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

And another two peers quit the Lords rather than pay full tax

By Mark Pack | Tue 6th July 2010 - 8:54 pm

I’d mentioned previously that Conservative peers McAlpine and Laidlaw have chosen to quit the Lords rather than have to end their non-dom tax status. With the deadline for making a final decision approaching they have been joined by a third Conservative peer – Lord Bagri – and a crossbencher – Baroness Dunn.

A fourth Conservative peer, Lord Ashcroft, has instead given up his non-dom status as has the Labour peer, Lord Paul.

UPDATE: Lord Foster has also quit the Lords in order to preserve his tax status, though from the Parliamentary records it doesn’t looks as if he was ever …

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Mark Pack

Want to win an election? Not sure how to use the internet?

By Mark Pack | Tue 6th July 2010 - 11:40 am

In the early twentieth century, large public meetings and lengthy public speeches were expected of – and needed by – Parliamentary candidates fighting vigorous campaigns. A century on, candidates fighting vigorous campaigns frequently get by without organising any public meetings or giving any public speeches longer than a few minutes of opening remarks at a local organisation’s hustings.

Yet although these forms of personal, direct contact between candidate and voter have declined sharply over the last century, the opportunities for such contact via the internet have increased sharply in the last few years.

We are already at the stage where voters find …

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Mark Pack

Ex-Tory councillor convicted of proxy vote fraud

By Mark Pack | Mon 5th July 2010 - 11:44 pm

An update on Mohammed Saghir, the former Conservative councillor in Calderdale who went on trial for electoral fraud earlier this year:

has been found guilty of election fraud at Bradford Crown Court.

Mohammed Saghir, 63, of Gibbet Street, Halifax, applied for five proxy votes in other people’s names in the May 2008 local election…

Saghir, who did not attend court for his trial, is thought to be in Pakistan. His son, Shakar, was standing as an independent candidate in the election. (Halifax Evening Courier)

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Mark Pack

The Freedom Bill: this time the consultation is for real, but is it better?

By Mark Pack | Mon 5th July 2010 - 10:20 am

The Freedom Bill (previously known as the Great Repeal Bill) has been a Liberal Democrat policy for some time and now that we’re in coalition government it’s become the Your Freedom initiative – an online consultation to identify laws to repeal.

In two respects this is good news – online consultation is becoming more of a habit for government and it’s also becoming a welcome pattern to see long-standing Liberal Democrat demands move towards actual implementation by government.

But in one respect I think the Your Freedom site does not address a key issue as well as the party did when …

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Posted in Online politics and Op-eds | Tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Blog sues pollster in row over questionable polls

By Mark Pack | Sun 4th July 2010 - 6:35 pm

The news is from the US and allows people in Britain to give themselves a quick pat on the back because from what’s come out so far it very much looks as if the British rules on polling transparency would stop any similar situation arising (at least as far as polls commissioned from British Polling Council members go):

I’ve obtained a copy of the lawsuit that Daily Kos just filed against Research 2000, and this going to get nastier than you thought.

The suit contains striking new details about Research 2000’s alleged reluctance to release its raw data and its alleged money

…

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Posted in Polls | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Chris Fox and Lorely Burt continue in post

By Mark Pack | Sun 4th July 2010 - 10:50 am

Chris Fox, the party’s interim Chief Executive, has been appointed to the post permanently whilst Lorely Burt, chair of the Parliamentary Party (in the Commons) has been re-elected unopposed. Best of luck to them both.

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Government 100% committed to completing the journey to LGB and T equality

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd July 2010 - 11:04 pm

A news release from the Home Office brings the news:

Home Office Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone today set out the Government’s ambitious plans to tackle homophobia and transphobia and promote equal rights for all.

Speaking to the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) LGB and T conference ahead of Pride London 2010, the Lynne Featherstone stressed that the battle for equality is far from over and promised that the Government would do everything in its power to protect LGB and T people from discrimination.

The Minister highlighted the Government’s plan of action for the LGB and T community – the first of its kind to …

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Mark Pack

Why budget maths makes me thinks of Escher

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd July 2010 - 12:50 pm

A small state is smaller than a big state, right?

But now bear with me.

Take a glance at the heated rhetoric coming from Labour ranks about how the coalition government is hell bent on a right wing crusade to slash the size of the state.

Then consider this. The coalition’s spending plans will see public spending in 2015-16 at a fraction under 40% of GDP.

And you know what? That’s higher than it was under Labour in 1997-98 and in all the intervening years through to, and including, 2003-04. (See the graph here from Peter Hoskin.)

So the horrible dreadful right-wing small state still …

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Mark Pack

Labour’s dinosaur tendency rides again

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd July 2010 - 8:55 am

Many, many years ago John Gilbert, then a Labour MP, gained widespread respect across the political spectrum for his penetrating questioning of the government over the Westland helicopter crisis. But that was then and now he’s a politician of a rather different type as shown by his contribution to the debate on Lords reform held earlier in the week:

We come to the question of who will be elected to come here . You would get the sort of oik – for Hansard’s benefit, oik is spelt OIK – that could not get into the Commons, Europe, the Scottish Parliament

…

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Posted in Parliament | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Lib Dems in the news

By Mark Pack | Thu 1st July 2010 - 8:50 am

Willie Rennie has stopped being a Special Advisor and is reported to be planning to run for the Scottish Parliament.

Welsh Assembly member Mick Bates has pleaded not guilty to assault charges.

Posted in News | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Opening up data: the experience with election data

By Mark Pack | Wed 30th June 2010 - 2:20 pm

A review has just been published into the ‘Open Election Data’ project, which was an attempt to make local election results available from councils in a format which would allow others to collate, republish, analyse or otherwise use the data. (At the moment the data is often put online in very inaccessible and inconsistent ways – e.g. one council might have election results in a pdf, another in a graphic file, another as text on the page and so on.)

The list of lessons learnt from the project casts a wider light on why the public sector so often seems …

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Mark Pack

Julian Huppert elected to Federal Policy Committee

By Mark Pack | Wed 30th June 2010 - 9:20 am

Julian Huppert, David Howarth’s successor as MP for Cambridge, has been elected to the party’s Federal Policy Committee (FPC). Julian is rather in the Evan Harris mode in that he’s very interested in (and knowledgeable about) scientific issues, keen to see evidence properly scrutinised, likely to be an active participant in the FPC’s work and, in as much as the labels make sense, rather more of a social liberal than an economic one.

You can follow Julian on Twitter at @julianhuppert.

Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Met set to lose £5m from collapse of Icelandic bank

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th June 2010 - 12:20 pm

London’s Metropolitan Policy Authority had £30m deposited with Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank which collapsed in late 2008. Combing through some of the latest financial information from the MPA, it’s clear that the MPA is now expecting (at best) to get 83% of that back, leaving the police with a £5.1m loss.

Ouch. Though not so ouch as to have stopped the £2m a year spent on chauffeur-driven cars for senior Met officers who don’t have a security need for one.

(To put these numbers in some context: the annual cost of a police constable is c.£60,000.)

Posted in London | Tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Preparing for the AV referendum: get asking

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th June 2010 - 10:20 am

With an AV referendum coming (most likely in the spring), there is plenty that local parties can already be doing to help win the referendum. I’ve already talked about the importance of fielding more local election candidates, so today’s post is about starting to ask questions of the public.

It’s never too early to start gathering voting intention data, even if you don’t yet know the exact candidate line-up, and likewise it’s never too early to start gathering referendum voting intentions, even if we don’t yet know the exact question.

When it comes to electoral reform, opinion polls show us …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 27 Comments
Mark Pack

Should Lembit Opik be the Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor?

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th June 2010 - 9:20 am

The news that Lembit is interested in running for Mayor has produced a flurry of comment online from Liberal Democrats (such as Andrew Reeves’s piece) so over to you: what do you think?

Posted in London | Tagged and | 80 Comments
Mark Pack

Police pay damages to photojournalists

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th June 2010 - 8:50 am

The police’s problems with mistreating photographers just go on and on. Yesterday Helen reported on the latest incident – including the damning comment from a policeman who, when asked under what law he was demanding a photographer’s details, simply said “I don’t have to have any law”.

But also we have the recent news that the police are paying compensation after an incident outside the Greek Embassy in 2008 when they stopped two photojournalists taking photographs. As the Press Gazette reported,

Vallée had his camera pulled away from his face and the lens of Parkinson’s video camera was covered by

…

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Mark Pack

Two Lib Dem MPs rebel over VAT

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th June 2010 - 7:37 am

The Guardian:

The coalition faced its first rebellion last night when two Liberal Democrat MPs voted against a budget proposal to increase VAT to 20%.

Bob Russell and Mike Hancock voted with Labour to oppose the increase, which has alarmed many Lib Dems who warned during the election of a Tory VAT “bombshell”.

To shouts of “shame” from the Labour benches, the 2.5% increase in VAT from January was backed by 346 to 270, majority 76. Russell, MP for Colchester, and Hancock, MP for Porstmouth South, had earlier supported a backbench Lib Dem motion demanding a Treasury investigation into the impact on the

…

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Mark Pack

Government moves right, political agenda moves elsewhere

By Mark Pack | Mon 28th June 2010 - 9:20 am

Whether driven by circumstance or long-term plan, the reaction of David Cameron to the general election result has been an attempt to realign British politics around the centre-right, using the need to strike – and then keep an agreement – with the Liberal Democrats as a way to drag his party away from its more right-wing elements. Doubtless future biographers will spill much ink over what might have been had he got closer to the winning post on his own, or even past it, just as the question of how pluralistic Tony Blair would have been had he not got …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 77 Comments
Mark Pack

Mail blunders over Twitter, again

By Mark Pack | Sun 27th June 2010 - 7:20 pm

Fresh from the Mail’s triumph of journalism where it exposed an MP sending tweets in the middle of the night (only a pedant would point out that the Mail’s journalist read the time wrong and in fact the tweets were sent during the day), we have the Mail’s splash on how Steve Jobs may be planning to recall iPhone 4s (and again only a pedant would point out that the Mail’s journalist failed to see the words pointing out that the Twitter account is a spoof).

Makes you want to work for the Mail so you can share in …

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Mark Pack

Information Commissioner writing to Unite over its data protection approach

By Mark Pack | Sun 27th June 2010 - 11:56 am

A footnote to my post from the general election campaign, Hasn’t Charlie Whelan admitted Unite is breaking the law?. Finally, after nearly three months the Information Commissioner has ruled on the complaint and is writing to Unite to “recommend” they change their data protection registration.

As to why the Information Commission didn’t take any action whilst all the phoning was going on and instead waited until the phoning was all over, the data gathered, the data used, the votes all cast and the results decided? The Information Commissioner’s office says “Please accept my apologies”. Not quite regulation at its best.

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Mark Pack

More party I.D. figures

By Mark Pack | Sun 27th June 2010 - 10:20 am

A quick follow-up to my post with YouGov’s party I.D. figures as I’ve now got ComRes’s equivalent figures, these taken from its penultimate election poll:

Party I.D.
Labour 32.5% (YouGov), 39% (ComRes)
Conservatives 28.5% (YouGov), 35% (ComRes)
Lib Dem 12% (YouGov), 17% (ComRes)

Measuring underlying party I.D, as opposed to current voting intention, is a notoriously difficult process as people’s general political views expressed to pollsters often move closely in step with their voting intention. Therefore the differences in numbers for each party between the two pollsters are not too surprising and it is more significant that the pattern is …

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Posted in News and Polls | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Lib Dem MPs in the news

By Mark Pack | Sat 26th June 2010 - 2:20 pm

Lembit Opik is interested in becoming Mayor of London, while The Guardian has a round-up of comments from backbenchers about the Budget. Although all are anxious about one aspect or another, notably they all overall support is as with Annette Brooke:

I don’t like the budget but I dislike the economic situation we find ourselves in even more. The Lib Dems have done their utmost to address the fairness issue. In an ideal word I would not choose to put up VAT. But I was convinced, even at the hustings meeting, that the books were much worse than we

…

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Posted in Conference, London and News | Tagged , , and | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Six companies awarded contracts to develop more energy efficient lighting for homes

By Mark Pack | Sat 26th June 2010 - 12:20 pm

From the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs comes this news:

Six British companies have won support for carrying out technical feasibility studies in the first phase of a major initiative to develop more energy efficient lighting for our homes.

The £1.2m research fund, from the Technology Strategy Board and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), will help the companies to become market leaders in the best ultra energy-efficient lighting, which will contribute to reduced energy consumption in our homes.

The companies have been awarded up to £40,000 each to carry out work, over the next three months, to

…

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Mark Pack

Ideas for saving public money? The Treasury wants to hear from you

By Mark Pack | Sat 26th June 2010 - 10:20 am

The Treasury has launched a website asking for evidence from the frontline about how public spending can be saved:

This week’s Budget set out a 25 per cent cut in spending for most departments over four years. Now, we want you to help us find those savings so we can cut public spending in a way that is fair and responsible. You work on the frontline of public services. You know where things are working well, where the waste is, and where we can re-think things so that we get better services for less money.

Share your idea with us. Either one

…

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Posted in News | 78 Comments
Mark Pack

SNP ends legal challenge over election debate

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th June 2010 - 8:49 pm

The Press Gazette reports:

The Scottish National Party has dropped its legal challenge against the BBC’s decision not to allow its leader Alex Salmond to appear in its televised debate in the run-up to the general election.

A judicial review of the matter was scheduled to be heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

You can read the full story here.

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Mark Pack

Scope calls for online voting to assist disabled voters

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th June 2010 - 4:20 pm

The BBC reports:

Online voting should be introduced to assist disabled voters after access to polling stations failed to improve for this year’s election, a charity said.

A Scope survey suggested more than two thirds of the general election polling stations failed basic access tests.

Ms Scott said the country’s voting system “isn’t working for other voters either,” demonstrated by “scores of people queuing outside polling stations” at the recent general election.

“Over the last decade there has been next to no improvement in the overall accessibility of polling stations or postal voting,” she said.

“There is a pressing need for clearer accountability

…

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Posted in Election law | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

An unexpected consequence of opening up data

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th June 2010 - 12:20 pm

I blogged recently about the welcome moves being made to open up London’s transport data to wider use. A great example of what opening up data can produce is the map showing the locations of tube trains on the network in real time – available for free and produced thanks to the enthusiasm and civic-mindedness of volunteers.

But with the current tube strikes in mind, it also shows how opening up data can produce unexpected consequences. Because what is one of the standard parts of transport strikes? It’s conflicting claims from unions and management about how widespread the impact …

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Posted in London | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Government consults over ending 28 days pre-charge detention and control orders

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th June 2010 - 9:20 am

Following on from the welcome news of the review into ending Labour’s policy of detaining children for immigration purposes, yesterday a wide-ranging review into anti-terrorism measures was announced. (It’s a review that I of course have rather an interest in.)

Liberty’s take on the review is:

Help us end 28 day detention

Pre-charge detention refers to the length of time you can be locked up and questioned before you face a charge. In that time you may be unaware of what you are accused of, and unable to challenge the evidence against you. The current period for terror suspects is 28

…

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Mark Pack

New twist over News of the World phone hacking allegations

By Mark Pack | Thu 24th June 2010 - 7:42 pm

In an unusual and dramatic turn in the long-running story of the News of the World (editor at the time, Andy Coulson) and the hacking in to the voicemail systems of people in the public eye, a lawyer whose claims were initially dismissed as wrong by the Press Complaints Commission is now sueing for libel.

As The Guardian explains:

Peta Buscombe, the baroness who chairs the Press Complaints Commission, has been sued for libel by a solicitor.

Writs have also been issued against the PCC itself and the Metropolitan Police by a London-based solicitor, Mark Lewis.

He is claiming damages for libel, including

…

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Mark Pack

A quiet fair pay revolution

By Mark Pack | Thu 24th June 2010 - 12:50 pm

Largely overlooked in the Budget was the confirmation of plans to introduce across the state sector a new standard for fair pay. The intention is that the best paid will receive no more than 20 times the salary of the lowest paid.

There is a wealth of detail still to be worked out, though reassuringly much of that work lies in the hands of Will Hutton, who is heading up a commission on fair pay in the public sector. Particularly important are questions of how broadly the public sector is defined (similar to the questions raised by Freedom of Information legislation, whose remit …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 20 Comments
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