With only around 1.5% of the population having access to the internet, it may look as if the role for online campaigning in the next Afghanistani Presidential election is rather limited. At least one candidate though is hoping to demonstrate otherwise in the run-up to voting on 20 August, with a second round if necessary about six weeks later.
That candidate is Ashraf Ghani, who is seen as one of the main possible challengers to the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai. He was previously Karzai’s finance minister.
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 bonus singing unhappy customer.
2 Big Stories
Afghanistan: troops numbers to go up or down?
The papers are agreed that, following the tragic and symbolic news of the number of British military deaths in Afghanistan now exceeding those in Iraq, Afghanistan is one of the major news stories of the day.
But there’s rather less agreement on what they think the Government is going to do.
Either “Thousands more troops could be sent to Afghanistan within months” (Observer) or “Ministers are secretly planning to cut the number of British troops in Afghanistan” (Independent). All clear I trust.
Rebel Conservative MPs plan to refer Andy Coulson, David Cameron’s chief spin doctor, to the party’s sleaze watchdog over his role in the illegal phone hacking row.
Some Tory backbenchers believe Cameron took an excessively tough stance on the expenses scandal. Now they hope to exploit the row over Coulson, the former News of the World editor who resigned when the paper was caught hacking into royal aides’ phones.
Yesterday, Lord Tebbit lent his voice to the Tory rebels. “Cameron has talked a lot about ‘detoxifying’ the Conservative brand,” he said. “Perhaps he should now think about a ‘detoxification’ of his own office.”
Nich Starling continues his close analysis of the Conservative campaign in Norwich North, this time highlighting the inconsistency between what their by-election leaflets say and how they’ve voted locally
Sunday Bonus
One man gets his revenge on United Airlines for bad customer service through the medium of song:
A quick update from LocalGov as I’ve blogged on the story before:
The police will not be charging former Stoke Mayor, Mark Meredith, and two other men with corruption after the Crown Prosecution Service said there was not enough evidence to make a case.
Mr Meredith, who no longer holds a role at the council following a change in its political system, had been arrested along with former portfolio holder for childrens services, Roger Ibbs and local business man Mo Chaudry.
After consulting lawyers, the council’s external legal advisors approached Staffordshire Police in November last year to investigate a number of allegations
Inspired by Journalism Grads: 30 Things You Should Do This Summer post (pointed out to me by Lib Dem Voice’s Stephen Tall), here’s my list of 30 things anyone wanting to become an elected public official should do over the summer.
Thanks to everyone who responded to my Twitter, Facebook and email messages asking for suggestions for inclusion in the list. Whether your idea(s) made it in or didn’t quite make the cut, the final 30 are the better for all that feedback. You can read Part I here, and Part II here.
Inspired by Journalism Grads: 30 Things You Should Do This Summer post (pointed out to me by Lib Dem Voice’s Stephen Tall), here’s my list of 30 things anyone wanting to become an elected public official should do over the summer.
Thanks to everyone who responded to my Twitter, Facebook and email messages asking for suggestions for inclusion in the list. Whether your idea(s) made it in or didn’t quite make the cut, the final 30 are the better for all that feedback. You can read Part I here.
Submit a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. It’s a key
Speaker John Bercow certainly didn’t flinch from his accusations of leaking against whips. As I Spy Strangers reports:
The Speaker of the House of Commons has told MPs that neither he nor his staff leaked details of his statement to the House on proposals to elect his deputies.
John Bercow said that he had consulted with government and opposition whips before he made his statement last Thursday…
Inspired by Journalism Grads: 30 Things You Should Do This Summer post (pointed out to me by Lib Dem Voice’s Stephen Tall), here’s my list of 30 things anyone wanting to become an elected public official should do over the summer.
Thanks to everyone who responded to my Twitter, Facebook and email messages asking for suggestions for inclusion in the list. Whether your idea(s) made it in or didn’t quite make the cut, the final 30 are the better for all that feedback. Parts II and III follow on Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Tuesday evening I blogged about the speech given by Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission, criticising her comments about turnout in British elections:
I was rather surprised at the introduction to your speech earlier today to the UCL Constitution Unit where you painted what seems to me a very misleading picture of what is happening to turnout in British elections.
I appreciate that is a fairly strong criticism, so I hope you won’t mind me justifying it by taking parts of your speech and commenting on them in detail.
You can read my detailed comments in the original …
Here’s the email I’ve sent to Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission:
Dear Jenny Watson,
I was rather surprised at the introduction to your speech earlier today to the UCL Constitution Unit where you painted what seems to me a very misleading picture of what is happening to turnout in British elections.
I appreciate that is a fairly strong criticism, so I hope you won’t mind me justifying it by taking parts of your speech and commenting on them in detail.
After talking about recent political scandals, you said:
One of the immediate measures of the impact of these events is turnout at the recent elections. Turnout for the European elections across the UK was just 34 per cent, against a European average of 43 per cent.
However, turnout in the UK has been lower than the European average in every European election since and including the first one in 1979. The mere fact of it being lower again does not tell us about the “impact of these events”.
The one piece of evidence you present on that is wrong, for you say:
The question of who can stand for election to a local council should be clearly defined and easy to understand – so that those new to politics can be candidates, so that voters don’t end up with a false choice where not all the candidates are actually allowed to be candidates and so that elections can be about choices between people and policies, rather than battles between lawyers.
In England and Wales the law was last codified and laid down in the 1972 Local Government Act. With the passage now of nearly forty years, plus frequent subsequent legislation which gave the opportunity to clarify any ambiguities, matters should now be clear.
Alas, though, a combination of poor drafting, changing interpretations and equivocation from the Electoral Commission has left part of the law in an ambiguous mess.
A bit of background for any Voice readers who either have seen some of the slightly elliptical comments posted in earlier threads by a couple of people about the past actions of Rupert Read, the Green party candiate for the Nowich North by-election.
Last year, Rupert Read accused a Liberal Democrat councillor, Judith Lubbock, of perjuring herself more than once. Given that perjury is a serious offence which can result in someone being jailed (see Jeffrey Archer), this is a pretty serious allegation. It was also wholly untrue.
A survey has uncovered the outside interests of dozens of MPs who hold down paid positions, ranging from legal and media work to crofting, and even grave digging. One earns £750 an hour for helping to organise an awards ceremony for the drinks industry, while another is paid more than £1,300 a day to provide business advice.
Among the highest earners is Nick Raynsford, the former housing minister, who collected £148,000 from six private-sector jobs last year, mostly connected to housing, and John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP, who receives more than £200,000 a year from his computer software company.
John Hemming pre-empted the story about himself by a week with a detailed post on his blog:
I am a full time politician, but I remain a director of two companies that I founded and also other businesses that run through as John Hemming Trading. My working week is around 70 hours a week. I spend about 4 hours a month chairing John Hemming & Co LLP. This means that over 98% of my time is spent on political issues.
One of the oddities about London Assembly Member Brian Coleman’s record in running up huge expenses bills (e.g. in one year he managed to run up more taxi bills than all the other 24 Assembly member added together) is the incredibly soft line that Boris Johnson has taken on them.
For all Mayor Johnson’s talk about value for money, clearing out dodgy practices and so on, his message to Brian Coleman has in effect pretty much been, “Carry on as you were”. Of course, the news about Boris’s own big taxi bills does help explain this. And so perhaps it …
Carl Minns is the Liberal Democrat leader of Hull City Council. Lib Dem Voice has quizzed him about why he’s in politics, what he’s achieved and how being a Liberal Democrat means he does things differently from other parties.
1. What made you get involved in politics originally?
I was recruited into the party by Lembit Opik at a student rally against tuition fees in 1998. A few weeks later a Lib Dem activist, John Robinson, (now executive member on the council for inward investment) turned up at my house with a bundle of leaflets and a mars bar. The rest, as they say, is history!
Two pieces of troubling news regarding London Mayor Boris Johnson and his approach to expenses: he’s been running up big bills himself and he also personally signed off expenses on the controversial corporate credit card, the use of which resulted in (yet another) Deputy Mayor having to quit.
Paul Waugh has the details of Boris Johnson’s expensive taxis:
I know Boris loves London’s cabbies, but this is ridiculous. A new written answer to City Hall today shows that the Mayor seems to be following in the footsteps of Ken Livingstone when it comes to his love of the hackney carriage.
On 15 June 2009, the Assessment Sub-Committee of the GLA’s Standards Committee met in private and considered a complaint from Mr Shaun Lee, a member of the public, concerning the conduct of Mr John Biggs, London Assembly Member.
Set out below is a brief and general summary of the complaint:
In a letter dated 23 February, John Biggs’ Personal Assistant responded to correspondence from the Complainant to explain that John Biggs was not related to the Great Train robber, Ronald Biggs.
In response to this, the Complainant wrote to John Biggs on 26 February 2009 demanding an explanation
Winding up usage of my old work email address in the last few weeks, after using it for nearly a decade, has given me far more experience than I’ve ever wanted about the idiosyncracies of trying to change your email address on different lists and for different organisations and firms.
(Double black marks to the people running some of the Barack Obama email lists who (a) don’t tell you how to change your address, (b) don’t tell you have to join the list from your new address and (c) don’t reply if you contact them. But then, as you may have heard …
Here’s the email which has gone out to party members today:
Seasoned conference-goers might have been expecting the Preliminary Agenda for the autumn conference in Bournemouth to have arrived by now. Well, it hasn’t – because conference last year agreed a set of sweeping changes to the timetable for submitting motions for debate. They’re designed to make it easier for local parties and conference reps to submit motions and amendments, and to increase your chance of having a say in party policy.
The old series of three deadlines for submitting motions has been replaced by two, and we’ve scrapped the Preliminary Agenda.
With all the genuine expenses targets available, you’d have through the Taxpayers’ Alliance would have found a better target than attacking a Plaid MP, Adam Price, for using part of his Parliamentary expenses to pay for his staff to go on training courses.
MPs, rightly, get to employ staff via the expenses schemes. (How else, for example, would an MP deal with the hundreds of letters and emails that many get each day?) If people are being employed to work for MPs, then in return MPs should be good bosses. Part of that involves identifying training needs for their staff …
Welcome to the Sunday outing for The Voice’s Daily View series. As it’s a Sunday, today it comes with a special Obama in tights extravaganza.
2 Big Stories
Iranian protests continue despite crackdown
The BBC reports:
Iranian police have used water cannon, batons, tear gas and live rounds to break up protests over the presidential election, witnesses in Tehran say.
A BBC reporter said he saw one man shot and others injured amid running fights
Defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi repeated calls for the election to be annulled on the grounds it was rigged.
Their round-up page for the latest Iranian news is well worth a visit, bringing together reports, analysis and background information all in one place, not to mention links through to where Iranian news is coming through on social media sites.
Yesterday the Financial Times ran an obituary from Liberal Democrat peer William Wallace:
Ralf Dahrendorf, who has died at the age of 80, crowded several careers, in Germany and Britain, into a single life.
First a leading academic sociologist, then a rising Liberal German politician, director of the London School of Economics and later warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford, he combined political engagement and intellectual debate. He was successively a German minister, a European commissioner and a British peer. He was a European public intellectual; the author of nearly 30 books, and a long-standing columnist for Die Zeit and La Repubblica
No, I didn’t either. But the odd thing is, there’s plenty of evidence that the public were keener to vote in European electins than previously. The evidence is certainly patchy and incomplete, but the uniformity of the turnout gloom and doom stories seems to me to say rather more about the media’s fixed image (‘turnout? must be down’) than about the actual evidence.
The key is to compare like-for-like data. For example, in several parts of England the last European election were run using an all-postal ballot, in which all possible voters were sent a ballot paper that they could then …
I’ve blogged before about some of the myths around Obama’s campaign – the exaggerated tales of seas of small donors and soaring turnout. Now it’s time to look at how the votes played out across the country and see what it tells us.
The US Presidential election is (with some minor exceptions) a first past the post election run across each state, with the winner scooping all the spoils. It doesn’t matter whether you win New York state by 1% or 99%; either way the result counts the same in the tally towards winning the Presidency. Therefore, when it comes to targeting campaign activities, there is a strong incentive to ignore states that are likely to be either landslide victories or defeats and instead pour efforts into the marginal areas. These ‘swing states’ in the US political parlance therefore have much the same place in campaign calculations as marginal constituencies have in the UK.
Traditionally, that targeting has primarily involved deciding where to run TV adverts, where to direct direct mail and where to send your campaign’s big names for visits. Plot Obama and McCain’s visits for 2008, for example, and you see a huge cluster in the key swing states.
The broad story of the Obama campaign is that it was well run, highly successful and used the internet in particular to mobilise large amounts of grassroots campaigning. Up against a McCain campaign that had far less money and is seen as having been much weaker, you might therefore have expected to see a fair amount of variation in the swing to Obama between different parts of the country. A good campaign, targeting its efforts well, would garner extra support in key swing areas.
George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, is facing demands to “pay back” £55,000 in capital gains tax, which critics say he is morally obliged to pay after “flipping” his designated second property.
The Liberal Democrats said they had calculated how much capital gains tax Mr Osborne avoided by the way he designated his London family home. They called on David Cameron to force him to pay it back.
The Tory leader has clamped down heavily on backbench Tory MPs who have abused the expenses system, but he has yet to censure a senior member of his inner circle…
Welcome to the Sunday outing for The Voice’s Daily View series. As it’s a Sunday, today it comes with a bonus complaint and the easiest quiz question of the week.
2 Big Stories
Could Alan Johnson scrap ID cards?
Gordon Brown’s weakness means there is a set of senior Cabinet members who are now unsackable. If any of them were to take it upon themselves to indulge in a very un-Brownian desire to do something dramatic and decisive, it would be extremely hard for Gordon Brown to stop them.
Step forward then possibly, perhaps, just maybe Alan Johnson. (He is, after all, one of those who hasn’t acted dramatically or decisively to get Gordon Brown ousted.) The Sunday Times reports:
ALAN JOHNSON, the home secretary, has launched an urgent review of the £6 billion identity card (ID) scheme, paving the way for a possible U-turn on one of Labour’s flagship policies.
Johnson, who was promoted in Gordon Brown’s latest cabinet reshuffle, is understood to be “sympathetic” to critics who claim identity cards will undermine civil liberties.
The home secretary told officials that he wanted a “first principles” rethink of the plan, which was launched by Tony Blair following the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and has since been championed by Brown as a way of fighting terrorism.
“Alan is more sympathetic to the civil liberties arguments than previous home secretaries,” said an insider.
The Iranian elections
Although Lebanon’s recent elections saw a decisive victory for moderates, the official results from Iran show a landslide for the hardliners. These results have been disputed, but as so often the mainstream media coverage amounts to little more than “X says the elections were rigged, Y says they weren’t”, with little evidence presented to let you make a decision about who you think is telling the truth.
Step forward the online world, where there is much detailed argument available, including this blog post which – combined with the comments posted to it – gives a good flavour of the cases for and against the election results having been rigged.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
If David Cameron believes in first past the post, he should quit his job
From Mark Reckons:
David Cameron has spent a lot of time in the last few weeks talking about how great the First Past the Post electoral system is. He will not countenance any change from this even though MPs can end up elected with often much less than 50% of the vote in their own constituency.
What I find fascinating about this is that if you follow his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion then David Cameron should not be leader of the Conservative party at all. Instead it should be David Davis … if this had been a First Past the Post election then David Davis would have been elected leader.
Twitter and politics
Euro-candidate and journalist Jonathan Fryer muses over the impact of Twitter:
Though a comparatively late convert to the practice (despite the proselytising of my friend, Stephen Fry), I’ve been finding it hugely useful in recent weeks and have noted how one can enter into dialogue with politicians of other parties as well as with journalists and bloggers of all persuasions, who are quite happy to ‘follow’ one on Twitter, but who might not wish to ask or accept to be one’s Facebook ‘friend’, in case that were seen to be some kind of endorsement.
Sunday Bonus
Don’t these US movie moguls have any respect for our heritage?
In the past it’s never really occurred to me to lobby my MP about who they were going to support in a contest for Speaker of the House of Commons. I’ve seen those contests as largely internal affairs, with MPs knowing the candidates and their likely ability to do their job far better than me, and with the choice having only a limited impact on life outside the Commons itself.
This time, though, matters are clearly different. The MySociety team has put together an excellent three-point manifesto, which Speaker candidates are being asked to back:
(a) Slipped back to fourth place for the first time
(b) Saw their vote fall
(c) But say they are “pleased” with the result? and hope to “ride the momentum” into next year’s local elections
(Here’s a clue: his name is Richard Merrin; his political party is the Conservatives.)
And for a final bit of fun, here’s what Richard Merrin said during the election campaign itself: “Do the Lib Dems really think the Euro election in Hornsey is a fight between them and Lab – the electorate don’t …
Normally spelling the name of your party’s leader wrong on a leaflet would be enough to get it filed in the “things not to do” pile, but the Scottish Labour Party managed another mistake in a recent leaflet that rather put the misspelling in the shade:
Labour has been ridiculed for sending out campaign leaflets urging people to vote for the party in a local election in which it is not standing.
The name of Scottish leader Iain Gray is also misspelled in the pamphlet.
The mistake came about after the party noticed its candidate in Angus Council’s Monifieth and Sidlaw ward
Which daily newspaper do you read most often?
42% Express / Mail / Mirror / Record / Sun / Star
25% No newspaper
18% FT / Guardian / Independent / Times / Telegraph
15% Other
expats Ed's first paragraph was a 'moan' about things are; his second was to promise to change it.
What was missing was the "HOW" bit..*
*Promising to call on 'exp...
Mick Taylor @Chloe. In a democracy. a majority of 1 is enough. How many elections have been won with a single or double figure majority? The plain fact is that the bill pas...
Mary Reid @Jana - yes, of course we should treat people as individuals. But we have to marry that principal with the need to counterbalance past discrimination. Sometimes...
Mick Taylor Jason Connor is absolutely correct. Adam Shaw says that the gap has closed, but if you have only the state pension, even at the highest rate you have to live on...
Alison C To me the message is clear. Michael is pointing out the dangers and asking us all to heed the words of Jo Cox....
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The Major Oak is dead and Phil Harding has discovered another ancient site near Stonehenge
Reform own goals
Trumps' White House thuggery appals the world including most Americans
expats 
Mick Taylor 
Mary Reid 
Alison C 