There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader …
Here’s Lib Dem MP for Somerton and Frome David Heath promoting the Lib Dems’ campaign to axe the beer tax. What do you think David, or his companion, might be saying to each other, or thinking about each other?
The winner of our most recent caption competition, the “Lembit pops his cork edition” edition last month – according to The Voice’s judging panel of one – was this one …
Caroline Pidgeon is a Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member and member of the London Fire Emergency and Planning Authority (LFEPA)
Walking out of a meeting as a protest is something I would not normally recommend, but last week I felt had no other option and left a key budget meeting of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA). Both the Lib Dem leader on the Fire Authority, Councillor Ed Butcher from Haringey, and I knew we had to make a protest at the decision of the Conservative Chair Brian Coleman to prohibit TV cameras from filming the meeting, and Coleman’s decision to …
So the polls are narrowing, the Tory lead tottering along within the range of 2-7%. As we all know, the Tories need to poll at around 40% to be sure of a working majority, or else they will have to significantly out-perform their national ratings in the key marginal battlegrounds.
And if they don’t succeed? Well, that will clearly be a disaster for David Cameron’s leadership which has been predicated on the fact that he’s the Tories’ talisman. A hung parliament with a minority Labour/Tory government, perhaps with the tacit consent of the Lib Dems, appears at this stage the …
As Liberal Democrat Voice has reported in depth over recent weeks, there was a surge of debate around the party’s response to the Digital Economy Bill, leading to our open letter from PPCs, and the emergency motion passed at conference. Great joy.
Then it all went quiet.
There has of course been a little matter of the Budget. MPs and candidates have been, quite rightly, out on the hustings and the doorsteps. But if our Parliamentary party were otherwise engaged, the blogosphere was not. The dedicated campaigning of the Open Rights Group was joined by the 38 Degrees lobby. They have objected not only to the content of bits of the Digital Economy Bill, but also the obvious concerns about its process.
If nothing else, this Bill has highlighted to a new generation of voters the urgent need for Parliamentary reform. The unelected second chamber; ridiculous rush, horsetrading and lack of debate of the washup; the way a Government elected with a minority of the vote can railroad through legislation – all of this must change.
The Open Rights Group anti-disconnection rally took the issue from the screen to the streets, and I was delighted to be invited to speak on behalf of our party. As I told the crowds, we started campaigning for Freedom of Information against a Tory government; now we are campaigning for free exchange of information under Labour. When you deal with a death, there is a cycle of emotion from grief through anger to acceptance. When it comes to the death of our freedoms under Labour, as Liberal Democrats we may be aggrieved, we are angry, but we will not accept it.
Today’s BBC Daily Politics / ComRes poll asking which of the three major parties’ leadership teams is more trusted to steer the economy through the current downturn has caused a bit of a stir – it shows Labour’s duumvirate of Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling out ahead of the Tories, an about-turn on three months ago.
Here are the results:
…
It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:
1. Ooops! Mirror gets poll graph wrong and inflates Labour’s position (13) by Mark Pack.
2. Were there two YouGov polls for the Sunday Times? (3) by Mark Pack.
3. Roberta Blackman-Woods – desperately sabre-rattling on her MP’s expenses (1) by Stephen Tall.
4. The 7 retiring Lib Dem MPs (and the 7 candidates hoping to replace them) (4) by Stephen Tall.
5. Cameron filmed confused and clueless in gay equality TV interview (9) by Stephen Tall.
Taking campaign films to a new level
Nick Clegg on the Politics Show
Size of the public sector
Writing literature?
Cutting winter fuel allowance
1. Nick Clegg Meets…
2. Lib Dem Cider Drinkers
3. Southport Liberal Democrats
4. Say No to Trident
5. Lib Dem Media Watch
(excluding Liberal Democrat Voice or its variants)
Alistair Darling’s pre-budget and pre-election speech was well done. Good knock about in which he steered clear of presenting a budget. David Cameron’s response not only rivalled Darling’s in terms of vacuity, on economic policy, but was too angry by half given the emptiness of his own party’s plans and proposals.
Nick Clegg did fine. It wasn’t a riveting parliamentary performance but it was a workmanlike and honest response to the budget speech, and it did what Nick and Vince must have hoped it would do: it got out the LibDem message efficiently and ensured that key LibDem sound bites …
A petition calling for the creation of a Youth Minister has been launched by Revolver Entertainment and the Damilola Taylor Trust. As with many other initiatives around at the moment, one of its aims is to give a voice to the disillusioned young people. It certainly isn’t stinting in its ambition though – aiming to collection over a million names on a petition to be presented to the Prime Minister after the election.
Linked to the campaign is a new British film, Shank, which addresses issues of gang violence and knife crime. The storyline and script for Shank were developed using workshops with teenagers, and some of the casting was also done through schools and social media.
Mo Ali, Shank’s Director, says, “Kids killing each other is more of a trend now and it’s very sad. It’s the environment that teaches them that it’s ok to do that, or that it’s cool to stand up for your rights and kill someone for them. There’s no emotional connection to taking a life. We have to tackle that – we have to show how horrible it is as much as possible, but with these young kids, the last thing they want for us to do is to ram it down their throat.”
Mo Ali’s role in the film is in itself interesting because as Nick Taussig of Revolver explains, “Mo Ali, from a background of poverty and violence, found a way out. Giving Mo the opportunity to direct the film was all the more meaningful and significant because of this. I hope that through the work we’ve done thus far with the Damilola Taylor Trust, a workshop built around the issues of the film for at-risk teenagers from Waltham Forest and a forthcoming creative writing day, a few young Britons might follow Mo’s inspiration.”
I do like the political pastiche of the film’s poster used to launch the petition:
Here’s the film’s trailer:
The Young Foundation has launched a new website, First Political Memory, which aims to reconnect people’s everyday lives with politics through sharing stories about when we first became aware of the wider world.
You get an interesting – and broad – snapshot as you browse the site and you can also add your own memories here – and share them in the comments below.
I’ve recently stumbled across a piece by Lynne Featherstone MP which I’d forgotten about. Written in 2006, the points it makes about political campaigning still read well:
Vietnam war vet and Republican John McCain and London mayor and former restaurant review Ken Livingstone are probably not often bracketed together politically! But I have been thinking recently about them both and their own rather different political personas.
Both have had periods of great popularity – though McCain still seems to be basking in it whilst Ken’s has well and truly worn off – and it has not been for their stances on particular
…
Time flies – Friday already! And is it really 29 years to the day that the Gang of Four launched a new political party: the Social Democrats?
Roy Jenkins said at the launch:
We want to get away from the politics of our dated dogmatism and class confrontation. We want to release the energies of people who are fed up with the old slanging match.
Watch the video of the launch here.
Digital economy bill to be pushed through parliament next month
The controversial digital economy bill will be pushed through in the “wash-up” leading up to an election, after the government confirmed that it will receive its second reading in the Commons on 6 April – the same day that Gordon Brown is expected to seek Parliament’s dissolution.
Harriet Harman, the leader of the house, said today that the bill will get its second reading. But when questioned by Labour MPs Neil Gerrard and Tom Watson about the lack of time given to debate over controversial issues in the bill, she said only that “ministers are aware” of the strong feelings that the proposed legislation has engendered.
Having covered earlier in the week the importance of ‘low earner Liberal Democrats’ to the party’s prospects, how are things looking after the Budget?
One thing Alistair Darling most certainly did not do was to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000, the Liberal Democrat policy that would take millions out of income tax completely and also cut the tax bill for those low income households on higher incomes. Instead, he went in the opposite direction by freezing (i.e. cutting in real terms) the income tax threshold.
(Given the Fabians criticised the Lib Dem plans for raising the basic income tax …
Here’s a bit of fun speculation, at least if you’re not a Tory. Let’s suppose most of the last 10 days’ polls are right, and David Cameron’s Tories are destined to have fewer MPs than Labour in the House of Commons (even if they win more votes) – what would the Tories do?
That’s the question Andy Beckett ponders in today’s Guardian.
Would David Cameron resign or be forced to quit? According to Tim Bale, author of The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron, he’d be safe if he chooses to be:
“You’ll get lots of huffing and puffing on
…
News International announced this morning that, from June, we punters will have to cough up £2 a week to read the Times and Sunday Times online – a cool £104 a year.
The sound you hear is bloggers choking on their breakfast cereal.
The move makes a lot of sense for News International. True, their online readership will plummet. But, unlike most bloggers, Murdoch’s willy-waving is based on the size of his bank balance, not his number of unique visitors. Online advertising, for everyone except Google, hasn’t proved to be the magical money-making machine we were promised, and there’s only so much …
Ah, the old tricks are always the best. Readers may recall during the Henley by-election campaign, the Tories issued an empty threat to sue the Lib Dems “unless the Lib Dems withdraw a leaflet and remove claims from their website by noon”. Of course, they didn’t do it but a gullible media ran with the story anyway.
Fast forward a couple of years, and it seems Labour’s Roberta Blackman-Woods is apeing the Tories’ tactics. Here’s what Politics.co.uk has to say:
Roberta Blackman-Woods MP (City of Durham) has instructed solicitors to inform the Liberal Democrat candidate that she must apologise for
…
The Evening Standard has won a significant victory in a High Court libel battle brought by a Conservative MP.
Jacqui Lait, MP for Beckenham, had sued over an article headlined “Women MPs will be put off by Kelly reforms”.
Mr Justice Eady today struck out elements of her claim and ordered her to pay £10,400 legal costs.
The November 2009 article correctly pointed out Ms Lait had claimed “large sums” to travel to her family home in Sussex even though her constituency home is only 11 miles from Westminster…
The judge said it was “unreal to suggest that readers of
…
Many congratulations to Carl Minns and his team in Hull on this much deserved acolade:
Hull City Council has been crowned the most improved in England, six years after it came bottom in a survey of 150 local authorities.
Hull beat four other councils to win the ‘Most Improved Title’ at the Local Government Chronicle awards…
Leader of Hull City Council, Carl Minns said: “The most important factor is to ensure that residents get excellent quality services but it is always good to have external recognition of the improvements to services.” (BBC)
For the delectation of LDV’s readers, you might be interested in clicking on the following two links:
1. Mark Thompson interviews Anna Arrowsmith
The Mark Reckons blog carries an interview with the Lib Dems’ candidate for Gravesham in Kent, Anna Arrowsmith, who shot to prominence last week owing to her successful career as the UK’s first female director of pronography.
2. Total Politics interviews Paul Walter
The Lib Dem blogosphere’s very own Burbler-in-Chief Paul Walter is profiled here by Total Politics magazine. Find out Paul’s least favourite blogger, his political idol, and what would be the one thing above …
At Comment is Free today, Steve Webb MP reiterates the Liberal Democrats’ focus on redistributive policies and fairness.
He’s replying to Tim Horton’s suggestion that the Liberal Democrats have seen a “rightward shift” under Nick Clegg, at the expense of the party’s progressive credentials.
Webb responds with the £10,000 tax allowance, smarter public spending (including introducing the pupil premium and scrapping ID cards) and the Lib Dems’ fairness in politics agenda:
We have argued for an effective cap on political donations, so that no political party in Britain can be bought by sectional interests: the two old parties have, not surprisingly,
…
Oh dear. You’d have thought a party funded by non-doms like Lord Ascroft and Zac Goldsmith would at least have the money to throw at professional, vote-winning advertising. Thankfully, though the Tories may preach value-for-money to others, they show zero signs of putting it into effect themselves.
The Tories, after all, are the party which brought us the most famous British advertising slogan of all times: Labour Isn’t Working.
Yet their most recent attempt – the confused and confusing “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS” – brought universal derision thanks to the weak message, the air-brushed Dave image, and the crowd-sourced satirical efforts courtesy mydavidcameron.com.
The result: the Tories have sidelined advertising agency Euro RSCG just weeks before polling day, and reverted to the tried-and-tested M&C Saatchi.
Time was the Tories were lauded as the party which ‘got’ Web 2.0: they dominated the blogosphere, had thrown money at their Internet strategy. Those days seem so far away now.
This week, the Tories launched CashGordon, a doomed exercise which can perhaps be filed under, ‘It seemed a good idea at the time’. (Or, alternatively, ‘This is what happens when you let kids run the place.’)
First came the news that the Tories’ CashGordon had used an off-the-shelf template developed by a US anti-healthcare lobbyist. Not great timing in the week President Obama is being praised to the skies for defeating US anti-healthcare lobbyists.
Then it dawned on the Tories that perhaps allowing anyone to post a Tweet to their site without moderation wasn’t perhaps such a great idea – Twitter users flooded the site with obscene messages, and code that allowed the site to be hacked and redirected.
And then the final humiliation: the exposure that the girlfriend of Samuel Coates, the Tories’ online campaigning guru, had phoned the employers of a Twitter user threatening litigation against him for tweeting to the site.
The result: CashGordon dies a miserable death.
Tory blogger Iain Dale highlights today the video of Tory candidate Anthony Calvert, intended to inspire donations to his campaign to unseat Labour’s Ed Balls. Here’s the video:
Excuse me, while I discard my customery mode of politness, and begin to vent …
From Nick Clegg’s budget response, 24 March 2010:
Finally, on tax, the other gross disappointment in this Budget was the failure to make our tax system fair. Under Labour, the bottom 10 per cent. pay a staggering 48 per cent. of their income in tax, while the richest pay 34 per cent. The Chancellor took pride in saying today that he would make no big announcements on tax. How can he look at a system such as that and say, “Let’s have more of the same”?
…
Wednesday’s editorial for the Guardian – which I found online here – is one of those pieces you see all too often in the Guardian, the time honoured preparation of the nose peg. Hold your nose, disregard the stench and put the cross by the rose.
It tries to find some vestige of hope in the Labour party, one thing remaining that is still worth voting for. But it’s the penultimate paragraph and not its conclusion that rings truest:
The party’s activists and MPs are so obviously convinced of their own decent intentions and past record that they fail to
…
So you’ve been selected as a candidate for council or general election as a Lib Dem. Hurrah! The first step on the path to world domination and ever-lasting glory has been taken, and now you’re wondering what the next step is. You look at your campaign budget. You realise that thruppence ha’penny and a tin of organic pasta sauce is not going to go as far as the Ashcroft millions the Tories have access to, or the union funding of Labour. You’re going to have to use all your wiles and cunning to even get noticed as a member of …
A pleasant surprise this morning to wake up and find that, despite the fact I am doing the Daily View, it is indeed Thursday and not Tuesday! In celebration of yesterday’s Budget, there’s riproaring inflation of the number of posts featured in today’s Daily View. Don’t tell Vince! Is it sustainable? I doubt it, so enjoy while you can..
Thirty years ago, the British Olympic Association (BOA) voted by a large majority to defy the government and send athletes to the Olympic Games in Moscow. The Conservative government has pressed the BOA to boycott the event in a protest at the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. Sir Denis Follows, the chairman of the BOA, said that whilst he was sympathetic to the government’s stance, “We believe sport should be a bridge, and not a destroyer”.
On this day in 1655 Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest natural satellite of the planet Saturn. During their 1969 honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel.
Yes, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: David Cameron’s bewildered, stumbling, confused, squirming, befuddled, painful TV interview with broadcaster Martin Popplewell is now available to view on YouTube – over 17,000 people have watched it to date.
LDV highlighted the footage late Tuesday. To give them their due, ConservativeHome didn’t shy away from it either.
The Tory blogger Iain Dale loyally attempted to gloss over Mr Cameron’s dire performance, desperately claiming “I think the inherent problem with the interview was that Cameron didn’t know if he was giving a print interview or a film interview”. Sure thing, Iain – I can see exactly how the confusion arose. After all which senior politician hasn’t wondered, when being interviewed two metres away from a three-person camera crew, “Is this being filmed?”
And Paul Staines’ right-wing Guido Fawkes blog decided to ignore it altogether. Quite right, Paul: much better to devote yourself to your forlorn campaign to persuade people Vince Cable doesn’t understand economics. Good luck with that one – I think your crusade has a way to go.
For those who haven’t yet seen it, then, here is the footage of David Cameron going into meltdown in front of the TV cameras:
We are pleased that the committee recognises our commitment to human rights, which are at the heart of our counter- terrorism legislation.
That’s the Home Office response to a cross-party parliamentary committee which has criticised the Government’s terror legislation and the nearly-nine-year public emergency we are still in. Who said satire was dead?
The question is, and has always been, how best to balance the need to keep society safe against the human rights of those who, whether innocent or guilty, may be caught up in those efforts.
The Lib Dem view, and now the view of the joint committee …
I blogged earlier today about how the Mirror bigged up a poll showing Tory support unchanged (within the margin of error) into a story of how their support was plunging.
But looking again at the story, I realise just how badly wrong their graph is.
The two key pieces of information about Labour’s rating in the poll are that:
(a) It was 30%
(b) It was 32% in the previous poll
Now look at the graph:
See what’s happened? What should be a downward Labour line has become a flat …
The mountain laboured and brought forth a mouse. But not a very nice or useful mouse.
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has at last produced a ‘policy statement’ entitled ‘The Modernisation review of public libraries’. There is little radical and little of benefit to the public, indeed precious little modernisation. The library establishment and quangoland by contrast have much to be pleased about.
The paper contains a long list of instructions for local authorities and even specifically for local authority chief executives: no role for councillors here. Local authorities must set flexible opening hours to suit the needs of local …
Missed the Budget? Well, you didn’t miss much. But if you’re wondering what the Lib Dems have to say about it, then look no further.
First up, here’s Vince’s instant vdieo response:
And now for the detail, as provided by Nick Clegg’s instant response to the Commons after Alasdair Darling’s budget statement:
Mr Speaker, this Budget has been billed as the preface to the Labour manifesto. Based on what we have seen today. It won’t be a manifesto but an obituary. The Prime Minister may have wanted a “giveaway budget”. What we got was a “given up budget”.
One of the major successes of the past 13 years, depending on your point of view, has been devolution. The establishment of Parliaments and Assemblies has transformed the governance and the culture of three of the four nations within the Union. However, this has left a big question at the heart of government, which ash also had a knock-on effect culturally:
How should England be governed?
This is often referred to in the media as “The English Question”. It is a question that the major political parties have, so far, avoided answering in a satisfactory manner. In fact, the major parties seemed to avoid any …
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Why I won’t Wayve goodbye to Black Cabs (Christian de Vartavan)
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)
Lib Dems make another by-election gain in Highlands
The Joy of Six 1585
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Now We Are Severn released by Shrewsbury's Up Sewage Creek
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Peer says his name should not be used in legal letter in island cafe dog snub row
A fair pension for every generation: a Liberal Democrat case for reform
Council by-election results scorecard 2026-2027
So many questions over Burnham's agenda
James Hill 
Richard Wingfield 
David Warren 
Rif Winfield 
Jason Connor 
