
Much else too in the speech was good to read, but I think you are missing an important issue about how the changes to election expense rules introduced for the 2010 general election are driving political parties in the wrong direction.
Welcome to a series where old posts are revived for a second outing for reasons such as their subject has become topical again, they have aged well but were first posted when the site’s readership was only a tenth or less of what it is currently or they got published and the site crashed, hiding the finest words of wisdom behind an incomprehensible error message. Today’s is a review of a book first published in 2008 which is still going strong.
Should politicians blog? Does it matter if a local party has a website that allows comments or not? Is it …
Two vacancies on the soon to be abolished Audit Commission have just been advertised, seeking people willing to do 3 days a month work in return for an annual salary of £14,358.
That generous salary for someone helping to head up a body aimed at ensuring value for money might raise eyebrows at any time, but given that the Audit Commission’s audit practice is due to be moved into private hands in two years time it is particularly generous. Because who is going to …
A quick update on my post about Brighton Green councillor Jason Kitcat, who is facing disciplinary action over putting footage of a council meeting up on YouTube. He’s posted the latest news over on his blog, and it is good to see that he is getting support from across the political spectrum:
As Ed Maxfield wrote about last month, the LibDem conference in Liverpool will see a consultation session on the party’s strategy and priorities. Penned by Gordon Lishman, the paper is a good starting point for debate and goes through the obvious yet important questions, such as how does being in government change the party’s approach. Being a paper from Gordon it also places many of the questions in a broader context, with nods towards history, community politics and the variations in political perspective across the UK.
Reading through it, there was one section I found particularly welcome, and one rather too conventional.
The particularly welcome section was this:
How can we create a liberal movement?
The liberal movement goes beyond party, asserting our leadership on a wide range of issues and themes, including climate change; civil liberty, equality and human rights; political reform; rural affairs; and many more. This is partly a matter of working with other campaigning organisations, think‐tanks and popular movements where our goals coincide; it should also involve Liberal Democrats in leadership of such organisations: what better role for Parliamentarians outside government and other competent members of the Party? For instance, how do we build on Liberal Democrat overall responsibility for human rights: in the Foreign Office, Home Office and Ministry of Justice?
Gordon’s absolutely right about the need to place our electoral campaigning and our work as a political party in a wider campaigning context. The debate we will be having at conference about marriage being open to same-sex couples illustrates this. It’s a cause dear to many liberal hearts, but is by no means exclusive to Liberal Democrats. Cross-party support is often a key ingredient in securing legislative change. Moreover, the issue is not just about what Parliament does or doesn’t legislate. Parliament decides whether same-sex marriages result in the same legal entitlements as traditional marriage. What Parliament cannot directly do is make society hold same-sex marriages in the same esteem. The emotional and cultural parts of equality come from how we all feel and behave. That requires broader change and campaigning than the MPs of one party trooping through the right lobby in Parliament.
The part of the document that struck as me as far too conventional is about regional parties in England:
The English Regional Parties should have a key leadership role in supporting and motivating activists, representing the Party publicly, influencing the UK Party and ensuring that we have the right candidates in place at the right time.
Those are roles that regional parties have had for a long time and overall they have a very mixed record in many respects. The context in which regional parties operate has changed significantly. It used to be rare in most regions for there to be significant elected Liberal Democrats outside of local government. Now we have MPs and MEPs right across England, with GLA members in London too. Our membership and its perspectives has also changed, along with society more generally, with people often having looser geographic roots and interests and instead placing themselves more firmly in non-geographic communities which share particular interests. At a time too when many councils are looking to share large amounts of their back office organisation with neighbouring councils, to simply restate those roles for regional parties misses out the bigger questions of what they should be for.
Do regional parties really have a role in representing the party publicly? When there are Lib Dem MPs and MEPs in their patch could they ever hope to do so effectively? Are regional conferences best organised by many separate teams working independently in each region? How effective really are regions at maximising the number of local council candidates (a very important question in my view)? The list of questions goes on and a good review should address the role of regions rather than work on the basis that the old model is still the right one to try to make work.
One of the curious of political blogging in the UK is how male dominated it is. Although the Office of National Statistics’s figures show that the majority of bloggers in the UK are female and the majority of voters are female too, take a look through lists of Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem bloggers and you see lists that are dominated by men. The same applies with other parties and independent blogs. Political blogging in the UK is male dominated. But why?
One explanation is that UK politics overall is male dominated. Just look at the number of MPs or Cabinet …
Over on Left Foot Forward Mark Davies, a former special advisor to Jack Straw and now Director of Communications for Rethink, praises the coalition government’s approach to mental health:
Mental health is one of the defining issues of our times. Always present, rarely talked about, people affected by mental illness represent a massive group who continue to face a degree of discrimination which would trigger street protests in any other context. Nine out of ten people with mental health problems experience prejudice…
Judging by his words, the health minister Paul Burstow recognises this. In an article published in Community Care to set
There is a chance to introduce an imaginative new way of opening up the political process and public sector data to the public in the legislation currently going through Parliament to change the rules for Parliamentary boundary reviews.
As under the old rules, submitting proposals to the Boundary Commission, or commenting on their own proposals, will require access to electoral register and geographic data except for the most minor of comments (or debates over constituency names, which can generate deep passions). The better access you have to such information and the more sophisticated the computer tools you posses to manipulate it, …
Over on the Royal Navy’s website is a striking map, showing where all the navy’s main vessels are currently deployed. It’s striking for two reasons. First, it demonstrates how the current drive towards opening up government data and presenting it in visually illuminating ways is reaching all sorts of unlikely corners of the public sector. Second, twenty-five years ago that sort of openness would have been unthinkable. The security needs the navy has to meet now are very different from those of the Cold War.
David Garlick Touted as bringing power to people.
Power brought down from Govt sounds good but power still not reaching the lowest possible levels in our Communities....
Tristan Ward @ David Allen
"PFI won’t help stop the planet burning"
Who said anything about PFI - I didn't.
The private money that is building (not enough) house...
Joey Vimsante I think the EU and UK needs to support not for profit, social media platforms that put the interest of the public, vulnerable people, young people, and nation a...
Nick Baird With regard to client-side image scanning, the danger of mission creep are real, but I have other concerns. One is whether this is truly a practical and effecti...
Tara Foster Hi Simon
"Has the author not heard of girls sharing pictures with boys who then share with their friends ? of boys and girls tricked in to sharing pictures w...
That generous salary for someone helping to head up a body aimed at ensuring value for money might raise eyebrows at any time, but given that the Audit Commission’s audit practice is due to be moved into private hands in two years time it is particularly generous. Because who is going to …
Gordon’s absolutely right about the need to place our electoral campaigning and our work as a political party in a wider campaigning context. The debate we will be having at conference about marriage being open to same-sex couples illustrates this. It’s a cause dear to many liberal hearts, but is by no means exclusive to Liberal Democrats. Cross-party support is often a key ingredient in securing legislative change. Moreover, the issue is not just about what Parliament does or doesn’t legislate. Parliament decides whether same-sex marriages result in the same legal entitlements as traditional marriage. What Parliament cannot directly do is make society hold same-sex marriages in the same esteem. The emotional and cultural parts of equality come from how we all feel and behave. That requires broader change and campaigning than the MPs of one party trooping through the right lobby in Parliament.
…
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Brechtian television: Leo McKern in Galileo (1964)
Good news on political donations?
Conference booked
Are Labour going to cross another red line?
David Garlick 
Tristan Ward 
Joey Vimsante 
Nick Baird 
Tara Foster 