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

David Cameron backs down on plans to cut MPs

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th January 2009 - 10:34 am

Now, you might be seeing in the media today that David Cameron wants to cut the number of MPs. But as Will Howells has spotted, in fact the plans are a watering down of the previous Conservative plans to cut the number of MPs. Rather than wanting to cut them by 20% (their previous plan), now it’s a 10% cut. Will’s blog has the details…

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Mark Pack

Conservative Portsmouth councillor quits amidst claims of hate campaign

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th January 2009 - 9:20 am

Portsmouth Conservative councillor Lee Hunt has quit the Conservative council group in a dispute over claims of a hate campaign and whether Flick Drummond, the Conservative candidate for Portsmouth South, is the right person to take on Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock.

The Portsmouth News reports:

A long-serving Tory councillor has quit his party after claiming he was the victim of a hate campaign.

Councillor Lee Hunt resigned as the Tory whip at a group meeting on Friday saying he could ‘no longer stomach’ his colleagues’ actions.

The Central Southsea councillor of 10 years says he was forced to quit because he spoke out

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

More flack for George Osborne in the Sunday papers

By Mark Pack | Sun 11th January 2009 - 1:37 pm

David Smith is economics editor at the Sunday Times and today he writes of George Osborne:

Every day, sometimes on several occasions, an e-mail arrives in my inbox on behalf of George Osborne, the Conservative shadow chancellor.

Issued in response to a minor economic indicator or flaky forecast, these missives, apart from rather demeaning the office of shadow chancellor, are usually harmless enough and can be safely ignored.

Last week, however, came one that summed up the Tory problem: opposition by soundbite. For weeks, a debate has raged about whether central banks should engage in “quantitative easing”, the technique employed by the Japanese

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

How to backup your photos from Flickr

By Mark Pack | Sat 10th January 2009 - 9:20 am

What backup Flickr photos?

Flickr is a very powerful online photo gallery and is increasingly widely used by activists. Its online nature makes it a great way to share photos between different people locally, to build up an archive of photos for annual reports and the like and, as an added bonus, it automatically generates a range of different sized photos from the one upload. One other benefit: Flickr is also a widely used website, so putting photos up there will often result in them being seen by voters above and beyond their appearance in your leaflets and on your websites.

But nothing in life is perfect, and uploading photos to Flickr should be accompanied by backups, because:

  • Companies do sometimes go bust and shut down services. Yes, it may seem unthinkable that this may happen to Yahoo (owners of Flickr), but the unthinkable has a nasty habit of happening now and again.
  • Flickr’s service is very reliable, but computers and cables do go wrong from time to time. Imagine you find yourself with an urgent print deadline to hit, but Flickr or your internet connection is having a wobble that day.
  • Even if you are good at backing up your computer, it’s easy to end up with a Flickr account where photos have been uploaded by several different people and/or from several different computers and cameras. It’s only if you’ve got one backup of your Flickr photos that you’ll have everything in one convenient place for that panic moment when you need it.

FlickrEdit

So how do you do a backup?

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Three Conservative activists expelled over Madeleine McCann fancy dress costume

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th January 2009 - 8:43 pm

ConservativeHome has the story of how a Conservative activist went to a fancy dress party as Madeleine McCann.

Posted in News | Tagged | 21 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get your picture to appear next to your comments

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th January 2009 - 6:16 pm

Ryan blogged about this last January, 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 Gravatar.com, create an account and upload

…

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Posted in Site news | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Liberal Democrats win Hull by-election

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th January 2009 - 1:17 pm

The Liberal Democrats last night won in Drypool, gaining a seat from the Conservatives (or rather regaining it, as the retiring Conservative councillor had originally been elected as a Liberal Democrat):

Lib Dem candidate Linda Chambers polled 1,306 votes to secure the seat vacated by Conservative Andy Sloan who resigned before Christmas because of work commitments.

Labour’s Gary Wareing finished second with 891 votes while the National Front’s Mike Cooper came third on 184 votes. Conservative Andrew Allison polled 117 votes. The turnout was 26.7 per cent.

The result increases the overall Lib Dem majority at the Guildhall to 15. (thisishullandeastriding.co.uk)

I particularly …

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Posted in News | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Terrorists target Alan Sugar – or freelance journalist goes undercover and winds up polite letter-writers?

By Mark Pack | Thu 8th January 2009 - 8:55 am

The Sun – Tabloid Lies blog has a demolition of The Sun’s story that Alan Sugar is being threatened by terrorists:

The Sun today has an exclusive: TERROR TARGET SUGAR their front page shrieks, with EXTREMIST THREAT TO UK JEWS in a banner above it…

However, all is not as it seems for not only is this story seemingly based on an appeal for addresses actually so that a “polite” letter-writing campaign could be run, but also the moderator of the board where the appeal appeared said:

I can confirm that the User “AbuIslam” who was posing as a Muslim on this forum

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Graham Watson running to be President of the European Parliament

By Mark Pack | Thu 8th January 2009 - 8:50 am

Graham Watson, one of the South West’s Euro-MPs, has written on Comment is Free:

Everybody wants to get a first in something: a race, a university degree, a newspaper scoop. This week I launched my campaign for president of the European parliament knowing that I am not the first British candidate, but I am the first – of any nationality – to run a public campaign, and that is already something to be just a little bit proud of.

The chattering classes love to have a pop at the behind-closed-doors culture that we are told thrives in Brussels. Europe’s reputation for secrecy

…

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Posted in Europe / International | Tagged | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Norman Lamb wins freedom of information battle

By Mark Pack | Thu 8th January 2009 - 8:45 am

News from The Red Box blog:

A major breakthrough in Freedom of Information rules has happened today, thanks to the tireless work of Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman and FOI expert.

The Information Tribunal has forced Downing Street to release the names of every official, adviser and minister met by the Prime Minister in “internal meetings” during the period of one month.

You can read the full post here.

Update: The Guardian has more:

The ruling by the tribunal, taken with another recent decision to release the minutes of a lobbying meeting between the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Blair over

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg: We must stop arming Israel

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th January 2009 - 10:20 am

Nick Clegg has a piece in The Guardian today:

The world watched in horror yesterday as the conflict in Gaza claimed its latest innocent victims in the rubble of a UN school. Any hopes of reconciliation are being snuffed out as anger spills into protests around the world.

The past two weeks have been a telling indictment of the international community. We have an outgoing US president sanctioning Israel’s military response and an aching silence from the president-elect. We have a European Union encumbered by clumsy decision-making and confused messages.

And at home we have a prime minister talking like an accountant about

…

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

How is our defence team doing?

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th January 2009 - 8:50 am

Here’s the verdict from DefenceManagement.com / Defence Management Journal‘s end of year email round up:

↓↓↓ The Labour Party

We uncovered a simple economic formula sent from Treasury ministers to the MoD. Apparently it never arrived. If inflation is greater than proposed spending increases, your budget will eventually have a deficit.

↔ The Conservatives

On the surface they promise to bring about fundamental change to the MoD if they come to power. This might be so and we would welcome a change of leadership. But no one is committing to actually increasing spending so the current problems will persist for many

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Someone’s attacked you online; should you respond?

By Mark Pack | Mon 5th January 2009 - 8:50 am

The US Air Force may not seem the obvious place to go for advice on this, but they do seem to take online communication seriously and are an organisation whose activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, are frequently talked about online.

Being also rather a large bureaucracy, they’ve created a flowchart to help decide how to respond to online comments. Some parts are, er…, very American management speak (“proactively share your story”) but there’s also a lot of good sense in it, particularly in its five headings about responding to blog postings:

Transparency (make clear who you are)
Sourcing (give sources for your …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

How much have you paid Alesha Dixon?

By Mark Pack | Sun 4th January 2009 - 3:51 pm

Today’s Observer brings us the story of how the NHS is spending money on getting celebrities to take part in health information campaigns but insisting on keeping the details secret in case it puts people off:

The Department of Health, which increasingly uses actors, singers, television stars and sports personalities to convince the nation to adopt healthier habits, refuses to admit how much it spends on celebrity campaigns. Now critics have accused the government of “unacceptable secrecy” following speculation that stars are being paid up to £10,000 a day for their appearances.

The DoH has rejected a bid by the Observer under

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

The five blogs nicest to the Lib Dems in 2008

By Mark Pack | Sun 4th January 2009 - 8:50 am

Based on the amount of traffic they’ve passed on to www.libdems.org.uk during 2008, the top five blogs were (with changes in brackets from last year’s top five):

  1. Liberal Democrat Voice (no change)
  2. Iain Dale (no change)
  3. Lynne Featherstone (+1)
  4. Liberal England (+1)
  5. Jo Christie-Smith (NEW)

Iain will, I’m sure, be flattered as ever to know he is so nice to the Liberal Democrats 🙂

(For the list of the top five local sites, see yesterday’s post.)

No great surprise that Ming Campbell’s site dropped out of the top five after he stepped down from being leader. Nick Clegg’s new national site, …

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Mark Pack

Nick Clegg, Jo Swinson in the news

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd January 2009 - 12:07 pm

Nick Clegg on Radio 4’s Today this morning:

Mr Clegg said that his party would “rebalance” the tax system so that the country comes out of the recession “in a fairer state than we went into it” … Later Mr Clegg said that the EU should reconsider its trade arrangements with Israel over the bombing attacks on Gaza. “The western reaction, the reaction from the international community has either been wrong in the case of George Bush who seems to be giving more or less a green light to carry on bombing no questions asked, or weak in the case of

…

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Mark Pack

Conservatives continue to take money from peer who broke his tax promise

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd January 2009 - 11:18 am

The Conservative peer Lord Laidlaw was criticised by the Lords Appointments Commission last year for failing to keep his promise to stop being a tax exile if he was appointed to the House of Lords:

The commission said it had informed the prime minister of Lord Laidlaw’s situation and said it would not have approved his peerage if it had known that he would not honour his promise.

And how have the Conservatives reacted to this broken promise and public criticism? By continuing to take money from him, as today’s Daily Telegraph reports:

In March, June and

…

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

The top five local Liberal Democrat websites in 2008

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd January 2009 - 8:50 am

Based on the amount of traffic they’ve passed on to www.libdems.org.uk in 2008, the top five local Liberal Democrat sites (excluding blogs) were (with changes in brackets from last year’s top five):

  1. stevebeasant.mycouncillor.org.uk (NEW)
  2. vincentcable.org.uk (+2)
  3. brentlibdems.org.uk (-2)
  4. henleylibdems.org.uk (NEW)
  5. gloucester-libdems.co.uk (NEW)

Steve’s new entry at the top of the list is very impressive, particularly as his site is based on his ward, rather than a whole Parliamentary constituency or council area. It’s a bit of a borderline judgement whether or not his site counts as a blog, though if it did, it would still appear in the blog top …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Secure your passwords in Firefox: a security tip for the new year

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd January 2009 - 8:50 am

It’s pretty common for people to use the “remember my password” option in web browsers such as Firefox. But do you realise just how easy it is for someone else to then see all your passwords?

In Firefox go to Tools / Options / Security, then click on Saved Passwords and then on Show Passwords. Bingo – all your passwords are there in plain text. OK if you’re the only person who goes near your computer, but not so reassuring in other circumstances. (These are the menu options for Firefox v3. They are slightly different in earlier versions.)

There’s a simple way …

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Posted in Online politics | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

In the news: Gaza, Treasury honours and Big Brother

By Mark Pack | Wed 31st December 2008 - 10:28 am

Nick Clegg calls for suspension of EU/Israel agreement: “Innocent people are being killed and injured by a military operation that will only serve to further inflame extremism, and weaken the moderate Palestinian and Arab opinion which Israel’s long term security depends on.”

Vince Cable criticises knighthood for Treasury chief: “I would have thought it a rather premature judgment on government policy, which is far from assured of being a success. There is a slight element of self-congratulation about it.”

Ken Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, criticises Labour’s plans for a database to track emails and phone calls …

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Mark Pack

What does Eric Pickles think of Andy Coulson’s salary?

By Mark Pack | Wed 31st December 2008 - 8:50 am

I only wonder but … the job of being a local council Chief Executive involves being responsible for far more staff, far bigger budgets and (much though I think my colleagues in our media team are important) far more important issues than heading up a media team.

The awful fallout if a council bungles its Children’s Services is perhaps the starkest indication of how much more important running a council is than running a media team.

Yesterday Eric Pickles was in the news attacking councils, some of whom paying their chief executives six figures salaries. Leaving aside the embarrassing for him …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

De-stress yourself, ready for the new year

By Mark Pack | Wed 31st December 2008 - 8:45 am

Ah, the glories of the internet: try out this site and pop your cares away.

Posted in Humour | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Eric Pickles slams Conservative councils for wasting money

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th December 2008 - 4:56 pm

What else can one make of this? Eric Pickles has been in the media today calling for pay cuts for the most highly paid local council chief executives. But what’s this at the foot of the report about Eric Pickles and his proposals The Times? It’s a list of the eight highest paid local council chief executives.

I think you can guess what might be coming next …

Yes indeed, let’s look at who runs these councils:

Bexley (Conservative)
Ealing (Conservative)
Hertfordshire (Conservative)
Kensington & Chelsea (Conservative)
Kingston upon Hull (Lib Dem)
Newham (Labour)
Suffolk County Council (Conservative)
Surrey County Council (Conservative)

Yup, that would be six out of eight …

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Posted in Local government | Tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Why do MPs use Facebook?

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th December 2008 - 11:50 am

Cross-posted from The Wardman Wire:

When it comes to social media, Facebook is pretty much it as far as MPs go. For example, of the Liberal Democrat Shadow Cabinet members, 100% have a public email address, 90% have a website (the exceptions being in the House of Lords), 72% are on Facebook, 7% blog (and for another 7% there are party blogs covering their portfolio, even though they do not blog personally), and 3% are on Twitter. None have an active MySpace or Bebo presence (though there’s one that is now defunct).

Similar patterns – heavy email use, slightly lighter website coverage, many Facebook profiles, fewer bloggers and Twitter bringing up the rear – occur across all the main political parties.

This is not just a matter of new services taking time to catch on; blogging, after all, has been around for much longer than Facebook and the first politicians on Facebook came years after the first blogging politicians.

So what is it about Facebook that makes it attractive to MPs?

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Mark Pack

Boris Johnson and Transport for London’s financial secrecy over Oyster

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th December 2008 - 11:35 am

An interesting little question and answer from the London Assembly:

Q. What has been the cost to the taxpayer of TfL buying ownership of the Oyster brand? (Caroline Pidgeon)

A. Under the terms of the recent agreement between TfL, Electronic Data Systems and Cubic Transportation Systems TfL agreed to treat this information as being commercially confidential.

Certainly getting ownership of the Oyster brand could bring lots of benefits (though it raises the question of how it ended up in private hands in the first place and on what terms).

Spending 50p on it would be  a bargain. Spending £500 million would be a …

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Mark Pack

The Powell Memo: the memo from 1971 that most repays reading

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th December 2008 - 8:50 am

OK, the list of memos from 1971 that you were thinking about reading may not be that long … but this one is worth a read.

Now that the Democrats are back in control of both houses of Congress and with Barack Obama about to formally take office as President of the United States, it may seem a long time since pundits were heaping praise on the efficacy of the Republican political machine, its long term building up of support and changing of the terms of political debate.

Although the edifice has largely coming tumbling down (though not completely – in November’s …

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Mark Pack

Nick Clegg’s New Year message: hope and change

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th December 2008 - 6:50 am

You can watch it here:

There’s also a transcript on the party website.

Before you click away, here are three quick things you can do to help the film reach a wider audience:

1. Give it a rating on YouTube (free account required; you can register straight away online for one)
2. Digg it (free account required; you can register straight away online for one)
3. Share this story with others via email, Twitter or any of the other options using the links below.

Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

My political video moment of the year

By Mark Pack | Mon 29th December 2008 - 8:50 am

You may think that this was just another political YouTube film, this one happening to feature Nick Clegg talking about ID cards.

But watch carefully 30 seconds in for the man entering stage left with a piece of string and a banana, eaten. Ten months on, I still have no idea why he would have been doing that:

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Conservative County Councillor switches to the Liberal Democrats

By Mark Pack | Sun 28th December 2008 - 8:22 pm

Shortly before Christmas, Cllr Maureen Hill switched from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats. She represents Weston ward on Northamptonshire County Council, and said:

I think it’s been a natural progression for me. I’ve found myself so much at odds with the policy of the administration I don’t feel I could possibly support any further budget cuts.

Welcoming her to the Liberal Democrats, group leader Brian Hoare said:

Maureen has made many contributions in the chamber that have echoed our thoughts, so we’re delighted to have her join us.

The Northampton Chronicle has Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

What should you do with your Christmas cards?

By Mark Pack | Sun 28th December 2008 - 7:50 pm

Some good ideas here.

Posted in News | 4 Comments
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