I got my first lap-dancing related hate mail the other day. The writer (who was not anonymous) suggested that I had nothing better to do with my time and argued that I belonged in the Stasi.
One of the hazards of politics is that you occasionally take a clear public view and someone doesn’t like it. My crime was to have issued a statement in support of the new rules on sexual encounter establishments.
Since the 2003 Licensing Act, lap-dancing clubs had been subject to the same licensing regime as pubs and restaurants – in particular, there was a presumption in …
By Sara Bedford
| Thu 18th February 2010 - 8:50 am
Welcome to my second Daily View of the week, as Alex continues his Caledonian cultural capers.
On this day five years ago, the ban on hunting with dogs came into force. As a long-term campaigner against blood sports, I don’t think it’s been the most successful piece of legislation ever. Today is also the anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s u-turn of 1981, when she withdrew plans to close 23 pits and agreed to reduce coal imports from eight million to five-and-a-half million tonnes over the next year. As we know, it was only a short reprieve.
Mailings intended to tell people who have recently moved how to get on the electoral register have mistakenly been going out to people who have not moved in years.
A circular from the Electoral Commission sent to councils around the country explains,
As you will be aware, the Commission is currently running a campaign to encourage home movers to register to vote. It has become apparent that there is a problem with one of the data sources being used for the campaign, resulting in some people who have not recently moved home being sent the mailing in error. We are
Over at Pink News, Nick Clegg answers questions from its readers on gay marriage, homophobic violence, faith schools, LGBT asylum seekers, and many other political issues. Here’s a taster:
The number one question submitted by our readers was on whether Nick Clegg and his party support gay marriage. Mr Clegg said last month he supported civil partners calling themselves husband or wife but would he change the law to allow gay civil marriage?
Yes, I support gay marriage. Love is the same, straight or gay, so the civil institution should be the same, too. All couples should be able to make that
Lib Dem shadow health secretary Norman Lamb has today written to his Tory opposite number Andrew Lansley to urge him to attend this Friday’s conference on social care.
The Tories are refusing to attend the cross-party conference – following last week’s tribal spat – on the basis that the Labour Government will not rule out a compulsory levy. This is despite earlier indications that Mr Lansley accepted that the issue of voluntary versus compulsory schemes was one of the key points to be resolved in a consensus building process.
Norman has also called for the talks to be held in the open, …
So, Tories really are sheep in respectable politicians’ clothing.
In a comment to me on Facebook of all places, Conservative Future Scotland Chair Duncan Stewart attempted to make excuses for Tory spin doctors dropping in “stunt students” for David Cameron’s press conference at University of East London this week.
At the press conference Mr Cameron took the opportunity to attack Gordon Brown over expenses, claiming that the Tories were the “new generation” of politicians “at ease with openness” needed to reform politics.
However, UEL Student Union President Joseph Bitrus blew the whistle on Cameron’s latest attempt at public deception. He was alerted …
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 17th February 2010 - 2:02 pm
Bless Nick Herbert: he’s doing his best today to make the claim that the Tories’ attitudes to homosexuality have changed, and that gay people should trust the party. The trouble is Nick has to contend with the reality of the Tories’ voting record – which, as the Lib Dems have pointed out, shows what the Tory party really believes.
The voting records of current Tory MPs who are standing again in 2010 show that:
One in six voted against the repeal of Section 28 in 2003 – including David Cameron and a third of the Tory shadow cabinet;
By Prateek Buch
| Wed 17th February 2010 - 12:50 pm
As people who know me well will tell you, I’ve always been something of an idealist, daydreaming about some abstract political philosophy whilst everyone else deals with more pragmatic concerns – or ‘living in the real world’ as I believe it’s known. I make this point as what I’m about to write alludes to an apparent confluence – potentially at least – of strands of abstract political thought and practical everyday policy that I believe should gain prominence as the general election approaches.
First of all let’s deal with the practicalities (unusual for me but there you go…). Earlier this month …
With so much political attention on the next general election, it’s easy to forget that there are a large number of council seats up for election on the first Thursday in May. Many of those wielding power after the local votes are counted will have far more power than MPs or even junior ministers.
What’s up for election?
It’s a big round of local elections:
All the seats in the 32 London boroughs
One third of the seats in the 36 Mets
One third of the seats in 19 20 unitary authorities
Councillors in Salford will be banned from using Twitter in meetings.
Gatherings of the full council at Salford’s town hall have been covered live by councillors via their micro-blogging profiles.
The debates have attracted hundreds of followers, but town hall bosses have now banned members from using the site during meetings.
I have to admit to being rather confused by this opposition to Twitter that’s creeping across a few Town Halls.
The argument is that councillors who are twittering can’t be paying attention, but how can you report on a meeting if you’re not paying attention to it?
By Iain Roberts
| Wed 17th February 2010 - 8:20 am
It’s Wednesday 17th February and for me, like so many other Lib Dem activists, another day of delivering leaflets and knocking on doors (plus a Council meeting in the evening).
On this day in 1933 prohibition ended in the United States, and in 2003 London got a new congestion charge. There, wasn’t that interesting.
Yes, someone said something foolish on Twitter. Yes, he then dug himself into a hole with an explanation that doesn’t stack up. Yes, he shouldn’t have done it.
But even for a Twitter-holic like me, you’ve got to wonder quite why this story is garnering so much online chatter in comparison with the news we may be deprived of the chance to find out the truth as to whether or not one of David Cameron’s top advisers headed up an organisation that carried out systematic and widespread criminal activity.
That is the sort of moral blindness and indifference to rule breaking which …
Sharing of bank records with the US started in 2001 in an effort to tackle terrorism. However, the European Parliament has rejected new proposed agreement after heated criticisms that too much private information could be handed over without good reason.
The European Parliament has rejected a proposed interim agreement on SWIFT – under which the US gets access to European bank transactions…
Rapporteur Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert from the Netherlands said the Council had not been tough enough on data protection and rules in the interim agreement on data protection were not proportionate to the security supposedly provided.
The artwork for the Liberal Democrat campaign logo has now gone live on the extranet/huddle and is available for use on campaign material.
The slogan has been designed to reflect the key themes of our campaign – change and fairness. Throughout the campaign we will aim to demonstrate that we are the only party offering the real and substantive change needed to deliver a fairer Britain. The logo will be a visual indication of that commitment.
Our campaign will be built around four steps to a fairer Britain:
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 16th February 2010 - 3:23 pm
A week ago, Lib Dem Voice invited the members of our private discussion forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200 of you who completed it; we’ve been publishing the results on LDV over the last few days.
LDV asked, How would you rate the performances of the following leading Liberal Democrats? And here’s what you told us (with results from September 2009 – the last …
The Hansard Society has a new report out which asks the public what they want out of politicians and the political system online.
Although many studies have looked at what politicians do or don’t do online, those looking at what the public actually wants are rather rarer. That makes this a particularly welcome report and is based on:
Two samples, the first is a national survey of individuals who are already online and the second a group of ‘digital leaders’; individuals with a strong interest in social media and politics. The first group is representative of digital Britain and the second group are the ‘early adopters’ of social media and digital technologies.
In many ways the report paints a positive picture, concluding that the country has:
An online population who are actively involved in civic and political life and who see the internet as beneficial for this.
However, this optimism should be tempered with the knowledge that other research has often seen people draw a distinction between being interested in issues and seeing the connection between them and voting, political parties or election results. Although the report has apparently very healthy figures for the proportion of people who have got engaged with the political system, this includes registering to vote – an important and welcome step, but one whose inclusion boosts the headline figures.
Jamie Saddler is pounding the streets as the Liberal Democrat candidate in Wirral South and is producing a campaign diary for Catch21, an organisation trying to get more young people interested in politics. Jamie is 23 himself and so has caught their eye.
In his first diary, Jamie talks about tax policy, the military and what it’s like on the campaign trail:
I have more action days planned, I’ll be knocking on more doors, delivering more leaflets, and visiting schools and community organisations right across the constituency. It’s hard work, but I’m enjoying every minute of it! I’m a Wirral lad, and
Despite their professed enthusiasm for having a bonfire of the quangos, in practice the Conservative Party keep on announcing new ones – and have rather run in to trouble when pressed to explain what’s going on the bonfire (both points I wrote about here).
The tally of new quangos the Conservatives is now at least 19, which sits rather oddly with the rhetoric about culling them. However, that doesn’t mean all the individual proposals are bad ones.
One in particular which appeals to me is an Office of Tax Simplification.
Regular readers may have noticed my love of tangling with bureaucracy. (I …
OK, if you’re going to really insist on thinking that Obama is the Holy Grail of Campaigning To Be Transplanted To The UK Because Our System Is Just Like Theirs, then here’s a useful statistic for you.
The Obama for President campaign raised around $500 million online.
Two-thirds of it came from people clicking a “donate now” link in an email.
The proportion of people giving and the sums people gave on average was low. But with an email list in the millions (10-13 million depending on whose figures you believe) and 1.3 billion email messages being sent out, that added up to …
On this day 51 years ago, Fidel Castro was sworn in as Cuban Prime Minister. Twenty five years ago Clive Ponting resigned from his post at the MoD over the Belgrano affair, despite having been acquitted of breaching the Official Secrets Act a week previously. Just five years ago, the Kyoto Protocol came into force.
Today is of course Shrove Tuesday, so get ready for pancakes tonight. But don’t rely on your opponents giving up campaigning for Lent. I’m off to spend the night setting the budget for the good residents of Three Rivers.
By Iain Roberts
| Tue 16th February 2010 - 9:22 am
It can be a harsh blow for any parliamentary candidate. You’ve filled in the forms, been through the selection process, made your speeches, answered the questions and, in a fiercely fought contest that may even have involved more than one applicant, emerged victorious to represent your party in the General Election.
And then you discover that the seat, in which your party has failed to top 13% of the vote in either of the last two elections, is unaccountably not having tens of thousands of pounds poured into it by the central party; nor are activists from across the region …
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, called for MPs to be banned from making a profit from selling second homes which they bought using their Commons allowances.
He will prevent Liberal Democrat MPs making money out of selling such a property after having their mortgage interest paid by the taxpayer – and wants the rule extended to all MPs. Any profits from the sale of a property would be handed back to the Exchequer.
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 15th February 2010 - 9:40 pm
A month ago, LDV launched our comments policy experiment, appealing to our readers to ‘make nice’. As I explained at the time:
… though we reckon this site is better than most political blogs in offering a space where all can feel free to debate with mutual respect, it doesn’t always happen. And those few occasions when LDV’s comments become overly personal and abusive (and invariably testosterone-charged) can deter others from ever daring to join in. So for the next month – leading up to Valentine’s Day, appropriately enough – LDV is going to try and ‘love up’ our comments
It’s a mark of a good piece of analysis that it is still sound even if the particular news story that prompted its publication doesn’t stand up for long. And so it is with Stephen’s piece over on Comment is Free, triggered by the Guardian story – firmly rubbished by the party – about the party’s attitude towards coalitions.
So although The Guardian story has been ridiculed – after all the paper has variously reported that the party wants a coalition with the Tories, wants a coalition with Labour or doesn’t want a coalition at all – Stephen’s three tests …
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 15th February 2010 - 2:45 pm
A week ago, Lib Dem Voice invited the members of our private discussion forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200 of you who completed it; we’ve been publishing the results on LDV over the last few days.
Today, we turn our attention to the performance of the Liberal Democrat shadow cabinet, and a handful of other senior Lib Dems. Reproduced below, in alphabetical order, are the full results of our survey, which shows how effective each MP is felt by members to be, together with a net satisfaction rating (those who think they’re very/fairly effective minus those think they’re very/fairly ineffective). The figure in brackets is their net satisfaction rating in September 2009, the last time we polled party members.
For those looking for our ‘golden dozen’ most popular Lib Dem shadow cabinet members, here it is:
“Where have all the good times gone?” That old song by The Kinks often comes back to my ears when I am in Britain –quite regularly, that is. The economy is not only going down, it is just not up to what it used to be.
The Cadbury flop
The takeover of Cadbury by Kraft Foods is just the latest in a long series. In less than three decades Britain has lost many of the jewels in its industrial crown.
One of the most spectacular examples is of course the car industry. When The Times writes about Jaguar Land Rover as “the UK’s …
With the general election looking to be heading towards a hung Parliament according to the latest prediction we’ve published from a group of academics, how are things looking for the Liberal Democrats?
The fast-moving story that sweeps round the world may catch the headlines, but the reality of most internet campaigning is very different: it’s the gradual, consistent and sustained effort that reaps the reward. Unless you’re very lucky, it’s a commitment to building up email lists, web visitors and so on over time which brings results.
2. Don’t expect people automatically to come to you
It’s easy to stick something online – a Facebook page, a blog, a simple website or whatever. But that won’t make people come to it. Just as there’s no point printing a …
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 15th February 2010 - 9:45 am
Happy Monday morning! And as it’s the fifth anniversary of YouTube, find out why Paddy chose to appear with a couple of puppets back in 1997. But first, the news and blogs.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
These episodes demonstrate the character of the Conservative Party – people who make all sorts of promises in order to get what they want with the firm intention of weaselling out of them.
… don’t be surprised if the next Labour PM is someone that you won’t have heard of even several years from now.
Have you donated yet?
Lib Dem Voice is asking our readers to consider making a donation to help five candidates in the imminent general election. The first to be featured is Willie Rennie, victor in the 2006 Dunfermline by-election. Click here to read more. Click here to donate to Willie’s campaign.
2 Lib Dem Stories
David Laws on Tory ‘free school’ plans: “deeply flawed”
David Laws has criticised the Tories’ plans to set up Swedish-style ‘free schools’, saying:
The Tories’ schools plans are deeply flawed both in terms of money and on the curriculum. Michael Gove’s plan to cut the education budget means his ability to establish new schools will inevitably depend on raiding the budgets of existing schools.
“On the curriculum, Conservative plans are in even more of an incoherent muddle. Michael Gove plans to impose an absurdly detailed curriculum on most state-funded schools, while allowing free schools to adopt a pick-and-mix curriculum – even if this means dropping core subjects such as British history and modern languages.
“It is impossible to justify in any logical way a system which imposes such centralized uniformity on 23,500 schools while allowing a small minority to teach whatever they like at the taxpayers’ expense.”
Lib Dem voters more likely to have a sex toy
Well, according to a poll quoted in The Sun anyway:
Lib Dem voters are more likely to have a sex toy than Labour or Tory supporters, a poll reveals. Thirty per cent own one, compared to 24 per cent for Labour and 22 per cent of Tories.
The party that gives you good vibrations.Hmmm, I admit the slogan needs some work, but, hey, it might just work.
Celebrating 5 years of YouTube
Because 5 years ago, clips like the below were just forgotten bits of old news archive seen by no-one:
Nigel Jones @Vince, your nuanced approach makes some sense and as you say it is a complicated situation. If we get gas from the Jackdaw field and not importing it, does tha...
Nigel Jones I agee with your main argument. We do not need to support many pensioners with the triple lock and those who are poor should be provided for in another way. I ...
Jana Two seats where Restore standing has probably cost Reform gains. If this becomes an ongoing pattern, Farage may have to swallow his pride and do a deal with Res...
Chris Bowers Thank you to everyone who commented on my post, even if, by the end, the responses had drifted into the realm of comments-about-comments-about-comments. I think...
Chris Perry What the Prime Minister actually said was that if a prices link or 2.5% did not keep up with earnings over time the government would correct it. But that would ...
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