Mark Pack

How is public opinion playing out over MPs’ expenses?

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd September 2009 - 2:20 pm

At the weekend, I saw a presentation of the June polling findings from the British Election Study. The BES is a collaborative academic exercise run before and at each general election. It is designed to gather some of the key raw material about the public’s opinions which will then be available to anyone who subsequently pours over the election, trying to explain why it turned out as it did.

The June results including some striking figures on the public’s reaction to the MPs’ expenses scandal:

  • Have you heard reports and MPs’ expenses? Yes: 95%
  • Do you think the scandal proves most MPs are

…

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Posted in Polls | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
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Stephen Glenn

Haggis, Neeps and Liberalism #7: The Megrahi Documents

By Stephen Glenn | Wed 2nd September 2009 - 12:45 pm

The Megrahi case has ripped apart the peace of the Scottish Parliamentary recess, with even some former Lib Dem leaders taking a differing view to our leader in Holyrood. Today the UK Government and Scottish Parliament have released papers relating to the discussions that have gone one over the last two years. It ranges from correspondence between Westminster and Holyrood, to memos of meetings with Libyan officials, to the compassionate release request listing medical conditions.

These start chronologically with the first letter from then-Lord Chnacellor Lord (Charles) Falconer to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond outlining the Memorandum of Understanding that Westminster had set up with Libya regarding a number of judicial issues. The Memorandum was drawn up to look at increasing bilateral co-operation covering, amongst other things, commercial and criminal issues. The legal issues were not exclusively about Mr Al Megrahi, but looking at the bigger picture of co-operation between the two nations at large. However, Lord Falconer did say that nothing could be ruled in or out, but that co-operation and consultation between Westminster and Holyrood would be carried forward.

However, it the path of the UK’s justice secretary Jack Straw’s correspondence that sheds a lot of light on the situation, especially considering the Labour response in Holyrood.

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Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds and Scotland | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Forthcoming PPC selections

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd September 2009 - 11:20 am

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

Surrey Heath (03 Sep 2009)
Derbyshire Dales, Kettering, Loughborough, Gedling, Mansfield, South Leicestershire (04 Sep 2009)
Hertsmere (05 Sep 2009)
Rushcliffe (21 Sep 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

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Mark Pack

TV leaders debate set to happen: if Sky keeps its nerve

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd September 2009 - 9:19 am

I’ve always wondered why the media don’t call the bluff of party leaders when it comes to holding leaders debate at general election time.

Many in the media regularly and sincerely go on the record about believing such debates would be good for democracy, but in the past they’ve always held back from the idea that a debate could go ahead without all the relevant party leaders first agreeing.

That’s a view that has puzzled me because – particularly since the law was changed a few years ago – there are pretty strong legal grounds for being able to hold a debate, …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 30 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 2 September 2009

By Alex Foster | Wed 2nd September 2009 - 8:00 am

Well, that’s it. August is over, nights are drawing in, it’s downhill to Christmas, and LDV’s daily 2×2 slot that’s more-or-less been on hold over the summer returns to its more-or-less 8am schedule to bring you two top news stories and two must-read blog posts from the world of Lib Demmery.

With just 120 days till the end of the year, 2nd September is the day the Great Fire of London broke out in 1666, the day Thomas Telford died in 1834, and Salma Hayek’s birthday. Happy birthday, Miss Hayek!

Two top stories

PM’s role in release of Megrahi

Gordon Brown

…

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and | 1 Comment
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Mark Pack

Portsmouth Council rejoices at discovery staff only spending 11 seconds a day on Facebook

By Mark Pack | Tue 1st September 2009 - 10:23 pm

There has been widespread praise for Portsmouth Council after it was discovered that on average its staff only spend 11 seconds a day using Facebook. Despite the huge growth in the number of people using Facebook and the growing number of hours spent on the site by its users, Portsmouth Council staff are barely using the site. It may even be that much of this time is spent outside of work hours.

Facebook is going to be banned at Portsmouth Council after new figures outrageously revealed that its 4,500 staff waste an average of 413 hours a month in total on …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 18 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (August ’09)

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st September 2009 - 9:30 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 19,655 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in August.

This is our lowest readership figure of the year to date, down a notch on last month’s 22,000 – not surprising in a holiday month and when genuinely exciting political news is scarce. For the record, August’s 20k is still more than 50% up compared with the same month last year (13k).

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Sept 2008 – 31 Aug 2009) to 299,315, more than double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 147,363.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

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Stephen Tall

A look back at the polls: August ’09

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st September 2009 - 7:30 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 six polls published in August:

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Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Tagged | 5 Comments

If used properly and proportionately, CCTV can be a vital deterrent to criminals

By Chris Ward | Tue 1st September 2009 - 6:28 pm

I did intend to write a less controversial article after my previous contribution attracted far more attention and comments than I expected it to. Knowing that what I’m writing about now falls onto a similar strand of sensitivity, I expect I’ll fail miserably.

When I arrived at Surrey in 2002 to study, we were told it was the safest county in the country. Indeed, this was one of the attractions of studying there, as well as the very beautiful and leafy campus in one of the most unspoilt but bustling southern towns in the country. However, …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 14 Comments
Alex Foster

Previous blogs of the year

By Alex Foster | Tue 1st September 2009 - 5:30 pm

Earlier this afternoon, Jonathan Calder unearthed video footage from the first blog awards in 2006, which reminds me that I should plug the still-available recordings of our awards ceremonies in 2008.

Tucked away in our “Podcasts” category are audio recordings of the full round of speeches for 2008 Blog of the Year in which Alix Mortimer was crowned.

And still free-to-hear from this site is the taping of the apparently-one-and-only CGB Blogger Awards from March 2008.

There’s still three days remaining to nominate people for this year’s round of Blog of the Year Awards so feel free to nominate …

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Stephen Tall

Nick Harvey: MPs should be able to profit from second homes’

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st September 2009 - 12:59 pm

The south-west’s Western Morning News has the report:

A WESTCOUNTRY MP has told an official inquiry into the Parliamentary expenses scandal that politicians should be able to profit from their taxpayer-funded second homes. North Devon Lib-Dem MP Nick Harvey made the case in a six-page letter to the Committee on Standards in Public Life which has received more than 700 submissions.

Mr Harvey, who claimed up to £1,250 a month mortgage interest for his house in London, argued: “If making a capital gain is seen by some as a ‘crime’, then it is a ‘victimless crime’ because it does not add in any way to the taxpayer’s burden: it is simply a function of market movement.

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Will the City’s troubles boost our high tech firms?

By Mark Pack | Tue 1st September 2009 - 11:50 am

In his book Reality Check, published last October, American entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki wrote about the ingredients for Silicon Valley’s success in nurturing new firms:

If your companies have to compete with conglomerates or banks like Goldman Sachs throwing money at people, it’s going to be hard to get anyone for a startup. Pity the startups in New York, London and Singapore. Come to think of it, how many tech success stories have come from these cities?

Although he doesn’t directly address the impact of the credit crunch, the implication is that there is a silver lining to the City’s current troubles.

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Stephen Tall

Top 75 Lib Dem blogs: the Total Politics List

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st September 2009 - 9:00 am

It’s six weeks since Total Politics asked blog-readers to vote for their Top 10 favourite blogs in their annual survey promoted here on LDV, as well as at LabourList and Iain Dale’s Diary. More than 1,500 people voted, and here is the full list of the Top 75 Lib Dem blogs in the Total Politics list:

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , and | 29 Comments
Mark Pack

Lembit Opik on internet piracy

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st August 2009 - 9:49 pm

From Lembit’s Daily Sport column:

PIRATES could soon be in power in the UK! But they’re not the swashbuckling Johnny Depp-type –– or even our uzi-wielding chums from the Somali coast. I’m talking about the Pirate Party –– the Swedish outfit who campaign for free file-sharing online. They’re fed up of big fees being charged for music downloads, copyright being slapped on YouTube videos and internet usage being tracked. They won a couple of seats in Brussels and are now planning on standing in the UK general election next year. These buccaneers shouldn’t be underestimated. They’ve got a big supporter

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Li-Teck Lau

Opinion: Freedom of speech should not be filled with wrong-speech

By Li-Teck Lau | Mon 31st August 2009 - 4:00 pm

OK, so basically, I will confess to enjoy reading the Daily Mail because it’s full of hate, and hate can be fun to read. Third world (or however you may wish to call it) debt, access to clean water and human rights abuses etc, are all very noble issues, but, at the same time, can get rather boring. Once you’ve read about one genocide, you’ll soon discover they’re all really quite similar.

I got to reading a wonderful Saturday commentary page by a certain Amanda Platell (I understand that she also writes for the Guardian giving a ‘right wing perspective’ on Wednesdays, but I have yet to waste time on it) titled ‘This baby boom will make us all go bust’, referring to the recent publication of birth and death rates . She starts off her piece stating,

Soaring immigration – and a migrant baby boom – has sent Britain’s population rocketing over the 61 million mark. We are now the second most densely populated country in the world, something that will be all too apparent on the roads and trains this bank holiday weekend’.

Ignoring the flame-stoking use of language for the moment, the second sentence claim that Britain has filled up to the point that it is now the second most densely populated country in the world, apparently in an attempt to shock the average housewife sitting in her flower-embroidered sofa into believing she will imminently be accommodating this influx in her garden, is only outdone in its disgracefulness by its shear wrongness.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 26 Comments
The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV… Peter Black: Wales needs a holistic approach to mental health

By The Voice | Mon 31st August 2009 - 2:45 pm

Over at Wales Online, Lib Dem Welsh assembly member Peter Black, the party’s health spokesman, explains why an holistic approach to health-care is so vital. Here’s an excerpt:

Mental health and wellbeing services have historically been under-resourced in Wales and throughout the UK. Such a position is surprising given the incidence of debilitating mental health problems among the population. The figures are striking – one in four of us will suffer from a mental illness at some point in our lives, and one in seven will suffer to a sufficient degree to warrant therapeutic intervention at some level.

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Stephen Tall

Swinson: Brits spend as much time commuting as they do on holiday

By Stephen Tall | Mon 31st August 2009 - 2:00 pm

Are you spending half your August Bank Holiday Monday stuck in a traffic jam? Well, just think of it as extra vacation. Lib Dem research has revealed that the average British commuter spends the equivalent of 23 working days per year travelling to and from work; a Londoners’ average yearly commute is 1,370 miles.

Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson, who is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics, comments:

Commuting is often an incredibly frustrating experience, whether you are on a crowded train platform staring at your watch, crammed on to a bus or tube train or stuck in a traffic jam. Even moderate commutes make people less happy – something the Government’s own research shows.

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 7 Comments
The Voice

Sandra Gidley: sofa, so good?

By The Voice | Mon 31st August 2009 - 1:34 pm

Old school, analogue politics demanded that constituents turn up to their MPs’ offices for surgeries if they were seeking their Parliamentarian’s help. Then came street surgeries, when elected representatives turned up their residents’ doorsteps to solicit casework.

But Lib Dem Romsey MP Sandra Gidley has taken mobile surgery to a whole new level of comfort:

The Sofa will be travelling around the Romsey and Southampton North constituency with Sandra Gidley MP. Come to one of Sandra’s Sofa Surgeries, Sit on the Sofa with Sandra, and sign the I’ve Sat on Sandra’s Sofa visitor book.

Sandra’s sofa even has a website:

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Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Even Martin Luther King repeated the same message

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st August 2009 - 9:20 am

Plugging away with the same message time after time may sound the obvious way to get your message over, but think how often discussions about what should go in a leaflet revolve around coming up with new things to say – or how when you look through the collection of leaflets from a campaign some people complain, “But they all said the same thing!”.

So let’s look at Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech: an amazing piece of oratory and, surely, if you can utter such moving words, you don’t need to repeat them time and again? Well, no …

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Posted in LDVUSA and News | Tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

More people use Facebook in the UK than it takes to elect a government

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th August 2009 - 8:21 pm

A bit of whimsical statistical trivia for the bank holiday weekend:

Number of votes won by the winning party at the 2005 general election: 9.6 million (BBC)
Number of Facebook users in the UK: 11.2 million (TechCrunch)

(Before anyone starts threatening me with a slide-rule: yes, this does compare apples and oranges a bit since Facebook’s minimum age requirement is less than 18 and also allows people who aren’t qualified to vote to become users . However, unless there’s a very unusual skew in their user base, the broad picture still stands.)

Posted in Online politics | Tagged | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #132

By Stephen Tall | Sun 30th August 2009 - 3:45 pm

Welcome to the 132nd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (23rd August – 29th August 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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The Voice

Nick Clegg publishes his message for Ramadan

By The Voice | Sun 30th August 2009 - 2:45 pm

You can find it as Muslim News – here’s an excerpt:

We in the Liberal Democrats have always championed religious tolerance, and we are proud of the diverse traditions in our country. We recognise the importance of the principle of Zakat to Muslims, especially at this time, and I deeply regret that Islam can be unfairly portrayed in many parts of the media especially when Muslim communities in this country do so much excellent charitable work.

The full article is here.

Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 17 Comments
Stephen Tall

CommentIsLinked@LDV… James Graham: Nick Clegg – where have you been?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 30th August 2009 - 1:30 pm

Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, Lib Dem blogger James Graham has a pop at the Lib Dem leader for squandering the political opportunity presented by a quiet August. Here’s an excerpt:

Where was Nick Clegg when #welovetheNHS kicked off? He did, in fairness, manage to fire off a single tweet – 24 hours late – but the party made no attempt to use this as an opportunity to carve out its own distinctive agenda on health. Four days after his return to Libya, Clegg did manage to squeeze out a press release about Abdelbaset al-Megrahi but while criticising Gordon Brown for not making his own position clear declined to do likewise. Considering Clegg was calling for the summer recess to be cancelled just a couple of months ago, this does smack somewhat of dropping the ball. …

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

Daily View 2×2: 30 August 2009

By Stephen Tall | Sun 30th August 2009 - 12:05 pm

2 Big Stories


Sunday Times: Lockerbie bomber ‘set free for oil’

Today’s Times has the big story:

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal. Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release. The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.

The Lib Dems Ed Davey – who has been leading the campaign for full disclosure over Mr Al Megrahi’s release – is quoted by the paper:

This is the strongest evidence yet that the British government has been involved for a long time in talks over al-Megrahi in which commercial considerations have been central to their thinking.”

Brown’s surprise Afghanistan trip scuppers Cameron

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Stephen Tall

Will Tory Barnet’s ‘Ryanair Council’ model backfire?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 29th August 2009 - 3:35 pm

There’s been plenty of reaction to yesterday’s Guardian story in which Tory-controlled Barnet council revelled in their plans to adopt the practices of no-frills airlines like Ryanair in their delivery of local services:

Barnet wants householders to pay extra to jump the queue for planning consents, in the way budget airlines charge extra for priority boarding. And as budget airline passengers choose to spend their budget on either flying at peaktime or having an in-flight meal, recipients of adult social care in Barnet will choose to spend a limited budget on whether to have a cleaner or a respite carer or even a holiday to Eastbourne. Other examples of proposed reforms include reducing the size of waste bins to minimise the cost of council rubbish collections.

The proposals are being seen as an example of “new Conservatism” which is spreading among Tory-controlled boroughs. Observers believe “radical outriders” such as Barnet offer a glimpse of how a David Cameron government could overhaul public service provision in an era of heavy spending cuts.

The Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh has dug out a couple of revealing quotes, first from Tory Barnet councillor John Hart:

With council tenants, and I’ll admit I am putting it crudely, it has been a lot of ‘my arse needs wiping, and somebody from the council can come and do it for me’.”

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged , , , , , and | 4 Comments
The Voice

When Potholes Attack!

By The Voice | Sat 29th August 2009 - 2:45 pm

My thanks to LDV reader Andrew Harrison (with a hit-tip to b3ta) for bringing The Voice’s attention to the Glum Councillors website, which is dedicated to “doggedly collate images of councillors looking glum whilst pointing at holes in the road, wearing hard hats or presenting oversized cheques.”

We can take pride in the fact, sort of, that so many Lib Dems are prominently represented. As Andrew notes, pavement politics at its finest.

Posted in Humour and Local government | Tagged , and | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Should parish councils be “completely apolitical”?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 29th August 2009 - 11:40 am

An intriguing row has broken out in Shoreham, West Sussex, in the lead-up to a by-election to fill a vacancy on the parish council. The local paper tells all:

CONTROVERSY is stirring in grassroots politics, with the nomination of a Liberal Democrat to stand in a Rustington Parish Council by-election. Jamie Bennett’s punt at parish politics has rippled the normally tranquil waters of the council, on which all 15 current members sit as independents.

Lib-Dem Jamie will contest the West ward seat vacated by former parish council chairman Mike Warrington, who has moved away from the area, in a two-horse race with Andy Cooper, described as the “Keep Rustington Council Independent” candidate. The by-election is on Thursday, September 17.

This kind of debate isn’t unusual at parish council level – the size of most parishes, and their limited budget powers, tend to mean the decisions they can make are small-scale: what place does party politics have in such circumstances?, goes the argument.

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Posted in Local government and Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 20 Comments
Stephen Tall

YouTube ‘cos we want to: Kennedy, Fox News and X-Factor

By Stephen Tall | Sat 29th August 2009 - 8:45 am

Welcome to the return of our regular Saturday fix of a trio of videos doing the political rounds. You can catch up on our previous outings by clicking here.

First up, this week’s news over the pond has been dominated by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy – here’s an excerpt from his famous “The Dream Shall Never Die” speech to the Democratic Party’s 1980 national convention in which he formally ended his Presidential aspirations:

Secondly, US comedian Jon Stewart is on top-form in this clip from his Daily Show, exposing how Fox News has (whisper it gently) gone all liberal on us:

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Stephen Tall

Kennedy speaks out on Megrahi

By Stephen Tall | Fri 28th August 2009 - 8:20 pm

While Nick Clegg has publicly disagreed with the SNP Scottish executive’s decision to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi, former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has joined David Steel in declaring his belief that the decision was the right one. Charles’s local paper the Ross-shire Journal reports his views:

The Justice Secretary faced an unenviable decision, in which neither of two practical options represents a good outcome. The whole tragic, tangled web of Pan Am Flight 103 raises profound issues of principle and of process.

“The most regrettable aspect of what has happened is that the appeal was withdrawn, and there is now no clear route to try to resolve all the doubts which surround the Lockerbie bombing and Mr Al-Megrahi’s conviction.

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , and | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Time to stop wasting money on “frigging ridiculous” health authorities, says Clegg

By Stephen Tall | Fri 28th August 2009 - 7:45 pm

The Guardian big-ups Nick Clegg’s plans to cut waste in the public services, specifically by trying to rein-in hospital trusts using their monopoly position to drive up costs. The paper bills it as “one of the most radical ideas of any of the main political parties to save money”:

Under the Lib Dem plan, hospital trusts would be forced to charge the same rate for operations as the cheapest and most efficient hospitals in the country.

Clegg said: “It is a very specific but rather radical idea, of saying that all hospital tariffs under the ‘payment by results’ system should match the most efficient tariffs in the hospital system. We think that would save about £2bn a year.”

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
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