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

Court finds Corby Council negligent in landmark pollution case

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th August 2009 - 2:50 pm

Catching up on council news from outside my home patch of London*, here’s a report from The Guardian:

A group of young people who claim an “atmospheric soup of toxic materials” released when an old steelworks was redeveloped caused their birth defects won a landmark ruling today when it was found that the local council had been negligent in its handling of the site.

The high court decision clears the way for 16 successful claimants, who are aged between 11 and 22 and have missing or underdeveloped fingers or deformities to their feet, to set out to prove their individual disabilities were caused by Corby borough council’s failings when reclaiming the former British Steel plant. Compensation could run into millions of pounds if they succeed…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

The Political Parties and Elections Act 2009: changes to election expenditure rules

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th August 2009 - 2:50 pm

Cross-posted from The Wardman Wire:

Hands up everyone who thought the problem with current rules for controlling constituency expenditure was that they work if a Parliament last for four years but not if it lasts for five? Nobody? Oh well, that’s the basis on which Parliament has just changed the law anyway.

This provision of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 has its roots in a sensible concern, but along the way disagreements between parties and lack of understanding of how campaigns actually operate has landed us with this rather odd change in the law.

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

100 days to change British democracy

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th August 2009 - 7:50 pm

An email pops in to my inbox from the Electoral Reform Society:

Today we mark 100 days until the Queen’s Speech – and the government’s last chance to change politics for good.

If you’re a blogger or a web editor you can help the campaign today by adding our countdown widget to your posts or site:
http://voteforachange.co.uk/widget

Feeling creative? Well grab your camcorder and enter the campaign’s viral video competition. You’ve got less than a minute to tell us just what you think’s wrong with politics. Not long we know! But there’s a Macbook up for grabs for the best entry –

…

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Mark Pack

Moldova update: what happened after the ‘Twitter revolution’?

By Mark Pack | Sun 9th August 2009 - 1:24 pm

Back in April I blogged about how Twitter was being given the credit for helping to fuel a revolt against the Communist government in Moldova. The protests were against the conduct of parliamentary elections, won by the Communists.

The protests secured new elections in late July, following which a non-communist government has just been formed:

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Posted in Europe / International | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Daily View 2×2: 9 August 2009

By Mark Pack | Sun 9th August 2009 - 7:50 am

The rest of The Voice’s Daily View team may have decided to have a lie in each morning during August, but we’re made of sterner stuff here on the Sunday slot (for the moment). And as it’s a Sunday, it’s also time for another instalment of singing.

2 Big Stories

UK ‘may have 40-year Afghan role’

So reports the BBC:

The UK’s commitment to Afghanistan could last for up to 40 years, the incoming head of the Army has said.

Gen Sir David Richards, who takes over on 28 August, told the Times that “nation-building” would last decades.

Troops will be required for the medium term only, but the UK will continue to play a role in “development, governance security sector reform,” he said.

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Mark Pack

Tim Farron’s book likes and dislikes: CS Lewis and Richard Dawkins

By Mark Pack | Sat 8th August 2009 - 5:38 pm

Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron features in the ‘Brought to book’ column in the current edition of Total Politics, answering questions such as:

What is your least favourite book?

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I’m a Christian, but I don’t object to people criticising my faith or even trying to ‘disprove’ it. However, I do object to bright people like Dawkins writing uncritical and abysmally researched polemic and then parading it as a respectable work.

What was the most inspiring book you have ever read and why?

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Posted in Books | Tagged , and | 28 Comments
Mark Pack

Are Tory bloggers less trustworthy than Labour or Lib Dem ones?

By Mark Pack | Fri 7th August 2009 - 9:56 pm

Rather bizarrely, that looks to be the view of the Conservative Party’s Press Office. At the tail end of July, their attitude towards bloggers caught some attention following the refusal of a Conservative press officer to even email an already published letter to a Conservative blogger.

PR Week this week reports that the Conservatives have now changed tack somewhat:

The party has adapted its blogger relations policy after a staffer caused a storm in the Tory blogosphere by admitting the party’s press office does not consider blogs ‘important’…

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , and | 24 Comments
Mark Pack

Forthcoming PPC selections

By Mark Pack | Thu 6th August 2009 - 9:59 pm

Fancy standing for Parliament? Here are the selections coming up in the next month, courtesy of the LibDems4Parliament website:

Bournemouth East – PPC (1st Aug 2009 – 28th Aug 2009).

Stourbridge – PPC (1st Aug 2009 – 14th Aug 2009).

Mid Norfolk & South West Norfolk – PPC (1st Aug 2009 – 23rd Sep 2009).

Mid-Bedfordshire – PPC (1st Aug 2009 – 8th Aug 2009).

Hertford & Stortford – PPC (Re-advertisement) (1st Aug 2009 – 8th Aug 2009).

Harrow East – PPC (1st Aug 2009 – 14th Aug 2009).

Basingstoke – PPC (1st Aug 2009 – 27th Aug 2009).

…

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Mark Pack

Less than 1 in 16 rapes result in a conviction

By Mark Pack | Wed 5th August 2009 - 8:00 pm

Another part of the party’s policy paper ‘Real Women’ has been released to the media today, highlighting the shocking news that the already dreadfully low rate of conviction for rapes has fallen even further:

Fewer than one in 16 rapes reported to the police results in a conviction in court, research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed. Figures revealed in a Parliamentary answer show that the conviction rate has fallen from less than one in 13 in 1998.

The Liberal Democrats have today called for up to 15 more Rape Crisis Centres to be opened across the country, and for more money

…

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 33 Comments
Mark Pack

Nine staff sacked for breaking rules over ID cards database

By Mark Pack | Tue 4th August 2009 - 11:16 pm

Computer Weekly has the story:

Nine staff have been sacked from their local authority jobs for snooping on personal records of celebrities and personal acquaintances held on the core database of the government’s National Identity Scheme.

They are among 34 council workers who illegally accessed the Customer Information System (CIS) database, which holds the biographical data of the population that will underpin the government’s multi-billion-pound ID card programme.

Further details are in the full story.

Hat-tip: Ideal Government

Posted in News | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Stephen Fry pokes fun at Euro-myths

By Mark Pack | Tue 4th August 2009 - 8:50 am

Here’s the “Call my Euro-bluff” section from an episode of QI I stumbled across:

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Posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Tax-exiles get a new lease of life as political donors

By Mark Pack | Sun 2nd August 2009 - 1:23 pm

From today’s Observer:

A much-publicised law designed to stop wealthy tax exiles bankrolling political parties has been quietly dropped until after a general election, the Observer has learned.

The disclosure means that key Labour donors such as Lakshmi Mittal as well as Tory donor Lord Ashcroft will still be able to pump millions of pounds into the forthcoming election campaign, despite promises to curb the influence of wealthy backers. It has prompted accusations that the government has “nobbled” an act of parliament by failing to ask the electoral commission to enforce the rule.

Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, said he

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 19 Comments
Mark Pack

Youth Justice Board’s IT manager paid £1m in three years

By Mark Pack | Sun 2nd August 2009 - 11:21 am

From the Sunday Telegraph:

Mike Mackay, an IT manager for the Youth Justice Board, (YJB) a quango charged with overseeing youth justice and the rehabilitation of young criminals, has been paid almost £1 million over the past three years, making him one of the highest-paid public servants in the country…

Freedom of Information requests and the YJB’s annual accounts reveal that in 2007 Mr Mackay was paid £330,000 for his services. Last year that rose to £351,499, according to the Daily Mail.

This year, he was paid £336,000, which is more than ten times the salary of a youth worker.

A spokesman for

…

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Mark Pack

Daily View 2×2: 2 August 2009

By Mark Pack | Sun 2nd August 2009 - 7:50 am

The rest of The Voice’s Daily View team may have decided to have a lie in each morning during August, but we’re made of sterner stuff here on the Sunday slot. And as it’s a Sunday, this time by popular demand (sort of) there’s a special bonus social networking meets beards sing-a-long supplement.

2 Big Stories

Iranian protesters go on trial

Forcing critics of a government to recant in implausible public confessions is both a display of a regime’s power but also of a display of absurdity. If it makes people fear that power it strengthens the regime, but if it makes people ridicule that absurdity it weakens it. So far in Iran it seems to be doing at least some of the latter:

Iran’s biggest reformist party has dismissed the court appearance of 100 people, including leading opposition figures, as a “laughable show trial”.

The accused are on trial for alleged involvement in post-election violence, on charges including acting against national security and vandalism.

Pro-government media reported what they said were confessions by some of the leading reformists.

But the party, Mosharekat, said the “confessions” had been forced.

It said “even a cooked chicken” would laugh at the charges.

Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian Television, says the timing and scale of the trial came as a surprise and suggests Iran’s leadership wants to send a message to stop any more protests.

But judging from messages on micro-blogging site twitter and the internet, our correspondent says, the move may have the opposite effect, with several people talking about the need for new demonstrations and calling those on trial “national heroes”. (BBC)

Immigration

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Mark Pack

What powers do the police have to stop you taking photographs?

By Mark Pack | Sat 1st August 2009 - 10:45 am

The Voice has covered various stories about people being questioned by the police for taking photos. So here’s the guidance from the National Policing Improvement Agency* from their 2008 guide, Stop and Search in Relation to Terrorism:

The Terrorism Act 2000 does not prohibit people from taking photographs or digital images in an area where an authority under section 44 is in place. Officers should not prevent people taking photographs unless they are in an area where photography is prevented by other legislation.

If officers reasonably suspect that photographs are being taken as part of hostile terrorist reconnaissance, a search under Section

…

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Posted in News | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Full disclosure: what should be disclosed and documented on a political website?

By Mark Pack | Fri 31st July 2009 - 2:45 pm

I’ve been asked by someone creating a new website to give some advice on what legal and other text they should have on the site. Imprint – obviously. Reference to data protection and, it being a Lib Dem site, being covered by the party’s data protection registration for petition data and so on. Also a good idea to write down the moderation policy (note to self: remember to add one to my own blog).

But exactly what words to use for the moderation policy? And what else to say? Perhaps in the interests of financial transparency any affiliate links (e.g. to …

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Posted in Online politics | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Are you only interested in things you agree with?

By Mark Pack | Thu 30th July 2009 - 1:30 pm

That looks to be the view of many people according to the findings of the latest PoliticsHome Impact Tracker.

The tracker asks: “Below is a list of news stories that the media have focused on this week. Looking back over the week, please say which stories, if any, have most interested you. You may choose up to three.”

The overall figures show some interesting trends – the top story getting interest was ID cards (with 31%) just beating the story about two police dogs dying in a hot patrol car (29%). Yes, that’s right – a hard political story beat an animal tragedy story for interest from the public. In addition to those two, the renationalisation of the East Coast rail line also got more interest than the ongoing story of Michael Jackson’s death, a finding that raises some interesting questions about some of the media’s editorial judgements.

But what really caught my eye was the variation in the results when looked at by party affiliation. It’s perhaps no surprise that Conservative and Lib Dem supporters were far more likely to find the ID cards story interesting than Labour supporters. After all, they are both more likely to be opposed to ID cards, and generally opponents think ID cards are a much bigger deal than supporters.

It goes on though. Labour and Lib Dem supporters were much more interested in the railway renationalisation than Conservatives; Conservative and Lib Dems were more interested than Labour in the criticism of Michael Martin being given a peerage; Labour and Lib Dems were more interested than Conservatives in the news that George Osborne’s mortgage expense claims are being investigated and so on.

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Posted in News and Polls | Tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Electoral register project bids to win “worst Government IT project” prize

By Mark Pack | Wed 29th July 2009 - 11:00 am

There are many contenders for the “worst Government IT project” crown, but the CORE (Co-ordinated Online Record of Electors) project is a strong contender. Eight years on from me sitting in a meeting being told it would start appearing that autumn, it is still years away from delivery – and has just been put on indefinite hold.

In its original guise of LASER (Local Authorities’ Secure Electoral Register), and now as CORE, the project promised to make all the electoral registers for the country available from one central location, in a consistent data format. Since 2000 political parties have to check the validity of donations they receive, which frequently involves checking a name against the electoral register. However, the registers are currently split amongst several hundred councils, in a myriad of formats and, even if you request to receive all the monthly updates, the records which parties have are frequently partially out of date. The result? A mix of inaccurate checks and lots of time taken up both by parties and council staff in phone and email exchanges dealing with queries.

Back in early 2001 I sat in a consultation meeting where the project was being planned, with the data available on CD (ah! those were the days) and then securely online in early 2002. Eight years on, none of that has been delivered.

The planned delivery dates as of earlier this month were still several years away – and now the Minister of State, Michael Wills, has just announced a new, indefinite, delay in order to review how plans to introduce individual registration will fit with CORE.

The delay is perhaps typical of the last eight years. At one level it is reasonable – how you can you proceed with an electoral register project without looking at how changes in electoral registration might affect it? – but at another level it just shows up bad management. The introduction of individual registration has been discussed, consulted, thought about and chewed over already for many years. And it’s only now the Government has decided to stop and think about how it fits with CORE?

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Mark Pack

Politics, money and elections: what changes with the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009?

By Mark Pack | Tue 28th July 2009 - 8:50 am

Cross-posted from The Wardman Wire:

The last year certainly hasn’t been a quiet one when it comes to controversies over how parties raise and spend money. Whilst the massive and long-running story of MPs’ expenses has rather overshadowed the previous stories, Royal Assent has just been given to the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, which is intended to deal with the issues thrown up by those previous events.

New rules on political donations

The changes are intended both to reduce the administrative burden on volunteers such as local party treasurers but also to ensure that more information is revealed as to the actual sources of money received by parties or candidates.

Question over the actual origin of money given to parties have come up in the cases such as David Abrahams’s donations to Labour (where he provided money to intermediaries who then donated to Labour and whose names were those in the public donations records) and the Midlands Industrial Council (who took money from individuals and in turn made donations to Conservatives, but with the MIC being declared as the donor).

In future donations will have to be accompanied with a declaration as to the source of the money (dealing with the David Abrahams type situation). Unincorporated associations making donations of over £25,000 in a year will have to reveal the source of donations to themselves of more than £7,500 (dealing, at least in part, with the Midlands Industrial Council type situation, though that £7,500 is a fairly generous figure).

There has also been ongoing controversy over whether tax exiles and similar should be able to donate.

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Mark Pack

How to get your picture to appear next to your comments

By Mark Pack | Sun 26th July 2009 - 3:09 pm

It’s a few months 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.

  1. Visit

…

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Posted in Site news | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Daily View 2×2: 26 July 2009

By Mark Pack | Sun 26th July 2009 - 8:00 am

Welcome to the Sunday outing for The Voice’s near-daily Daily View series. As it’s a Sunday, today it comes with a special Twitter sing-along. Oh yes.

2 Big Stories

Let’s skip past the latest round of “No really, this time we mean it, we’re going to do something really very soon, honest guv” talk of Labour MPs plotting to oust Gordon Brown (see most previous Sundays for the last 18 months) and move on to, er…, a story of a beleaguered leader surrounded by resignations but promising to stay on.

Equality chief urged to quit post

Equalities and Human Rights Commission head Trevor Phillips is facing calls to step down after a fourth resignation over his leadership in eight days.

Ben Summerskill of gay rights group Stonewall is the latest commissioner to go. He said Mr Phillips was damaging the cause of equality by staying on.

Auditors have criticised the commission for spending almost £1m on re-employing staff after giving them redundancy.

Mr Phillips will not be resigning, the commission said. (BBC)

Kurdistan goes to the polls

About 2.5 million eligible voters in the Kurdish region’s three northern provinces of Irbil, Dahuk, and Sulaimaniya will elect their 111-seat parliament and next president…

Since 2005, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has maintained a secure region that has been largely free of the violence seen in other parts of Iraq. But a lack of government transparency, corruption, difficulty in delivering basic services, and political rivalries continue to plague the KRG. (CNN)

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

  • Neil Fawcett doesn’t beat about the bush in his view of what some people are saying about the Norwich North by-election: Bloggers talk balls about by-elections.
  • Meanwhile, outside politics the Tour de France nears its end, getting far less media coverage than the stunning performances of British cyclists Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish (only in his second Tour and already the winner of more stages than any other British cyclist has won in their career) deserve. So here’s Stephen’s Linlithgow Journal on Saturday’s crucial stage.

Sunday Bonus

Don’t be shy. Sing along with the chorus.

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Mark Pack

New research service offered to election candidates

By Mark Pack | Sat 25th July 2009 - 6:49 pm

The newly launched Get Elected research firm says that,

If you’re a candidate using Get Elected, you get the support you need when and how you need it.  With our bank of political researchers, varying not just in geography, but expertise and political affliation, you’ll get the researcher that best suits your needs – and one you can trust.  As we work for candidates across all political groups, we are confident in being able to find someone suitable for your campaign.

Candidates are used to making use of their own resources, that of volunteers and those of their party. So is there a gap for a commercial service offering to sell such services? The idea of having research as and when you want it could have appeal to some, though with money playing a much smaller role in British politics than in American politics, it’s not so obvious if enough people will have the funds and willingness to pay for such external services.

I mention America because this style of campaign organisation – buying in key services from external, non-party suppliers – is very much a feature of politics there, although in Britain the range of services brought in is typically much narrower and more technical (e.g. paying for printing but not for research). Other similar Western democracies, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, fall much more in to the British than the American pattern.

I asked Get Elected’s founder, James Knight about this and he said:

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Mark Pack

Parliament edges towards allowing footage to be put on YouTube

By Mark Pack | Fri 24th July 2009 - 1:40 pm

Good news from Section 10 of the minutes of a recent meeting of the Commons Administration Committee: slowly, cautiously the House of Commons is moving towards allowing Parliamentary footage to be put up on YouTube.

Credit to Jo Swinson, who has been campaigning steadily on the issue and kept it going through the slow wheels of Parliamentary decision-making.

Here’s the relevant part of the minutes:

The Committee considered a paper from the Director of Broadcasting (Tim Jeffes), about the use of parliamentary footage on searchable websites. As agreed by the Committee at a previous meeting, he had agreed with PARBUL a

…

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

Is this the cheekiest piece of newspaper reporting this week?

By Mark Pack | Fri 24th July 2009 - 8:55 am

Click here and read the story.

Then guess if the person who “expressed satisfaction” with the court case (a) won or (b) lost.

Posted in News | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

What does the public think on tax, spending and the budget deficit?

By Mark Pack | Thu 23rd July 2009 - 9:20 pm

From MORI’s latest email newsletter rounding up some of their most recent poll findings:

Many believe that efficiencies, rather than cuts, can ‘rebalance the books’. Four in five (79%) agree that efficiencies can help cut government spending without damaging services, while around half (51%) are not persuaded that there is a need to cut spending on services to pay off the national debt. This suggests that many of the public are either not aware of, or not facing up to, ‘hard truths’, as espoused by many independent experts like Robert Chote of the IFS.

No public consensus exists on how best to

…

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Posted in Polls | Tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Japan adds Twitter to the list of internet services banned in elections

By Mark Pack | Thu 23rd July 2009 - 8:48 am

Last year I blogged about the unusual attitude towards the internet in Japan:

It’s been a democracy for over 50 years.

60% of its population has access to high speed broadband.

More blogs are written in its native language than in any other language.

And the country is … Japan, where: “Once an official campaign has started, candidates are barred from updating their

…

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

Boris Johnson breaks employment promise

By Mark Pack | Thu 23rd July 2009 - 12:13 am

From The Pink Paper:

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, will not be entering the Greater London Authority as a candidate for Stonewall’s annual Top 100 employers list, PinkPaper.com can reveal.

The news comes as a surprise considering that the authority – which is based at City Hall – was ranked second in 2008 and third in 2009.

The decision has also contradicted a former promise by Johnson who, in response to a previous question, said the GLA would be entered for 2010…

Dee Doocey, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member , “Last Summer Boris Johnson’s office was in such a mess at City

…

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Mark Pack

Daily View 2×2: 19 July 2009

By Mark Pack | Sun 19th July 2009 - 7:50 am

Welcome to the Sunday outing for The Voice’s near-daily Daily View series. As it’s a Sunday, today it comes with a special epic mustache bonanza. Not just any old mustaches you understand.

2 Big Stories

Iran: public criticism of senior figures is becoming the norm

Former President – and opponent of current President – Ali Akbar Rafsanjani has been speaking out. As the BBC reports:

By calling for an open debate about the election result, Mr Rafsanjani was almost openly challenging the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Four weeks ago, from the same pulpit, Mr Khamenei called for an end to discussion about an election result which he declared had been blessed by God.
Former President Rafsanjani played his trump card, by referring to his friendship with the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini.
He quoted Ayatollah Khomeini in ways that appeared to support the opposition’s right to demonstrate.
Mr Rafsanjani even called for protesters who have been arrested to be released from prison.

First World War veteran Henry Allingham dies

As the Guardian puts it:

Born in 1896 to an ironmonger’s wife in a corner of north-east London, the veteran, whose life spanned three centuries and six monarchs, was 67 when John F Kennedy was assassinated and 73 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon…

He remembered spending a night in a shellhole in Flanders. “It stank,” he said. “So did I when I fell into it. Arms and legs, dead rats, dead everything. Rotten flesh. Human guts. I couldn’t get a bath for three or four months afterwards.”

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

  • Nich Starling continues to be the must-read blog for coverage of what’s happening on the ground in the Norwich North by-election. This time he’s got the tale of the Conservative campaign’s highly targeted approach to blogger outreach.
  • Readers of my blog will know of my views about the lack of media interest in Mark Cavendish’s sporting triumphs. (Equalling the British lifetime record for Tour de Franch stage wins, and still only being 24, wasn’t enough to get him into the top 95 stories on Sky News.) If he was getting the sort of coverage his successes deserve, yesterday’s controversial disqualification would be all over the mainstream media. Instead, head over to Stephen’s Linlithgow Journal for the Mark Cavendish disqualification story.

Sunday Bonus

Mustaches of the epic variety:

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Mark Pack

Are these the most generous mileage allowances in the public sector?

By Mark Pack | Wed 15th July 2009 - 8:50 am

HM Revenue and Customs set an approved mileage rate of 40p per mile for using your own car on work. That makes for a good yardstick to judge mileage allowances against and various parts of the public sector I’ve come across pay either this figure or a bit more or less.

But I’ve never come across anything quite like Reading Council:

About 400 council staff get a whopping £2.10 for every mile they travel by car.

Read the rest of the story at Get Reading.

And a challenge for our readers: anyone able to beat £2.10 per mile?

UPDATE: If you follow the …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Vince Cable 1, Labour Party attack document 0

By Mark Pack | Tue 14th July 2009 - 9:27 pm

Back in 2005 the Labour Party published a document attacking 100 (alleged) spending commitments the Liberal Democrats had made, including one which accurately quoted Vince Cable from his website:

Twickenham has one of the best bee keeping centres in the country. Many local people support it. Benefits from bees’ natural pollination activities are enormous, worth billions of pounds. There is however negligible research into damaging diseases and I have pressed the ministry of agriculture for a bigger research commitment.

Oh, how Labour laughed back then at the absurdity of the idea that money should be spent on hard working bees rather than …

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