Duncan Brack

Ask questions at conference – even if you’re not there!

By Duncan Brack | Sat 22nd August 2009 - 9:44 am

Party members not going to the Bournemouth conference still have a chance to input to some of the discussions. The conference features three Q&A sessions:

Sunday 20th September (afternoon) – with Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats

Monday 21st September (morning) – Crime Policy: Panel including Chris Huhne MP (Shadow Home Secretary), Jan Berry (Independent Reducing Bureaucracy Advocate), Juliet Lyon (Director, Prison Reform Trust) and Professor Larry Sherman (Wolfson Professor of Criminology, University of Cambridge)

Tuesday 22nd September (afternoon) – The Economy: Panel including Vince Cable MP (Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer), Jeremy Purvis MSP …

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Helen Duffett

Two charged with publishing BNP membership list

By Helen Duffett | Sat 22nd August 2009 - 7:50 am

Two people have been charged under Section 55 of the Data Protection Act* with leaking the BNP’s membership list, including contact details and family information.

From the Guardian:

The list, which identified thousands of people linked to the far-right party, was posted on the web in November 2008. Information included addresses and other contact information such as mobile phone numbers and the names and ages of children in a family membership.

Dyfed-Powys police said a 27-year-old man and 30-year-old woman were charged under the Data Protection Act after a joint investigation with the Information Commissioner’s Office. The pair lived in the Nottingham area at the time of the leak.

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Helen Duffett

Gosport Tory candidate: unattractive women need not apply

By Helen Duffett | Fri 21st August 2009 - 9:51 pm

The Chairman of Gosport Conservative Association is the latest to show the party’s true colours by making sexist comments in an interview for Channel 4 News.

Alan Scard is overseeing the selection of a Parliamentary candidate for Gosport, to replace Peter Viggers MP who is standing down after claiming £1645 on his expenses for a duck house.

When asked whether he would support David Cameron’s appeal for more women in Parliament, Mr Scard said,

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Alex Foster

Brian Haw’s milestone

By Alex Foster | Fri 21st August 2009 - 4:53 pm

Just a quick note to congratulate Iraq war protester Brian Haw. According to capital news website Londonist, yesterday saw his 3,000th day of continuous protest against the invasion.

3,000 days ago today, Brian Haw left his Redditch, Worcestershire home and took off for London, where he parked himself across the road from the Houses of Parliament and began a one-man anti-war protest. It was June 2001, and Haw was protesting against British and American sanctions on Iraq; September 11th, the deployment of troops in Afghanistan, the Iraq invasion of 2003 and the global marches against it, the July 2005

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 16 Comments
Helen Duffett

Have you nominated your Lib Dem Blog of the Year?

By Helen Duffett | Fri 21st August 2009 - 12:20 pm

Time’s ticking till close of nominations for the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards, so here’s a reminder of the categories and an exhortation to vote early!

Nominate in any or all of these:

• Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st September 2008)
• Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office (The Tim Garden Award)
• Best use of blogging / social networking / e-campaigning by a Liberal Democrat
• Best posting on a Liberal Democrat blog (since 1st September 2008)
• Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog
• Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year

To be eligible for ‘Best blog from a …

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Posted in Best of the blogs, Conference and Online politics | Tagged | Leave a comment
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Alex Foster

Unpleasant Tory campaign vignettes

By Alex Foster | Fri 21st August 2009 - 10:16 am

This week in the Guardian’s diary column Esther Addley is standing in for Hugh Muir, and she’s chosen a book of the week, True Blue: Strange Tales from a Tory Nation, by Chris Horrie and David Matthews.

Very unpleasant trends are emerging in two vignettes that paint Tory activists as racist and anti-Semitic. Who knew?

The first scene takes us to Richmond:

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Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , and | 9 Comments
Seth Thevoz

Setting the Record Straight: Labour and the NHS

By Seth Thevoz | Fri 21st August 2009 - 9:20 am

So, it’s the silly season again, and politicians are once more gripped by an irrational argument. No change there.

But for those of us who study history, the latest furore over the NHS is positively nauseating, with people apparently split into the camps of those who decry its very right to exist, and those who suddenly pretend they haven’t spent the last few years grumbling about how it’s in dire need of reform.

Part of this division is built upon a myth – a boil that needs to be lanced. We’re so used to Labour politicians churning out the line that Labour gave us the NHS, that we’ve begun to unthinkingly accept it. When Ian McCartney MP celebrated Labour’s centenary in 2006, he actually shed a tear for the NHS as Labour’s greatest triumph. Anyone familiar with 1940s history will tell you that this version of events is a cruel lie.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 36 Comments
Helen Duffett

Australian Electoral Commission agrees to “Sex Party”

By Helen Duffett | Thu 20th August 2009 - 6:41 pm

– a political party, that is!

From The Register:

It’s official: the Australian Sex Party (ASP) is now a bona fide political party, entitled to appear on the ballot paper, raise funds and even – if they gain more than four percent of the primary vote – eligible for public funding.

This follows a long drawn-out tussle with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), after several members of the public claimed that the Party’s name was obscene. In a five-page minute (pdf) that carefully explored the precise meaning of the concept of obscenity and how it related to the electoral process, the AEC decided that the various objections received to the registration of the ASP were outside the grounds on which a refusal might be made.

They did, however, consider objections that the ASP name invoked “orgiastic notions”, with a full analysis of the case and statute law surrounding the subject.

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Alex Foster

Damian’s DNA

By Alex Foster | Thu 20th August 2009 - 3:46 pm

As the Guardian reports:

Damian Green, the Conservative frontbench immigration spokesman whose arrest during a Home Office leaks inquiry sparked a parliamentary storm, has won a four-month battle to have his DNA, fingerprint and police records destroyed.

The Metropolitan police told Green’s lawyers he is to be treated as “an exceptional case”. His DNA sample and fingerprints, taken when he was arrested, will be deleted within “a number of weeks”.

Meanwhile, for everyone else in Britain, different rules apply, despite a clear ruling from the European Court of Human Rights.

To Green’s credit, he does not want to be a special case: …

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Helen Duffett

Met Police to Twitter at protesters

By Helen Duffett | Thu 20th August 2009 - 3:13 pm

CO11MetPolice twitter screenshot

The Metropolitan Police are trying new tactics to engage with environmental activists at next week’s Climate Camp in London.

The Met have opened a Twitter account @CO11MetPolice (named after its public order unit) which is intended “specifically to inform the Camp for Climate Action of any operational updates relating to the policing of their event starting on 26 August.”

From the Metropolitan Police website:

If you follow us, you can expect tweets covering some or all of the following:

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Alex Foster

Interview with Durham campaigners

By Alex Foster | Thu 20th August 2009 - 12:27 pm

Last week I was up in Durham on a singing week in the Norman cathedral there. While I was there, I took the opportunity to meet with a group of local Lib Dem campaigners for the latest in our LDV interviews.

In Durham, they’re smarting from local government re-organisation; still proud of what Lib Dems achieved whilst running Durham city council; champing at the bit to build more social housing; and adamant the Lib Dems should not resile from their commitment to abolish tuition fees.

Hear all that and more by clicking play below (or here if you are reading …

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Opinion: Misinformed populists spoil the exam results debate

By Chris Ward | Thu 20th August 2009 - 9:50 am

It’s that time of year again. (Former) sixth form students walk up to the school gates together for the last time to find out exactly how well they have done in the tedium that is the AS/A-Level examination system, prefaced by the usual yearly whinges from armchair-idiots rubbishing the entire system and associating any positive correlation with “exams getting easier” and any negative correlations with “young people getting thicker”.

I was the first year to take the AS level. “Ah, that system seems so much easier!”, the armchair-idiots chirped. This assumption was based on the one pro the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 62 Comments
Helen Duffett

Blackpool council in planning and donations row

By Helen Duffett | Wed 19th August 2009 - 6:10 pm

Construction firm Kensington Developments has donated £10,000 to Blackpool South Conservative Association after applying to build 570 properties in the area.

Blackpool Council Leader Peter Callow (Conservative) has launched an investigation, saying he is “disgusted.”

From the BBC:

An entry on the Electoral Commission’s register of donations confirms the association received a donation of £5,000 from Kensington on 3 July 2008.

A company spokesman confirmed a second donation was made in May 2009.

Kensington unveiled controversial proposals to build properties around Moss House Road in March 2008, prompting a local campaign to prevent the development.

Mr Callow, who is not a member

…

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Helen Duffett

Ming in the Psychiatrist’s Chair

By Helen Duffett | Wed 19th August 2009 - 4:50 pm

Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell was interviewed by Dr Raj Persaud in an event called the Psychiatrist’s Chair at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

From the Times:

It promised much — a candid, soul-baring encounter between a psychiatrist skilled in the probing of great minds and a political grandee seasoned by life’s storms. Both men have their demons: the former tainted by scandal, the latter one of many ensnared in the parliamentary expenses affair.

The article offers but tantalising snippets of the interview (patient confidentiality?), but content yourself here with such hints. It’s a pity that the Times, who …

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Allum Bokhari

Going negative on the Greens – losing votes and alienating people

By Allum Bokhari | Wed 19th August 2009 - 3:42 pm

It’s a mistake we’ve all seen people make. Having just lost your spouse to a rival, you call your now-ex girlfriend in the middle of the night, to politely request an explanation:

“How can you be going out with HIM? He’s a *****! He’s a ****ing son of a **** !!

Of course, such a display does not help your cause one iota, and in fact makes re-uniting with your girlfriend an even murkier prospect. Having just started going out with your rival, your girlfriend is unlikely to listen to anything bad you might have to say about him.

Moreover, …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 38 Comments
Helen Duffett

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Norman Lamb on NHS parking charges

By Helen Duffett | Wed 19th August 2009 - 2:02 pm

Liberal Democrat Health spokesman Norman Lamb says the NHS is using car parking charges as a “tax on the sick.”

From the Telegraph:

Every year the NHS in England makes over £100 million from parking charges. While these charges do generate some much-needed income for the NHS, they can also cause real hardship for patients and their families. Patients are often faced with eye-wateringly high parking costs, but poor public transport links means that they sometimes have little alternative but to pay up. This is a scandalous and unfair situation: it needs to change.

However, I do not believe that we

…

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Mark Pack

Will the changes to Scottish election law gives us a data bonanza?

By Mark Pack | Wed 19th August 2009 - 11:20 am

The main change to election law this summer has come with the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, but Parliament has also approved the Scottish Local Government (Elections) Act 2009.

The primary purpose of the Act is to change the cycle for Scottish local elections, so that in future they will not be held on the same day as Scottish Parliamentary elections. Instead, the next round of local elections is being delayed by one year – from 2011 to 2012 – and the local elections will then run on a four-year cycle from there.

Also in the Scottish Local Government (Elections) Act 2009  is a new provision to publish much more information about election results:

The Scottish Ministers may by order make provision as to the publication of
information about votes cast at elections of councillors.
(2) Such an order may, in particular—
(a) specify information to which the provisions shall apply,
(b) make provision about access to information to facilitate publication,
(c) specify limitations on the publication of information,
(d) make provision relating to votes cast in part of an electoral ward.

(1) The Scottish Ministers may by order make provision as to the publication of information about votes cast at elections of councillors.

(2) Such an order may, in particular—…

(d) make provision relating to votes cast in part of an electoral ward.

In other words, there is now the power for voting breakdowns by polling district (or other sub-ward level unit) to be published. With STV it’s unlikely that full results will be provided on a sub-ward level, but even so this is good news for confidence in election results.

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Posted in News | 4 Comments
Helen Duffett

Richard Tracey: Tory triumph or tall tale?

By Helen Duffett | Wed 19th August 2009 - 9:20 am

A Tory London Assembly Member wants his party to take the credit for a brief drop in London’s unemployment figures, while the annual results show a different picture.

Richard Tracey, Conservative London Assembly Member for Merton and Wandsworth (and a former Conservative Minister and MP for Surbiton) proudly wrote to the South London Press in March 2009:

“London has bucked the tragedy of rising unemployment – it fell between November and January, whereas the UK as a whole saw a rise.

It is no coincidence that unemployment in London has actually fallen in the last three months, given taxpayer-focused Conservative administrations run so much of it.

Richard Tracey

London Assembly member for Merton and Wandsworth”

In a rather desperate attempt to make a political point he grabbed at the very limited unemployment figures between November 2008 and January 2009 for evidence. The letter was even titled ‘Tory Triumph.’

Well, five months later, the Tories must be less triumphant.

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Posted in London and News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

Top MP blogs published

By Alex Foster | Tue 18th August 2009 - 3:49 pm

TotalPolitics (in association with Iain Dale) now have published their list of top MP blogs, as voted for by over 1500 readers.

In the top 30 are Lynne Featherstone, Willie Rennie, John Hemming, Steve Webb, and John Barrett.

Only one party leader features in the list, and that’s Nick Clegg.

Posted in News and Online politics | Tagged , , , , , and | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

The week in Facebook groups

By Alex Foster | Tue 18th August 2009 - 2:16 pm

Not  a week goes by without a dozen invites to various groups on Facebook.  (Well, maybe the week my ISP turned my email off without warning…) Here’s a selection that have crossed my path in recent days:

We agree with Vince Cable and Compass. Lets have a high pay commission.

Ever since the collapse of Northern Rock, Vince Cable has led the way in support of demanding an end to excessive pay and bonuses for greedy bankers who are more interested in short term profit than the long term interests of the economy.

Recently the Left

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

I’ve been emailed by a Real Woman

By Alex Foster | Tue 18th August 2009 - 12:50 pm

A Real Woman has been in touch to tell me about new Lib Dem policy proposals for Real Women.

As readers of the Voice should know by now – Jo Swinson MP penned a piece on Perez and photoshopping last week – the Lib Dems have a policy paper on women’s rights. The full paper is available at www.RealWomen.org.uk, and here’s the summary from the front page:

Women face pressure from all directions these days. Hit hard by the recession, trying to juggle family commitments with work and home life, it’s easy to feel like you’re running just to stand

…

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | 2 Comments
Richard Parsons

The Independent View: Making your voice heard on the file-sharing law

By Richard Parsons | Tue 18th August 2009 - 9:20 am

The government has plans for a Digital Economy Bill, which, if you took it at face value, sounds like exactly the kind of thing the government should be focusing on to help keep Britain at the cutting edge of the ‘new economy’.

As usual, however, the details tend to be slightly more complicated. The legislation will, instead, be used to introduce a new system for targeting pretty much everyone who shares files on the internet.

The government wants Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to monitor your broadband connection and send you ‘warning letters’ if you are sharing files improperly. Details of who has been sent a letter will be made available to big corporations, which can then use them in court to sue you.

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | 13 Comments
Alex Foster

Jo Swinson’s Indy Q&A

By Alex Foster | Mon 17th August 2009 - 11:13 am

The Lib Dem MP for Dunbartonshire East has submitted herself to a gruelling grilling at the hands of the readers of the Independent.

Among the questions – such taxing ones “that thing you just did, isn’t it a huge waste of time?” – “no”; “don’t you think you were too young to be an MP?” – “no”; and “who’s your bestest friend in all the Lib Dems?” – I will leave you to visit the story yourself to see the thrilling answer.

Amongst the questions there are some better thought out ones and some interesting answers, so it’s well worth five …

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged | 7 Comments
Helen Duffett

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #130

By Helen Duffett | Sun 16th August 2009 - 8:00 pm

Welcome to the 130th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (9th August – 15th 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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Alex Foster

What does 300 mean to you?

By Alex Foster | Sun 16th August 2009 - 2:33 pm

Is it the epic historical film from last year?

Do you see a triangular number and a pair of twin primes (149 and 151)?

Or do you recall how Jo Shaw, the Lib Dem PPC for Holburn and St Pancras revealed in the Telegraph last week that that’s how many children are added to the UK’s DNA database each and every day.

Almost 1.1 million youngsters aged between ten and 17 have had their profiles recorded by the police since 2000, with a large proportion aged under 15, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
And around one in six are likely to

…

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Posted in Big mad database and News | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Vince Cable on the surveillance state

By Mark Pack | Sun 16th August 2009 - 12:50 pm

Vince Cable’s latest column for the Mail on Sunday is out and this time it’s about civil liberties:

A quarter of a century has passed since 1984, the titular year of George Orwell’s novel which described a world constantly spied upon by an all-powerful dictator, the fearsome Big Brother.

It never happened. Orwell’s nightmarish vision was realised, for a while, in communist Eastern Europe but the Stasi and similar agencies have now gone.

And yet in a quiet, insidious way our own democratic society is producing a surveillance state that Big Brother would have been proud to call his own.

You can read …

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James Graham

Looking beyond the Lib Dem ghetto

By James Graham | Sun 16th August 2009 - 10:20 am

The Lib Dems have always selected their candidates by “one member one vote” (OMOV). It has always seemed the most logical and transparently fair system, and it is certainly better than having candidates hand-picked by an inner cabal. It still does a fairly good job at selecting candidates for the House of Commons, although as membership levels drop that is becoming less true. But it has been quite inadequate for selecting candidates for larger constituencies, particularly for the European Parliament and London Assembly.

Here’s the fundamental problem: a significant proportion of our members are concentrated in our held and target constituencies. Target seats become target seats because they have a larger pool of activists from which to draw. In turn, in order to become winning seats they have to recruit more activists. The more tightly we focus on target seats, as the Lib Dems certainly have for the past two decades, the more the gap between target seat and what we sometimes euphemistically call “development seats” widens.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 24 Comments
Mark Pack

Daily View 2×2: 16 August 2009

By Mark Pack | Sun 16th August 2009 - 7:50 am

The rest of The Voice’s Daily View team may have decided to have a lie in each morning during August, but we’re made of sterner stuff here on the Sunday slot (for the moment). And as it’s a Sunday, it’s also time for another bonus musical extra.

Big Stories

UK death toll in Afghanistan reaches 200

A British soldier has died from wounds suffered in Afghanistan, taking the number of UK troops killed since operations began in 2001 to 200.

The soldier, from the 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh, died in hospital in Birmingham. Family have been informed. (BBC)

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Posted in Daily View | 11 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Ton (The Top 10!)

By Stephen Tall | Sat 15th August 2009 - 6:00 pm

‘Tis the season for lists… All this week we’ve published the top 100 posts by Lib Dem bloggers, in descending order of popularity, for the last year – August 2008 to July 2009, inclusive, according to click-throughs from the Aggregator.

(Profuse thanks to techno-wizard and stat-monkey Ryan Cullen for compiling this table.)

And now, at last, we come to this year’s Top 10:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

The Pirate Party: the apolitical political party

By Mark Pack | Sat 15th August 2009 - 9:43 am

The formation of UK version of the Pirate Party could turn out to be a political development of more than passing interest, both because it may appeal to a section of heavy internet users who are willing to put considerable efforts in to promoting it and its policies, and also because its very existence may help shift the terms of political debate on some issues.

The Telegraph has a good interview with its the Pirate Party’s leader, Andrew Robinson, both covering him and his views at more than soundbite length but also throwing in some scepticism. It also has this …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 106 Comments
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