Category Archives: A weekly catchup

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 …

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 …

And goodness, what a fortnight it’s been for politics and the party.  Since we at Weekly (hem hem) Catchup left  your screens a fortnight (hem hem) ago we’ve seen a lot of movement on the political front led by the Telegraph’s sensational coverage of the “Cash for Cushions” constitutional crisis that John Stewart’s chromakey team dubbed “Scamalot“.

We kicked off our coverage with a triple bill of Norman Baker’s contributions on the matter, but it was to be a gift that keeps on giving.  Stephen ranted, then questioned; you answered in spades. Clegg weighed in. Alix …

It’s Sunday night, it’s the early hours of the morning – it’s LDV Catchup!

And this was the week in which even more MPs fell foul of the media in the great expense extravaganza, which was particularly embarrassing for Jacqui Smith. Chris Grayling came in for criticism for representing a constituency 17 miles from London but still claiming both second home allowance and high travel costs. Eric Pickles fun time on Question Time finally became available on Youtube – both with and without a Monty Python Yorkshiremen mashup. Thank goodness Nick Clegg has the answer.

It was …

Welcome to your sneaky guide to the best of LDV from the last fortnight.

In Op-eds, we had a round-up of polls after previous Labour governments from York Membery. Jock Coats told us of the opportunity of a lifetime to build anew, build better. Cllr Jenni Clutten asked whether we can trust our young people and Gareth Aubrey asked whether we can win them.

Our MP for Taunton Jeremy Browne penned a piece to explain why he was one of only two Lib Dem MPs to vote against allowing the Youth Parliament to meet in …

Welcome to Catchup, bringing you the tastiest nuggets of LDV from the last fortnight, apart from Conference, which we caught up here.

We started the period with a debate about fairtrade. Good? John Pugh MP thought so; Julian Harris wasn’t so sure.

We learned where thousands of Lib Dems will be trekking to conference over the coming years.

We learned the Government had caved on individual voter registration – and Mark Pack explained why that was a good thing.

Our peers came out top. Ros Scott unleashed hell. Bob Russell MP campaigned …

Welcome to Lib Dem Voice’s Catchup post in the poignant week when the newest little Clegg entered this world (pics here) and one of the little Camerons left it, and politics as usual was suspended for an afternoon.

It was also the week Alix Mortimer made the longlist of the new Orwell Prize for Blogging, and Lib Dem Voice itself spent a day in cryogenic suspension as technical wizard Ryan Cullen migrated us to new, private, expensive server.

Our outage led to one angry customer: James Graham’s provocative “Is Lord Ashdown the IT Industry’s Patsy?” went …

Welcome to catchup, featuring only the crumbliest, flakiest posts from the last week, with no Flake wrappers stopping up the plug.

Most read this week: Mark Pack using David Cameron’s own words to prove that David Cameron is cheap, lurching to the left, and not sensible; yet another post about bloody Derek Draper; another wind-up post from the monstrously offensive Laurence Boyce; an excellent piece from Stephen defending Clegg’s piece about fathers in the recession and still more comments on “Just Exactly How Wrong Was Chris Huhne?”

Your …

It’s been a while since we last caught up with the best of Lib Dem Voice, so here is a whistlestop tour of the last four weeks:

Some of the most viewed stories (according to Google Analytics):
Charlie Gordon MSP’s expenses
Is Progressive London a front for Ken?
Former members of the SDP – are there more in the Tories than the Lib Dems?
Stephen Tall’s excellent “25 random things about the Lib Dems”

The stories you commented on the most:
Was Chris Huhne right to say Geert Wilders should be banned from …

The year is but 12 days old and it’s only a little over a week since we last caught up, but already we have dozens of delectable posts to pick over and review for your entertainment.

Just this morning, we had the welcome return of the excerpts from the Dictionary of Liberal Thought with a topical entry on Keynes beginning a three month series on the man, his works and thought, and the Forum that now bears his name.

Our fearless leader underwent celebrated a birthday, we liked Twitter for spurious reasons, we discussed my specialist subject, …

It’s been a busy few weeks since we last delved into the Archives at LDV Towers, so here’s a little snapshot of what’s been happening here since we last rounded up.

You can’t have failed to miss our 12 Op-Eds of Christmas, a round-up of all your favourite writing from the blog throughout 2008. You can find all twelve at this tag link.  There are still a few more to come, taking us up to when we at LDV towers take the tree out for recyling, take our Christmas cards to Smiths or Marks, and carefully wrap up the …

Welcome to Christmas catchup in the week party leader Nick Clegg celebrated his first anniversary in post. We covered that here on the voice with articles from our editor at large Stephen Tall, Cambridgeshire campaigner and activist Martin Land, and Mark Littlewood from Progressive Vision. Clegg penned an article for us himself, and also put up a Youtube video. And Alison Holmes also wrote a considered review of the year.

As well as slightly introspective views of his leadership year, Nick Clegg also gave a major speech to Demos, covering the big subject …

Welcome to weekly catchup.  This week, the Voice saw the start of two of the big debates widely expected at spring conference next year, starting with the Lib Dem stance on student tuition fees.  On the pro side, Julian Astle and Tim Leunig.  Batting for the antis, Paul Holmes MP.  The posts attracted a huge number of comments, suggesting the debate is only just beginning. And at the end of last week, Susan Kramer MP used our pages to launch a policy paper that would provide seamless childcare support for families from the day a child is …

Welcome to the Catchup posting in its new regular time slot at the end of business on Friday.

We start this week where we started last time with the ongoing repercussions of the death of Baby P.  Our own Alix Mortimer laid out a series of constructive steps concerned people could take themselves.  Mark Pack gave us news of what social workers themselves think of the situation. And barrister and Euro candidate Antony Hook wrote an explanatory piece on the role of anonymity in the criminal justice system, partly in response to the Baby P case.

The tragic, untimely …

With the sad news of Baby P came a sudden influx of new visitors to the Voice this week.  Our article highlighting local MP Lynne Featherstone’s measured question at PMQs unexpectedly became the top link on Google for Baby P, drawing in more people than we’ve ever seen one thread before.  The result is a sombre wake-up call which shows some of our more jaded regulars and editors like me just what the general public really thinks about stories like this.  The posting attracted over 200 moving postings, the vast majority from people who’ve never been to LDV before. …

This week, Daniel Jones made his LDV début urging Lib Dems to go to the Climate March.

We asked the Lib Dem presidential candidates how they would improve membership, and we posted three answers here: Opik, Scott and Fernando.

You, dear reader, commented in spades on posts like David Allen’s opinion piece Time for a New Start, (Darrell Goodliffe put a different view here – it’s early days yet for comments on that one). Our new poll on the BBC licence fee started a conversation. See also Stephen Tall highlighting a curiosity in …

A trio of Independent Views kickstarted our week last Monday: Phil Booth from No2ID on credit freezes, Anne Furedi from BPAS about the human fertility bill and Dale Bassett from Reform about the IPOD generation. Our Independent View slot is open to almost anyone who wants to talk to Lib Dems whilst stressing their independence from any particular political party.

Our biggest debate last week started on a post from Mark Littlewood in which he set out his stall for Liberal Vision. 150 comments later and the debate is still going strong. Remind me …

Life has been a little quieter this week as the Conference season concludes, the world comes to the brink of financial meltdown and Dr Pack sets off on his tour of the world’s paperclip factories.

Our own Vince Cable gave his thoughts on the economy, kicking off a Lib Dem campaign to highlight our plans for financial recovery. It’s been a good week for Vince – as even Tinsel Tits agrees.

Vince was joined this week as a guest contributor to the voice by Simon Titley, arguing that politicians should talk more than listen; Paul Burall sought …

Previously, on Lib Dem Voice…

MP Lynne Featherstone penned us an article on the brittleness of British politics; Alisdair Murray fed back on how joint Lib/Lab meetings went at both our conference and theirs; Jeremy Hargreaves let us know about the Lib Dem Hospital Governor’s Network; Tom Papworth shared his views about tax; and Rob Blackie had a plea about the proposed Leadership Academy.

Editor at Large Stephen Tall was pleased that 187 of you dropped by with your views on the state of things at present – and we covered your views extensively in a series …

Catchup has been away from our screens following a writers strike. In the three weeks since you last heard from me, here’s what’s been happening.

There’s been a by-election. The best place to catch up are a series of post-mortem posts, including what party chief exec Lord Rennard emailed to members, and LDV staffer Stephen Tall’s response. A wide ranging debate followed on both threads – and Chris Rennard followed closely too – and posted his own response.

Just hours later, we heard that there would likely be a by-election in Glasgow East, so I asked …

After a brief hiatus, Weekly Catchup returns.

Guest writers brought us:

• Alex Folkes on Votes at 16
• John Dixon on Political Correctness
• Staffers at Reform urged us to seize the educational reform agenda.

Loads of comments on:

• Our new poll on Road Pricing
• Charge of the Lib Dem Brigade by Paul Reynolds
• Trouble for the Tories in Henley by Mark Pack

The regulars brought you:

• Nick Clegg on education, from Alix
• The Voice team as a whole brought you our first campaign – on Database Britain
• and Mark Pack brought news of a fluffy toy with bank account issues.

And of course, there’s the …