The prospective Tory general election candidate for the Western Isles has made a hugely embarrassing gaffe by backing a spoof harbour in a landlocked village.
Conservative hopeful Sheena Norquay confusingly insists that developing the fictional port at Achmore in the middle of the barren Lewis moor is a top priority.
The 22-year-old hopeful unexpectedly stressed one of the main island issues is “the building of the harbour wall at Achmore.”
However, the policy is a complete nonsense as no such harbour exists.
Achmore is a dry land village is located in the centre of Lewis, surrounded by hills and moor, and is
For two weeks now Full Fact has been trying to find out the basis of Gordon Brown’s claim that 300,000 businesses in the UK have been provided with direct cash-flow help from the Government.
In a piece published on 4 March, Full Fact examined the claim made by the Prime Minister in a speech to the Welsh Labour party. Despite numerous requests, emails and phone calls neither BIS, HMRC, Downing Street, The Treasury nor the Labour party were able to say where the figures came from.
But with Mr Brown again using the claim during yesterday’s PMQs, Full
Labour’s Liverpool Wavertree candidate Luciana Berger is in trouble again:
Wavertree’s Labour candidate, Luciana Berger fell to pieces in the first debate of the Election campaign, which saw Colin Eldrigde for the Liberal Democrats and Conservative, Andrew Garnett attack the Londoner from both sides.
In a filming for ITV1s ‘Party People’, the three candidates were grilled by presenter Rob McLoughlin over their policies on crime and the economy.
When given 30 seconds to sell themselves in the debate at Riley’s Snooker Hall near Picton Clock, Berger froze, clasping her hands over her head repeatedly saying: “Sorry, can we start again?”
Liberal Democrat blogger Mark Thompson has launched a new site, Lib Dem TV:
On it I intend to put up any interviews or other sorts of footage involving Lib Dem members and candidates that I can generate. I am also happy to post any relevant footage from other Lib Dem activists that might be of interest more widely.
A few days ago Dizzy Thinks spotted an oddity in the expense claims of Hull North Labour MP Diana Johnson:
At the end of the detailed, albeit censored claims, provided on the Parliamentary website, is an invoice to the tune of £1,654 for “delivery of a leaflet in Hull North Constituency during September and October 2007”.
Looks legit doesn’t it? However there’s is an oddity about it. You see, there appears to be no such company as J W Shipley Distribution, either solvent or dissolved, listed on Companies House. An advanced search for all companies with “Shipley” also throws up
“Do we have to invite the extremist candidate?” “Can I veto the hustings by refusing to attend?” “Is the hustings meeting an election expense?” These are all common questions during general election campaigns, so here is your whistle-stop guide to what the various rules says.
Political impartiality
Some organisations wish to be impartial, some are forced to be impartial. So does that mean if you are organising a local hustings you need to invite every candidate standing in that constituency? For a regional or national hustings does it mean you have to invite every party who is putting up a candidate in …
Some members of the House of Lords have been demanding the right to vote for MPs and want to see the law changed to remove the ban on peers voting at general elections.
Do you agree with them? That’s the question asked in our latest Twitter poll:
Boris Johnson’s fire chief Brian Coleman has lost his position as Chairman of a National fire board after increasing concerns about his behaviour.
The LGA confirmed to me this morning that Brian is no longer Chairman of the National Organisation of Employers of Local Authority Fire & Rescue Services.
A spokesman said that Brian had lost his position but would not confirm the exact date or circumstances of his departure.
Brian himself has also failed to respond to my questions about this.
However sources within the National Joint Council tell me that Brian’s chairmanship was recently the subject of a vote
With Parliament expected to pass legislation placing an onus on Returning Officers to start general election counts shortly after the polls close, rather than wait until Friday morning, the Electoral Commission has published a draft of the guidance it will be required to issue.
The key points of the guidance are:
If plans are already well advanced for election counts involving starting to count on the Friday, then it may be reasonable for the (Acting) Returning Officer to argue that it is too late for them to change plans.
However, given the legal obligation to take reasonable steps to start counting on the Thursday night, the guidance reminds (Acting) Returning Officers that they will be liable to prosecution (for breach of official duty) if they do not either count on Thursday or have very good, documented reasons for not doing so.
(Acting) Returning Officers should be mindful of the need to properly process postal votes, but this hint at therefore delaying until the Friday is balanced out by some suggestions on how to arrange matters so as to allow a Thursday night count.
The relative costs of running a Thursday night versus a Friday morning count should be considered, but if a Thursday night count would cost more then that is a matter that should be raised with the Ministry for Justice as it is responsible for funding counts (or, in Scotland, the Scotland Office).
In other words, the Electoral Commission has partly put the ball back in the Ministry of Justice’s court. Having been sceptical of the Ministry’s support for this change in the law, the Commission is saying, “if you want it, you’ll have to pay for it”. However, the Electoral Commission has also explicitly reminded (Acting) Returning Officers in the draft guidance that they could be liable under the law if they drag their feet on Thursday counts unreasonably.
Overall, this is guidance that will encourage more rather than fewer to start counting on the Thursday night, particularly if the Ministry of Justice (and Scotland Office) are willing to fund any extra costs involved.
How many voters are ready to turn against their MP over the expenses scandal? A fascinating battle in a hotly-contested north London constituency looks set to provide some answers.
On one side is Labour whip Dawn Butler. On the other is Lib-Dem MP Sarah Teather. They have been thrown together in a new seat as a result of boundary changes, and there is now a fight to the death to see which one returns to Westminster after the election to represent Brent Central…
What Ms Teather, described as a “saint” by one newspaper
The constituency of Hyndburn, Lancashire has been left “without a functioning Conservative Association” after its entire leadership resigned in protest at a selection shortlist forced upon them by Tory high command. The list excluded the Conservative leader of Hyndburn Borough Council, Peter Britcliffe, who had made no secret of his desire to contest the seat.
Andy Rankine is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Hyndburn. You can get in touch, read news or offer to help via his Facebook page or the local party website.
Regular readers of The Voice may be familiar with my correspondence with the Cabinet Office and the tales of how the Cabinet Office has lost correspondence, failed to comply with data protection access requests and ignored requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. In short, the Cabinet Office’s administration is frequently chaotic and on several occasions the Cabinet Office has broken the law.
I’ve also put in two Freedom of Information requests about the Cabinet Office’s records of complaints about emails sent via their website going astray. The first produced
Some bad old secrecy habits clearly still linger on in parts of the Conservative Party.
Step forward: Christopher Chope MP and his veto of a Bill to aid developing countries.
The Bill was at a stage where any one MP objecting to it would kill it off, and that’s what he did. In itself, of course it’s perfectly fair for an MP to view a Bill as being wrong. Myself, I’d change the weird way Parliamentary rules work to produce this power of veto, but given it’s there I don’t hold it too much against an MP for using it.
In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Electoral Commission chair Jenny Watson repeated the Commission’s interest in seeing a switch to weekend voting:
Flexible election schedules, including opening the polls for entire weekends, should be considered to make the system more relevant to 21st century life, she said.
In the interview, Jenny Watson also gave her support to the much more controversial issue of looking again at online voting, expressed doubts about how many general …
The 2010 edition of the Electoral Commission’s “Handbook for polling station staff” contains this welcome advice for those staff:
Most electors bring their poll card with them to show to the Poll Clerk even though this is not a requirement for most voters. Offer this poll card back to the elector. It will help them to give information to tellers outside if this is their wish.
It’s a small, but very welcome, recognition of the usefulness of tellers to the health of our electoral system. Tellers are party volunteers who gather information about who has voted. They therefore bring two benefits: first, …
In March, the House of Commons voted in favour of reforming the House of Lords making it either wholly or 80% elected.
In March too, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced the a draft bill to reform the Lords would be published within weeks.
Only one problem. The first March was in 2007 and the second 2010. Three wasted years when that terribly modern and cutting edge idea of electing the people who sit in our Parliament could have been introduced. But instead we’re left with this political cynicism:
Although the plan is unlikely to become law before parliament is dissolved, Labour strategists
Tameside Eye has the story about the fight to win the Labour selection in Stalybridge & Hyde, where James Purnell is standing down. It has both its serious and its farcical elements.
The serious: a series of anonymous emails have been sent out making a wide number of personal attacks on Cllr Jonny Reynolds, one of those in the running to be Labour candidate. The emails have come from two IP address: one which has also been used by another Labour Councillor, Sean Perry-Parker, to send out emails and a second one which is a local council IP address (and therefore …
As a Labour candidate in a working class area of Liverpool, glamorous 28-year-old Londoner Luciana Berger has gone to great lengths to prove her down-to-earth credentials.
The privately-educated friend of the Blairs’ son Euan has spent months canvassing on jobs, schools and hospitals.
And such is her devotion, the former management consultant has even ditched a car with a £5,000 personalised numberplate spelling out her name.
Federal Conference Committee treat it fairly generously – as emergency motions do not normally get into the territory of drawing up significant new party policy (because, by their nature, the wording is only published at the last moment and so people have little time to debate over it, draw up alternatives etc.).
There are two emergency motions but only a slot to debate one of them – so conference voted this morning on which to debate tomorrow. Digital Economy Bill motion wins that
Federal Executive (FE) report moved by Ros Scott – “I hope it is a sign that you are all fairly happy with the party that the room is emptying so rapidly.” Explains FE meetings always start with a session with Nick Clegg and also gets regular updates on the general and local election campaigns.
Explains how FE has changed more to a scrutiny model (cf House of Commons select committees) and has paid particular attention to party membership/recruitment and to IT.
Update on the Bones Commission report – those within the FE’s remit have now mostly been carried out. Creation of the …
Party business sessions are usually fairly thinly attended at party conference, except back in the days of disaster and near bankrupcy immiediately after the merger which formed the Liberal Democrats.
They can however play an important role, particularly where well chosen questions tease out information or get commitments on the record. James Graham’s question this morning about the Digital Economy Bill was a good example of this (and would have been even more cruicial has the emergency motions ballot not decided to debate the topic on Sunday morning).
And so, here I am back in the conference hall for part two of …
That was the message of Danny Alexander’s speech to the Liberal Democrat spring conference this morning. Change – but not just any sort of change:
Two ideas will dominate this election campaign: change and fairness. Only one party is arguing at this election for both fairness and change: the Liberal Democrats.
Change: because business as usual is not the answer to the economic, political, and environmental crises that we face.
Fairness: because too many people in our society are still held back because of the circumstances of their birth, their sex or their parent’s bank balance.
Speaking at the Liberal Democrat spring conference this morning, Danny Alexander MP (Vice Chair of the Federal Policy Committee and chair of the party’s General Election Manifesto Group) said the party will seek to make further changes to the Digital Economy Bill when it comes to the Commons.
The Bill, currently passing through the Lords, has been the subject of much debate (such as here and here) and yesterday Liberal Democrat peers announced plans to table further amendments to the bill.
This morning Danny Alexander committed the party to supporting further changes to the Digital Economy Bill, saying:
It’s been a while since we last reminded readers about this, so now seems a good time to publish the information again. You may have noticed that next to some people’s comments is a small picture of themselves, such as:
If you want a picture to appear next to your comments you need to do two things.
He’s recently been touted as a Lib Dem supporter after attending one of their parties at the House of Commons, but Rory admits that, professionally speaking, he doesn’t want them to do well in the general election – because he can’t take off Nick Clegg.
“I struggle with David Cameron, but I find Clegg particularly difficult to master,” confesses the impressionist and satirical comic, who is about to embark on his first tour in five years.
“I imagined meeting him at the party and him asking ‘Can you do me?’ I was going to say ‘No, can you?’.
George Thomas I think this article is well written, thank you. This past week has seen a reminder in two different ways of when the LGBTQ+ community supported the miners and ...
Nick Baird Ajax should of course have been cancelled years ago. Unfortunately due to the sunk costs the MOD and Government seem to be converging on a plan to spend another...
Peter Chambers > The standout project is Ajax, which should be immediately cancelled.
Oh if only! Ben Wallace confided that "the money is spent" and that if the programme...
Tristan Ward It has been perfectly obvious since the start of trump's second term that UK defence spending must rise. The political difficulty is equally obvious given th...
cim @Nick Baird - Even taking a quarter off the UK's budget would still keep us comfortably in the top 10 for all countries and ahead of the (also nuclear-armed) Fr...
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District council backs a parish council for Market Harborough
New by-election poll gives Burnham 5 point lead
Pope Leo speaks for all liberals when he condemns racism, supports migration, and supports Ukraine
Growing Asylum backlog undermines Government's case
George Thomas 
Nick Baird 
Peter Chambers 
Tristan Ward 
cim 