Author Archives: Alex Foster

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.
Alex Foster

Liberal Democrats support equal marriage for LGBT community

By Alex Foster | Tue 21st September 2010 - 2:25 pm

This morning the Lib Dems voted to extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples and open the institution of marriage to gay couples.

Conference was addressed by a broad spectrum of those directly affected by the issue and many supporters from the sideline.

Amongst the speakers was former mayoral candidate Brian Paddick who spoke of his own experience of marriage. He was married in the UK to a woman in the early 1980s before his growing realisation of his own sexuality. Since falling in love with a Norwegian man in the 2000s he took advantage of the change of law in …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

Help spread the word about tonight’s #Tweetup!

By Alex Foster | Tue 21st September 2010 - 9:03 am

LibDemVoice are hosting four events at conference – fuller details are available here.

As the week motors on, the evening planned for our Liberal Drinks / Tweetup night approaches.

We’ll be in the Baltic Fleet pub from 7.30pm onwards tonight having a friendly drink in a real ale pub and getting ready for Glee Club.

If you’d like to come along, why not click here to let your twitter friends know.

Posted in Conference and Events | Tagged , and | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

More on Nick Clegg Q&A

By Alex Foster | Mon 20th September 2010 - 8:22 pm

Yesterday saw the first Q&A of the Lib Dem leader since entering government. We covered it on Lib Dem Voice with a live tweeting session, Stephen Tall’s excellent live-blog and we also recorded it for posterity.

Because quite a lot of what was said might be useful for campaigning purposes, and because in the fullness of time we will want to hold Nick Clegg to account for his answers, I asked BOTY-nominee and Total Politics List star Caron Lindsay to mobilise an army of volunteers to transcribe it from our slightly ropey recording.

Caron and her volunteers have …

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference | Tagged | 6 Comments
Alex Foster

Worth a second outing: historical BOTYs

By Alex Foster | Sun 19th September 2010 - 9:28 pm

With the success of the most recent Blog of the Year still ringing in our ears, I thought I’d dig through the archive and bring you the tapes from the previous incarnations of the event.

Marvel at our clipped accents and the comical costumes we wore as we take this trip down memory lane.

Firstly, Jonathan Calder unearthed some footage of the very first BOTY ceremony with guest speaker Alex Wilcock. This was way back in 2006 when the world was as a younger, kinder place.

I’m not aware of any recordings from 2007 – if you can help fill the …

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference and Podcasts | Tagged , , and | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

PODCAST: Fairer? For whom?

By Alex Foster | Sun 19th September 2010 - 5:32 pm

"Coalition: Fairer for whom?" Susan Kramer and Will Straw at LDV's conference fringe

This lunchtime, Lib Dem conference representatives gathered in the staggeringly poorly signposted Hall 1B to hear a stellar lineup of Susan Kramer, Evan Harris and interloper Will Straw from Left Foot Forward hold forth on the subject of “Fairer? For whom?” – excellently wrangled by the chairman, our own Stephen Tall.

As with all Lib Dem Voice fringe events, we were there with …

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference, Events and Podcasts | Tagged , , , and | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

PODCAST: Nick Clegg Q&A

By Alex Foster | Sun 19th September 2010 - 4:45 pm

Below is a sound recording of the Nick Clegg Q&A that just happened.

We also live-tweeted it – and the tweets will not be displaced from our feed for a few hours yet.

And m’colleague Stephen Tall was live-blogging the session, and his words can be found here.

Posted in Conference and Podcasts | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

Help spread the word about LDV’s event today

By Alex Foster | Sun 19th September 2010 - 8:55 am

LibDemVoice are hosting four events at conference – fuller details are available here.

It was brave of us to have events on two consecutive days, particularly as many of us are nursing hangovers after the display of the BOTYs last night.

And yet, our next event featuring the lovely Dr Evan Harris and the erudite Will Straw takes place this lunchtime.

If you’d like to come along, why not click here to let your twitter friends know.

Posted in Conference and Events | Tagged and | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

PODCAST: Blog of the Year Awards 2010

By Alex Foster | Sun 19th September 2010 - 1:19 am

Earlier tonight, the Blog of the Year Awards reached their fiery climax.

Helen Duffett has already brought you the stunning results, congratulated the winners and commiserated with the runners up.

All that remains is my duty to bring you, the loyal listener at home who maybe can’t be at conference this year, the recording of the proceedings.

And, technology permitting, you should find that below.

Happy listening!

Posted in Conference, Events and Podcasts | Tagged | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

Final details for our Fringe tomorrow

By Alex Foster | Sat 18th September 2010 - 3:20 pm

Many many thanks to Lib Dem Voice editor Helen Duffett for organising our major fringe event tomorrow. She’s been hunting around the country for the best talent to speak to us, and has overcome many seemingly insurmountable obstacles to bring a stellar event to the conference.

Hall 1B is a lovely room with a giant set of seats sitting on an enormous turntable, for reasons that will probably become clear if you come and see the fringe.

Without further ado, our speaker lineup is:

Evan Harris
Susan Kramer
Will Straw

The title is:

Fairer? For Whom?

As will all our fringe events, we are planning …

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference and Events | Tagged , and | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

Help spread the news about the BOTYs tonight

By Alex Foster | Sat 18th September 2010 - 10:45 am

LibDemVoice are hosting four events at conference – fuller details are available here.

The first of these falls tonight, at the Blog of the Year Awards.

If you’d like to come along, why not click here to let your twitter friends know.

Posted in Conference and Events | Tagged and | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

Call for contributors: day of multilingual blogging

By Alex Foster | Wed 15th September 2010 - 8:20 pm

A long time ago, I did a degree in modern languages. To try and keep my skills from fading, I follow a few French and German language users on Twitter. And one of these, the French-speaking arm of the FCO let me know a few weeks ago of a planned event at the end of September.

The UK arm of the European Commission is hoping to celebrate European Day of Languages with a day of multi-lingual blogging. The date is 26th September, and you can read all about it on the EC Facebook page for the …

Continue reading »
Posted in Site news | Tagged and | 12 Comments
Alex Foster

Calling Kindle owners (and would-be owners)

By Alex Foster | Sun 29th August 2010 - 10:33 am

Continue reading »
Posted in Site news | Tagged , , , and | 5 Comments
Alex Foster

LibDemVoice.org at Conference

By Alex Foster | Sat 21st August 2010 - 10:29 am

Once again, Lib Dem Voice have a varied and exciting programme at the Lib Dem federal conference planned for Liverpool next month.

Some of our events are still taking form; others are now so well established they are almost traditional.

And don’t worry if you are unable to join us in person at conference – we will be making recordings of the events and making them available right here on the blog, so that you can get the conference feel coming in your ears wherever you are in the nation.

For your delight and delectation, here are some details.

Blog of the Year Awards

Join …

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference and Events | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Alex Foster

LDVUSA: California’s Proposition 8 overturned

By Alex Foster | Thu 5th August 2010 - 3:01 pm

America’s gay rights activists were celebrating last night as a judge re-legalised gay marriage, making the latest step in the long-running battle in the US and the state of California.

Previously, legal gay marriage had been granted to Californians following successful legal challenge on discrimination grounds of the rules that meant marriage was only available to heterosexual couples.

Only after thousands of gay Californians had tied the knot did anti-gay activists manage to get a proposition on the ballot paper last to ask voters whether gay marriage should be disallowed.  By a narrow margin, Californians voted to end homogamy in their state …

Continue reading »
Posted in LDVUSA | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

Housing: of course there are more questions than answers

By Alex Foster | Wed 4th August 2010 - 5:05 pm

Earlier today, m’learned colleague Sara Bedford penned a piece responding to David Cameron’s off-the-cuff policy-making on the issue of tenure in social housing.

Her piece has unreasonably taken flak from our valued community of commenters for asking more questions than she answered.

But housing is one of the thornier issues facing any government, and like so many big problems, of course there are more questions than answers.  No-one disputes that were we are now is not ideal. There aren’t enough homes. People are overcrowded. Others are overhoused. Houses cost too much more than most people earn for many people to …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 35 Comments
Alex Foster

Catchup in Budget week

By Alex Foster | Mon 28th June 2010 - 1:18 am

Weekly catchup returns this week as the nation, and this blog, have been consumed with debate about the budget. Not for us such petty distractions as the World Cup, the cricket, the world-record breaking tennis or the siren call of the vuvuzela; no, for us, it’s all about the 2.5 percentage point difference between the previous VAT rate and the next.

We kicked off our budget coverage with a message from Nick Clegg warning us that things would not be pretty.

On budget day itself, we asked you what you thought, and spawned a massive comments thread with over 200 …

Continue reading »
Posted in A weekly catchup | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

Weekly catchup:

By Alex Foster | Mon 21st June 2010 - 12:41 am

Dear LDV reader, you may or may not have noticed that we have discontinued our strand of writing that used to appear under the Daily View heading, following a decision of the team last week. All of us writing it found it took a great deal of time for little reward, and some of us thought the clunky title with its numbers and acronyms did little to help our site’s readability. What we’ll miss is Daily View’s helpful punctuation of the day, marking the passage of time, and the daily opportunity to spread the linky love through the …

Continue reading »
Posted in A weekly catchup | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

Hames, Swinson to wed

By Alex Foster | Sun 20th June 2010 - 9:13 am

I had hoped not to write this story immediately after the last, less happy one, but sometimes, them’s the breaks.

Not since Baroness Scott and the Lib Dem’s bureaucrat of choice Mark Valladares changed their facebook statuses to “engaged” has the Lib Dem online world been so charged with romance.

Now Jo Swinson and Duncan Hames used the medium of Twitter to tell the world of their engagement, to cheers of encouragement all round.

Every congratulation and wish for happiness from all your friends at t’Voice.

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 8 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 27 May 2010

By Alex Foster | Thu 27th May 2010 - 7:33 am

Detail of the art deco crown of the Chrysler Building, New YorkGood morning, and welcome to Daily View on the day which sees New York’s Chrysler Building celebrate its 80th birthday. Completed in 1930, it was the tallest building in the world for all of 11 months, before being replaced by the Empire State Building. After 9/11, it is once again the second tallest building in New York.

Also celebrating birthdays today are the chef Jamie Oliver (who is currently applying for planning permission to build a restaurant in Nottingham I will probably never be able to afford to eat in); West Wing actor Richard Schiff and the Lib Dem MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale Tim Farron. Some have speculated he might be in the running to replace Vince Cable as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats; he tweeted last night that as Vince Cable’s PPS, he got to hear the “Stalin to Mr Bean” gag in rehearsal. Tim is 40 today.

2 Big Stories

Coalition government sets out radical welfare reforms

So says the Guardian headline, anyway, but the article is light on detail if heavy on mood music. A lot of people will be watching anxiously for the detail.

Duncan Smith says he is to propose to the Treasury a radical scheme that includes simplification of the complex benefits system designed to make it financially worthwhile for unemployed people to work, including in part-time jobs.

Continue reading »
Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

Liberal Drinks meeting at Special Conference today

By Alex Foster | Sun 16th May 2010 - 9:55 am

We had an extremely busy day at LDV yesterday with a lot of opinion articles scheduled from a wide spectrum of writers.

In all that, there’s a good chance we might lose sight of our early morning post proposing a Tweetup / Liberal Drinks meeting at the end of the special conference on Sunday.

Full details are here: http://ldv.org.uk/19520

To keep our discussion tidy, comments on this post are closed. Please comment on the first blog post from this morning.

Posted in News | Comments Off on Liberal Drinks meeting at Special Conference today
Alex Foster

Tweetup / Liberal Drinks at special conference

By Alex Foster | Sat 15th May 2010 - 4:49 pm

We’re thrilled to be having such a busy day here at LDV with a lot of opinion articles scheduled from a wide spectrum of writers.

In all that, there’s a good chance we might lose sight of our early morning post proposing a Tweetup / Liberal Drinks meeting at the end of the special conference on Sunday.

Full details are here: http://ldv.org.uk/19520

To keep our discussion tidy, comments on this post are closed. Please comment on the first blog post from this morning.

Posted in News | Comments Off on Tweetup / Liberal Drinks at special conference
Alex Foster

Tweetup / Liberal Drinks at special conference

By Alex Foster | Sat 15th May 2010 - 12:10 pm

We’re thrilled to be having such a busy day here at LDV with a lot of opinion articles scheduled from a wide spectrum of writers.

In all that, there’s a good chance we might lose sight of our early morning post proposing a Tweetup / Liberal Drinks meeting at the end of the special conference on Sunday.

Full details are here: http://ldv.org.uk/19520

To keep our discussion tidy, comments on this post are closed. Please comment on the first blog post from this morning.

Posted in Conference and Events | Comments Off on Tweetup / Liberal Drinks at special conference
Alex Foster

Tweetup / Liberal Drinks at Special Conference

By Alex Foster | Sat 15th May 2010 - 8:00 am

Plans are emerging for a Liberal Drink / Tweetup at tomorrow’s special conference.

It’s been a long old while since I was at the NEC (we had a fab time at a printing exhibition ten years ago when we were replacing a folding machine. Going to a conference that included machines that could turn trees into decks of playing cards was a little OTT for a standard folding machine)

However, a bit of a look at the NEC website suggests there is a Wetherspoons on site – and it’s not terribly far from Hall 3 where the special conference …

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference and Events | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 13 May 2010

By Alex Foster | Thu 13th May 2010 - 7:19 am

closeup view of velcroGood morning, and welcome to your super soaraway Daily View on this, the first full day of Liberal government in the UK.

Today in 1958, Velcro was trademarked before going on to applications in haberdashery and space travel.

Birthday boys today include Arthur Sullivan, Armistead Maupin and Stevie Wonder.

2 Big Stories

There’s no doubting from the papers that today is all about the new inhabitants of Downing Street. From a Lib Dem perspective, there’s wor Vince, about to wage war on the banks. Or is he? Does the update to the Guardian’s article, filed 90 minutes after the article itself, herald the first hint of trouble in Paradise?

City is right to fear Vince Cable

Make no mistake, Cable’s appointment matters. David Cameron could have given him another economic job that would have kept him well away from anything to do with City reform. Last night it was mooted that the MP for Twickenham might be made chief secretary to the Treasury, and thus responsible for the delicate negotiations with Whitehall ministries over spending cuts.

Continue reading »
Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , , , , , and | 9 Comments
Alex Foster

Liberal Democrat policies in Government

By Alex Foster | Wed 12th May 2010 - 5:46 pm

Chris Fox, the Lib Dem Chief Exec, has circulated this helpful summary of which of our policies are included in the agreement. It’s slightly easier to wade through than the full text, which we brought you earlier.

A Fair Start for Children

  • Introduce a Pupil Premium to give all children a fair start.

Fairer taxes and Economic Reform

  • A substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011 with a longer term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective
  • Reform of the banking system, ensuring a flow of lending to

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 8 Comments
Alex Foster

Coalition ahoy

By Alex Foster | Tue 11th May 2010 - 11:57 pm

News trickling in that the Conservatives have offered the Liberal Democrats a coalition. The Lib Dem parliamentary party and Federal Executives, without whom a coalition cannot be ratified, are currently meeting to consider it.

There’s even talk of an emergency Special Conference this weekend which will mean conference representatives across the country pricking their ears up.

But the rolling news media are considering it a done deal already.

Amongst the headlines are that Nick Clegg will serve as Deputy Prime Minister, Danny Alexander as Secretary of State for Scotland, along with three other Lib Dems in the cabinet and a further …

Continue reading »
Posted in General Election | Tagged , , , , and | 98 Comments
Alex Foster

Communicate with your members

By Alex Foster | Sun 9th May 2010 - 2:00 pm

Just a very quick note to ask local party officers to make sure they are planning some urgent communication with members.

One of the tangible benefits of Cleggmania was a surge in membership and support across the country, so many local parties now have significantly more members than they did before the election. For many of these people, this will be the first members’ newsletter they receive, so do please design your communication with this in mind.

For those of you who are preparing a newsletter, Lib Dem Voice has a regular newsletter insert. The General Election special is …

Continue reading »
Posted in Site news | 9 Comments
Alex Foster

Lib Dem Flashmobs nationwide

By Alex Foster | Sat 1st May 2010 - 1:50 pm

Just a few weeks ago we brought you the news of the unofficial Lib Dem Facebook group that was growing by 1,000 members an hour.

Now its members are enthusiastically promoting a series of flashmobs. There’s been one scheduled for London for some time, but I know many of us discounted going to that on the simple horror of getting to London on a bank holiday, whilst we should be shoving leaflets through letterboxes in our various provincial locations.

The prospect of a series of nationwide flashmobs, however, makes attendance just a little easier, no? Here’s the …

Continue reading »
Posted in Events | Tagged , , and | 21 Comments
Alex Foster

+++ Holy crap, the Guardian endorses Lib Dems

By Alex Foster | Fri 30th April 2010 - 7:01 pm

Not content with publishing a letter from leading progressives, the Guardian tonight brings to an end its journey to a decision about which party to support.

The article is here.

General election 2010: The liberal moment has come
If the Guardian had a vote it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats. But under our discredited electoral system some people may – hopefully for the last time – be forced to vote tactically

We can certainly commend them on their decision, and my headline shows my surprise at them taking this bold step. I think many people were expecting …

Continue reading »
Posted in General Election | Tagged , , and | 16 Comments
Alex Foster

The Third Leaders’ Debate: Live chat

By Alex Foster | Thu 29th April 2010 - 8:15 pm

Welcome to Lib Dem Voice’s coverage of the third televised debate between the three main party leaders, an event perhaps even more keenly anticpated than last week’s inaugural debate – though the viewing figures will almost certainly be fewer. As last week, we’re co-hosting live-chat, below, simultaneously with the Mark Reckons blog.

Continue reading »
Posted in General Election and News | Tagged | 14 Comments
Advert



Recent Comments

  • Katharine Pindar
    Let's speak up, and demand to be heard. I don't fear what we will say, just the public not hearing from us. Newsnight on BBC 1 last night was an example of what...
  • David Raw
    As someone who first joined the Liberal Party way back in 1961, what I have observed since 2006 leads me to agree that David Allen's diagnosis is correct....
  • David Allen
    Yes. The Lib Dems have become a Janus Party - Facing both ways. There is a lot of detailed social-liberal centre-left word-play, designed to keep the activist...
  • David Raw
    @ Tristan Ward " I am wary of having my children (or any children) educated by the state given the state’s tendency to insist that citizens are there for it...
  • Anthony Acton
    The question was - what are the LDs for? IMO we should be the party of the rule of law, which is the essence of liberal democracy. We now have the time and r...