Defending your plans for cuts at a local council by comparing your management style with that of Toyota doesn’t really sound the smartest move any more does it?
Step forward, David Burbage (Conservative Leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead).
So, how to explain what Alistair Darling has been up to with his comments about Number 10 unleashing the forces of hell on him?
Let’s go for the carefully plotted conspiracy theories first (warning: may contain irony).
Explanation number one: it’s all a clever plot to make sure the Conservatives win the general election and are then crippled for a generation by having to carry out huge spending cuts. After all, look at the damage winning in 1992 did to the Conservative Party in the long run. This is a consistent, long-term and well thought out plot of course because each time …
North West Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies has blogged about how he’s rejected a nomination as Politician of the Year for the 2010 Erotic Awards. The Flying Golden Penis award will, it would seem, be flying elsewhere this year.
It’s an honour to be considered but it’s not justified. I organised a fringe meeting to give sex workers a voice at last year’s party conference, and more recently I put out a press release defending sex workers from prohibitionist government policies. But it’s not enough.
Whether this spurs Chris to even greater heights to be worthy …
For the third time in four weeks, the BBC won’t be having a Liberal Democrat on Question Time. As Freedom Central reports:
A number of Lib Dems have complained, with gathering pace, about this lack of representation. The response from Gavin Allen was:
“The Liberal Democrats like all parties get representation based on their level of electoral support, which means they are on most – but not all – ‘Question Time’ panels across each series. We believe it adds to the breadth of debate to have perspectives from politicians and non-politicians alike, so places
…
Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat Shadow Scotland Secretary, has tabled amendments to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill aimed at bringing an end to MSPs and MPs holding both jobs at the same time.
The amendments follow legislation backed by both the Government and the Conservatives which seeks to end ‘double jobbing’ by Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLAs) who are also MPs. They offer two options:
…
It isn’t often that Members of Parliament are praised, vilified as they are over their expenses, point-scoring and deference to vested interests. Yet this week has seen a moment of real clarity in Westminster, a true demonstration of how our elected leaders can exercise critical thinking and formulate policy based on objective, rational evidence – and all this over some tiny sugar pills.
Monday saw the publication of Evidence Check: Homeopathy, a report by the House of Commons Science and Technology committee (full report available as a PDF here). This report followed months of taking …
The political impact of TV debates in other Parliamentary democracies (and yes, yawn yawn, obligatory American reference, in the US too) has often been more about expectations than about absolute performance. Beat expectations and you benefit from the debate, even if that means people viewed you as the narrow loser. But if you were expected to be a big loser and then beat expectations and only just lose, you benefit.
Also the impact of debates has often been to reinforce people’s existing predilections rather than switch people between different parties or candidates. That has, for example, been a common feature in Canada, where TV debates have been held off and on since 1968. (Yawn yawn, US example, 1988 second Dukakis-Bush debate and others.)
In other words, you’re best placed to come out well from a debate if your party is the one most in need of motivating its supporters and if the expectations about your performance are low. Step forward then, Gordon Brown.
As for Nick Clegg?
Both of Brown’s advantages are advantages over David Cameron – and only over David Cameron. Liberal Democrat share of the vote is fairly static overall as turnout changes: from purely partisan motives, the level of turnout does not really matter, though of course from the perspective of health democracy higher turnout is much to be preferred. The expectations one is trickier, but the expectations amongst many in the media that Nick Clegg will benefit hugely from being in the debates is based on simply him being there, so he won’t go in to them with the pressure of extremely high personal performance being expected by the media.
Moreover, for Nick Clegg there is that third factor: TV debates can raise the profile of leaders beyond the main two parties.
For Nick and the Liberal Democrats this is likely to be a major boost, because consistently the party does best when it is in the news (even if, during the post-Kennedy leadership contest several MPs did their level best to disprove that). As simple a move as asking people about their views of party leaders before asking them which party they’ll vote for raises the third party’s vote in opinion polls. That’s why for many years Gallup gave the party higher ratings that other pollsters.
Compared to that, appearing in a trio of TV debates alongside Brown and Cameron will be a massive boost for Nick Clegg and the party.
Whilst we wait to find out what the televised general election debates will bring, enjoy this moment from the 1988 Canadian debates. The 1988 election was a re-run contest between Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives, who had won a landslide in 1984, and the Liberals under John Turner, still leader despite leading his party crashing out of power in 1984. John Turner is the silver haired one:
There’s a curious article in today’s Times by the paper’s chief political correspondent Sam Coates. Here’s how the report starts:
Voters are abandoning the Liberal Democrats in parts of their South West stronghold as dislike of Gordon Brown boosts support for the Conservatives. A tour by The Times of Lib Dem constituencies in the region found genuine signs of support for the Tories, with voters who backed the Lib Dems in 2005 now responding positively to the high-spending Tory campaign.
Conservative strategists believe the party is significantly more popular in swing seats that have been the target of campaign spending by
…
Every now and again, some opinion poll or other asks people to name their own MP and politocos tutt when, invariably, a good proportion fail the test.
But, if you were to speak to every MP and ask them who the MP for their own constituency is, you’d hope for a better result.
Sadly, news reaches us that at least one MP may be unsure.
Dawn Butler, Labour MP for Brent South, held a coffee morning on Friday with Rt Hon Paul Boateng MP.
The polls have closed and over 100,000 votes been counted in the Power 2010 online consultation on political reform (which we’ve previously covered here).
The most popular proposals, with people able to pick more than one from a list, were a proportional voting system, the end of ID cards and government data hoarding, an elected House of Lords, English votes on English laws and a commitment to drawing up a written constitution.
The next stage in Power 2010’s campaign will involve candidates being challenged to back this set of proposals. The campaign’s director, Pam Giddy, says, “The vote shows that voters can make difficult choices …
On this day in 1920 (according to the nice people at Wikipedia), the Nazi Party was founded.
The days when the Daily Mail publically paraded its sympathies for the Nazis are long gone – their interests lie elsewhere these days…
The story Mail hacks have been waiting for
This story must have felt like Christmas and Easter rolled into one for reporters at the Daily Mail – it’s got everything.
Reacting to the DCMS select committee report on “Press standards, privacy and libel”, which has just been published, Chris Huhne has said:
This report blows a gaping hole in the News of the World’s line that only a sole rogue reporter was involved in illegal hacking of phones, and reveals enormous worries about the feeble response of the Metropolitan Police in investigating what was clearly widespread illegal activity.
There are very serious issues at stake here for the privacy of the citizen and the report highlights deep concern at the weak reaction to these illegal intrusions by News International, the Press Complaints Commission ,
…
The Electoral Commission’s report into the November 2009 Parliamentary by-election in Glasgow North East has condemned the Labour Party for breaking the Code of Conduct on postal voting, saying the party repeatedly failed to process postal vote forms promptly.
The Code allows parties to distribute to the public forms for signing up to postal votes and to have them returned to a party address. This makes sense in circumstances such as the forms being in with a mailing which also asks for donations to the campaign where giving two different return addresses could result in items going to the wrong place and council staff having to send on political donations to the right address.
However, to guard against misuse the Code – whose provisions the Labour Party has been consulted on annually and each year said it consents to – requires such forms to be passed on by a political party within two working days of receipt.
In Glasgow North East this deadline was broken by the Labour Party and the Electoral Commission says that, “When the Commission reported the concerns that the party had unduly delayed the return of applications for postal votes to the ERO, his staff undertook a spot-check of those applications and discovered that more than 100 forms had been signed and dated by the elector more than a week earlier, and in some cases, more than one month earlier.”
The Labour Party has however defended its actions, with The Guardian reporting that, “The commission’s conclusions were vigorously challenged by the Labour party, which will be asking the commission to justify its report’s conclusions, a spokesman disclosed. He said the report had ignored the significant impact on the delivery of postal vote applications by the postal strike, which had seriously affected every party’s campaign, despite this being highlighted in meetings between Labour and commission officials.”
The Commission was also critical of the long delay by Labour before calling the by-election. “The procedures for calling a by-election are complex and in this instance led to voters being without an MP for nearly five months,” said Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission. “The Electoral Commission believes the UK Parliament should consider how long a Westminster seat should be able to remain vacant to ensure voters can elect a new MP in a timely way.”
You can read the full report here:
Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, Lib Dem leader in the Greater London Assembly Mike Tuffrey argues that, though the mayor of London made many promises about changing the way the city is governed, nothing has materialised. Here’s an excerpt:
Alas, Johnson’s bold claims to change how London is governed have proved to be largely fanciful. The specific promise to introduce a cabinet system at city hall – an idea introduced by Livingstone, but afterwards abandoned by him – was quickly dropped, despite my constant probing. …
The mayor has also stopped holding regular press conferences at city hall,
…
Or there’s the alternative headline the Voice decided not to use: The six Lib Dem MPs who were in favour of devolution before they were aginst it …. The BBC reports:
Liberal Democrats say an “error” led to several of their MPs supporting an attempt to block new powers for the Welsh assembly. Six signed an amendment to a new law that would have stopped the assembly acquiring powers over home education.
The Lib Dems are in favour of more devolution, and their Welsh education spokeswoman Jenny Randerson said her colleagues had signed in error. They will now remove their names
…
Over at Cancer Research UK’s science update blog, Nick Clegg asnwers questions about the Liberal Democrats plan to do to help beat cancer. Here’s an excerpt:
Britain’s cancer survival rates are worse than many of our European neighbours – what are the Liberal Democrats planning to do to tackle this?
Nick Clegg – Early detection is key. It simply doesn’t make sense for people to be turned away from screening programmes because they’re thought to be too old or too young, so we’d scrap age limits on screening for a start. And we need to get more people to go and get
…
On Friday 19 February 2010 from 9am until midnight, the BBC Parliament channel gave us the chance to relive the February 1974 election by broadcasting the whole of Election Night 74, hosted by Alistair Burnett.
When I stumbled on the coverage at 6 pm, the programme was reaching 1.00 pm on Friday 1 March, the day after polling day. By that stage, 600 results were in and the Conservatives were a dozen seats and a few thousand votes behind Labour. The swingometer, operated by Robert McKenzie, showed a 2% swing to Labour from the Conservatives but this failed to register the real flow of …
Vince Cable has today set out the Lib Dems’ plan for the banking sector. We’re publishing his speech in full below, but for those who just want the skinny, Vince:
The full text of the speech is below:
Four blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
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:
At the height of Make Poverty History back in 2005, in the Cabinet Room at No 10, Richard “Four Weddings and a Funeral” Curtis asked then PM Tony Blair, “would you mind if I showed you a video I’ve made?” It’s not the same as some bloke at work offering to show you his holiday snaps. So when Richard Curtis showed his new Robin Hood Tax video to some of the 85 national organisations supporting the latest big campaign in the TUC General Council Chamber earlier this month, we knew we were in for a treat. There’s already
Today the people of Guyana celebrate the country becoming a Republic in 1970. Mashramani, often abbreviated to ‘Mash’, is an annual festival that celebrates the nation and people of Guyana with a carnival parade, music, games and food.
On this day in 1945, the Stars and Stripes was raised over the Japanese-held volcanic island of Iwo Jima, rather than the flag of a trade union.
This morning the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable is in Canary Wharf, delivering a keynote speech, which will outline the Liberal Democrats plan for the banking and financial services industries.
From a party news release ahead of Jo Swinson and Lynne Featherstone meeting with representatives of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA):
Commenting on today’s report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists calling for airbrushed images to be ‘kitemarked’, Liberal Democrat MP, Jo Swinson said:
“The Royal College of Psychiatrists makes it crystal clear that airbrushing plays a harmful role when it comes to negative body image and eating disorders.
“Airbrushing has a really damaging impact on people’s self-esteem and that’s why we’ve called for a labelling system.
“Making sure children are taught to be media-savvy and getting ads which feature unrealistic, unattainable images to …
The Telegraph reports that shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke is going to Brussels tomorrow for “secret talks” with members of the European Commission:
Mr Clarke, who will be accompanied by Mark Prisk and John Penrose, junior shadow business ministers, is expected to seek concessions on financial and employment regulations during the meetings, which are not listed on the European Commission’s official diary.
Fiona Hall MEP, Leader of the European Liberal Democrats, said,
The question is what deal will he do? Will he sell out his own beliefs or those of his anti-European colleagues?
and suggested that such secret talks meant that “the …
A reminder, if you’ve been putting it off, that you only have until midnight tonight to vote in the Power 2010 online poll:
What 5 reforms will bring real change to UK democracy? You can vote for as many reforms as you like, but just once for each reform.
The top 5 ideas become the POWER2010 Pledge – the backbone of our nationwide campaign for change at the next election. Vote now.
You can see which five proposals are leading at the moment, and as Mark has already blogged, it’s worth bearing in mind the options you don’t like, as …
…it is becoming increasingly clear that teenage girls are a stand-alone demographic in crisis
So says a report in Sunday’s Observer, looking at the pressures faced by teenage girls and the effects it has on their lives, and it’s far from alone.
As Mark Pack reported here on Sunday, the Evening Standard and Telegraph both reported on concerns of girls becoming sexualised at ever younger ages.
Just hold on a moment, though.
Yes, teenage girls have problems. And it may well be that there are specific measures the State can take to reduce those problems, such as the regulation …
Like something you’ve read or watched on the internet? Sharing it with others is a good idea because:
1. It helps get the content to a wider audience. Whether it is to share the interest and enjoyment that you got from the piece, or whether it is for publicity purposes because you think it should be seen by more people, sharing the content via sources such as Digg or Facebook is a good way to achieve that.
2. Using one or more of these routes builds up a history for your own future use of what you’ve found and liked.
3. Sharing content through social …
The public overwhelmingly backs major changes to the way our electoral system is run according to a new poll commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.
Just under two-thirds of people (65%) agree that, “This country should adopt a new voting system that would give parties seats in Parliament in proportion to their share of votes” and 59% support holding a referendum on changing the voting system used for Parliament. That later number is particularly strong given Gordon Brown’s strong support for the idea; usually having an unpopular high profile figure back a policy makes it less popular.
But the strongest support …
Happy Monday morning everyone. Just 213 years ago today saw the Last Invasion of Britain: look away now if you don’t want to know the result. We beat the French. The 22nd February is also the birthday of three of this country’s greatest entertainers: Kenneth Williams (1926), Bruce Forsyth (1928) and Terry Eagleton (1943).
But enough of such tarrying, and on with the main event …
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
.
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Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 157th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (14th-20th February, 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:
The BBC reports Simon Hughes’ criticism of the Government for letting the plane take the strain a little too often.
Party spokesman Simon Hughes said: Government staff should “use trains and video-conferencing more so they fly around the country less”.
“Civil servants are spending staggering amounts of taxpayers’ cash flying around the UK,” he added.
“The Civil Service Code needs to change so that environmental factors are considered when travel bookings are made.”
Government departments spent £21.8 million on over 210,000 internal flights in the year 2008-9. Well over half that total is down to the MOD, with the Department for Work …
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By-Election Report 01.10.26 (Joe Nutt)
Picking our allies, a perspective on Israel/Palestine (Gillian Mosely)
Burnham is right to reform the triple lock; the Lib Dems should support it (James Hill)
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)
Lib Dem MPs are talking to the media about their concern at the party's direction
Latest voting intention and leadership ratings opinion polls
Blackburn Reform councillor accused of farting at rival
State of Play: a classic BBC political drama revisited
Lib Dems make another by-election gain in Highlands
The Joy of Six 1585
Has Ed Davey got it wrong on the triple lock?
Now We Are Severn released by Shrewsbury's Up Sewage Creek
The death of Dennis O'Neill and expertise in a narrow subject
Peer says his name should not be used in legal letter in island cafe dog snub row
Nigel Jones Nigel Jones 
Jana 
Chris Bowers 
Chris Perry 
