Lib Dem Voice hosted a fringe in Bournemouth at the party’s annual conference to discuss the impact of climate change (see photo above).
Our speakers were Baroness Cathy Bakewell, Lib Dem Lords Spokesperson for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Luke Murphy, Head of IPPR’s Environmental Justice Commission; Lib Dem Deputy Leader Ed Davey MP; Mark Campanale of the Carbon Tracker Initiative; and Paul Sheeky from Extinction Rebellion; The panel was chaired by LDV’s own Dr Kirsten Johnson.
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LibDemVoice co-editor Stephen Tall joined the panel for this week’s Guardian Politics Weekly podcast, hosted by Tom Clark and also featuring political columnist Melissa Kite and Guardian social affairs editor Randeep Ramesh. They discuss the Tories’ latest implosion over when to hold an in/out EU referendum and Theresa May’s proposal that life should mean life in prison for anyone convicted of murdering a police officer.
This week’s Politics Weekly podcast from The Guardian features, ahem, myself alongside Dan Sabbagh, Juliette Jowit and Tom Clark. Amazingly, we talked reshuffle, then reshuffle and a bit more reshuffle, including how Jo Swinson is now one of the party’s main rising stars.
All three of the Guardianistas are their own people with their own views, yet I was struck how between them they didn’t particularly paint the reshuffle as a lurch to the right – more a nudge of a few points – and also how they were relatively kind to the Liberal Democrats too. Not quite the collective Guardian …
This week’s Politics Weekly podcast from The Guardian features, ahem, myself alongside Martin Kettle, Nick Cohen and Tom Clark. Lords reform, Boris Johnson’s political future and the Corby by-election (so far, dreadfully lacking in jokes about trouser presses) all feature.
Nick Cohen made a particularly good provocative point about Boris Johnson – saying he’s the only Conservative in the UK to have won a major election since John Major won the 1992 general election. It makes the Tory right’s view of him rather contradictory: they really dislike some of his policy preferences (such as on immigration) yet also love him as …
In June, Mark Pack addressed the Liberal History Group‘s summer meeting on the topic of Forgotten Heroes for a Governing Party. Further details of the event can be found here.
And who was Dr Pack’s choice? You will have to listen to find out.
I’ve been talking on the Pod Delusion again this week, this time about some of the processes involved in standing for election to your local council. It’s more complicated than some people realise, and my process piece explains some of the intricacies.
On Monday 4th April, in the run-up to the AV referendum, the Gladstone Club hosted a debate in the National Liberal Club on electoral reform which featured Lib Dem Voice’s co-editor Mark Pack and the Chairman of the Edmund Burke society, Ian Alston. Both took a look at the lessons which can be learnt from history by those deciding how to vote in the referendum.
Soon after becoming Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg promised “the most significant programmes of reform by a British government since the 19th century…. the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832.” But how do the Coalition government’s constitutional changes actually compare to the changes brought in by the Great Reform Bill of 1832?
That question was addressed by a meeting organised by the Liberal Democrat History Group earlier this year, with speakers our own Dr Mark Pack (who studied nineteenth century elections and electoral reform for his PhD) and the History of Parliament Trust’s Dr Philip Salmon. Here now for those …
Here is a full podcast of our fringe last night, “Who controls the internet?”
Libel law reform campaigner and former MP Evan Harris, website pioneer Mary Reid, James Blessing of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) and Jim Killock of the digital rights champions Open Rights Group debate recent issues about free speech and the internet with chair Mark Pack.
Following overwhelming demand from our twitter colleagues, we are now publishing in full the debate we had yesterday on diversifying our elected representatives.
You can find my written review of the debate here.
After a few minutes amplifying and chopping stuff off the beginning and end, and then many more minutes uploading large files to the internet, we can now bring you the audio recording of Nick Clegg’s conference speech.
You can play it by scrolling down and clicking the “play in another window” link.
And if you’d like to CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY, you will also find the published text here.
The Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Nick Clegg MP, made himself available for a question and answer session with party members this afternoon, and a packed Oval Hall at Sheffield’s City Hall called in to hear his answers.
Hear him as he talks about Lords reform and tuition fees and takes questions within topic from speakers on the floor.
And did he really forget he was in charge of the country? Find out by clicking the “play in another window” link below.
Earlier today, Simon Hughes, Lorely Burt, Vince Cable and Ed Davey joined chair Sal Brinton to answer questions from the audience about post offices, tuition fees, the education maintenance allowance and cutting red tape for small businesses.
You can hear the session in full by clicking the “play in a new window” link below.
Coming up later today: our podcasts of the Nick Clegg Q&A and a recording of our own fringe meeting, which is happening right now.
To amplify that, we can now bring you an almost full recording of the debate. Thrill at procedural niceties! Coo at the applause for Baroness Williams! And bask in the self-righteous glow from delegates that no other party still has debates like this.
Apologies that the recording starts halfway through Paul Burstow’s introductory speech. It took longer than expected for me to wake up and eat breakfast clear security at City Hall.
By Alex Foster
| Sun 26th September 2010 - 6:34 pm
Agressively secularist podcast the Pod Delusion has, since its inception, carried pieces from contributors and former contributors to Lib Dem Voice. Former LDV editor Will Howells has guest-edited the podcast, and appeared in the firstthreeepisodes.
Latterly, I’ve started showing up in the occasional episode, holding forth on leaflets, tesco and polling day.
And on the first birthday of Pod Delusion, both me and Will Howells appeared on a stage together for the first time – both trying to get a serious point across and make people laugh – at Pod Delusion Live. Much fun was had by all. And there was a most entertaining acronym of “atheist”.
So, to this week’s episode, released in the early hours of Friday morning. I took some of our recording of the Equal Marriage debate at Lib Dem conference and chopped it up and made commentary, almost like a real reporter / journalisty thing. Go me. The resultant reportage is cheek by jowl with reports on “Protest the Pope”, phone hacking and a trolling masterclass.
The Wednesday lunchtime at Liverpool conference saw myself chairing the last of The Voice’s fringe meetings, this one looking at lessons from the 2010 general election.
Our guest speakers were Hilary Stephenson (Director of Campaigns), Duncan Hames (newly elected as MP for Chippenham) and Paul Holmes (former MP for Chesterfield).
Thanks to Alex for sorting out the recording and podcasting wizardry.
By Alex Foster
| Wed 22nd September 2010 - 5:14 pm
Our final podcast from the conference floor was the penultimate session, a Q&A with cabinet ministers Danny Alexander, Chris Huhne, Michael Moore and Vince Cable.
The last session at Lib Dem conference is usually reserved for the Leader’s Speech – but that was not possible this time as Nick Clegg had to fly out to the UN.
It’s quite a shock for Liberal Democrats to get to quizz cabinet ministers, but it’s something they took in their stride with relative ease. This was taped from the reserved press section – and it’s interesting that over a dozen journalists had stayed till this …
By Alex Foster
| Wed 22nd September 2010 - 10:24 am
After a brief hiatus during which our podcast host migrated us to an account we hadn’t asked for during our busiest week, we can now bring you, in full, the debate on LGBT marriage from Tuesday’s conference floor.
This debate may not necessarily be of interest to the wider public, but certainly anyone who loves Lib Dem conference will recognise many of the aspects of the debate.
Highlights for me include Dr Evan Harris’s explanation, in the opening minutes of the debate of his stint as the only openly gay Lib Dem MP despite not actually being gay; the Voice’s own Sara …
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 …
By Alex Foster
| Sun 19th September 2010 - 5:32 pm
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 …
I always seem to start my podcasts with an apology. In the hurry to bring this recording to you so you can share in the debate the Lib Dems had this morning, I have not yet processed my sound file. It could do with a bit of amplification for sure. And I’m afraid I missed the vital first few moments of Bridget Fox’s speech. And after that, the speeches will be punctuated by the sounds of the hall slowly filling up as the debate progressed, and the frustration of many of the delegates that what looked like …
Last night a good crowd turned out to hear Paul Burstow MP, Mark Pack, Alex Wilcock and Bridget Fox talk about our new online project, Authoritarianism vs Liberalism and to talk more generally about their work and current campaigns.
As ever, I was there with my trusty Zoom H2 so that we can share the fringe meeting with our listeners at home. …
By Alex Foster
| Thu 24th September 2009 - 10:07 am
Below, you will find our final fringe event at conference, Beyond Twitter. MP Jo Swinson joined LDV regular Mark Pack and MySociety’s Richard Pope to debate the future of public online engagement with politics.
We still have one more fringe event in the cans ready for sound processing, but I won’t be able to bring that to you just yet.
By Alex Foster
| Wed 23rd September 2009 - 8:01 pm
We were taping ippr‘s fringe with our own Editor at Large Stephen Tall along with some relative political unknowns – Shirley Williams, Menzies Campbell and Charles Clarke.
The ippr did say they were recording the event themselves, and their recording is probably better than ours, but I can’t immediately find it on their website.
By Alex Foster
| Tue 22nd September 2009 - 6:35 pm
A number of those present at the conference are not here because they are party members, but because they want to influence those of us who are. When I was wandering around the conference hall finding people to talk to, two of them met that category.
By Alex Foster
| Tue 22nd September 2009 - 4:30 pm
We asked delegates if their constituency was ready for the General election; if Nick Clegg was right on tuition fees; how a mansion tax would go down in their area; and how they were campaigning online.
Answering our questions were Tom Holvey and Chris Wiggin, from York, Katy Gordon for Glasgow North, Alan Bullion from Tunbridge Wells / Sevenoaks and Brendan D’Cruz from St Albans.
Joe Bourke For 2023-24 the public sector expects to raise from taxes and other income 41.1% of national income ...
Joe Bourke Money circulating in the economy is cash (3%) and bank accounts (97%). Banks create new deposits when they make a loan and credit the account with a deposit. T...
Mary Regnier-Wilson Iain - you are correct that I have absolutely no intention of putting out any leaflets in Chelmsford that say we want to build 380,000 houses nationally. I will...
Simon R @Mick Taylor "if you think it is obscene for a few to have billions whilst the many have very little" ... There's nothing remotely obscene about some peo...
Simon R @Joe Bourke "The UK has been stuck in a low productivity growth cycle ... since the 2008 financial crisis. ... addressing trade barriers with the EU could br...
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Event at the Botanic Garden this Friday! #dundeewestend
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