Mark Pack

Electoral Commission heavily criticise report into plans for 2012 London elections

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd October 2009 - 8:55 am

The Electoral Commission has published a report laying out a series of detailed and powerful criticisms of the cost-benefit analysis carried out for the Greater London Returning Officer into the use of e-counting for the 2012 London Mayor and Assembly elections.

However, the Greater London Returning Officer (GLRO) appears determined to go ahead with electronic counting, having told a meeting he had made this decision before even hearing the Electoral Commission’s views and despite even the flawed cost-benefit analysis showing that e-counting is more expensive than manual counting.

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Posted in Election law and London | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
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Mark Pack

Ed Davey condems Tory alliance with “extreme right wingers and homophobes”

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd October 2009 - 8:40 am

A follow-up to Wednesday’s post about the Conservative MEPs’ alliance with Valdemar Tomaševski, a homophobic Lithuanian MEP, with Ed Davey now commenting:

This is yet more evidence of the shameful way that Cameron has taken the Tories out of the centre-right mainstream of European politics, and allied them with a lunatic fringe of extreme right wingers and homophobes.

Cameron has been at pains to portray his party as one of modern, ‘liberal Conservatives’. It is hard to see where this fits in with an alliance with parties which support homophobic laws such as this.

Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Helen Duffett

Daily View 2×2: 2 October 2009

By Helen Duffett | Fri 2nd October 2009 - 8:00 am

Two big news stories

BAE faces criminal charges over deals
The FT reports on a high-stakes court battle between BAE Systems and the Serious Fraud Office after corruption investigators decided to press for criminal charges against the arms manufacturer over its dealings in Eastern Europe, South Africa and Tanzania.

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , and | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

BBC Question Time – LDV open thread, 1 October2009 #bbcqt

By Alex Foster | Thu 1st October 2009 - 10:22 pm

It’s Thursday, it’s 10.35 pm … it’s BBC1’s Question Time.

For the Liberal Democrats, perennial favourite former party leader Charles Kennedy will be responding to public questions Joining Charlie will be Ben Bradshaw, Theresa May, Dr David Starkey and Dambisa Moyo

If you’re tuning in, you can join the simultanous online Twitter debate here at #bbcqt, or the LDV debate in the thread below. Meanwhile Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson will be liveblogging events via CoverItLive at his own blog.

Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged and | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Forthcoming PPC selections

By Mark Pack | Thu 1st October 2009 - 10:20 pm

Courtesy of the LibDems4Parliament website, here is the list of PPC selections closing this month:

Christchurch – PPC  (02 Oct 2009)
Reading West – PPC  (02 Oct 2009)
Leeds Central – PPC  (02 Oct 2009)
Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber PSPC  (08 Oct 2009)
Gosport – PPC  (09 Oct 2009)
Wirral South – PPC  (13 Oct 2009)
Devizes – PPC  (16 Oct 2009)
Edmonton – PPC  Enfield North – PPC  Enfield Southgate – PPC  (16 Oct 2009)

For further details on how you could become the Liberal Democrat prospective candidate in any of these constituencies see http://libdems4parliament.org.uk/events.

Posted in Selection news | 5 Comments
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Stephen Tall

Because homphobia is gay when it’s against Tories, too

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 9:00 pm

The Lib Dem blogosphere has a bit of a love-hate relationship with arch Tory blogger Iain Dale.

Some regard him as little more than a self-promoting tribal propagandist who plays a clever game of appearing impartial when it suits him. Others believe him to be a nice fella for a Tory, who spreads round a lot of blogging link-love, and maintains a prolific, usually entertaining blog, which through hard work and determination has brought him mainstream celebrity. My view? As a Lib Dem I think there’s a bit of truth in both verdicts (though, truthfully, I incline more towards the latter).

But …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 26 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lamb slaughters Burnham’s “vague unfunded” hospital parking wish

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 8:35 pm

In a pledge so carefully worded it already anticipates its own failure excuses, Labour’s health secretary Andy Burnham yesterday pledged to abolish hospital parking fees:

It’s not right if some people don’t get visitors every day because families can’t afford the parking fees. … We can’t do it overnight, but over the next three years, as we can afford it, I want to phase out car parking charges for in-patients, giving each a permit for the length of their stay which family and friends can use”

Using the phrases “over the next three years” and “as we can afford it” in …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

YouTube ‘cos we want to: Gordon, Dawkins and Fordham

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 8:10 pm

Welcome to the latest edition of our occasional LDV feature, YouTube ‘cos we want to, featuring some of the most memorable political moments from the past week (or so).

First up, in tribute to the triumph of this week’s Labour party conference in Brighton, let’s enjoy in all its 11 seconds of glory, Gordon’s huff with Sky’s Adam Boulton after a particularly feisty interview:

Hat-tip: Paul Waugh. You can enjoy the full interview here.

Second’s up … for many the highlight of Lib Dem conference was meeting Richard Dawkins, while for others it was hearing his declaration that, though not a member, he has voted for the party in every election since it was founded. So here for your delectation is his 5-minute speech to the conference hall:

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Posted in YouTube | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 1 October

By Alex Foster | Thu 1st October 2009 - 2:20 pm

Welcome to a belated Daily View on this fine first day of the month. 1st October marks the 166th anniversary of the News of the World; the anniversary of the death of Ned Sherrin; and we say happy birthday to comedian Harry Hill.

Two big news stories



Earthquake hits stricken Sumatra (Guardian)

A second powerful earthquake has hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a day after the first devastating quake left more than 500 dead, thousands of people buried in rubble and a major city cut off from the outside world.

Today’s quake, of magnitude 6.9, struck in the early hours about 180

…

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Posted in Daily View | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (Sept. ‘09)

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 12:55 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 27,708 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in September.

This takes us back closer to our pre-summer trend readership of c.30,000 – and is up some 43% on the equivalent figure for September ’08 of 19,435.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Oct 2008 – 30 Sept 2009) to 306,418, almost double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 158,046.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

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Posted in Site news | Tagged | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Some 0.5m Lib Dems read the now-Tory-again Sun

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 12:35 pm

Apologies, readers, I appear to be on a bit of poll roll over the last 24 hours, what with this, this and now this … Yesterday’s ‘big news’ – or, more accurately, the story which garnered most column inches – was the announcement that The Sun has jilted Labour, and is shacking up once again with the Tory party.

There was no real surprise there: The Sun backs winners, and follows (and doubtless re-inforces) its readers’ opinions. Ipsos-Mori was quick off-the-mark to press release its figures showing the voting intentions of Sun readers in 2009 compared with 2005, general election year. These show a collapse in Labour support with hefty swings towards both the Tories and Others:

2005 – Tory 33%, Labour 45%, Lib Dem 12%, Others 10%
2009 – Tory 42%, Labour 29%, Lib Dem 12%, Others 17%

Interestingly the Lib Dem figure is unchanged between 2005 and 2009, at 12%.

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

73% say Marr wrong to ask PM about prescription pills

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 12:15 pm

An interesting little stat from YouGov’s latest tracker poll (with a hat-tip to Anthony Wells’ UK Polling Report blog). The internet polling company asked the question: Gordon Brown was asked on TV to respond to media rumours that he had been prescribed pills to help him cope with the stress of his job. Do you think it was right or wrong to ask him about this?

And here’s how those polled replied:

>> 22% – Right: the public have a right to know full medical details
>> 73% – Wrong: everyone, including the Prime Minister, has a right to privacy on medical matters that do not materially affect their work
>> 5% – Don’t know

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Posted in Polls | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

David Cameron’s European ally supports “deeply homophobic legislation”

By Mark Pack | Wed 30th September 2009 - 10:59 pm

Liberal Conspiracy has the story:

Despite the persistent criticism that it has allied itself with extremists, David Cameron’s Conservative Party now sits in the European Parliament with the European Reformists and Conservatives group (ECR), led by Poland’s Michal Kaminski – a man allegedly with a racist and homophobic past.

But so far it has gone unreported that another ally of the Conservatives in Europe has a much more serious and recent record of homophobia.

Valdemar Tomaševski, MEP from Lithuania, and member of the Tories’ Euro coalition, is on record as having branded homosexuality a “perversion”.

Not only that, I can now reveal for the

…

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

Two more Lib Dems quit PoliticsHome panel

By Stephen Tall | Wed 30th September 2009 - 9:30 pm

I blogged at the weekend about the resignations of three Lib Dem MPs – Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Lynne Featherstone – from the PoliticsHome ‘insiders’ panel’, the PH100, in protest at the acquisition by Tory deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft of a majority stake in the site.

Today I’ve hear from an impecable source that another Lib Dem MP – not previously publicly listed as a member of the PH100 – has also quit: Chris Huhne. The only other Lib Dem MP publicly listed as a PH100 member is David Laws, and I’ve not yet heard if he’s resigned.

The second Lib Dem to resign from the panel is, erm, me.

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

A look back at the polls: September ’09

By Stephen Tall | Wed 30th September 2009 - 7:10 pm

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 18 polls published in September – the number is extra high this month because of the recently instituted daily YouGov tracker poll. (Note to self: we need to find a way of averaging the trackers, otherwise they will dominate and distort LDV’s (very unscientific) monthly poll average).

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Posted in Polls | Tagged | 4 Comments
David Pollard

Opinion: We’ve got the polices, now we need the sound-bite narrative

By David Pollard | Wed 30th September 2009 - 1:15 pm

Nick Clegg has picked his time to talk about power. In his party conference speech he described why he wanted to be Prime Minister. This is a major step forward in his development as leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Now he has to say what he wants to achieve and what he will do in power. He must develop a narrative that we all as Liberal Democrats can use. The party has excellent policies on a range of issues and these have to be brought together into a collection of coherent sound-bites.

After the excitement of a couple of opinion polls showing us neck-and-neck with Labour following our conference, we are in for the long haul again with very limited exposure in the media.

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Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments
Stephen Tall

Does it matter if The Sun backs the Tories?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 30th September 2009 - 9:35 am

suncover.jpg The Sun is shining on the Tories this morning, with the announcement by Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid that it will back the party at the next general election for the first time since 1992. Indeed, so proud was the rag paper of its announcement that they took the trouble to email Lib Dem Voice (twice) to let us know all about it – you see how much we matter to them!

The Sun’s endorsement of the Tories in not full-throated.

Most of its leader article is devoted to setting …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 20 Comments
The Voice

Daily View 2×2: 30 September 2009

By The Voice | Wed 30th September 2009 - 9:05 am

Two big stories

Gordon’s speech to conference

It almost passed unnoticed in the blogosphere, but it seems Gordon Brown made some sort of speech yesterday.

As the Daily Express put it:

Brushing off reports he is a “dead man walking,” a deluded Brown gushed: “It’s our Britain that works best.”

Though Labour activists might prefer The Guardian’s take:

In a determined 59-minute speech to the party’s autumn conference in Brighton, the prime minister said the Conservatives had faced the “economic call of the century” and had called it wrong.

Polanski arrested

Roman Polanski had sex with a 13 year old girl 32 years ago, so is …

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

The problem with Gordon’s speech was that it was so Gordon #lab09

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th September 2009 - 9:00 pm

Living in London and (attempting) to use the Tube most days, it’s deeply ironic the legacy of Gordon Brown’s political career which I am reminded of most often – his insistence on forcing through the botched part-privatisation of the Tube – is something quite at odds with his overall record.

For his overall record is not of dogged determination to bring in as quickly as possible a radical policy come what may, but instead it is one of ducking the big tough choices and looking to attempt to play clever with the details instead. Not so much a case of fiddling …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Gordon’s speech – Danny Alexander responds (and so do I) #lab09

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th September 2009 - 6:50 pm

Gordon Brown delivered his speech to the Labour Party’s conference in Brighton today – you can read it in full here, or watch it here.

For the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg’s chief-of-staff Danny Alexander has issued the following response:

Gordon Brown’s speech showed just how tired and bereft of new thinking the Labour Party is. His new announcements were a hotchpotch of the ineffective and the ill-thought through, rehashed press releases, copied ideas and humiliating U-turns.

“The fact is Gordon Brown has presided over a huge and widening gap between the richest and the poorest, he has failed a generation

…

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

12 years to re-state a watered-down pledge. So much for progress. #lab09

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th September 2009 - 6:25 pm

The Labour Party manifesto 1997:

We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system.

Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour Party conference 2009:

There is now a stronger case than ever that MPs should be elected with the support of more than half their voters – as they would be under the Alternative Voting system. And so I can announce today that in Labour’s next manifesto there will be a commitment for a referendum to be held early

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #136

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th September 2009 - 6:00 pm

Welcome to the 136th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (20-26th September 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 | 4 Comments
Alex Foster

Brown’s ID card loopholes #lab09

By Alex Foster | Tue 29th September 2009 - 4:37 pm

I’ll confess I am not actually listening to the Prime Minister’s speech to Labour conference, as I have far more important things to do, including biting my nails and feeding the cats.

However, a quick refresh of Twitter shows that quite a lot of my friends are. And some of them have even been a little taken in by Brown’s ID card commitment.

If Twitter is right – and I can’t be bothered to check – he said, “there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens in the next parliament”

My goodness, but you can drive a double decker bus through …

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Posted in News | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th September 2009 - 2:20 pm

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

Good luck to all three, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Posted in Online politics | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Iain Roberts

Bournemouth was a hit, no shambolic disaster

By Iain Roberts | Tue 29th September 2009 - 11:04 am

“What’s the name of your leader?” a constituent asked me the day after the Lib Dem conference closed. Luckily, it was a question I could answer with some confidence.  “Nick Clegg”.  “Oh yes, that’s right.  Saw him on the news last night.  Good speech.”

That seemed  a perfectly reasonable, and probably typical, comment from someone with no particular interest in politics who’ll still most likely be casting their vote in the General Election; not to mention the sort of person every political party is looking to engage with.

So how does that fit with William Le Breton’s claim that Bournemouth was …

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

To be fair …

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th September 2009 - 9:40 am

I made clear my view on Sunday that the BBC’s Andrew Marr was bang out-of-order to ask Gordon Brown whether he uses prescription drugs seemingly on the basis of nothing more than Internet rumour:

… in making it an issue on the basis of no evidence, Andrew Marr and the BBC have done a real disservice to serious political reporting.

I stand by my assessment. However, I also pointed out that, at the time of writing, no-one from the right-wing blogosphere had taken Mr Marr to task. It’s only fair, therefore, to note that Tory MP Nadine Dorries yesterday broke ranks with the fellow members of her tribe to post a stinging denunciation:

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 6 Comments
Richard Huzzey

Daily View 2×2: 29 September 2009

By Richard Huzzey | Tue 29th September 2009 - 4:08 am

Two big stories

Flood crisis worstens in Philippines

From the BBC:

The Philippines government says 240 people are now known to have died in severe flooding caused by Tropical Storm Ketsana.

The country has appealed for foreign aid to deal with the disaster, which has displaced more than 450,000 people.

A rare moment of hope for Gordon Brown

For the first time in… a very long time, Gordon Brown may be relieved by some polling news from Sky and YouGov:

Support for Labour has climbed five points since the start of the party conference, according to a brand new Sky/YouGov poll.

The survey – the first

…

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Posted in Daily View | 3 Comments
Richard Huzzey

Rumours suggest Brown will accept debates, but seek to exclude Clegg

By Richard Huzzey | Mon 28th September 2009 - 10:23 pm

The BBC reports that Gordon Brown will accept the proposals, forcibly proposed by Sky’s Adam Boulton, for a leaders’ debate… but with only partial involvement for Nick Clegg:

Months ago, Conservative leader Mr Cameron called for a TV election debate to be held involving Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg as well.

Sources suggest Mr Brown would rather go “head to head” with the Tory leader and is prepared to take part in a series of debates – some involving Mr Clegg and others not – in order to allow this to happen.

This seems to be yet another gaffe by Brown. …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 17 Comments
Mark Pack

Tax on £1m houses: 69% in favour

By Mark Pack | Mon 28th September 2009 - 8:56 pm

We don’t usually do individual polls on The Voice, relying instead on Stephen’s monthly round-ups. But we do make exceptions when there’s something particularly striking or interesting about them and one of the recent YouGov questions falls into this category.

With the usual caveats about it a poll that is carried out in the middle of one party’s conference and that policy proposals can look different once they’ve been subject to constructive debate frequent attack from other parties, here it is:

The Liberal Democrats have proposed a new tax on the most expensive houses. Householders would pay an annual tax of …

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Posted in Polls | Tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV readers split on Nick’s talk of need for “savage” cuts

By Stephen Tall | Mon 28th September 2009 - 7:25 pm

A week ago, Lib Dem Voice asked our readers the question on everyone’s lips at conference: Do you think Nick Clegg was right to say that the Lib Dems need to be “quite bold, or even savage, on current spending”?

I was clear on my view:

I cannot see how the talk of “savage” cuts is helpful – quite simply, it’s not the language of Lib Dems. Just as importantly, it’s not backed up by policy proposals. Even Vince Cable has so far come up with some £14 billion of potential savings, while estimating that a total of £112 billion will

…

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Posted in Conference and Voice polls | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
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