Author Archives: the founding editor

The first results should be coming in in a couple of hours – the BBC has a page here, and the Vote 07 election programme has started and can be watched online here.

The Welsh Liberal Democrat conference begins in Swansea this Friday.  There’s a news release on Mark Young’s blog, and as if to prove that you can never have too much policy, the Welsh Lib Dems have released a “Policy of the day” every week day since… a long time ago. The most recent is number 47, and if you look at their news page they certainly have been busy. Pob lwc!

Eagle-eyed viewers of Newsnight may have noticed that the Guardian wasn’t included in their newspaper front-page round up tonight. They couldn’t include it, as to do so would breach the injunction currently in place against the BBC.

If you want to know what it says, flick over to Sky news – they’re reporting it happily. The AG has failed to win an injunction against the Guardian to prevent them reporting that Lord Levey may have asked Ruth Turner to “shape” her evidence to the police.

The official notice seeking candidates to run for London Mayor has been published, with a deadline of 23rd March – application details from London Lib Dems. The notice says “Neither of the previous candidates from 2000 and 2004 are expected to apply this time”

And the motion, now lacking lines 74-76 (or was it 72-76?) was then passed.

The official motion won the hearts and / or heads of the conference.

I understand that the Parliamentary Party were whipped to vote against the amendment, which given the tight majority may upset some delegates.

Phil Willis MP has just moved amendment 2, to huge applause and cheering, in the process accusing the movers of the ‘official’ motion of “misrepresentation” of the amendment.

It’s worth noting that Phil Willis also spoke in favour of the 50p top rate of tax at the last conference, again to significant applause – but his amendment then fell in the final vote.

Tim garden moved the FPC motion to a hall that is eight tenths full. Basic message is that amendment 2, perceived as the ‘rebel’ amendment is not the option you should vote if you believe in disarmament. His call to oppose both amendments was warmly applauded.

Amendment 1 proposes a ‘eurobomb’. Very weak applause so far.

In the last 24 hours I’ve spoken to a number of people on various sides of the Trident debate, which begins in the main hall in 1fifteen minutes. No-one is confident, everything is to play for, and there is a real sense that the speeches in the hall will swing the debate one way or the other.

This morning the movers of the official motion have leafleted voting representatives with a table comparing the motion amended and unamended, with a message that the motion unamended is nearer to a position of genuine disarmament than the amended motion.  Last night in the …

URGENT ISSUE TOPIC SELECTED

The topic for the ‘urgent issue’ discussion at Harrogate this weekend will be gun crime. It will be at 17:10 on Saturday. This topic was chosen by Federal Conference Committee and Federal Policy Committee officers, from a wide range of issues submitted by conference reps, and will give conference-goers a chance to take part in a broad-ranging discussion on this highly topical issue

TRIDENT DEBATE
The debate on Trident takes place on Saturday morning. It is scheduled to start at 11:10, but we will bring the start time forward if we can, as we anticipate a large number of …

Jonathan Isaby has dug up a nice project of Mark Oaten’s – a book examining governing coalitions past, and future.  Sounds like an interesting project. (Shame he was researching it in Portcullis House when he should’ve been representing his constituents.)

Sky News is reporting that UKIP has rejected a local election candidate – the candidate is saying he was rejected because he is disabled.

UPDATE: A red-faced Nigel Farage is saying that they stopped him being a “priority” candidate as he couldn’t knock on doors or deliver leaflets, but he’s welcome to stand as a paper candidate. He also claims that the candidate, 65 year old Jack Biggs has attempted to “blackmail” the party.

Stephen Tall has been receiving crank calls from Rory Bremner claiming to be Nick Harvey MP (that’s how political phone calls work these days isn’t it?)

Text of motion below, article to follow in a couple of hours:

Amendment 1

Insert a new item (ix): “Notes that Britain’s current nuclear weapons system is dependent on the United States for technical and operational support and that dependency will remain if any replacement is based on the Trident missile system.”

Delete Article (C) and renumber accordingly

Article 3. – delete from ‘nuclear systems’ to end and replace with “with our European Union partners, in particular France, with the intent of securing a powerful and coherent European voice within NATO, subject to the constraints on such co-operation imposed …

Yesterday, former BBC Man Martin Belam wrote about the Daily Mail’s distortion of an NSPCC report.  Having then commented on the story on their website, he got quite a shock:

This is what they published:

If you actually read the report ChildLine issued, it does not say that suicidal five year olds called ChildLine. It says that there were 42 phone calls by children between the ages of 5 AND 11. The other 96% of suicidal calls were by children 12 and over – which whilst it is still very sad.
– Martin Belam, Salzburg, Austria

Sadly, I appear to trail off mid-sentence.

…

Nick Harvey tomorrow at 7am, and the Lib Dem European Group the day after.

£16k, so would suit someone starting out in politics and looking to get on the ladder.  Applications close tomorrow, to apply send a CV and covering letter to Neil Trafford.

Position is full time, working with PPC Alison Smith, along with the local party and the local council group.  Key skills: literature production, volunteer co-ordination, events organisation and press.

Just a curiosity – it’s probably nothing…

Every week at PMQs the PM answers his first question “Mr Speaker sir, this morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the house I will have further such meetings later today”

Today, he tripped over the sentence and said “Mr Speaker sir… I had meetings with ministerial” etc, omitting to say ‘this morning’.  Ruther Turner was questioned again by the police yesterday. Was the PM questioned this morning?