Welcome to the (conference-belated) Golden Dozen, and our 160th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (7th – 13th Mar 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, usually courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget, by the way, you can now sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox – just click here – ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Nick Clegg will be speaking tonight at the 20th annivesary celebrations of human rights group, Privacy International, and will stress the importance of this coming general election as an opportunity to win back privacy.
Here are some extracts from his speech:
Labour has spent 13 years trampling over people’s privacy. From allowing children’s fingerprints to be taken at school without their parents’ consent; to making us a world leader in CCTV; to wasting vast sums of taxpayers’ money on giant databases that hoard our personal details. And now we hear that ministers want pensioners to swap their bus passes for ID cards.
“The Government’s staggering record on losing private data – leaving it in pub car parks and on commuter trains – just makes matters worse.
Labour’s Liverpool Wavertree candidate Luciana Berger is in trouble again:
Wavertree’s Labour candidate, Luciana Berger fell to pieces in the first debate of the Election campaign, which saw Colin Eldrigde for the Liberal Democrats and Conservative, Andrew Garnett attack the Londoner from both sides.
In a filming for ITV1s ‘Party People’, the three candidates were grilled by presenter Rob McLoughlin over their policies on crime and the economy.
When given 30 seconds to sell themselves in the debate at Riley’s Snooker Hall near Picton Clock, Berger froze, clasping her hands over her head repeatedly saying: “Sorry, can we start again?”
Liberal Democrat blogger Mark Thompson has launched a new site, Lib Dem TV:
On it I intend to put up any interviews or other sorts of footage involving Lib Dem members and candidates that I can generate. I am also happy to post any relevant footage from other Lib Dem activists that might be of interest more widely.
A few days ago Dizzy Thinks spotted an oddity in the expense claims of Hull North Labour MP Diana Johnson:
At the end of the detailed, albeit censored claims, provided on the Parliamentary website, is an invoice to the tune of £1,654 for “delivery of a leaflet in Hull North Constituency during September and October 2007”.
Looks legit doesn’t it? However there’s is an oddity about it. You see, there appears to be no such company as J W Shipley Distribution, either solvent or dissolved, listed on Companies House. An advanced search for all companies with “Shipley” also throws up
As dawn broke over Bronte House, South Kilburn, I realised.
I realised that with this beautiful sight (the dawn, not Bronte House!), change was coming.
My local MP will soon cease to be Sarah Teather (Lib Dem, Brent) and soon will be Ed Fordham (Lib Dem PPC, Hampstead & Kilburn). Boundary changes mean that the tiny triangle of estate that I call home is being cut and pasted into the new Hampstead & Kilburn constituency. So, it feels a little like moving home.
But looking at the wider picture – change is coming.
Let …
“Do we have to invite the extremist candidate?” “Can I veto the hustings by refusing to attend?” “Is the hustings meeting an election expense?” These are all common questions during general election campaigns, so here is your whistle-stop guide to what the various rules says.
Political impartiality
Some organisations wish to be impartial, some are forced to be impartial. So does that mean if you are organising a local hustings you need to invite every candidate standing in that constituency? For a regional or national hustings does it mean you have to invite every party who is putting up a candidate in …
LDV reported earlier this morning on the BBC story that leaked Cabinet Office documents suggest Tory shdaow foreign secretary William Hague was aware of, and approved, the terms of the deal under which Lord Ashcroft gained his place in the upper house.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Mr Hague was forced to concede he had made a “mistake” when he said that Lord Ashcroft’s promises upon becoming a peer would have cost him “tens of millions of pounds” with its clear implication that Lord Ashcroft would end his non-dom status when he became a …
LDV has identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to rank all MPs according to how liberal or authoritarian their record is. All MPs are marked out of 100: the higher their score the more authoritarian they are. The lower their score the more liberal is their voting record.
Yesterday we noted the 24 Lib Dem MPs who recorded a perfect zero score of 0/100, meaning they had voted on the liberal side of the argument in each of the 10 Commons debates we looked at. Today we’re publishing the full results for Lib Dem MPs:
The BBC has received a leaked Cabinet Office document suggesting William Hague was aware of, and approved, the terms of the deal under which Lord Ashcroft gained his place in the upper house.
Of all the days in history I’ve had to write about so far, March 18th seems about the dullest. Nothing particularly interesting has ever happened today, so that’s a bit of a challenge for the day just leaving the starters blocks.
About the best the wikipedia page for today can offer up is that John Updike was born today and the Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to transportation. Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube was disconnected and BSL was first recognised as an official British language.
The BBC has shelved a Panorama documentary about the business affairs of the Tory billionaire Lord Ashcroft, because of a threat of legal action.
The Corporation has received what one insider described as “several very heavy letters” from Lord Ashcroft’s lawyers. There is now little or no prospect of the investigation being broadcast before the general election, if it goes out at all.
Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free website, Simon Hughes – Lib Dem MP for North Southwark and Bermondsey since 1983 – writes about his experiences as a constituency member of Parliament, and how a good and effective democracy is under-pinned by approachable MPs who deliver top-quality personal responses.
(Peter Black recently blogged a letter in the Guardian from someone whose train journey was disrupted by Simon’s assiduous work ethic).
Here’s an excerpt:
It is a seven-day, 80-hour a week job being a constituency MP. Every day by phone, letter, email or simply being stopped in the street, people ask for
Some members of the House of Lords have been demanding the right to vote for MPs and want to see the law changed to remove the ban on peers voting at general elections.
Do you agree with them? That’s the question asked in our latest Twitter poll:
Boris Johnson’s fire chief Brian Coleman has lost his position as Chairman of a National fire board after increasing concerns about his behaviour.
The LGA confirmed to me this morning that Brian is no longer Chairman of the National Organisation of Employers of Local Authority Fire & Rescue Services.
A spokesman said that Brian had lost his position but would not confirm the exact date or circumstances of his departure.
Brian himself has also failed to respond to my questions about this.
However sources within the National Joint Council tell me that Brian’s chairmanship was recently the subject of a vote
Party members have just received this email from Lib Dem Chief Executive Chris Fox:
At our successful spring conference last weekend, a number of delegates came up to me to ask about the music they heard at the rally, opening each session and on the video before Nick’s speech. This music is called We’ll be the change that works for you and it has been specially prepared for the election. The more you listen to it the catchier it gets.
Following the positive comments we got at conference we wanted to make it available to members and supporters and I am delighted to say that it is now available via iTunes. There are a number of ways you can find it – if you go to the iTunes store and search any of the following, it’s in the top results:
The LD Community Choir (straight to track)
LD Community Choir (straight to track)
We’ll be the change
Change that works for you
Alternatively, there is a direct link using this URL (this will launch iTunes if you have it installed):
If you are trying to access the track and have not used iTunes before, this link should then show you how to download it.
We have prepared a number of different versions, but the one available here has a long instrumental introduction that can be used for a variety of campaigning events and it ends with the rousing chorus we all heard when Nick Clegg ended his speech on Friday.
Yours,
Chris Fox
Chief Executive, Liberal Democrats
PS Of course if enough of us all download it in the same week we might just creep into the charts! Please encourage friends and family to download this as proceeds go into the campaign fund.
Lib Dem Voice didn’t receive a review copy, so I’ve coughed up my 79p and downloaded my own legal copy.
Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, writes about the Digital Economy Bill:
The Open Rights Group would like to thank the Lib Dems for taking a strong policy stance against the Digital Economy Bill’s disconnection and web blocking proposals.
The biggest danger now is that Parliament will not debate or amend the Bill at all. After the budget, the Bill could be passed with little or no debate, as the election must be called within the next few weeks. The result could be that the Bill becomes law in very bad shape.
Roger Williams, Lib Dem shadow secretary of state for Food and Rural Affairs, is the subject of an interview in the Voice’s favourite read, Horticulture Week. He gives his views on Defra, the party’s call for a supermarket ombudsman, soft landscaping and school visits to rural industries. Here’s an excerpt:
An issue on which the Lib Dems have long been vocal is the creation of a supermarkets ombudsman, as Williams is keen to point out. He explains: “The Liberal Democrats have led the call for an ombudsman. The way in which horticultural producers and top fruit producers have been treated by
In case the 4.5 hours of Prime Ministerial debates featuring Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and David Cameron were not enough to sate the appetite of even the most politically-obsessed television viewer, the BBC has revealed plans to broadcast nine Cabinet Contender debates. Digital Spy reports:
… the nine Cabinet Contender debates will see Labour ministers, their Shadow rivals and Liberal Democrat counterparts discussing the key issues ahead of the general election. … The Daily Politics host Andrew Neil will front the Cabinet Contender debates on BBC Two in the two weeks before the election date, which is still to be
LDV has identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to rank all MPs according to how liberal or authoritarian their record is. All MPs are marked out of 100: the higher their score the more authoritarian they are. The lower their score the more liberal is their voting record.
24 Lib Dem MPs recorded a perfect zero score of 0/100, meaning they had voted on the liberal side of the argument in each of the 10 Commons debates we looked at. Here is the roll-call of liberalism:
Fifty days to polling day, fifty days to deliver those leaflets, knock on those doors, make the phone calls and, if you’re not in a target seat yourself, get along to your nearest one (preferably taking a nice big team with you).
The digital makeover was initially denied by Miss Dinenage, who hopes to replace outgoing MP Sir Peter Viggers – notorious for his duck island expenses claim. ‘By virtue of the fact it’s so big it’s slightly pixelated,’ she insisted. ‘It does look different but it’s not airbrushed.’
But her assistant Glenn Duggan admitted the image had been changed without her knowledge, adding: ‘It has been done to make it more visually attractive for a billboard.
With Parliament expected to pass legislation placing an onus on Returning Officers to start general election counts shortly after the polls close, rather than wait until Friday morning, the Electoral Commission has published a draft of the guidance it will be required to issue.
The key points of the guidance are:
If plans are already well advanced for election counts involving starting to count on the Friday, then it may be reasonable for the (Acting) Returning Officer to argue that it is too late for them to change plans.
However, given the legal obligation to take reasonable steps to start counting on the Thursday night, the guidance reminds (Acting) Returning Officers that they will be liable to prosecution (for breach of official duty) if they do not either count on Thursday or have very good, documented reasons for not doing so.
(Acting) Returning Officers should be mindful of the need to properly process postal votes, but this hint at therefore delaying until the Friday is balanced out by some suggestions on how to arrange matters so as to allow a Thursday night count.
The relative costs of running a Thursday night versus a Friday morning count should be considered, but if a Thursday night count would cost more then that is a matter that should be raised with the Ministry for Justice as it is responsible for funding counts (or, in Scotland, the Scotland Office).
In other words, the Electoral Commission has partly put the ball back in the Ministry of Justice’s court. Having been sceptical of the Ministry’s support for this change in the law, the Commission is saying, “if you want it, you’ll have to pay for it”. However, the Electoral Commission has also explicitly reminded (Acting) Returning Officers in the draft guidance that they could be liable under the law if they drag their feet on Thursday counts unreasonably.
Overall, this is guidance that will encourage more rather than fewer to start counting on the Thursday night, particularly if the Ministry of Justice (and Scotland Office) are willing to fund any extra costs involved.
How many voters are ready to turn against their MP over the expenses scandal? A fascinating battle in a hotly-contested north London constituency looks set to provide some answers.
On one side is Labour whip Dawn Butler. On the other is Lib-Dem MP Sarah Teather. They have been thrown together in a new seat as a result of boundary changes, and there is now a fight to the death to see which one returns to Westminster after the election to represent Brent Central…
What Ms Teather, described as a “saint” by one newspaper
The opinion polls are up-and-down day-in-day-out at the moment, making it almost impossible to say with any confidence whether we are firmly in hung parliament territory, or whether the most likely result is still a Tory victory at the coming general election. But one thing is beyond doubt: the last six months has seen a substantial narrowing in the Tories’ opinion poll lead.
In October 2009, the Tories were polling at around 42%, Labour at 28% – a convincing Tory lead of 14%. Last month, the Tories were at 39%, Labour at 31%, a 3% swing from the …
The constituency of Hyndburn, Lancashire has been left “without a functioning Conservative Association” after its entire leadership resigned in protest at a selection shortlist forced upon them by Tory high command. The list excluded the Conservative leader of Hyndburn Borough Council, Peter Britcliffe, who had made no secret of his desire to contest the seat.
Andy Rankine is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Hyndburn. You can get in touch, read news or offer to help via his Facebook page or the local party website.
Last month, the Voice linked to the first part of a campaign diary by Jamie Saddler, the 23 year-old Lib Dem candidate for Wirral South, which has been commissioned by Catch21, an organisation trying to get more young people interested in politics.
The latest instalment has just gone online – here’s an excerpt:
Although it got somewhat lost last week in the fanfare of conference, and the continued media frenzy around hypothetical hung parliaments, the Lib Dems launched a manifesto for young people. Our central proposal is to introduce a guarantee that young people will be back into education, employment
The book ‘Why vote Lib Dem’ – edited by Danny Alexander MP, with a foreword by Nick Clegg, and contribututions from 26 individuals – is selling fast.
Its publisher (one Iain Dale, Esq) reports that it “is outselling Why Vote Conservative by a factor of 9 and Why Vote Labour by a factor 25. Indeed, so popular is the LibDem book that we have almost sold out of the entire print run, meaning that we will have to reprint after only ten days of sales.”
He speculates that one reason might be the Lib Dems’ minor coup in persuading …
Nick Clegg addressed the ippr this morning to set out his approach to the single biggest problem facing all three major political parties in the coming weeks and months: how to keep the support of the British people given the need for huge public spending cuts to tackle the deficit.
We’re re-printing Nick’s speech in full, below, but here are the key points which struck me:
Re-iterating Vince Cable’s five conditions to take account of before cutting public spending: the rate of growth; the level of unemployment; credit conditions; the extent of spare capacity in the economy and the cost of Government borrowing.
A clear statement “that the conditions will be right for cuts from 2011-12, but not before.”
A clear statement of the level of cuts needed: “at some point in the next eight years the government is going to have to stop spending as much as 10% of what it spends today.”
A promise that the Lib Dems will follow the example of Canada’s Liberal Government in the 1990s and undertake “a massive consultation about every last line of public spending”.
A cash limit on public sector pay rises of £400, ensuring that the lower your salary, the higher percentage pay rise you are eligible for.
In addition, Nick sets out once again the party’s four key election campaign pledges: fair taxes, the £2.5bn ‘pupil premium’, a sustainable economy, and a fair political system.
The sharp eyed will notice no mention of “progressive austerity“. Nor indeed does Nick use the term “savage cuts” – though for all the embarrassment and mockery with which that phrase is identified, it’s the reality of what all the parties would have to implement in their own ways if elected to government.
Paul Turnbull There seems to a fundamental misunderstanding from the author and a few of the comments on the nature of the UK state pension. The UK state pension is designed ...
expats Chris, you also neglected to mention that the link to 'earnings' has already been 'deemed unaffordable'..
Almost exactly 5 years ago (Sept 2021)The Tory govern...
Jana Perhaps insist that an approved ‘black cab style self-driving car’ be mandated for those who wish to enjoy the advantages of modern technological developmen...
Ruth Bright Victor, Richard, Gary - so proud of you all. Nice to look back on my time as Deputy Leader in Southwark a quarter of a century ago and know that time was not wa...
James Hill Dear Chris, as others have pointed out, you seem to have missed the fundamental detail of the PM’s proposal as it retains a link to earnings, but instead of a...
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State of Play: a classic BBC political drama revisited
The Joy of Six 1585
Has Ed Davey got it wrong on the triple lock?
A fair pension for every generation: a Liberal Democrat case for reform
Paul Turnbull
expats
Jana
Ruth Bright
James Hill