By Sara Bedford
| Tue 19th January 2010 - 10:30 am
On this day in 1966, Indira Ghandi was elected as the first woman Prime Minister of India, whilst 20 years ago today, the rebel English cricket team, led by Mike Gatting, landed at Johannesburg airport.
Today we wish a happy 30th birthday to world champion Jenson Button and also commemorate the 132nd anniversary of the birth of former Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman. Voters go to the polls today in Massachusetts, to elect a Senator for the seat left vacant by the death of Edward Kennedy.
Nominally an extremely safe seat for the Democrats, the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley should be a shoe-in.
And yet Republican former centrefold star Scott Brown, once voted by Cosmo as America’s Sexiest Man (the link is fairly safe for work, but does contain a tastefully cropped naked man) has been closing the gap in the polls, and in some cases even taken a lead.
Of key importance in this battle is the senatorial supermajority, which we have covered on The Voice in the past. In the US senate, a party with 60 of the 100 senators – or the votes of 60 senators – can move a vote of cloture which can end a filibuster. This removes from the minority party a powerful tool to veto legislation by talking it out. This has become all the more fraught recently since Obamacare, the extremely controversial healthcare legislation currently under consideration. If the Republicans win the Massachusetts, the Democrats lose their right of veto and they could lose Obamacare.
Here’s a video for each candidate to give you a flavour of the battle.
First, President Obama is staking his political reputation to support Martha Coakley and underlining the future of Obamacare:
Yesterday we announced that Peter Tatchell had won LDV’s annual Liberal Voice of the Year award (open only to non-Lib Dems) in recognition of his fearless campaigning work for international human rights. We emailed Peter to let him know the news, and here’s the message he sent to all LDV readers …
Wow! What an honour. I’m chuffed. Thanks to everyone who voted for me.
What a surprise too. A socialist Green wins Liberal Voice of the Year.
It shows that your readers are non-sectarian and inclusive, putting
values and principles above party politics, which is how it should be.
The Press Complaints Commission is currently reviewing its Editors’ Code of Practice so a group of bloggers, including myself, have got together to propose five changes – and we’re running an online petition which you can sign too.
Amongst any group of people, the exact reasons for supporting the suggestions will vary but for myself they are:
(a) All the suggestions are obvious and easy ones which ask no more of newspapers than to meet the sorts of standards many journalists and editors have long since said they should meet.
(b) They pass the “what if your kids asked…?” test, by which …
Alex Finnegan at the Mandate blog has identified Burnley as one of the key seats to watch at this year’s general election, with the Lib Dems tipped to take the challenge to Labour in one of its heartland seats:
With former Government Minister Kitty Usher standing down because of her expenses’ claims, Burnley is the sort of seat the Liberal Democrats need to gain from Labour in order to do well. The Lib Dem candidate, Gordon Birtwistle, is the current leader of Burnley Council and has strong local roots and the Liberal Democrats have performed well in recent local elections.
Nick Clegg has taken the opportunity of a speech today to the Royal Society – on the relationship between science and politics – to press for reform to the UK’s “stifling” libel laws. Here’s how the Press Gazette reports it:
There appears to be a growing political consensus that Britain’s libel laws are too waited in favour of rich claimants and money-grubbing lawyers. Today Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is set to use a speech to the Royal Society to call for libel laws to be reformed, The Independent reports.
“Libel tourism is making a mockery of British justice,” Clegg
Congratulations to Peter Tatchell, who has won Liberal Democrat Voice’s third annual Liberal Voice of the Year award – an award which publicly acknowledges the campaigning work of non-Liberal Democrats in promoting liberal values. Peter gained a plurality of votes, with 27%; the runner-up was author and journalist Ben Goldacre, with 20%.
Over 700 votes were cast, and the results were as follows:
The Conservatives think they can improve education in this country by making the teaching profession “brazenly elitist” but it looks like they haven’t done their homework. David Cameron’s latest wheeze would actually exclude Carol Vorderman, the Tories’ own Maths Taskforce chief.
David Cameron made a speech today at a south London school, outlining Conservative pledges:
The Tory leader said he wanted to make teaching the “noble profession” and would bar students with a poor degree from taking government cash to train for the classroom.
And in what was almost certainly a conscious echo of Labour rhetoric, Mr Cameron said: “Good education is the right of the many not the privileged few.”
Michael Gove, the Shadow Education Secretary, went further in confronting head on claims that the Conservatives’ policies favour the better off.
An incoming Conservative government would be guided by a “moral purpose” to make opportunity more equal, he said, adding that it was a ‘scandal’ only 79 boys in receipt of free school meals achieved three ‘A’s at A-level nationwide compared with 175 pupils from Eton alone.
“It’s a scar on our conscience and we are pledged to reverse it,” said Mr Gove.
However, “breaking open the supply of education” won’t be achieved by discouraging graduates with lower classes of degree.
Nigel Jackson (University of Plymouth) and Darren Lilleker (University of Bournemouth) have carried out a useful little piece of research into what prospective Parliamentary candidates get up to on Twitter.
Size of Twitter audience
Although size isn’t everything on Twitter, the number of followers a candidate can build up is relevant to the question of whether Twitter can be a useful medium for direct communication with voters (as opposed to indirect communication, i.e. reaching journalists and helpers on Twitter who then in turn reach the public).
This survey found PPCs with followers often numbering in the thousands which leaves open the possibility that some, at least, are reaching significant local audiences directly.
What sort of messages do PPCs send out?
Around 78% of PPCs use Twitter to send out messages discussing local issues and the same proportion also use it to promote their party, with these two groups of messages being the most popular.
Sharing information is also common: 69% promote their own campaigns but also 67% share non-news links, 53% share news stories and 35% provide local information directly in their tweets. That last figure suggest that, whatever the possibilities, many PPCs do not view Twitter as being useful to them for a direct local audience – or perhaps (very wrongly!) think a local audience is not interested in local information.
Personal touches are common with nearly 60% sending tweets about their personal life, just under half expressing personal preferences and 29% sending jokes.
Using Twitter to listen
Directly asking for views is fairly rare though, with less than one in ten asking for views on local or national issues. However, many PPCs are aware that by putting views or links on Twitter they are likely to get feedback, so the number of explicit requests for views understates the degree to which Twitter is used to solicit feedback.
The report also found that:
The number are following varies from 6 to 2,751. To give these figures some meaning we created a follows/following ratio, which compares the number of followers they have as opposed to the number they follow. Thirty six PPCs have a negative rating meaning that they follow more than follow them, so that for them Twitter seems largely about listening to the views of others. Ninety one have a follower/following ratio of 10 or under, suggesting that they use Twitter as a means of promoting their views, but do look at what others have to say. Only 2 have a higher ratio than this implying that for them Twitter is primarily a broadcast channel.
It’s all related
Number of followers, number of people being followed and frequency of tweets are all strongly correlated in the survey results. With the usual caveat about correlation not being the same as causation, it looks as if the more people use Twitter, the more they get out of it – which in turn of course encourages them in turn to use it more.
Lynne doesn’t exactly get an easy ride. Those questions which aren’t of the form “Why don’t the Lib Dems pack up and go home?” are all specifics about how much her expenses were:
Why did you think it reasonable to spend £22,000 of our money on stationery for your office?Hannah Farthing, London
When I was elected in May 2005 I promised to be one of the “hardest working MPs – ever”. If you look at my record, you will find I have delivered
By Sara Bedford
| Mon 18th January 2010 - 12:15 pm
Today’s FT has an interview with wannabe Chancellor George Osborne, where he once again fails to give any real details of the Conservatives’ economic plans, should they win the next election. Osborne talks about his admiration for Sweden, although he is unable to put his finger on exactly why, saying:
“I’m no expert on Swedish society but I am a regular viewer now of Wallander”.
What next: Chris Grayling telling the Daily Mail that he is changing the Conservatives’ policies on drugs after catching up with a few episodes of Van der Valk?
By Iain Roberts
| Mon 18th January 2010 - 10:45 am
A genuinely hard problem, or one the large parties have an interest in not solving?
Whichever the truth is, political activists might find these comments have a ring of familiarity.
A far more serious problem, however, is the lack of any limitation on amounts which can be spent nationally and in the period between elections.
These amounts have now begun to dwarf the total sums spent on behalf of all candidates. In the period leading up to the 1959 election it has been estimated that the Conservative Party spent £468,000 on advertising alone, while over three times that amount was spent by business
On this day, in 1788, Britain established a penal settlement at Botany Bay in Australia; while, in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt sent the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States to King Edward VII. Even more excitingly, it’s the birthday of AA Milne (b. 1882), Oliver ‘Laurel &’ Hardy (b. 1892), Cary Grant (b. 1904) and Peter Beardsley (b. 1961).
But without further tarrying …
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:
The Internet is a fantastic place. It can also be an angry place. Lib Dem Voice has a high quality of passionate-but-reasoned debate in our comment threads, with many of our 30,000+ readers contributing their thoughts and enjoying LDV’s role as “Our place to talk”.
However … it’s not unknown for debate on LDV to get heated, for commenters sometimes to get personal with the authors of articles, or with each other. The editorial collective has generally adopted a laissez faire moderating policy: save a handful of exceptional circumstances, comments are left untouched.
A parish notice here from the LDV editorial collective … Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that a new person has recently joined the Voice’s team – Sara Bedford.
Sara joined the LibDems as a student in the 1980s, becoming National Chair of YLD (the predecessor to LDYS and Liberal Youth) between 1990-92. After serving as a member of the Federal Executive and Federal Conference Committee between 1991-95, in 1996 Sara settled down to motherhood and serving as a councillor for Abbots Langley on Three Rivers District Council, which has been majority Lib Dem controlled since 1999. She is also an active …
Eric Pickles has, we hear, labelled Paddy Ashdown “frail and confused”. It seems an odd charge for the lifelong political hack and current Tory chairman, Mr Pickles, to level against Paddy – a former Marine, diplomat and spy, who’s placed himself in danger in service of his country more times than Eric’s had hot dinners (no mean feat).
Here’s a picture of Eric.
And here’s a picture of Paddy (taken just last week, I believe).
And now let’s see Eric in action – in his infamous car-crash appearance on BBC1’s Question Time. A cruel person might observe that Eric seems a little, well, “frail and confused” as he tries to justify his second home allowance:
Welcome to the 152nd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (10th – 16th January 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:
By Iain Roberts
| Sun 17th January 2010 - 12:10 pm
We’re used to self-styled futurologists getting their predictions hopelessly wrong, so it’s impressive to come across this, from architect Sir Aston Webb. Made in 1914, Sir Aston imagined taking a journey a century into the future, to 2014.
I asked why everything looked so bright and clean, and my companion said that was because they had done away with the smoke and only used smokeless fuel materials now.
In a bird’s-eye view I obtained of London, I noticed that, besides the railway tracks out of London, there were great arterial roads stretching out in all ways. They were 120 feet
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 17th January 2010 - 10:20 am
It’s an issue that arouses passions on either side. For some, home schooling is an absolute right, for parents to be able to educate their children in the manner of their choosing without interference from the state. For others, the concern is to ensure that children whose parents are not suitable to home school do not suffer for the rest of their lives as a result.
Where, as liberals, do we draw the line between the rights of parents to know better than the state; and the rights of children to achieve the best possible education?
Mikey, The Terror Suspect gets a write-up from Stephen Glenn. There’s just one problem with him being a terror suspect as the photograph on the blog post reveals.
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.
Now LDV doesn’t, as our readers know, usually focus on individual opinion polls – but this one’s a little out of the ordinary, as it focuses on the voting intentions of teachers. The survey of nearly 4,000 teachers for the education charity the Sutton Trust by Ipsos MORI revealed the following voting intentions:
Labour 25%
Tories 18%
Lib Dems 14%
Here’s what the Independent had to say about the poll in relation to the Lib Dems:
Today’s poll showed the Liberal Democrats lagging behind the two main parties with just 14 per cent. Traditionally, third parties have done well in polls
Nick Clegg made some waves this week by calling for full gay equality, and challenging the Tories and their leader David Cameron to follow his example. Well, now Lib Dem research has shown what an uphill battle the Tory leader will have on his hand even convincing his own shadow cabinet to back such moves – let alone his even more right-wing backbenchers – as The Guardian reports:
Nearly a third of David Cameron’s shadow cabinet voted against gay rights legislation at some point over the last two parliaments, demonstrating their “shameful” record in tackling discrimination, according to the
Tories claim Labour is using taxpayers’ money to fund election advertising campaign – Telegraph, 15.1.10
“The Conservatives accused Labour of “raiding” taxpayers’ money to fund their election campaign. New figures uncovered by the Conservatives show that spending on advertising has increased to £232 million, which is a 39 per cent increase on the previous year.”
A tenth of schools fail to meet GCSE targets – The Guardian, 14.1.10
“One in 10 secondary schools in England failed to meet basic targets for GCSEs last summer and academies were disproportionately represented among the failing institutions, government statistics published today reveal.
Here’s what a Conservative borough councillor Smith Benson said at a public meeting in Colne, Pendle, last year:
The problem with Colne is that there are too many takeaways. And too many Pakis, that’s why people don’t come to Colne.”
His comment to the Colne town centre regeneration forum – and which he repeated in the meeting when asked to clarify his remarks – led Lib Dem councillor Tony Greaves to complain that Cllr Benson had breached the local authority’s code of conduct: this has been upheld, and the matter has now been referred to Pendle Council’s standards committee.
In 2006 two filmmakers decided to document the first term of a little known US senator called Barack Obama. Within nine months their rookie was running for president.
The resulting two hour HBO documentary was shown on BBC Two last Saturday (9th Jan). If you didn’t see it, do all you can to track it down somewhere, somehow. It is clear that the film-makers formed a trusted relationship with Barack, Michelle and his team so the access to the deeds, the techniques, the emotions and the inspiration of the whole cast from candidate to ten year …
LDV reported on Wednesday that Lib Dem MP for birmingham Yardley John Hemming had been granted an emergency Commons motion to debate what he termed an “intimidating” email received from a firm of solicitors Withers LLP.
A brief update, courtesy of the BBC report:
MPs have rallied round one of their number who said he was being “intimidated” and prevented from exercising his right to freedom of speech in the Commons by a firm of solicitors.
On 14 January 2010, they backed a request from Liberal Democrat John Hemming to refer the matter to Committee on Standards and Privileges, who will
Over at the Financial Times Nick Clegg has pledged to be straight with the British public about the state of the nation’s finances, and the public spending cuts the Lib Dems will make – called on the other two major parties to do likewise. At the moment, he says, Labour and the Tories are treating fiscal discipline like a “political football”:
Gordon Brown is determined to keep spending, whatever the risks, to create a dividing line with the Conservatives. David Cameron is determined to insist on immediate cuts, whatever the risks, to create a dividing line with Labour. It has become
Here’s your starter for ten as we experiment with a new Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
The enthusiasm across the political spectrum for using choice to raise standards in public services is misplaced because:
For many public services, it’s vital to get the service right first time – for everyone. Children only get to go through school once. You don’t want to discover after a botched operation that you should have chosen a different surgeon.
Choice requires surplus capacity to be meaningful – but it’s hard enough to fund minimum capacity in public services without also building in surplus capacity.
“Julian was selected from a shortlist of six candidates who fought for the position at Hustings at The Michaelhouse Centre in Trinity Street, Cambridge last night (Friday).
The ballot was called after MP David Howarth decided to stand down at the general election to return to his academic career at Clare College.
Alex Macfie Perhaps we should take a few steps back before getting hooked on the tech bros' kool-aid. It's a serious error to assume that whatever technology is currently i...
PM @ Mick,
"People who took their pension before 2016 have to survive on £12500 a year or £250 per week."
To be correct you should be saying "so...
expats 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...
Judi Conner Well said Gillian.
Lib Dems should be shouting from the rooftops about upholding international law (and humanity) in Israel-Palestine but are shamefully prone ...
Anthony Harris Sadly, the same comments were made when motorised cabs appeared on the streets. Initially people refused to use them but the unstoppable tide of progress eventu...
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