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

Second day for #welovetheNHS

By Alex Foster | Thu 13th August 2009 - 6:36 pm

Yesterday we brought you news about the bizarre battle between American rightwingers spreading misinformation about the NHS, and British users of the NHS who were actually quite proud of it.

24 hours later and Tweetminster (which monitors the twitter updates of MPs and PPCs and provides a service where you can search them) reports

65 #welovethenhs tweets from MPs & PPCS. 8 from @UKLabour MPs & 4 PPCs, 3 from @LibDems MPs & 3 PPCs, 1 from @Conservatives PPC

Our own Nick_Clegg was amongst them, as was Prime Minister Brown (whose tweet looks like it’s had help from …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , , , and | 15 Comments
Alex Foster

Clegg impresses MoneySavingExpert.com

By Alex Foster | Wed 12th August 2009 - 5:57 pm

MoneySavingExpert is reporting that Nick Clegg answered an open letter to David Cameron before the Tories managed to get their boots on:

It came about in an unusual way. Clegg (pictured, right) is one of the 3.5 million recipients of the MoneySavingExpert.com (MSE) weekly money tips email. In it, three weeks ago, he spotted an open letter to David Cameron where MSE asked the Tory leader to back the campaign for automatic refunds.

While Cameron has not replied, Clegg, and his Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable, in a letter to MSE this week (see full text below), have promised to table a

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 4 Comments
Alex Foster

Here at LDV, #welovetheNHS

By Alex Foster | Wed 12th August 2009 - 3:49 pm

One of Obama’s key pledges in the US Presidential elections was major healthcare reforms.  The US is a deeply divided nation on health as in many other policy areas – it is simultaneously home to some of the planet’s best hospitals, the best research in medical advances and the best healthcare practioners – and also home to some of the worst poverty and barriers to healthcare, the worst developed-world child mortality rates.

Without being facetious, almost all of my knowledge of the American healthcare system comes from my knowledge of US TV.  And whilst House has access to an amazing battery …

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Posted in LDVUSA and Online politics | Tagged and | 17 Comments
Alex Foster

Conference starts here on Lib Dem Voice

By Alex Foster | Wed 12th August 2009 - 10:40 am

The party’s Federal Conference in Bournemouth is now just a few weeks away – and the key policy papers including the Agenda are now available from the party website.

Conference is such a huge topic, and will be covered so extensively here on the Voice that it’s hard to know where to begin.

Here are just a few interesting things to highlight:

  • The timings are a little different this year. Conference kicks off on Saturday morning with consultative sessions, and is formally opened Saturday afternoon. It continues through until Wednesday afternoon when the Leader’s Speech will be after lunch. Conference

…

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Alex Foster

Revamp for Prater Raines sites

By Alex Foster | Tue 11th August 2009 - 8:50 am

An email arrives from web guru and Lib Dem county councillor Tim Prater, who is the public-facing half of Prater Raines, the hugely successful company that now supply local websites to a large proportion of the nation’s Liberal Democrat local parties, council groups and MPs. (The full, awesome list, from Aberconwy to Yorkshire and the Humber is here). It’s no small boast that they probably run more political websites than anyone else in the country.

They have a good track record of innovating and keeping content going online. But things have changed in the seven years since they first started to provide their content management system to the party, and they are now proposing a major upgrade to the service they offer.

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Posted in News and Online politics | Tagged | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

Oldham’s violent bars on Panorama

By Alex Foster | Mon 10th August 2009 - 5:21 pm

Tonight’s Panorama – at 8.30pm on BBC1 – features reports on a huge increase in violent attacks in bars in Oldham – and what the Lib Dem council there is doing about it.

Yorkshire Street is the main drinking area in Oldham which had a 200% increase in serious violent incidents in the first four months of this year.

That’s a stabbing or an assault with intention to kill on average every Friday and Saturday night.

But the Greater Manchester town has come up with a unique way of fighting back the recent spike in alcohol-related disorder.

The council believes promotions such as

…

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged , , , and | 23 Comments
Alex Foster

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Vince Cable doesn’t know when the economy will recover

By Alex Foster | Mon 10th August 2009 - 3:55 pm

Our Vince penned a piece for the Daily Mail yesterday with the  delicious title “The economy is now sitting up and showing signs of recovery”

In it, Vince made the startling admission that he is not, in fact, an all-seeing mage with black powers over the future of the economy:

I am often asked to play the part of Nostradamus. Since I had been a reasonably successful prophet of doom, I am now assumed to know when the economy will turn round. I don’t. No one knows.

It does seem likely, however, that a major disaster has been averted. We are no

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , , and | 4 Comments
Alex Foster

Extraordinary stats about snooping

By Alex Foster | Mon 10th August 2009 - 1:59 pm

Kudos to Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary, for garnering excellent coverage for the awful statistics about state sponsored snooping.

The Daily Mail’s ire is justified:

The number of Big Brother snooping missions by police, town halls and other public bodies has soared by 44 per cent in two years.

Last year there were 504,073 new cases – an average of 1,381 a day. It is the equivalent of one adult in 78 coming under state-sanctioned surveillance.

One adult in 78? I wonder who it is on my street. Which member of the Lib Dem Group in the House …

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Posted in Big mad database | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

Interview with Bristol Councillors

By Alex Foster | Fri 31st July 2009 - 12:15 pm

Earlier this month, LDV took a road trip to Bristol to see Banksy – which, if you can stand the two hour queue, is definitely worth seeing.

While we were there we met up with Stephen Williams MP and councillors and campaigners working for Bristol. Yesterday we brought you the interview with Stephen Williams; today’s podcast is a discussion with three councillors from the authority: Cllr Jon Rogers, transport and sustainability supremo with a twitter and e-campaigning twist; Cllr Anthony Negus, now enjoying his second month as a councillor, but many more years as a Lib Dem campaigner, …

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Alex Foster

Interview with Stephen Williams MP

By Alex Foster | Thu 30th July 2009 - 11:00 am

A few weeks ago LDV had a mini-break in Bristol to go and see the Banksy exhibition.

While we were in town we met up with Bristol West MP Stephen Williams and Cllrs Jon Rogers, Anthony Negus and Mark Wright as they held a street stall to gather signatures against the expansion of the local airport.

We taped a couple of interviews – the first was with Stephen Williams, sitting over enormous slices of cake in the Lovely Tart café on the Gloucester Road.

Look out for the councillor interview here on the Voice at the same time tomorrow.

You can listen to …

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Alex Foster

BBC Question Time – LDV open thread, 23 July 2009 #bbcqt #nnbe

By Alex Foster | Thu 23rd July 2009 - 10:05 am

Tonight’s Question Time comes from Norwich, and is broadcast shortly after polls close in the Norwich North by-election.

For the Lib Dems, Baroness Shirley Williams enters the fray. She is joined by fellow peeress Baroness Warsi, writer and broadcaster Clive James and from the House of Commons, Geoff Hoon MP and George Galloway MP.

If you’re tuning in, you can join the simultanous online Twitter debate here at #bbcqt, or the LDV debate in the thread below. Meanwhile Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson will be liveblogging events via CoverItLive at his own blog.

Finally, if you want to be amongst the first to …

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged | 12 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 23 July 2009

By Alex Foster | Thu 23rd July 2009 - 8:00 am

Good morning. You join us here on LDV as we wish happy birthday to Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michael Foot, and as the nation of Egypt and the Rastafarians commemorate the birth of Haile Selassie.

It’s also polling day in Norwich North. Will April Pond become the 64th Lib Dem MP? Will we make our second by-election gain in the 2005 Parliament? Find out first on twitter – as the blogosphere’s reporter on the spot Nich Starling will report, live from the Norfolk Showground.

Two big news stories

Kingsnorth tactics criticised
The Guardian reports the report into police behaviour at …

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , , , , , , , , and | 6 Comments
Alex Foster

When twitter gets… heated

By Alex Foster | Sat 18th July 2009 - 6:29 pm

A friend sends me a link to a news story about a spat between two councillors – one being interviewed on the radio, and the other responding simultaneously – and robustly – via Twitter.

The story is here – but don’t click it if mild profanity might offend.

Like so many things, there’s the funny side of the story, which is why the link was sent, and the salutary lesson. In this case the lesson is that twitter is very informal and can sometimes encourage the use of, erm, unparliamentary language. And should you be an elected representative, swearing …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 13 July 2009

By Alex Foster | Mon 13th July 2009 - 8:01 am

Fresh and refreshed from the weekend, here’s our picks for Monday morning.

Two big news stories

Two from the Guardian today: firstly most papers are leading with further details of the soldiers who died in the last few days with six new names and photos to illustrate – the photos serving as a stark reminder of how young so many of our uniformed personnel are. There’s in-depth coverage of their service and the wider questions raised by the recent British deaths in Afghanistan, including, in the Telegraph, praise from high ranking military officials for Nick Clegg’s contribution to …

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Alex Foster

Top RSS tips for local campaigners

By Alex Foster | Fri 10th July 2009 - 11:14 am

The attentive amongst you will have spotted amongst the 30 tips from m’colleague Mark Park for aspirant politicians:

Subscribe to at least 20 sites using an RSS reader, 10 of which are not party political. Using an RSS (feed) reader is a huge time-saver and an effective way of keeping up with news and information. But there’s no point just being an expert on party politics if you want to be an elected official.

RSS readers are many and various – my favoured one is Google Reader – and having just returned from engaging in another of Mark’s tips, a week …

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Posted in Local government and Online politics | Tagged , , , , , and | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

Conferences: #lgaconf vs #ldconf

By Alex Foster | Fri 10th July 2009 - 10:30 am

As I headed to Harrogate for the LGA conference last week, it was impossible to avoid comparing that with the many previous conferences I’ve attended with the Lib Dems in just the same venue.  We’re frequent flyers at Harrogate, home of our MP Phil Willis, in a conference centre he opened – if I remember the plaque correctly.

Barely months before, LDV had had its own crowded office and a successful fringe event – the recording of which is still available as a recording if you want to hear all over again – so returning for the summer events as …

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

BBC Question Time – LDV open thread, 9 July 2009 #bbcqt

By Alex Foster | Thu 9th July 2009 - 10:22 pm

Question Time this week is the Schools Special – and that brings with it two innovations. Firstly there’s the option to watch it live at 8pm on BBC3 – hence the much earlier appearance of this post than usual; and secondly one of the panellists will be a young person to be announced on the night.

There will also be the following not-quite-so-young people joining in the debate: Andy Burnham MP, Jeremy Hunt MP, Sarah Teather MP, and Shami Chakrabarti.

As last week, we hope to have a magic Facebook window appearing here:

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

Opinion: Cameron’s vision for local government is bleak

By Alex Foster | Thu 9th July 2009 - 10:25 am

Last week’s Local Government Association conference was addressed on its final day by three representatives from Westminster who’d made the journey northwards to Harrogate to face the serried ranks of senior local government councillors and officers.

The Lib Dems were represented by Vince Cable MP, given an early morning slot that not everyone got to. He was warmly received by all those who were there, in any case, which may represent that it was just the Lib Dem LGA group present. His speech covered his history as a councillor himself in the early 1970s when local government …

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Posted in Local government and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , , , and | 5 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 9 July 2009

By Alex Foster | Thu 9th July 2009 - 7:40 am

Happy Independence Day, Argentina! And happy birthday to Paul Merton and Tom Hanks.

Two big stories

Murdoch Papers hack phones
The Guardian has the story of Murdoch titles doing dodgy things with mobile phones – and it backfiring on them to the tune of at least £1m. There are clear links to current Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson.

There’s an awful lot of this story on the Guardian’s site – including an interview with hack victim Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes.

I hope this story has legs. This was shoddy journalism that should have serious consequences.

Darling’s banking reforms attacked
The FT looks …

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Alex Foster

Local Solutions 2009 – Julia Goldsworthy and Paul Scriven

By Alex Foster | Thu 25th June 2009 - 11:30 am

This is the fourth and final instalment of podcasts recorded at the Sheffield Local Solutions 2009 conference organised by ALDC. You can hear the earlier instalments here: Clegg and Scott; Scriven on Sheffield; Carbon Reduction Commitment.

In the final session of the day, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Julia Goldsworthy MP joined Cllr Paul Scriven, the leader of Sheffield Council, to reflect on the day and discuss current state of play for local government.

Both talk about the Sustainable Communities Act, its potential and their disappointment in Labour’s implementation of it so far; of …

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Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 25 June 2009

By Alex Foster | Thu 25th June 2009 - 8:00 am

How fitting that while Ricky Gervais and Phil Jupitus share a birthday with Michel Tremblay, a Canadian writer I studied as part of my degree, the US should be celebrating National Catfish Day.

Two big stories

Another climbdown for Brown as the Government backs off plans to bolster MPs’ pensions. Just hours after Clegg took Brown to task at PMQs for being wrong about Gurkhas, wrong about expenses and the Iraq enquiry. Now he’s admitted to being wrong about MPs’ pensions too. A planned increase had been accepted by all parties in March but the government now …

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Alex Foster

Local Solutions 2009 – Carbon Reduction Commitment for councils

By Alex Foster | Wed 24th June 2009 - 11:00 am

The third of our instalments from ALDC’s local government conference Local Solutions takes the Government’s energy policy for local authorities as its topic.

You can still hear the first two instalments: Nick Clegg and Ros Scott, and Paul Scriven on Sheffield.

Today’s instalment is an excellent presentation from Mo Baines, from the Association for Public Service Excellence, talking about how councils will shortly be required to monitor closely just how much energy they are using and reduce it year on year.

Sheffield Local Solutions 2009

You can …

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Alex Foster

Local Solutions 2009 – Paul Scriven on the Sheffield story

By Alex Foster | Tue 23rd June 2009 - 11:00 am

This the second in our series of podcasts of recordings made at ALDC’s Local Solutions 2009 conference on Saturday in Sheffield. You can listen to Nick Clegg and Ros Scott in the first instalment.

For the second hour, the leader of Sheffield city council Cllr Paul Scriven gave delegates a detailed explanation of how the Lib Dems won Sheffield – and most importantly of all, what they did with the power once they had it. It’s an inspiring story of decentralisation and empowerment of the local citizenry and is well worth forwarding around any of your colleagues who …

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Posted in Podcasts | Tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Alex Foster

BREAKING – first #newspeaker results

By Alex Foster | Mon 22nd June 2009 - 5:20 pm

A few very brief words from the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party as mediated by twitter:

PaulRowen Waiting to vote in the next round of the Speaker’s election, Beckett, Bercow, Haselhurst, Widdecombe and Young all still standing

joswinson Beckett, Beith, Bercow, Haselhurst, Widdecombe and Young all standing for next round #newspeaker

joswinson Bercow 179, Young 112, Beckett 74 – Shepherd, Cormack, Lord and sadly Dhanda all out #newspeaker

SandraGidley Pleased that J B won 1st round but how will it change after re allocation of votes. Not over til fat lady stops voting

SandraGidley Then we will have to wait for new papers

…

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Posted in News | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

Local Solutions 2009 – Nick Clegg and Ros Scott

By Alex Foster | Mon 22nd June 2009 - 11:00 am

For four mornings this week, LDV will be bringing you audio recordings of the proceedings at ALDC’s Local Solutions conference for Lib Dem councillors. One of the features of this event is to cram in as much as possible – including training sessions clashing with plenary sessions, which means many attendees themselves may not have heard the plenary. First up this morning is Saturday’s early morning session with party leader Nick Clegg MP and party president Baroness Ros Scott.

Sheffield Local Solutions 2009

You can listen to …

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Alex Foster

Local Solutions 2009 – first responses

By Alex Foster | Sun 21st June 2009 - 5:15 pm

Yesterday, I was at ALDC’s local government conference in the very heart of Sheffield, in a very contemporary new hotel right next door to the Town Hall. It was a smashing day with many useful lessons to learn, and just the event to spur Lib Dem campaigners onto greater heights when we return home.

The day included an interesting variety of main speakers, and simultaneous fringe meetings, so as a service both those who were there and couldn’t be in two places at once, and to those who couldn’t make it all, I will be podcasting sound recordings of all the …

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Posted in Podcasts | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

LDV at Local Solutions 2009

By Alex Foster | Fri 19th June 2009 - 2:57 pm

LDV will be represented tomorrow at ALDC’s Local Solutions 2009 conference in Sheffield. It’ll be a first outing for the exciting new Lib Dem Voice banner.

ldvbanner

We’ll be there to help raise the profile of the site, and to ask Lib Dem councillors to write their stories up for us. We’re always on the look out to beef up our local government coverage with stories the Lib Dems at the coalface who are actually running things. Could you write a piece about an exciting Lib Dem …

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Posted in Conference | Tagged , , , , and | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

BBC Question Time – LDV open thread, 18 June 2009 #bbcqt

By Alex Foster | Thu 18th June 2009 - 10:10 pm

Thursday rolls around, so once again it’s time to join David Dimbleby and a glittering panel of political stars for Question Time. Batting for the Liberal Democrats this week is Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Chair of Campaigns and Communications Edward Davey. The panel will include Labour peer Lord Falconer (since every last member of the cabinet is apparently too frit), Conservative shadow secretary for business and regulatory reform Kenneth Clarke, political commentator Polly Toynbee, and journalist and campaigner Esther Rantzen will be there to explain why a lifetime of interesting shaped fruit …

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | 7 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 18 June 2009

By Alex Foster | Thu 18th June 2009 - 8:00 am

Welcome to Daily View. Happy birthday to Delia Smith CBE. Today is also Autistic Pride Day.

2 Big Stories

And it’s good news for Burnley Liberal Democrats as sub-editors across the spectrum studiously avoid the headline “The Fall of the House of Ussher”

Miss Ussher said that she was leaving the Government “with the greatest regret” but would remain as MP for Burnley until the coming election, when she will stand down from Parliament “for family reasons”.

Burnley PPC Gordon Birtwhistle, who has steered the party through taking outright control of the borough council last year, and gaining five of the six …

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

Open Thread – Nick Clegg’s #bbcradio4 phonein

By Alex Foster | Tue 16th June 2009 - 11:52 am

As we discovered yesterday, Nick Clegg is the special guest on Radio 4’s You and Yours this morning and will be taking phone calls and emails from the public.

If you have thoughts on the matter and can’t get on air yourself, why not use the space below to alleviate your frustration?

Posted in News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
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