Author Archives: The Voice

The Daily Telegraph is publishing its top 50, with numbers 41-50 released so far.

From the BBC:

A junior member of the government is out of a job after breaking ranks to call for a challenge to Gordon Brown as party leader.

Government whip Siobhain McDonagh said she wanted to “clear the air” about the leadership issue.

A government spokesman said that if Ms McDonagh has not resigned then she will be sacked. The source said her replacement had already been appointed.

The source said Ms McDonagh had always been “Anti-Gordon”.

Ms McDonagh – who was the only member of the government not to nominate Mr Brown for the party leadership last year

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Here’s how The Times is reporting the story:

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, will set out today why he believes patients should be allowed to pay privately for drugs to “top up” NHS care. The Liberal Democrats will seek to outflank both Labour and the Tories after patients who bought life-extending cancer drugs privately were refused further treatment by the NHS.

Under current guidelines, patients risk forfeiting their right to NHS care, such as nursing or chemotherapy, if they pay privately for treatment rejected or not yet approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

The Government is

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Via the BBC:

Annual fitness tests for police and an end to the “job-for-life” culture are among the proposals in a Lib Dem policy document on fighting crime.

Home Affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said more officers were needed on the streets to catch criminals.

But he said there also needed to be an urgent review of working practices to make it easier to sack those who could not do their job properly.

The party said it would also jail fewer criminals for minor offences.

And it would give police authorities the power to set their

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All of us here at the Voice extend our warmest congratulations to Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, on the news that he and his wife Miriam are expecting their third child in February:

Mr Clegg and his wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez said they were “thrilled to bits” to be expecting their third child in February. The couple already have two boys and Mr Clegg said they always hoped to have a “little brother or sister” for them. The announcement comes one week before the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth – his first as party leader.

Via Liberal England:

An alarming story from The Herald:

Scottish Liberal Democrats have been warned by their auditors that … it may be deemed, in accounting terms, to be no longer a going concern, after nearly a tenth of its expenditure last year was not met by income…

But, as the Herald points out, other Scottish parties are equally precariously placed but have not received such warnings.

Via News of the World:

TOP Tory Caroline Spelman—already under investigation for paying her nanny from public funds—was last night embroiled in a NEW £100,000 cash row.

For the Conservative Party chairman used taxpayers’ cash to pay her top aide, DESPITE him undertaking party political work.

Via the BBC:

A former donor to the Liberal Democrats is to be tried for fraud in his absence after he skipped bail.

A warrant was issued last month for the arrest of businessman Michael Brown, whose firm gave more than £2m to the Liberal Democrats.