Category Archives: Site news

Welcome to my day – 14 December 2020

Christmas draws closer and, it seems to me, has started in earnest a bit earlier than usual this year. Perhaps that’s because many of us need a bit of cheer at a particularly trying time. The prospects of a no-deal Brexit, combined with a long winter before the various vaccines are rolled out, are not likely to lift the soul, it has to be admitted.

This week theoretically sees Parliament go into recess for the Christmas break although, if some sort of deal is done, the session may run into “injury time”. All three major parties will be undergoing some soul searching in terms of how to vote in such circumstances, with some Conservatives unlikely to support any deal, Labour seemingly committed to support any deal despite serious misgivings and the Liberal Democrats torn between abstention and rejection. That may not matter in the Commons, but the Lords is different for so many reasons.

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7 December 2020 – welcome to my day…

Good morning, gentle readers, and welcome to another week here at Liberal Democrat Voice. I have to admit that it’s going to be a quiet start, as I’ll be attending a funeral later, so do bear with me if moderation isn’t as snappy as it usually is.

Following on from my plea a fortnight ago, we’ve had a few requests and/or comments, and so I ought to respond.

To Katharine Pindar, who raised the issue of press releases, we’re not receiving very many at all at the moment – we are receiving e-mails from the HQ Press Team, but not much …

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How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

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23 November 2020 – welcome to my day…

Well, I’m back after a week off. The sun is shining, although the valley floor is shrouded in mist after a frosty night, so it’s not a day to linger unless you’re properly wrapped up.

In truth, I’d taken a week off because much of the joy of Liberal Democrat Voice has been rather lost of late. Attempts to disrupt the site by the use of fake e-mail addresses and, if I’m honest, the sheer grinding unpleasantness of some of our readers, made me wonder if the effort that I, and my fellow Editorial Team members, put in is really worthwhile.

I’ve always seen this site as an opportunity for Liberal Democrats, supporters of the Party and those who are “Lib Dem curious” to debate and discuss the issues of the day, propose new policy and campaigning ideas, and generally engage positively with each other in a respectful manner. It seems that there are too many out there who see it as an opportunity to settle old scores, browbeat or misrepresent those they disagree with or simply treat others with disrespect. It is, from an editorial perspective, wearing at best, deeply disheartening at worst. And, for the spirits of a volunteer Editorial Team, that can be a bit corrosive.

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How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

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Apologies

You may have noticed that we are having some technical difficulties with our site at the moment.

These have been manifesting themselves in a number of apparently unrelated ways – we can’t schedule posts in advance, we can’t add pictures or tags, and the Recent Comments in the sidebar are very out of date.

Our technical guys are working on it, but in the meantime please be patient with us.

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Forty-eight hours off Twitter for a good cause… #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate

Like many people, Liberal Democrat Voice will be maintaining a Twitter silence for forty-eight hours, starting at 9 a.m. this morning, to protest Twitter’s abject failure to address the issues surrounding anti-Jewish material posted seemingly without consequence.

We won’t be silent otherwise, so for the usual selection of news and opinion, do drop in from time to time, and we’ll aim to keep our readers engaged.

And, if you’re on Twitter, why not join us? The more participants, the more pressure on Twitter to act…

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Welcome to my day – 23 March 2020

Good morning, everyone, and as the United Kingdom heads towards lockdown, another week starts on Liberal Democrat Voice.

There’s been a lot of debate on this site about the pace of Government action, whether or not various steps are appropriate or not, but my sense from rural Suffolk is that most people are attempting to be sensible – staying indoors for the most part, keeping a sensible distance when meeting each other on the street, that sort of thing. And, whilst the Government might be hesitating about ordering a lockdown, non-essential services are rather leading in shutting up shop so that …

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LDV presents… Not the Spring Conference

One of our occasional commenters contacted me before the weekend, and asked if we might publish his prepared debate speech, given that he wouldn’t have a chance to make it “for real”. My first thought was, “it’ll be a bit on the long side”, which he accepted. However, it strikes me that we could do something to enable people to debate the various policy motions after a fashion, and so, today, I’m going to try a little experiment.

I will publish one of the motions due to be debated, and invite you, our readers, to “debate” it. My thoughts on how …

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How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

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What’s being debated in our members’ forum this week?

members forum wordleLibDemVoice has two parallel sites. The first is our public blog, the thing you’re reading now. The second is our private members’ forum, which only current Lib Dem members can access.

If you’re a member and want to chat with fellow party members about any issue that’s on your mind, then why not sign up? In addition, you’ll be included in our regular surveys’ of party members’ views.

Here’s some of the most active discussions this past 10 days:

  • The leadership election timetable
  • Violent crime
  • The influence of drugs on acquisitive

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An update on our troll farmer in Aberdeenshire

Day 139 - Worzel Gummage at Birmingham airport - 1982 (14515725233)
Many readers have been intrigued by the post earlier this week with a message to our troll farmer in Aberdeenshire.

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A message to the troll farmer in Aberdeenshire


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Yes, you!

Just stop it, please.

You’re wasting our time and yours.

Our rules are here and we set out two particularly relevant ones here last weekend.

That is all.

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Two very important parts of our Comments Policy

Yes, we have a Comments Policy, which can be found here.

There are two very important parts of it, under the section “Be who you say you are”:

  1. When entering your comment, we ask you to provide a valid email address which belongs to you. This email address will not be published and is requested in case we need to contact you. We may send a test message to the email address given, in order to check its validity. Comments submitted without the provision of a valid email address, owned by the commenter, will not be published.
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How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

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Season’s greetings

We will be taking a break until later in the week. We won’t be checking emails to the voice address until we return, so please be patient.

And have a great time yourself!

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A member of the Editorial Team responds…

Dear Reader,

It’s been an “interesting” few days. As promised, we’ve let a “hundred flowers blossom”, and, for the most part it’s been interesting. But, and you probably guessed that there would be a “but”, there have been a few disappointments along the way.

So, for the benefit of some of you, might I offer the thoughts of Liberal Democrat Voice’s former Readers’ Editor, i.e. me.

Firstly, quoting from my piece a few days ago;

As you may guess from today’s content, Liberal Democrat Voice aims to be a safe place for some of that discussion. We’ll try to offer anyone with a constructive

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Thanks!

You viewed Liberal Democrat Voice 25,892 times today.

Thank you for making us the place you come to when the proverbial solids of fate hit the Vent-Axia© of the Electoral Process.

(RIP Humphrey Lyttelton).

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At the end of the day, it’s the end of the day…

I’ve rather left the rest of the LDV team to their own devices today. Without a campaign of my own to worry about (we were stood down for the Greens, here in Bury St Edmunds), and with the nearest target seat fifty miles away, I’ve been slightly adrift from the experiences of the rest of you, and thus free to mind the shop, so to speak. Here are some thoughts…

It wasn’t a great night. Losing four sitting MPs, including Jo, and all of the newcomers is hardly something to celebrate. But, our share of the vote was up by more …

15 Comments

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

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Riding the enthusiasm wave, some thoughts going forward and a Presidential race update…

Well, that was a pretty good Conference, wasn’t it? Passion, enthusiasm, and a whole bunch of people I’d never met before. I have to admit that I left Bournemouth rather more enthusiastic than I was when I arrived.

And so, what to do with all of that enthusiasm? Well, I’d like to try a few things.

Firstly, our new members are still feeling their way into the Party, and that offers an opportunity for the various groups withing the Party – Specified Associated Organisations, Associated Organisations, thinktanks, pressure groups and the like, to reach out to new people. So, if you are …

2 Comments

How to bold, italicise & underline some of the text in your LDV comments

A reader has asked about this.

If you want to add some special features to your comments on this site, you can use HTML coding.

Don’t be frightened.

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How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Paddy – a few words on behalf of the Editorial Team

The news of Paddy Ashdown’s death tonight will have doubtless come as a shock to our readers, and to the wider Liberal Democrat family.

Members of the Liberal Democrat Voice Team, like so many Liberal Democrat activists and campaigners over the years, have our own Paddy stories, of kindnesses and of events. Paddy was seldom dull, even if you disagreed with him at any one time.

But, as the news of the death of a man many of us thought of as almost indestructible sinks in, we would like to offer our condolences to Jane, to the Ashdown family and friends. Our …

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How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

28 Comments

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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What do Liberal Democrat members think? Don’t miss your chance to make your views heard!

We used to poll our readers quite a lot, and very interesting the results were too. Not always entirely reflective of the wider Party membership, but often the only meaningful attempt to assess the direction of travel on a range of subjects.

Well, we’re keen to resume our polling, but before we do, we’d like to invite those of you who are members to register for the forum linked to the site (assuming that you haven’t already done so) so that we can send you an e-mail inviting you to take part when the time comes.

And whilst we’re talking about polling, …

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How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

3 Comments

Housekeeping note: Please use a valid email address for comments on Liberal Democrat Voice

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This is a housekeeping note just to emphasise this part of our Comments Policy:

When entering your comment, we ask you to provide a valid email address which belongs to you. This email address will not be published and is requested in case we need to contact you. We may send a test message to the email address given, in order to check its validity. Comments submitted without the provision of a valid email address, owned by the commenter, will not be published.

If you just run your fingers along the keyboard to create a random email address, then, sorry, but your comments will be automatically deleted without troubling a moderator. You must provide a valid email address which you own and monitor.

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