Andrew Reeves

John Lamont MSP sticks two fingers up the Kelly Report and outspends 128 MSPs

By Andrew Reeves | Mon 23rd November 2009 - 11:20 am

Holyrood has released the figures for last year’s MSP expenses and there is one name that stands out from the crowd. That’s Conservative MSPJohn Lamont, who has spent nearly £30,000 in the last twelve months on postage and office costs.

These figures were released on the same day that David Cameron was touring the TV studios telling everyone how the Conservative Party were fully behind implementing all recommendations of the Kelly Report on MPs’ expenses.

One of the specific things he mentioned was that MPs shouldn’t be members of two Parliaments, which smacks of breathtaking hypocrisy given that John Lamont, MSP for …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 1 Comment
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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem HQ: read what Nick said, not what the press reported!

By Stephen Tall | Mon 23rd November 2009 - 10:25 am

An email pings into LDV’s email inbox from the Lib Dems’ director of election communications, Jonny Oates, stating categorically that Nick Clegg did not express a preference for dealing with the Tories over Labour.

Now it has been known, just occasionally, for Nick to speak a little faster than he thinks. But, as I posted here, yesterday Nick really was crystal clear about how he would approach the vexed question of a ‘hung Parliament’ – and still the media managed to distort his remarks! In rebutting today’s inaccurate press reports, all Jonny had had to do is reproduce the …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 69 Comments
Stephen Tall

Clegg asserts Lib Dems’ ‘hung parliament’ equidistance. (The headline you won’t read in today’s papers).

By Stephen Tall | Mon 23rd November 2009 - 10:10 am

It’s a long time since LDV has carried a ‘Media Moron Watch’ feature … but if we were still running it, the spoils today would be shared by pretty much every newspaper. Here are the headlines from the so-called quality press today:

From which headlines a disinterested reader would conclude the following: Nick Clegg has categorically ruled out doing a deal …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 30 Comments
Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 23 November 2009

By Stephen Tall | Mon 23rd November 2009 - 7:45 am

It’s the 23rd November – which means great celebrations in (parts of) the Lib Dem blogosphere at the 46th anniversary since the first broadcast of Doctor Who. And it’s happy birthday, too, to Zoë Ball and Kirsty Young.

2 Must-Read Blog-Posts

Why we should not be afraid of a hung parliament (Mark Thompson)

A hung parliament is the sort of scenario that the Lib Dems been waiting for for years. It would finally give us a chance to wield some real power and exert our influence on policy and politics in a way that had been denied to us previously.


Cagoules, Coat Hangers and Cake – A taster of the Bloggers’ Unconference (Caron Lindsay)

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #144

By Stephen Tall | Sun 22nd November 2009 - 8:15 pm

Welcome to the 143rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (8th – 14th November 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, partly 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:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
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Paul Walter

Moving from Blogger to WordPress – ten lessons learnt the hard way (aka “The Long March”)

By Paul Walter | Sun 22nd November 2009 - 5:50 pm

The Voice recently highlighted how popular Blogger is with new Liberal Democrat bloggers. But if you’ve started with Blogger and want to move over WordPress what do you do? Paul Walter recounts the lessons he learnt along the way:

NERD’S CORNER, with apologies to any grandmothers for ovum-evacuation lessons herein

On 28th September I decided, in a fit of conscience, to clear out all the posts from my Blog archive with other people’s photos in them. I did it the wrong way and, in a tantrum, deleted all my old blog posts and started a fresh blog on …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , and | 17 Comments
Mark Pack

Former Islington Conservative candidate backs Bridget Fox

By Mark Pack | Sun 22nd November 2009 - 3:10 pm

This just in from Islington Liberal Democrats:

John Szemerey, former Conservative parliamentary candidate for Islington South & Finsbury, has thrown his support behind local Lib Dem campaigner Bridget Fox.

“Bridget Fox and the Lib Dems offer the real change that Islington and Britain desperately needs” said John.

“It’s clear that at the next General Election, the Conservatives just can’t win here in Islington South & Finsbury. If people are fed up with Gordon Brown and his failed Labour Government, they should support Bridget Fox’s Lib Dems. The fact of the matter is that voting Conservative in Islington South & Finsbury will actually help

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Iain Roberts

Tory lead falls to 6% in Ipsos MORI poll

By Iain Roberts | Sun 22nd November 2009 - 8:11 am

The latest Ipsos MORI poll for the Observer has Labour support jumping by 5% at the expense of the Conservatives and narrowing the gap between the two biggest parties to just 6%.

The poll has the Conservatives on 37%, Labour on 31% and the Lib Dems on 17%. That’s well into hung parliament territory and really quite surprising just six months out from a General Election.

As the graph on page three of this “getting opinion polls right” pdf shows, the Labour lead over John Major’s government from August 1996 to Februrary 1997 was consistently between 12 and 25% across …

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Posted in Polls | Tagged , and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

A look back at the polls: October ’09

By Stephen Tall | Sun 22nd November 2009 - 8:05 am

We tend not to be too poll-obsessed here at LDV – of course we look at them, as do all other politico-geeks, but viewed in isolation no one poll will tell you very much beyond what you want to read into it. Looked at over a reasonable time-span and, if there are enough polls, you can see some trends.

Here, in chronological order, are the results of the 19 polls published in October – the number is extra high again this month because of the daily YouGov tracker polls which ran during party conference season. (And many apologies for the delayed appearance of the round-up; it was my LDV colleague Iain’s post today which reminded me this needed publishing).

Tories 41.0, Labour 29.0, Lib Dems 17.0 (2 Oct, YouGov)
Tories 40.0, Labour 27.0, Lib Dems 20.0 (5 Oct, YouGov)

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Posted in Polls | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Daily View 2×2: 22 November 2009

By Mark Pack | Sun 22nd November 2009 - 7:00 am

It’s Sunday. It’s 7am and we’ve got some coffee art to wake you up this morning. But first, the blogs and then the news.

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:

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.

2 Big Stories

Sri Lanka vows to free 130,000 Tamil refugees

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
NewsHound

Vince talks to Iain Dale

By NewsHound | Sat 21st November 2009 - 8:16 pm

The Lib Dems’ deputy leader Vince Cable is the cover star of the December issue of Total Politics, trailing a feature interview with the Tory blogger we all love to name-check, Iain Dale. Here’s a taster:

Do you see the Liberal Democrats as a centre-left party?

No, I don’t use that description. I know some of my colleagues have in the past. There are some areas where we are, to use the jargon, centre-left progressive. A redistributive approach to taxation is obviously one of them, but there are other respects in which we are genuinely liberal, which puts us on the other

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

The LDV Saturday caption competition – Nick Clegg’s microscope

By Stephen Tall | Sat 21st November 2009 - 12:30 pm

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader …

nick clegg microscope

Here’s Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg campaigning in Winchester – what do you think he might be saying/thinking?

The winner of the most recent caption competition, Nick Clegg’s desk-job (according to The Voice’s judging panel of one) – Andy Mayer.

Posted in Caption Comp | Tagged | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Live TV coverage of Parliament started 20 years ago today

By Mark Pack | Sat 21st November 2009 - 10:20 am

Somewhat unexpectedly, one of the most immediate changes brought about by televising the House of Commons was to male MPs’ hairstyles.

Until then, it had been the habit amongst some of the, er…, thinning on top MPs to brush their hair forward so that when you looked at them face to face it appeared that they had a bountiful mop of hair above their forehead. Unfortunately, if you looked down on their head from a slightly elevated position, this impressive wave of hair instead looked like a toupe that had slipped forward leaving a bald patch further back.

And where were the …

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Posted in Parliament | Tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Electoral fact of the day: turnout and postal voting

By Mark Pack | Sat 21st November 2009 - 9:20 am

In June’s European elections, turnout amongst postal voters was 64% in Great Britain. Turnout amongst non-postal voters was 30% – a full 34 percentage points lower. There’s a lesson in there about campaigning…

The figures for the different regions were:

South East 68% (+34%)
South West 68% (+33%)
East Midlands 67% (+34%)
Eastern 67% (+33%)
West Midlands 66% (+35%)
Scotland 63% (+39%)
Yorkshire & The Humber 63% (+37%)
North West 63% (+37%)
Wales 62% (+36%)
London 61% (+31%)
North East 59% (+38%)

The Isles of Scilly were the only area where turnout amongst postal voters was lower than that amongst non-postal voters (by two percentage points).

Source: Calculated from Electoral Commission data

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Mark Pack

How to build-up the size of your blog’s readership

By Mark Pack | Sat 21st November 2009 - 8:50 am

Young woman, blogging by windowWelcome to part seven of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of The Voice’s Mark Pack to talk about building up your audience.

There are many reasons for blogging and, depending on your own …

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Posted in Blogging guide | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

LDVideo … Balls, Murdoch & Jon Culshaw’s Brown rap

By Stephen Tall | Sat 21st November 2009 - 8:30 am

Welcome to the latest LDVideo instalment, featuring three of the most memorable video clips doing the rounds on the blogosphere.

First up is Ed Balls – the guy might have a debating style reminiscent of a school bully demanding tuck money, but here he completely out-smarts tongue-tied Tory education spokesman Michael Gove:


(Hat-tip: Sam Coates).

The second clip shows Rupert Murdoch furiously denying suggestions that he alleged President Obama made a racist remark, followed by Rupert Murdoch alleging that President Obama made a racist remark:

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Posted in YouTube | Tagged , , , and | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

Goodnight from Irfan

By Alex Foster | Fri 20th November 2009 - 10:01 pm

Jonathan Calder last night broke the news (well to me, anyway) that Irfan Ahmed has had to pull his blog permanently following further outrageous comments.

The final para of the Pendle local newspaper story is apposite:

The comments are not the opinion of the LibDems and neither has anything on my blog ever had anything to do with the view of the LibDems in Pendle or across the UK.

Well, quite.

Posted in News | 4 Comments
The Voice

Tory councillor suspended over “foreign names” slur

By The Voice | Fri 20th November 2009 - 9:01 pm

Orpington Conservative Councillor Peter Hobbins has been suspended resigned from the party after criticising candidates with foreign names – and Central Office for picking them.

As News Shopper reports, Councillor Hobbins wrote:

“Not one of them has a ‘normal’ English name.

“They want to be the PPCs for Orpington and asked me for my personal advice on how they would be the best candidates for the Orpington Constituency. My view? For hells sake.

“Why are the Candidates Department so keen on these foreign names?!!!!

“The candidates department are simply rushing these names through.

“They have absolutely no idea about how Associations are organised

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

The LDV Friday Five (ish): 20/11/09

By Stephen Tall | Fri 20th November 2009 - 6:25 pm

What could be simpler: five categories, each with five links. And it’s Friday.

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

1. NEW POLL: Who do you least want to be Prime Minister in a year’s time: Gordo or Dave? (43) by Stephen Tall
2. How do the messages on the main political party websites compare? (10) by Mark Pack
3. A Labour gain, but no revival (25) by Iain Roberts
4. Lib Dem Voice publishes exclusive general election prediction (43) by Mark Pack
5. Nick’s Sheffield Hallam opponent quits as Tory candidate after just 10 days (15) by The Voice

5 recent Lib Dem tweets

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Mark Pack

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Mark Pack | Fri 20th November 2009 - 2:10 pm

Ten blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

All but one are using Blogger, the exception being Prue with the ALDC MyCouncillor system. If you’re thinking of starting up a blog yourself, both have much to recommend them but there are a range of other strong contenders too as Mat

…

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 3 Comments
Thomas Hemsley

My first Liberal Youth Conference

By Thomas Hemsley | Fri 20th November 2009 - 11:51 am

When I first learned of the location of the 2009 Liberal Youth Autumn Conference, I immediately paid my £15 to register. I had only been to one party conference before – the 2007 South West regional, which included the leadership hustings – so I was unsure of what to expect.

I only knew one person who was going, and I was tired and annoyed at the rain, not to mention the parlous state of the trains that evening. But when I arrived in Portsmouth, there were helpful signs pointing to Conference. This was an excellent omen of what was to …

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Posted in Conference | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

+++ OFFICIAL: Lib Dems cleared by Electoral Commission over Michael Brown’s £2.4m donation

By Stephen Tall | Fri 20th November 2009 - 11:11 am

Here’s the full statement just released by the Electoral Commission:

Donations by 5th Avenue Partners Limited to the Liberal Democrats: statement

20 Nov 2009

The Electoral Commission, the independent elections and party finance watchdog, today announced the outcome of its investigation into donations made by the company 5th Avenue Partners Ltd to the Liberal Democrats. Donations totalling over £2.4m were made in 2005.

The investigation considered whether there had been breaches of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA). In particular, it looked at whether the company, reported as the donor, was a permissible donor. It also considered whether the company

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 34 Comments
Mark Pack

Are local council boundaries set to change?

By Mark Pack | Fri 20th November 2009 - 11:10 am

That’s what the Electoral Commission is suggesting in its ‘farewell’ press release to mark the handing over of responsibilities for local government boundaries to a new body:

Max Caller, Chair of the Boundary Committee and Electoral Commissioner, said: “The new Local Government Boundary Commission for England’s job will be to keep the map of local government in England in good repair. Having fair local electoral arrangements is important to ensure that every voter, wherever they live in a council area, has a vote of similar weight in electing their representatives.

“We estimate that, by 2014, a quarter of all English local

…

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Will the Conservatives deal with racism in the Orpington PPC selection?

By Mark Pack | Fri 20th November 2009 - 9:15 am

Leaked emails published by Duncan Borrowman reveal a dismal state of affairs in the Orpington Conservative party, with Councillor Peter Hobbins writing comments such as, “Why are the Candidates Department so keen on these foreign names?!!!” and criticising members of the Conservative Party’s list of approved candidates for not having “a ‘normal’ English name”.

Duncan’s post says,

Racism is alive and kicking in Orpington Conservatives, as revealed in a couple of emails sent on the Bromley Council email system to their local councillors and constituency chairman in the early hours of this morning, and leaked to me today.

You can read the full …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Helen Duffett

Daily View 2×2: 20 November 2009

By Helen Duffett | Fri 20th November 2009 - 7:00 am

Welcome, Daily Viewers, to November 20th; it’s 17 years since fire broke out at Windsor Castle, causing tens of millions of pounds worth of damage. It’s also 24 years since Microsoft released Windows 1.0.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

  • The Isms of Cruddas Giles Wilkes at Freethinking Economist on why it’s not enough to think about thinkers.
  • The forgotten work and the financial penalties for women as primary carers – by Jane Watkinson at My Liberal Democrat Political Ramblings.

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.

2 Big Stories


Harriet Harman to be prosecuted for alleged driving offences

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , , and | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Meral Ece appointed to Equality and Human Rights Commission

By Mark Pack | Thu 19th November 2009 - 10:19 pm

Congratulations to Cllr Meral Ece (Islington) on her appointment as a commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Operation Black Vote reports:

A race advisor to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, Ece has her hands full having been handed special responsibility for race, gender and religion on the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

Speaking to OBV Blog, Ece said: “I’m really happy to be appointed. It’s a great opportunity and challenge. It’s important to put party politics aside and work to have a strong, healthy organisation.

“We need a strong regulatory body, to work towards a society that is

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Chris White

Queen’s speech not much fun for local government either

By Chris White | Thu 19th November 2009 - 5:32 pm

The Government has long had a knack of turning a good idea into an operational nightmare. One case in point is the Queen’s Speech proposal for personal care at home. The Prime Minister has given an undertaking to find a way of ensuring that older people with the highest needs can remain at home, regardless of means.

The bill will attempt to help 400,000 people (‘guaranteeing’ free personal care for 280,000 and providing assistance to 130,000 others). Difficult to argue with? In the small print not covered by the nationals screaming about the General Election is the fact that this will …

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Posted in Local government and Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 1 Comment

2,133 days of active service but no fuel allowance

By Michael Andrewes | Thu 19th November 2009 - 4:15 pm

“It’s bureaucracy gone mad!” is a familiar cry from Lib Dem MPs, councillors and activists across the country. But I think in Portsmouth we probably have something that takes the biscuit in that regard.

Here, Mike Hancock has been taken up the case of a 94 year-old Second World War veteran, Mr Bob McGowan who was denied his winter fuel payment by moving one day too late. He is now threatening to hand back his war medals in disgust at the way that he has been treated unless, at the very least, he gets an apology and a donation to Help …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Lib Dem Voice publishes exclusive general election prediction

By Mark Pack | Thu 19th November 2009 - 2:50 pm

Election forecasting, that is the using data such as party standings, leader ratings and economic indicators to predict the result of the next general election, is still in its infancy. The combination of general elections only every four years or so with the relatively recent innovation of regular detailed polling figures means that there has often been a shortage of data and election results with which to create and test models.

However, as each general election passes the volume of data accumulates and predictive models get more sophisticated. Of course, this begs the question about how well you can predict an …

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Posted in General Election and News | 57 Comments
Mark Pack

New figures reveal which candidates do the most campaigning

By Mark Pack | Thu 19th November 2009 - 11:50 am

Figures revealing which party’s candidates were most likely to do leafleting, canvassing, internet campaigning and a set of other activities have just been published by the Electoral Commission.

The Commission carried out a survey of local election candidates from the June 2009 campaign and found:

  • Conservative candidates were most likely to have produced a campaign leaflet (98% versus 70% for Lib Dems and 60% for Labour)
  • Labour and Conservative candidates were equally likely to have had telephone canvassing in their campaign (27% each, with 21% for the Lib Dems)
  • On average, Conservative candidates spent 21 hours a week campaigning during the campaign (excluding

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 16 Comments
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