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

Romney’s polling day technology meltdown: Orca

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th November 2012 - 11:53 am

The usual post-electoral defeat search for explanations and people to blame has an added edge for the Republicans after Mitt Romney’s defeat earlier this month. Not only did Romney lose, he lost in all the states that were picked as being in serious contention, the Republicans actually lost ground in the Senate (when they had hopes of making gains) and the initial voting analysis shows the Republicans with a big problem: the parts of the electorate that are growing are the parts which vote against them the most heavily.

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Posted in Campaign Corner and Online politics | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg message for Remembrance Day 2012

By Mark Pack | Sun 11th November 2012 - 9:00 am

A video message from the Deputy Prime Minister to mark Remembrance Day 2012:

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Mark Pack

What’s happened to real wages over the last 25 years?

By Mark Pack | Sat 10th November 2012 - 2:50 pm

This little presentation from the Office of National Statistics has the answer. It’s packed full of interesting information, presented in a very clear manner:

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 17 Comments
Mark Pack

Michael Mates faces “electoral poll fraud probe” by the police

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th November 2012 - 8:50 am

The Mirror reports:

Former Tory Minister Michael Mates is being probed for alleged electoral fraud over his attempt to become one of David Cameron’s new police commissioners.

The crony of crooked tycoon and Tory donor Asil Nadir, will be grilled by police over claims he broke election laws by giving a false address to win the lucrative post…

It was sparked by a complaint from rival Don Jerrard, an independent “justice and anti-corruption” candidate fighting Mr Mates for the £85,000-a-year role running the Hampshire force.

The former lawyer wrote to the county’s Chief Constable claiming Mr Mates breached the 2006 Fraud Act by

…

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Posted in Election law and News | Tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Mon 5th November 2012 - 2:53 pm

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Mark Pack

Haringey Council shows how not to provide educational vision

By Mark Pack | Mon 5th November 2012 - 1:55 pm

Having a vision for an important public service is a good thing, whether you are the sort of person who laps up visions for breakfast or the sort of person who hankers for a golden pre-jargon age when vision meant something to do with your eyes. Either way, knowing what you actually are trying to achieve overall is what saves you from drowning in detail and being blown every which way by passing events.

So the concept of a local council drafting a vision statement for education in its area is fine. The problem with Haringey Council’s attempt is the content.

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Mark Pack

What they say about Michael Moore…

By Mark Pack | Sun 4th November 2012 - 5:50 pm

Full story: Meet Westminster’s answer to James Bond.

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Mark Pack

New campaign buttons up and running on Prater Raines and MyCouncillor sites

By Mark Pack | Sun 4th November 2012 - 10:25 am

Thanks to the kind efforts of Tim Pickstone and colleagues at ALDC and Tim Prater and co. at Prater Raines, the newly revived Liberal Democrat campaign buttons have now been tested successfully on websites run using their own systems.

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

A longer watch for the weekend: Mothers of Liberty

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd November 2012 - 10:50 am

I blogged last month about the new pamphlet from the Liberal Democrat History Group, Mothers of Liberty: Women who built British Liberalism, a series of biographies of famous women liberals, which details the contribution of women to Liberal politics from the eighteenth century to the present day.

That was launched at a conference fringe meeting, chaired by Lynne Featherstone and featuring three excellent speakers:

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Mark Pack

How many votes will the Labour candidate who isn’t a candidate get?

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd November 2012 - 10:22 am

Here’s an interesting twist to the tale of Lee Barron, the latest Labour Police Commissioner candidate who has had to pull out for a previous conviction.

This has come to light too late in the day for him to actually pull out of the election, so his name will still be on the ballot paper with the Labour Party’s name and logo next to it. If he’s elected, he will have to immediately resign, triggering a by-election.

For voters who don’t follow the news that closely, there is therefore …

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

Judging Jimmy Savile

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd November 2012 - 7:50 am

OK, I know due legal process and all that is important. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.

But sometimes you don’t have to wait until the police and legal systems have done their stuff to have a firm view.

And when you look at all the evidence the media has been reporting, it’s pretty clear he’s guilty, isn’t it?

It’s even become a standing joke that you just have to look at him to know he’s just the sort of person who would commit those crimes. Perhaps like me you heard the jokes on the last episode of the News Quiz and …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 32 Comments
Mark Pack

Paul Burstow is new chair of the Parliamentary Party

By Mark Pack | Thu 1st November 2012 - 5:53 pm

Paul BurstowA bit of party news today with various posts being filled. Paul Burstow has been elected chair of the Parliamentary Party, succeeding Lorely Burt who in the reshuffle became PPS to Danny Alexander.

Meanwhile there have also been changes at both the Commons and Lords end to the Co-Chairs of various Liberal Democrat Party Parliamentary Committees (often given the same acronym, PPCs, as used for party candidates).

The full list of names now is:

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Posted in News, Parliament and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Lib Dems step up plans for more employee ownership

By Mark Pack | Thu 1st November 2012 - 7:25 am

A press release from BIS brings the news:

Responding to recommendations made by Graeme Nuttall in his independent review of the sector, the Government has approved plans for a range of activity that will help to grow the number of businesses that become or convert to the employee ownership model.

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

Chris Rennard backs move to kill off, not just delay, boundary changes

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th October 2012 - 7:13 pm

PoliticsHome reports:

Chris RennardLabour peer Lord Hart has just tabled an amendment to the Electoral Registration Bill which would have another major impact on the timetable of the Coalition’s plans to cut seat numbers.

The amendment, which seeks to amend a clause in Section 10 of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, declares that the Boundary Commissions reviews will not take place until….2018. Yes, you read that right, 2018.

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

Oh dear. Interception of Communications Commissioner does it again

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th October 2012 - 11:50 am

I’ve blogged just once or twice or thrice about the many failings of the Interception of Communications Commissioner and his dreadful record, failing to ask the right questions, unwilling to investigate evidence of widespread abuses and ignoring questions over cost.

And now he’s spoken out over the highly controversial Draft Communications Data Bill – not against its extensive online snooping provisions or even to call for stronger safeguards (such as to remedy his own failures to look into strong evidence that …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Lib Dem campaign buttons for your website available once again

By Mark Pack | Mon 29th October 2012 - 2:53 pm

A new set of automatically updated campaign buttons is now available for Liberal Democrat websites.

As I wrote in September, during my time working at party HQ doing online campaigning one of our most successful projects (cooked up with the help of Rob Fenwick and Martin Tod) was the ‘campaign buttons’ – a simple piece of code which let bloggers and those with other websites easily display campaign adverts and news stories from the party.

It was a great way for the party to be able to push out quickly and widely adverts for new campaigns, policy launches and the like, whilst for …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

How leaflets used to look: Labour’s Citizen leaflet from 1929

By Mark Pack | Mon 29th October 2012 - 10:53 am

Today’s leaflet in my series on old election leaflets is a centrally produced Labour party 4-pager from 1929. As with the Conservative leaflet from 1931 which I previously featured, the design may be very different from good modern leaflets, but the content has some very familiar overtones.

The May 1929 contest was the first general election in which women under 30 could vote and also one of only three elections in the modern era where the party with the most votes did not also win the most seats. Despite being slightly out-polled by the Conservatives, Labour won more seats in …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Jimmy Savile: can we have the police crisis now, please?

By Mark Pack | Sat 27th October 2012 - 11:25 am

The BBC is rightly in crisis over its handling of the Jimmy Savile case. But the mix of some journalists loving taking pot-shots at the BBC and the BBC’s own love of reporting itself (did you see the Newsnight piece on the Panorama episode about the Newsnight story?) means the BBC’s troubles has been over-shadowing the role of others.

The police, in particular.

One police force we now know investigate Jimmy Savile and their work at least got as far as serious consideration of whether or not there was enough evidence …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Appalling failings at Haringey Mortuary

By Mark Pack | Sat 27th October 2012 - 9:35 am

The Ham & High reports:

Auditors criticised the mortuary for its haywire record keeping, after a routine visit in May revealed oversights including not properly recording the locations of bodies.

The blunders were so serious the auditor immediately ordered Haringey Council – which runs the supposedly state-of-the-art facility, opened amid much fanfare in February 2009 – to make changes, including adding body storage locations to its database…

In March this year, Lyn Garner promised Haringey had reviewed its procedures and believed it had “as robust a set of arrangements in place as possible”.

But two months later auditors visiting the mortuary found:

  • personal effects

…

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Ed Balls denies that he denied there was a structural deficit

By Mark Pack | Fri 26th October 2012 - 1:24 pm

 

(Actually, it’s worse than that, for in addition Ed Balls’s claim that it’s only with hindsight that it’s clear there was a structural deficit doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny either.)

Posted in News | Tagged , and | 44 Comments
Mark Pack

Labour MP caught on microphone urging heckling of Tory minister

By Mark Pack | Thu 25th October 2012 - 1:25 pm

One of the reasons the behaviour of MPs in the House of Commons is often so appalling, baying and insulting in a way that if done by a school child in a classroom would have MPs lining up to demand tough action to restore decency to British life, is that the place is very small. Lots of people in a small space doesn’t usually bring out the best of behaviour, whether in MPs, commuters, sports fans or even tricycle riders.

But that’s only a partial excuse.

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Posted in News and Parliament | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

There should be far more rebellions like the one yesterday

By Mark Pack | Tue 23rd October 2012 - 1:25 pm

A brief footnote to Stephen’s piece yesterday Government suffers defeat in Lords over ‘new poll tax’ changes to council tax benefits. Note what the rebellion was over:

An independent review of the changes to be carried out within three years of them being introduced.

Yup, that shocking idea that after a new policy is introduced, we should leave it a little while and then someone should go and take a look how

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Mothers of Liberty: Women who built British Liberalism

By Mark Pack | Tue 23rd October 2012 - 10:50 am

For an organisation that looks to the past and to party politics, it is almost inevitable that the Liberal Democrat History Group’s publications are rather dominated with accounts of men. Even now, well into the 21st century, we only just have the first female Liberal Democrat ministers, whilst female Liberal Democrat Cabinet members or party leaders are still something for the future.

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Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Thoughts turn to the 2015 general election TV debates

By Mark Pack | Tue 23rd October 2012 - 8:25 am

The Guardian reports:

Some senior cabinet members want to limit the number of TV debates in the next election campaign to just one, but they are likely to face a counter-offer from Channel 4 that there should be four debates: two during the campaign itself and two in the months before the election, due to be called in June 2015.

Discussions between the parties and the broadcasters are likely to start soon with initial feelers being put out by the broadcasters.

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Posted in News | Tagged | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Campaign Corner: The four groups in good local party membership strategy

By Mark Pack | Mon 22nd October 2012 - 11:50 am

I’ve written before about ways to recruit more party members and related issues such as the need to respond well to people who are interested in joining or helping. Underpinning that latter post is an important point – a good strategy for getting more people involved and helping isn’t just about formal membership of the party.

Pretty nearly all local parties recognise that these days. The idea that the “members newsletter” only goes to paid-up members, as used to be the case, is now a rarity. Instead …

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Posted in Campaign Corner | Tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

An ironic gift to Miliband from some of his opponents

By Mark Pack | Sat 20th October 2012 - 6:59 pm

Ed MilibandAmongst the political obstacles between Ed Miliband and No. 10 Downing Street are a closely entwined pair related to deficits: how much control over him is wielded by the trade union bosses* and does he have a credible alternative to the government’s economic policies?

Labour has often been very coy about quite what it would cut and how much it would cut. Ed Miliband’s speech at the anti-austerity protest march today did not shed light on matters.

However, rather than that being a problem to him, his political opponents to his left …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

The pointlessness of political opinion polls

By Mark Pack | Fri 19th October 2012 - 7:50 am

Leo Barasi’s piece over on Liberal Conspiracy raises an interesting point about the frequency of political opinion polling in the UK. We now have far more polls than before giving national voting intention figures (this Parliament so far: 878, 2001-5 312 in total, 1987-92 548 in total – to give some examples). But do we have too few?

Due to the vagaries of random sampling, a poll that shows a party’s support going up or down a couple of points doesn’t really show anything. It’s like tossing a coin 10 …

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Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Tagged | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

MPs and expenses: return to an unwelcome past

By Mark Pack | Thu 18th October 2012 - 1:15 pm

Oh dear:

MPs are trying to block publication of material which could show they are renting their taxpayer-funded homes to each other, it is claimed.

Expenses watchdog The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is considering an Freedom

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 22 Comments
Mark Pack

New party magazine to replace Liberal Democrat News

By Mark Pack | Wed 17th October 2012 - 1:25 pm

There are many people in party HQ who have to try to work miracles with sparse resources, especially the party’s newspaper team, producing Liberal Democrat News and its predecessors on a shoestring for decades.

All the more impressive if you have ever looked at the range of raw materials sent them; the press releases and photos available to choose from have not always been of the best quality, shall we say.

Picking through the party’s financial accounts each year, it’s no secret that the various incarnations of the …

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

Information Commissioner sounds warning over Draft Communications Data Bill

By Mark Pack | Tue 16th October 2012 - 8:27 pm

An important intervention today in the debate over the Draft Communications Data Bill. The Information Commissioner has issued a strongly-worded warning about its impact if implemented:

Plans to monitor all Britons’ online activity risk uncovering “incompetent criminals and accidental anarchists” rather than serious offenders, the information commissioner has warned…

Christopher Graham said the “really scary people” could simply avoid detection by changing their behaviour…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
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