Alex Foster is a former Lib Dem councillor in Nottingham and has been a party staffer working in the constituency offices of MPs and MEPs in the East Midlands. He is Lib Dem Voice's bursar and likes to create podcasts. Follow @alexfoster
Margaret Thatcher had a secret meeting with Rupert Murdoch at Chequers weeks before his 1981 purchase of the Times newspapers, newly released files show.
A note by her press secretary Bernard Ingham says the prime minister thanked Mr Murdoch for “keeping her posted”.
But the contentious issue of whether to refer the bid to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission was not raised.
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LibDemVoice have for the last few years nominated a time and a place for an informal drink and meet-up for internetty Lib Dems to let their hair down and have a chat.
This time around, we weren’t quite fleet enough of foot to get any such event in the conference directory, so we will have to rely on word of mouth helping to spread the details.
After a quick chat on the topic in Lib Dem Voice’s private members’ forum, we settled on meeting at the Wellington pub, a short distance from the conference centre itself, on the Monday night of the conference week. Kickoff will be around 7.30pm.
Of course, if you think the content we produce here is worth £2 a month, and you don’t have a Kindle, you are more than welcome to cut out the middle-person and donate it to us directly by standing order.
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A tweet crosses my desk from Cllr Kemp, itself a retweet from LGCPlus journalist Ruth Keeling. It contains a link to the Association of Police Authorities – not a body I am overly familiar with, but it has a fairly self-explanatory title.
The link is directly to a fairly draw-dropping cross-party letter from chairs of Police Authorities around the country who have a fairly serious beef with the Home Secretary’s accuracy in a recent speech.
Theresa May appears to have tried to shore up support for the Conservative policy of elected police commissioners by insinuating that in London, taxpayers got a better service from the elected police chief (and Mayor) Boris Johnson, than in other parts of the country where there are indirectly elected Chairs of Police Authorities instead.
I’ve been keeping late hours baking but as I was getting ready to turn in, the news began breaking about the extent of the awfulness in Norway. As I write, 80 are confirmed dead at a summer camp for youth members of Norway’s ruling Labour party.
It’s terrible, terrible news, all the more vivid for me for the thought that this meeting must have been a similar sort of thing to the dozens run by our own party over the years. None of us would ever have considered Activate, or a Liberal Youth meeting a target for such an atrocity. …
In June, Mark Pack addressed the Liberal History Group‘s summer meeting on the topic of Forgotten Heroes for a Governing Party. Further details of the event can be found here.
And who was Dr Pack’s choice? You will have to listen to find out.
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In the grand scheme of things, not a lot of people know the rules MPs are subject to when it comes to using parliamentary stationery.
If you were an MP with a boatload of postage-paid envelopes, you could probably abuse them with impunity, and send them out unsolicited to 95% of your constituents without getting any redress.
But there is one group of people who are much more likely to know the rules: people who work in politics. A subset of those are councillors. And if you are really keen on getting shopped to the House authorities, who best to …
The news broke over the weekend that an announcement is imminent on the policy surrounding the lifetime ban on donating blood for any man who has ever had sex with another man.
The writing on the wall appears to be that gay men who have not had sex for a decade might in future be allowed to give blood.
This decision was the likely outcome of the scientific review into blood donation, when I researched the issue for an op-ed slot on Pod Delusion live. It was one of the things I mocked in front of a live pub audience. …
Soon after becoming Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg promised “the most significant programmes of reform by a British government since the 19th century…. the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832.” But how do the Coalition government’s constitutional changes actually compare to the changes brought in by the Great Reform Bill of 1832?
That question was addressed by a meeting organised by the Liberal Democrat History Group earlier this year, with speakers our own Dr Mark Pack (who studied nineteenth century elections and electoral reform for his PhD) and the History of Parliament Trust’s Dr Philip Salmon. Here now for those …
Of course, if you think the content we produce here is worth £2 a month, and you don’t have a Kindle, you are more than welcome to cut out the middle-person and donate it to us directly by standing order.
Here is a full podcast of our fringe last night, “Who controls the internet?”
Libel law reform campaigner and former MP Evan Harris, website pioneer Mary Reid, James Blessing of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) and Jim Killock of the digital rights champions Open Rights Group debate recent issues about free speech and the internet with chair Mark Pack.
Following overwhelming demand from our twitter colleagues, we are now publishing in full the debate we had yesterday on diversifying our elected representatives.
You can find my written review of the debate here.
After a few minutes amplifying and chopping stuff off the beginning and end, and then many more minutes uploading large files to the internet, we can now bring you the audio recording of Nick Clegg’s conference speech.
You can play it by scrolling down and clicking the “play in another window” link.
And if you’d like to CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY, you will also find the published text here.
The Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Nick Clegg MP, made himself available for a question and answer session with party members this afternoon, and a packed Oval Hall at Sheffield’s City Hall called in to hear his answers.
Hear him as he talks about Lords reform and tuition fees and takes questions within topic from speakers on the floor.
And did he really forget he was in charge of the country? Find out by clicking the “play in another window” link below.
Earlier today, Simon Hughes, Lorely Burt, Vince Cable and Ed Davey joined chair Sal Brinton to answer questions from the audience about post offices, tuition fees, the education maintenance allowance and cutting red tape for small businesses.
You can hear the session in full by clicking the “play in a new window” link below.
Coming up later today: our podcasts of the Nick Clegg Q&A and a recording of our own fringe meeting, which is happening right now.
Welcome news from the conference floor this afternoon as the party finally votes for a diversity motion without referring it back or dithering further.
There were only a handful of people opposing the motion, led by Sophie Bridger, a candidate in the general election for Glasgow. She said what was proposed was against key Lib Dem values. It would entrench unfair advantage and tokenism. It would undermine the status quo where everyone gets a fair shot. It would even, she said, make a mockery of the selection process.
It sounded familiar to me – and Alistair Carmichael put his finger on …
A final reminder about our conference event here in Sheffield, tonight at 8pm – and with the podcast recording brought to a wider, internet audience as soon after that as possible.
With attempts to control the internet ranging from drastic actions of dictators in the Middle East to democratic debates in the US Congress over an internet ‘kill switch’, and not forgetting the continuing debate over the Digital Economy Act in Britain, The Voice’s fringe meeting tonight at the Liberal Democrat spring conference is looking at who has control over what on the internet:
Who runs the internet? Wikileaks, piracy and censorship
To amplify that, we can now bring you an almost full recording of the debate. Thrill at procedural niceties! Coo at the applause for Baroness Williams! And bask in the self-righteous glow from delegates that no other party still has debates like this.
Apologies that the recording starts halfway through Paul Burstow’s introductory speech. It took longer than expected for me to wake up and eat breakfast clear security at City Hall.
The Daily Telegraph has seen emails from Mr Porter and his team in which the NUS leadership urged ministers to cut grants and loans as an alternative to raising tuition fees.
In private talks in October, the NUS tried to persuade ministers at the Department for Business to enact their planned 15 per cent cut in higher education funding without lifting the cap on fees.
I’m not sure this is anything other than an exercise in the dark arts on the day …
Are we all doomed?
Absolutely not! Not only are we not doomed, we’ve got a bloody great responsibility to turn things around when we feel as if we are.
Me, I always feel as if the Eco-Apocalypse is just around the corner.
And secondly, David Laws pens a piece in reply to Andrew Adonis’s review of his book.
I am one of those many politicians across all parties who admire Andrew Adonis.
By Alex Foster
| Sun 26th September 2010 - 6:34 pm
Agressively secularist podcast the Pod Delusion has, since its inception, carried pieces from contributors and former contributors to Lib Dem Voice. Former LDV editor Will Howells has guest-edited the podcast, and appeared in the firstthreeepisodes.
Latterly, I’ve started showing up in the occasional episode, holding forth on leaflets, tesco and polling day.
And on the first birthday of Pod Delusion, both me and Will Howells appeared on a stage together for the first time – both trying to get a serious point across and make people laugh – at Pod Delusion Live. Much fun was had by all. And there was a most entertaining acronym of “atheist”.
So, to this week’s episode, released in the early hours of Friday morning. I took some of our recording of the Equal Marriage debate at Lib Dem conference and chopped it up and made commentary, almost like a real reporter / journalisty thing. Go me. The resultant reportage is cheek by jowl with reports on “Protest the Pope”, phone hacking and a trolling masterclass.
By Alex Foster
| Wed 22nd September 2010 - 5:14 pm
Our final podcast from the conference floor was the penultimate session, a Q&A with cabinet ministers Danny Alexander, Chris Huhne, Michael Moore and Vince Cable.
The last session at Lib Dem conference is usually reserved for the Leader’s Speech – but that was not possible this time as Nick Clegg had to fly out to the UN.
It’s quite a shock for Liberal Democrats to get to quizz cabinet ministers, but it’s something they took in their stride with relative ease. This was taped from the reserved press section – and it’s interesting that over a dozen journalists had stayed till this …
By Alex Foster
| Wed 22nd September 2010 - 10:24 am
After a brief hiatus during which our podcast host migrated us to an account we hadn’t asked for during our busiest week, we can now bring you, in full, the debate on LGBT marriage from Tuesday’s conference floor.
This debate may not necessarily be of interest to the wider public, but certainly anyone who loves Lib Dem conference will recognise many of the aspects of the debate.
Highlights for me include Dr Evan Harris’s explanation, in the opening minutes of the debate of his stint as the only openly gay Lib Dem MP despite not actually being gay; the Voice’s own Sara …
By Alex Foster
| Wed 22nd September 2010 - 8:19 am
LibDemVoice are hosting four events at conference – fuller details are available here.
Our final event falls this lunchtime as Mark Pack takes the chair to explore the party’s general election campaign. With Hilary Stephenson, Duncan Hames MP and Paul Holmes.
By Alex Foster
| Tue 21st September 2010 - 3:03 pm
Just a quick reminder that LDV welcomes contributions from all, and none more so than during conference.
Our team is trying to provide a variety of different perspectives of how the conference works, but it is an enormous endeavour, and we welcome pieces from our readers with your experiences of conferences.
Have you been to an interesting fringe you’d like to review? Do you have a different view of what happened in the main hall from how we recorded it here?
You need no experience to submit a piece to the Voice, and neither do you need to have your own blog. …
Catherine Crosland Martin Gray, "Women's issues"? Kemi Bradenoch recently implied that she thought rights to maternity pay and maternity leave had gone too far, although many mot...
Martin Gray A first rate speaker, & parliamentary performer.. What she says on Immigration & women's issues - does resonate with a considerable number of voters ......
Katharine Pindar No, Chris Moore, you are mistaken. (And will you please stop misspelling my name!) It is not certain that the social liberal wing of the party is dominant, tho...
David Le Grice @Chris Moore
The title makes it clear that the author at least likes the idea of being centrist/moderate/in the middle. It is not unreasonable to casually ref...
Steve Trevethan Thank you for an interesting and timely article.
Can a nation or an international organisation be truly/validly democratic when they are so cemented to Auste...