Liberal Democrat Voice

Daily View 2×2: 4 April 2010 with special beard and moustache feature

By Mark Pack | Sun 4th April 2010 - 9:00 am

It’s Sunday. It’s 9am. It’s time for beards. And moustaches. But first the news.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Bravo to Nigel Farage on drugs policy – Mark Thompson praises the UKIP man’s approach to drugs
Where have all the Tory ladies gone? – soon to be ex-Councillor Mary Reid poses the question

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

Teachers threaten strikes over workload

Posted in Daily View | Tagged afghanistan, hamid karzi and nigel farage | Leave a comment

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Will the Tories back Labour’s plan that could land us with a £300m bill?

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 11:06 pm

The ISP Talk Talk (over whose connection I’m writing this) has made an extremely good point about the Digital Economy Bill, which is set to be debated extremely briefly in the House of Commons during the week:

Clause 14 of the bill demands that customers take “reasonable steps” to prevent their network from being used by hackers for illicit purposes. TalkTalk claims that that would “presumably” be interpreted as a demand for the latest security measures, and calculates that such expense would, spread throughout just half the current number of houses connected to broadband, necessitate approximately £300 million in upgrade costs.

…

Posted in News | Tagged digital economy bill | 5 Comments

Opinion: Attack YouGov if you want to – but at least say who you are

By Niklas Smith | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 5:50 pm

Last week’s Daily Telegraph article attacking YouGov’s polling raises some disturbing issues about the quality of political debate as we fast approach the general election.

Firstly, the article’s authors seem to have no understanding about how polls should be conducted. They complain that the raw data in one large aggregated survey “were…‘weighted’ using an undisclosed YouGov formula which reduced the lead to sex per cent .” But all reputable pollsters know that their sample will not usually be representative of the population, for example by having too few women or too many Guardian …

Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Tagged anthony wells, daily telegraph, peter kellner, robert winnett and yougov | 4 Comments

Pollwatch – State of the Leaders: Clegg +18%, Brown -27%, Cameron +5% (March 2010)

By Stephen Tall | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 4:45 pm

Yesterday, Pollwatch looked at the state of the parties in March; today it’s the turn of the party leaders.

As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Only three polling companies – YouGov, Angus RS and Mori – this past month asked questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the three main party leaders. And each asks variants on the basic question – do you think Clegg/Brown/Cameron are doing a good job – to come up with their figures, so comparison ain’t easy. But, still, we don’t indulge in polls often, so here goes …

Here, in chronological order, are the results of the four polls published in March asking the public to rate the three major party leaders:

Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Tagged david cameron, gordon brown, nick clegg and opinion polls | 2 Comments

Don’t tax sweat – An Independent View from Thomas Colignatus

By Thomas Colignatus | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 2:45 pm

With our intelligence and enterpreneurship we create micro-chips and send crafts into space, but the creation of jobs for the disadvantaged seems out of reach. The rich countries in the world still have a huge pool of unemployment and poverty at the bottom of society. A close analysis gives the insight that we actually create unemployment and poverty ourselves.

The following table gives the legal minimum wage in the US (dollars), in the UK (pounds) and in Holland (euros) as key examples for the rich world. The table is best understood from the principle of “don’t tax sweat”.

That is, workers at the minimum should be exempt from levies.

Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | 7 Comments

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Hasn’t Charlie Whelan admitted Unite is breaking the law?

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 1:55 pm

Charlie Whelan’s recent interview with Left Foot Forward confirmed what’s been widely reported elsewhere, namely that Unite are running a phone canvassing operation where they are asking their members how they are intending to vote:

We’ve talked to tens of thousands, almost hundreds of thousands of people in the last couple of years and there are a proportion of Unite members who are Tories. But the current telephone canvassing we’ve been doing of Unite members shows that it’s only 8.5%. I expected it to be higher than that.

However, if you are asking people their voting intentions and then recording that …

Posted in News | Tagged charlie whelan and UNITE | 1 Comment

BNP hit by allegations of coups, infighting and sabotage

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 12:25 pm

Extract from a leaked BNP email bulletin:

For several months the party’s internal security team has been running an extensive and long-running investigation. This was initially tasked to investigate:

Alleged financial irregularities and ‘scamming’ concerning the procurement of print, especially large election print run, leaflets and regular publications including Identity magazine.

The leaking onto the internet of sensitive party information.

The ongoing, co-ordinated and sustained hate campaign, feeding lies to certain anti-BNP blog sites.

More recently, its focus has moved on to the catalogue of recurring and seemingly inexplicable ‘gaffes’ being made at various stages in our preparations for the general election by certain

…

Posted in News | Tagged bnp, mark collett and nick griffin | 19 Comments

LDVideo Easter Saturday special: Lib Dem leaders at PMQs

By Stephen Tall | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 10:50 am

Welcome to this latest LDVideo instalment, and today as a special holiday treat we’re highlighting three political video clips showing Lib Dem leaders on top form at Prime Minister’s Questions.

First up, is Ming Campbell. Now Ming didn’t always have the happiest time at PMQs, but there were times when he hit his stride perfectly, and this was one such occasion, on 24th January 2007, when shaming Tony Blair’s failure to debate in the Commons whether troops should be withdrawn from Iraq:

(Also available on YouTube here).

Secondly, how could we forget Vince Cable‘s starring turn as acting leader? Certainly Gordon ‘Mr Bean’ Brown will never forget it:

Posted in YouTube | Tagged gordon brown, gurkhas, iraq, Ming Campbell, nick clegg, PMQs, tony blair and vince cable | Leave a comment

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 9:10 am

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 three simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

Posted in Site news | 1 Comment

An Independent View from the IEA: Enterprise needs liberalism – but are the Liberal Democrats liberal?

By Richard Wellings | Sat 3rd April 2010 - 8:45 am

The Liberal Democrats should be applauded for focusing on business in their new policy paper, Enterprise in a fair society. In the context of the current economic crisis, the document reminds us that businesses produce the wealth that not only raises living standards, but also funds health, education and so on – a lesson arguably ignored by New Labour as they burdened firms with more and more taxation and red tape.

There are some excellent ideas. Of particular note is a proposal to incorporate a sunset clause into each new business regulation so that it is time limited. This could …

Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | 49 Comments

Will troops miss out on the election?

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 8:53 pm

Sky News has been reporting:

Latest figures from the Government’s Defence Analytical Services show that more than 34,000 full-time members of the Armed Forces are not registered to vote.

That is 19% of the services, almost one in five of those in uniform – their votes that could be pivotal in a tight contest.

The Electoral Commission has been running a campaign for months to try and persuade those in uniform to register.
However, according to a survey, more than half the military has not seen a leaflet and only 5% have had a Powerpoint presentation on the subject…

Non-registration levels among the military are

…

Posted in Election law | Tagged electoral registration | 4 Comments

Labour troubles in Stoke

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 8:28 pm

The BBC reports:

The Labour Party secretary in Stoke-on-Trent has said he is going to stand as an independent candidate in the forthcoming general election.

Gary Elsby said he would stand against his party in protest at the selection of television historian Tristram Hunt as the city’s Labour candidate.

Mr Elsby said it was also a protest that there were no local names on the party’s nominations list.

You can read the full story here.

Meanwhile happier news from the Liberal Democrat camp, where I hear that efforts to stand a much larger number of local election candidates than we’ve managed for quite some …

Posted in News | Tagged gary elsby, stoke-on-trent and tristram hunt | 3 Comments

The price of a Labour marginal? £81 million

By Sara Bedford | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 6:05 pm

Earlier this year Professor Tim Briggs, medical director of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital at Stanmore, threatened to challenge local MP Tony McNulty and stand as an independent candidate for Harrow East. Professor Briggs was angry that after a 15 year campaign for funding to rebuild the hospital and a decision to fund essential repairs two years ago, the hospital remains in a state of disrepair, with rainwater seeping through ceilings and a maintenance backlog estimated at £54 million. The situation had worsened further, when a row between the hospital and NHS London intensified, leading to fears that the hospital could be split up as part of a restructuring process to save money.

Within four days of Professor Briggs announcement, Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Health had agreed an emergency meeting to discuss funding for the hospital. And on the last full business day before the General Election, an £81 million package to rebuild the hospital was announced. Professor Briggs expressed his delight at the decision, but not his surprise. Andy Burnham expressed similar thoughts when the Professor later announced that he would not now seek to join Dr Richard Taylor on the green benches. Making the announcement, Andy Burnham said, “Tony brought me here in 2006 and made the case for the hospital and for his constituency, and for me it was unfinished business.” One wonders why it took four years for the business to be finished?

Posted in General Election and News | Tagged andy burnham, humber bridge, royal national orthopaedic hospital, tim briggs and tony mcnulty | 5 Comments

The LDV Friday Five: 2 April 2010

By Helen Duffett | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 5:00 pm

It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:

5 top reader search returns to get to LDV

(excluding Liberal Democrat Voice or its variants)

Posted in Friday Five | Leave a comment

Pollwatch – State of the Parties: Lib Dems 19%, Labour 31%, Tories 38% (March 2010)

By Stephen Tall | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 4:45 pm

March may have 31 days, but it saw an extraordinary 39 polls conducted. So frenetic has been the activity, we at Lib Dem Voice even published a mid-month report to keep track of their findings. And despite all the hyped-up headlines – both in print and online – of minor fluctuations signifying some grand new trend which will transform the electoral arithmetic, the reality is that remarkably little changed in March.

As you can see from the full list of polls conducted in March, in chronological order of publication:

Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Tagged opinion polls | 2 Comments

3 ways the Labservatives blocked the Lib Dems cleaning up politics

By Stephen Tall | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 2:45 pm

Labour and Conservatives, Conservatives and Labour: same difference, as the Lib Dems’ rather fabulous Labservative website points out. Here are just three examples from the past 12 months of ways in which the Labservatives have blocked Lib Dem attempts to reform our broken political system …

The public’s right to sack MPs

The Liberal Democrats tabled an amendment in June 2009 to place a responsibility on the Secretary of State to review and report on procedures for constituencies to recall their MPs if they have been found guilty of misconduct.

Labour voted against these measures and the Tories refused to back them.

Cap on party donations

Posted in News | Tagged featured, labservative and parliamentary reform | 6 Comments

It’s Easter, so it’s time for Jo Swinson’s annual Eggs-cess packaging report

By Stephen Tall | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 11:50 am

2010 marks the fourth year of Jo Swinson’s annual Easter Egg excess packaging report. (You can read LDV’s 2009 posting here). This year’s headline conclusion? “Some Easter egg manufacturers have drastically cut their excess packaging, while others are lagging far behind.”

Jo explains her campaign further on her website:

Consumers are tired of excess packaging – they are tired of paying for it and tired of having to dispose of it. Easter eggs are a prime example – in many cases, the huge boxes contain more air than chocolate.

“Last year we saw Easter egg packaging reduced by a third, and companies such as Nestlé, Cadbury, Green and Black’s and Thorntons have made real efforts to cut packaging and improve recyclability. However, Guylian, Lindt and others are still producing grossly excessive packaging.

“The Government is clearly failing to enforce the law, which requires packaging to be reduced to the minimum necessary.”

You can read Jo’s full 2010 report here – here’s the executive summary:

Posted in News | Tagged easter, environment, excess packaging, Jo Swinson, josh brooks and packagingnews.co.uk | 1 Comment

David Howarth writes … Now is the time to reform our penal policy

By David Howarth | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 10:45 am

Last month the Howard League for Penal Reform launched its Take Action 2010 campaign, with the general election in its sights. The campaign reflects a growing consensus among experts and campaign groups that penal policy has reached a crisis point.

The Howard League’s campaign covers four policy areas – investment in the community not prison, ending short prison terms, justice for children, and creating a scheme of real work inside existing prisons. All four of these themes echo Liberal Democrat thinking and I very much welcome the campaign.

Billions of pounds are spent on maintaining our prisons and …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged crime, david howarth, howard league for penal reform and prisons | 1 Comment

How do Lib Dem MPs compare on Twitter? April update with a new number one

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 9:20 am

Changes in position and score are since March’s figures, and the same caveats apply as before to these numbers from TweetLevel (i.e. Twitter isn’t the only thing in the world, and this isn’t the only way of measuring people’s influence on / use of Twitter).

New this month to Twitter are Evan Harris, Nick Harvey and Charles Kennedy, bringing the total number of tweeting Liberal Democrat MPs up to 30.

UPDATE: Mark Williams has also joined Twitter recently. Apologies for missing you first time round Mark.

New entrant Evan is straight in at the top of the list. That’s no fluke: Evan’s put the work into working out how to use Twitter well and has built up a good community which reaches out beyond the usual activists suspects. Paul Burstow’s rise up the table is the other striking move.

Posted in Online politics | Tagged evan harris and twitter | 8 Comments

An email to the editor of the Daily Telegraph

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 8:50 am

I’m rather puzzled by the story that your paper has run questioning the use of weighting in YouGov’s polls (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7546322/YouGov-pollster-gives-Labour-an-unfair-advantage.html).

Indeed, the piece takes such a suspicious attitude towards weighting that it puts the word in inverted commas and talks about YouGov having “admitted” that it uses weightings.

My puzzlement is quite simple.

Every single political opinion poll published by The Telegraph during your time as editor has also involved weighting.

If it’s such a questionable act, why hasn’t your newspaper shopped itself first? And will you be abandoning your own practice of publishing weighted figures?

Yours,

Mark

Note: I do think there are some reasonable …

Posted in Polls | Tagged daily telegraph, journalism, will lewis and yougov | 8 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 2 April 2010

By Helen Duffett | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 7:00 am

2 General Election/statistics-themed stories

Holding general election on May 6th would save £7m says Government
Which is nothing compared to, say, scrapping the Child Trust Fund – but Gordon Brown’s timing of the election has only ever been about saving political skins, not money.

Figures disclosed in a Parliamentary written answer show that it will cost £82.1m to stage the election on the most likely date, five weeks today.

But if the country went to the polls on any other day, it is estimated that the cost would rise by more than £7m to reach £89.6m.

The 2005 general election, which also coincided with regional votes, is said to have cost £80m.

Posted in Daily View | Tagged alex wilcock, andy crick, child trust fund, doctor who, gordon brown, leaflets and simon singh | Leave a comment

Open Rights Group flashmob serves disconnection notice on UK Music #DEBill

By Obhi Chatterjee | Thu 1st April 2010 - 9:14 pm

Filmmaker Obhi Chatterjee, one of the team behind the Lib Dem Spring Conference emergency motion on Freedom, creativity & the internet, describes the experience:

It was while following #DEBill on Twitter on the train that, with just over an hour to go, we discovered where we had to be at 12:15. In front of London’s Dominion Theatre, near Tottenham Court Road. Bring a police helmet and clipboard if poss.

My father had struggled to understand how we could have left home knowing only that we had to be in central London at a certain time. We had aimed for Trafalgar Square.

I recognised Open Rights Group‘s Executive Director, Jim Killock, from his Facebook photo. A few people were distributing imitation police helmets and clipboards. A journalist was asking people why they were there.

The sheet on the clipboard explained what we had to do and where we had to go: the Soho offices of UK Music, a short walk away.

Once there, we were to wander up and down outside the building, looking officious. Perhaps everyone was too good-humoured and smiling a bit too much for that.

Still, there were quite a few photographers and video cameras around to record the event.

Staff heading out of the building for lunch didn’t seem to be very conversational. I can’t imagine they mistook us for MI5 …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged debill, digital economy bill, facebook, feargal sharkey, jim killock, open rights group, twitter and uk music | 4 Comments

Vince: Labour and Tory plans “would drive public finances into the ground”

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st April 2010 - 6:45 pm

The Tories’ pledged this week to reverse Labour’s National Insurance tax rises by increasing the UK deficit. Today Labour’s Lord Mandelson accused the Tories – seemingly without a trace of irony – of “peddling deception”.

The Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor Vince Cable is having no truck with the Labservative approach:

Labour and the Tories are as bad as each other. Under both their plans, public finances would be driven into the ground. Whether it’s for tax cuts or filling in the deficit hole, both parties seem to be in a competition to see who can come up with the

…

Posted in News | Tagged david cameron, national insurance and tax | 1 Comment

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (March ‘10)

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st April 2010 - 6:10 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 58,552 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in March.

That’s a huge 77% increase on our Feb. ’10 figure of c.34,000, and we are up some 125% on the equivalent figure for March ’09 of c.26,000.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 April 2009 – 31 March 2010) to 345,223, over 45% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 237,536.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

1. Lord Clement-Jones on the Digital Economy Bill: web blocking amendment (246) …

Posted in Site news | Tagged statporn | Leave a comment

LDVideo: April (paywall) Fool

By Helen Duffett | Thu 1st April 2010 - 5:32 pm

In case you missed Lib Dem Voice’s April 1st joke:

Also available on YouTube here.

We told readers this morning:

Posted in Humour | Tagged april fool, paywall and shameless fundraising ploy | 2 Comments

Power2010 turns its sights on the Lords

By Mark Pack | Thu 1st April 2010 - 4:50 pm

We’ve covered before how Power2010 is pushing for a set of political reforms and targeting specific MPs who have abused the system. Now it’s the House of Lords that is getting its specific attention, with a petition for a fully elected upper house.

You can find out more about the campaign and sign the petition over on the Power2010 site.

Posted in News | Tagged house of lords and power2010 | 1 Comment

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Mark Pack | Thu 1st April 2010 - 3:20 pm

Four blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Andreas Christodoulou – www.andreaschristodoulou.com, who’s already got a record of spotting good stories
Chris Wilson – chrisjw133.wordpress.com, who last month explained why he’s joined the party
Jonathan Mitchell – http://www.jonathanmitchellsblog.com, who is our candidate in Dulwich and West Norwood (South London) and nicely demonstrates how a string of small photos adds hugely to the messages you get from glancing at a site
Kui Kihoro – http://beginsathome.com/, who brings a welcome dash of African perspective to the Lib Dem blogosphere

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

Posted in Online politics | Tagged blogging | Leave a comment

Julia Goldsworthy: we’re too centralised

By Julia Goldsworthy | Thu 1st April 2010 - 2:20 pm

The extent to which this country has become centralised is, for me, best summed up by one fact. According to evidence collected through the ‘Total Place’ pilots – a series of initiatives aimed at delivering better public services at lower cost by reducing overlap between organisations – only £350 (a mere 5%) of the £7,000 spent per head on public services each year is discretionary spending by local councils. This is the stark reality of localism after 13 years of Labour government.

By contrast, localism is at the heart of everything the Liberal Democrats stand for. It is part of our …

Posted in Op-eds | 7 Comments

Votematch is back: which party most closely matches your policy preferences?

By Mark Pack | Thu 1st April 2010 - 12:10 pm

Following its British debut in the London and then European elections, Votematch is now up and running for the 2010 general election. The idea is a simple one – you answer 30 questions about different policies (less in Scotland or Wales because of devolution) and the site then tells you how closely your answers match those of different parties.

It’s got quite a few nice touches which show how the team have learnt both from experiences elsewhere, particularly the phenomenally successfully version used by one in three voters in Holland, and from their past experience in Britain. For example, you …

Posted in General Election and Online politics | Tagged votematch | 16 Comments

Harris and Huhne question legality of Labour’s ‘meow meow’ ban

By The Voice | Thu 1st April 2010 - 11:25 am

With just a fortnight until the Government’s mephedrone ban comes into effect, Lib Dem MPs Chris Huhne and Evan Harris have challenged the legality of the move (though the party has supported the ban itself). Today’s Guardian reports:

Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said the six resignations from the government’s advisory council on the misuse of drugs had left it inquorate and legally unable to issue formal advice to the home secretary. He also questioned how a decision to ban mephedrone without first publishing the council’s report on its potential harms complied with

…

Posted in News | Tagged chris huhne, drugs, evan harris and mephedrone | 9 Comments

Op-eds

Keep the earnings link: don’t repeat the mistakes of the 80s (Chris Perry)
Where have we heard this one before? Labour and electoral reform (Jack Meredith)
A national care service – questions for Burnham (and us) (Ruth Bright)
Opportunity at the heart of our vision in local government (Callum Robertson)
Vince Cable writes: Drill, baby, drill…or not (Vince Cable)

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Vince Cable writes: Drill, baby, drill…or not

Lib Dems must do better on Burnham

Britain should be proud, but never afraid of the stranger

Lib Dem Women: Amplifying women’s voices at Conference

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

2 Big Stories

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

5 active LDV Members’ Forum threads

5 newest groups on ACT

5 top reader search returns to get to LDV

The public’s right to sack MPs

Cap on party donations

2 General Election/statistics-themed stories

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