Congratulations and warmest wishes to Tavish and Kirsten Scott on the birth of their son, Archie.
From the Press Association:
“The wife of Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish Scott has given birth to a baby boy, a party spokeswoman confirmed.
Mr Scott and wife Kirsten, a BBC journalist, have named the youngster Archie.
The couple married a year ago and announced the pregnancy in March.”
Share prices surged today as Barclays and HSBC posted combined profits of £6bn.
The banks’ investment banking arms largely accounted for the growth, which comes less than a year after the banking system was rescued with taxpayers’ money.
From the Guardian:
“Barclays’ chief executive, John Varley, who described the tumultuous events of the last two years as “humbling”, stressed that bonuses would not be paid until the financial year ended and would be subject to tougher new rules. These are being devised by the bank’s senior independent director, Sir Richard Broadbent, who will brief major shareholders later this year.
“Varley said: “We don’t
…
Over at the Daily Mail, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable argues that Britain’s system of compensation awards is “mad”. Here’s an excerpt:
… The real scandal, however, is the meanness of the criminal injuries and military compensation system. The Armed Forces scheme is now being, belatedly, reviewed. But criminal injury awards seem likely to remain not only pitifully small but severely restricted and tardy. I had to write angry letters to the Government agency dealing with criminal injuries when a constituent – an innocent bystander who had been attacked by gangsters throwing acid in a pub – had been waiting
…
Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman is standing in for Gordon Brown over the summer and has chosen this time to air her views on women and political leadership. Yesterday she told the Sunday Times:
“Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it’s a thoroughly bad thing to have a men-only leadership. In a country where women regard themselves as equal, they are not prepared to see men just running the show themselves. I think a balanced team of men and women makes better decisions.”
Jo Swinson MP, the Liberal Democrat women’s spokesperson (and former Chair …
“Real Women,” a new policy paper from the Liberal Democrats’ women’s policy group, has proposed a set of measures to protect women and girls from body image pressure and to encourage healthier lifestyles.
These include:
· Children to be protected from body image pressure by banning airbrushing in advertising aimed at under 16s
· Adverts aimed at adults to indicate clearly the extent to which they have been airbrushed or digitally enhanced
· Cosmetic surgery advertisements to give surgery success rates
· Modules on body image, health and well-being, and media literacy to be taught in schools
· Schools to include greater …
July is usually a busy month in Parliament, as there is a rush to complete things before the long Parliamentary recess. This July has been no exception, and there were some long sessions, particularly in dealing with the Parliamentary Standards Bill, a rushed piece of legislation which has needed a considerable amount of work in terms of amendments, in order to make it workable.
As an aside, I have been in discussion with the Electoral Commission on the question of another piece of legislation, the Political Parties and Elections Bill. I am concerned that the burden of bureaucracy placed upon Local Party Treasurers is disproportionate to the amounts of money involved, and am pleased that my suggestion that Local Party Officers be included in the consultation process has been adopted by them.
The work of the Select Committee on Communications, which is currently carrying out an inquiry into the British film industry, does have its upsides – this month in the form of a visit to the Harry Potter film set. It is entirely coincidental that Daniel Radcliffe, whom I met on the visit, publicly declared his support for the Liberal Democrats the following week.
The end-of-term reception for Liberal Democrat peers, hosted by our Leader there, Tom McNally, was graced by the presence of a number of our candidates in target seats, who were in London attending valuable training in support of their ongoing campaigns, as well as by members of our teams in the Commons, the European Parliament and the London Assembly.
I think that it is important that I continue to find time for non-Presidential work.
The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people, just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.
You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are three simple ways:
1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …
Welcome to the 128th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (26th July – 1st August 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly 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:
It has been documented extensively via many different platforms that Parliament and the public are more disconnected in the 21st century than at any time in history – although Parliamentarians have never been hugely popular with those who elect them.
Part of the problem has stemmed from the reduction of parliamentary coverage by mass media outlets. This can be traced back many years to the gradual reduction in the reporting of speeches in broadsheet newspapers. Speeches are now hardly ever published, and parliamentary sketch writers usually focus on specific moments during proceedings – sometimes only the trivial.
However, in order to open up Parliament to the mass media, and therefore the electorate, radical reforms to proceedings need to take place. The problem lies with the fact that many people who care about ensuring that Parliament is a more trusted institution are relatively conservative in nature – even if they are radical in other ways. In an institution where clapping is seen as unprecedented behaviour, you know you have a long way to go.
It is clear that media coverage of politics has moved on far more than Parliamentary reform. Here are two suggestions that could be implemented to bring Parliament in to line with 24 hour media output:
From today’s Observer:
A much-publicised law designed to stop wealthy tax exiles bankrolling political parties has been quietly dropped until after a general election, the Observer has learned.
The disclosure means that key Labour donors such as Lakshmi Mittal as well as Tory donor Lord Ashcroft will still be able to pump millions of pounds into the forthcoming election campaign, despite promises to curb the influence of wealthy backers. It has prompted accusations that the government has “nobbled” an act of parliament by failing to ask the electoral commission to enforce the rule.
Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, said he
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From the Sunday Telegraph:
Mike Mackay, an IT manager for the Youth Justice Board, (YJB) a quango charged with overseeing youth justice and the rehabilitation of young criminals, has been paid almost £1 million over the past three years, making him one of the highest-paid public servants in the country…
Freedom of Information requests and the YJB’s annual accounts reveal that in 2007 Mr Mackay was paid £330,000 for his services. Last year that rose to £351,499, according to the Daily Mail.
This year, he was paid £336,000, which is more than ten times the salary of a youth worker.
A spokesman for
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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. And as it’s a Sunday, this time by popular demand (sort of) there’s a special bonus social networking meets beards sing-a-long supplement.
Iranian protesters go on trial
Forcing critics of a government to recant in implausible public confessions is both a display of a regime’s power but also of a display of absurdity. If it makes people fear that power it strengthens the regime, but if it makes people ridicule that absurdity it weakens it. So far in Iran it seems to be doing at least some of the latter:
Iran’s biggest reformist party has dismissed the court appearance of 100 people, including leading opposition figures, as a “laughable show trial”.
The accused are on trial for alleged involvement in post-election violence, on charges including acting against national security and vandalism.
Pro-government media reported what they said were confessions by some of the leading reformists.
But the party, Mosharekat, said the “confessions” had been forced.
It said “even a cooked chicken” would laugh at the charges.
Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian Television, says the timing and scale of the trial came as a surprise and suggests Iran’s leadership wants to send a message to stop any more protests.
But judging from messages on micro-blogging site twitter and the internet, our correspondent says, the move may have the opposite effect, with several people talking about the need for new demonstrations and calling those on trial “national heroes”. (BBC)
Immigration
Over at the Daily Mail, Nick Clegg mounts an impassioned attack against the decision to allow Gary McKinnon – the man with Asperger’s Syndrome who has admitted to being an amateur computer-hacker – to be extradited to the USA. Here’s an excerpt:
If he boards the plane to the U.S., it is almost certain he will never set foot on British soil again, doomed to pass out the rest of his days in shackles on a foreign shore. This is nothing short of a disgrace – and yet there is still one tiny glimmer of hope. Even now the courts have
…
From the London Paper:
Commuters on the first route to get rid of the controversial bendy buses today declared: “Bring them back.”
Passengers on the 507 complained that the single-decker replacements were overcrowded and failed to provide enough seating.
One told of chaotic scenes when around 100 people crammed on to a Waterloo to Victoria bus during rush-hour.
Another, Andrew Cooper, 39, of Westminster, said: “There are hardly any seats. I’m not sure why they got rid of the bendy.”
Maureen Pullen, 48, of Winchester, said: “The bendy buses’ three doors allowed people to board much faster and brought down journey times.” Sine Msomi,
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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 nine polls published in July:
Tories 39%, Labour 26%, Lib Dems 19% – YouGov/Fabians (unpublished, 1st July)
Tories 41%, Labour 27%, Lib Dems 20% – ICM/Guardian (14th July)
Tories 42%, Labour 25%, Lib Dems 18% – YouGov/S. Times (18th July)
Tories 38%, Labour 23%, Lib Dems 22% – ComRes/S. Independent (19th July)
Tories 38%, Labour 26%, Lib Dems 20% – Populus/Times (21st July)
Tories 40%, Labour 24%, Lib Dems 18% – Mori (unpublished, 21st July)
Tories 40%, Labour 25%, Lib Dems 20% – YouGov/S. People (26th July)
Tories 42%, Labour 24%, Lib Dems 18% – ComRes/Independent (29th July)
Tories 41%, Labour 27%, Lib Dems 18% – YouGov/Telegraph (31st July)
Which gives us an average rating for the parties in July as follows (compared with June’s averages):
Tories 40% (+2%), Labour 25% (+2%), Lib Dems 19% (+1%)
All three main parties can take a little consolation from this month’s figures, which sees a slight recovery for each at the expense of ‘Others’ (chiefly Ukip, Greens and BNP), who were boosted by their increased exposure during the run-up to June’s local and Euro elections. However, both Labour and the Tories have yet to return to their pre-‘Expenses-gate’ support of 28% and 43% respectively.
… We’d say a big thank you to the 22,117 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in July.
This is our lowest readership figure of the year to date, down about one-third on last month’s 38,000 – which either means we’ve been rubbish this month, or else that the political excitements of MPs’ expenses and the local/Euro elections, which spiked our figures in May and June, have subsided. Or a bit of both. For the record, July’s 22k is still more than 50% up compared with the same month last year (14k).
This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Aug 2008 – 31 July 2009) to 293,070, more than double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 141,626.
The 5 top-read stories during the month were:
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The Voice has covered various stories about people being questioned by the police for taking photos. So here’s the guidance from the National Policing Improvement Agency* from their 2008 guide, Stop and Search in Relation to Terrorism:
The Terrorism Act 2000 does not prohibit people from taking photographs or digital images in an area where an authority under section 44 is in place. Officers should not prevent people taking photographs unless they are in an area where photography is prevented by other legislation.
If officers reasonably suspect that photographs are being taken as part of hostile terrorist reconnaissance, a search under Section
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If the SDP had lived on*, 2009 would have marked its 18th** 28th birthday – which spurious segue is all the excuse we need to dust off three video clips tracing its rise and fall.
Let’s begin at the beginning, with the explosion of the ‘Gang of Four’ – Roy, David, Shirley and Bill – onto the scene, here holding their first press conference in March 1981:
For a year or more it really did seem as if the SDP might truly break the mould of British politics. But the party was shattered by the results of the June 1983 general election, winning only six seats. Here’s the start of the BBC’s election night results programme.
Yes, the silly season has started right on cue, with ‘mounting speculation’ (newspaper code for: 2+ journalists writing the same thing) that the next Labour leader might be none other than Baron Mandelson, of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham. This is, of course, utter rubbish, as everyone who’s written up the notion has been forced to concede.
But IF the impossible were to occur, and Peter Mandelson were to ascend to Number 10, he would do so thanks to one man, Liberal Democrat peer, Lord (Andrew) Phillips of Sudbury. Wikipedia takes up the story:
Over at The Independent, Nick Clegg (under a slightly unfortunately whiny headline not of his creating) puts the case for a televised debate between the leaders of the main political parties. Here’s an excerpt:
A debate wouldn’t advantage a party; it would advantage the people. It would be the voters’ opportunity to see the leaders competing to be Prime Minister promoting their policies and answering difficult questions about how they’d change the country. It would bring in a wider audience than leaders could reach otherwise, giving more people the opportunity to make up their own minds based on the facts.
If Gordon
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I’ve been asked by someone creating a new website to give some advice on what legal and other text they should have on the site. Imprint – obviously. Reference to data protection and, it being a Lib Dem site, being covered by the party’s data protection registration for petition data and so on. Also a good idea to write down the moderation policy (note to self: remember to add one to my own blog).
But exactly what words to use for the moderation policy? And what else to say? Perhaps in the interests of financial transparency any affiliate links (e.g. to …
You might expect the Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Chair of Transport for London to be a law-abiding, safety-conscious example to the rest of us.
Not when it’s London Mayor, Boris Johnson. At the recent “People’s Question Time” in Croydon, this was his answer to the decline of the traditional English pub:
“I have just one idea, if more people rode bicycles and fewer people drove cars you would not have to worry about the drink driving laws and I sincerely believe that. I have absolutely no prohibition about drinking a pint of two of beer
…
Yesterday I noticed that our Mailing List signup page had some issues. It turns out that any details enter on the site were lost in to the ether.
Having spent the night ironing out the bugs it looks like everything is now working.
So if you wish to get our daily roundup, or the Golden Dozen to your inbox please signup again.
Earlier this month, LDV took a road trip to Bristol to see Banksy – which, if you can stand the two hour queue, is definitely worth seeing.
While we were there we met up with Stephen Williams MP and councillors and campaigners working for Bristol. Yesterday we brought you the interview with Stephen Williams; today’s podcast is a discussion with three councillors from the authority: Cllr Jon Rogers, transport and sustainability supremo with a twitter and e-campaigning twist; Cllr Anthony Negus, now enjoying his second month as a councillor, but many more years as a Lib Dem campaigner, …
Lib Dem Voice has covered before the growing embarrassment to the Tories of David Cameron’s decision to withdraw his party from the centre-right grouping in the European Parliament, the EPP, and to establish a new right-wing grouping with an eccentric, ragbag group of Euro MPs.
This came to a head last month, when Edward McMillan-Scott, a former leader of the Tory party in the European Parliament, was expelled for standing against a Polish MEP, Michal Kaminski, for the post of Vice-President of the European Parliament – Mr Kaminski was subsequently elected leader of the Tories’ new Euro grouping. And now Mr McMillan-Scott has gone on the record in the Yorskshire Post to reveal precisely why he decided to make a stand against the Tory party’s latest descent into Euro lunacy:
Although Kaminski was nominated by the new Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) created by David Cameron, I decided to take the issue head on, even at the discomfiture of my own party. I did this at great personal and political risk – I could have lost everything and have now lost the whip – but I did it on principle.
It was not my principle – it was a higher one. To oppose a menacing political movement at a key moment in Europe’s politics. … my Yorkshire colleague, Timothy Kirkhope – leader of the Conservative MEPs – who that day had been elected leader of the ECR, was simply replaced by Kaminski. …
It has now been disclosed, as Kaminski should have done to the Conservative Party when nominated for Vice-President, that he has had fascist links – he was a member of Poland’s notorious fascist National Revival (NOP) – and he tried, as its MP, to cover up one of the worst anti-Jewish atrocities in wartime Europe.
Welcome to this, the final summer edition of LDV’s Daily View – the feature will return again at the beginning of September, as will the various members of the LDV editorial collective.
Treasury select committee slams Government’s “largely cosmetic” banking reform plans
Here’s what the BBC has to say:
The government’s plans for reforming the regulation of banks are “largely cosmetic” and “lack clarity”, MPs in the Treasury Select Committee say.
In its report on the banking crisis, the committee says that responsibility for strategic decisions and action remains “a muddle”. The report also says that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) “failed spectacularly” in supervising banks.
More importantly, here’s what Vince has to say:
This report rightly underlines the need for high quality and transparent regulation if we are to create a stable financial system. We must not create a regulatory system that just deals with the current crisis but one which is fit for all the challenges ahead.
“The cross party report also exposes the sheer folly of George Osborne’s proposal to hand all power back to the Bank of England. While it is true that breaking up the banks will be complex, it is also necessary. A bank which is too big to fail is simply too big.
“The secrecy in which the White Paper was created shows the extent of the deteriorating relations between the Bank of England and the Government and does not bode well for the future.”
Gary MaKinnon loses US extradition court battle
There’s a slightly plaintive piece in today’s Independent’s Pandora column under the self-explanatory heading, ‘Opik’s plea to Clegg: use me’. The paper quotes the Lib Dem MP for Montgomeryshire saying:
I’m certainly available to the party in any way they want me, and that’s a matter for them.
This all follows Lembit’s latest appearance in the spotlight since he joined forces with model Katie Green to front the ‘Give a big zero to size zero’ campaign. The trouble is, as so often with Lembit, that the celebrity gossip prompted by his friendship/relationship/whatever with Katie has overshadowed the worthy cause he is supposed …
The man charged with heading the inquiry into the UK’s decision to go to war with Iraq, Sir John Chilcot, has today held a press conferenece to explain the timescales and the process under which it will operate:
The “huge job” of going through vast amounts of material and evidence means the Iraq inquiry could continue into 2011 says chairman Sir John Chilcot.
Launching the inquiry he said it would be “as open as possible” with hearings televised and streamed online. But he said some hearings would be held in private for national security reasons or to allow “more candour”. Sir John said Tony Blair would be among those asked to give evidence and he did not expect anyone to refuse to do so.
There have been complaints that the inquiry, which will cover events from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, will not report back before the next general election.
Nick Clegg wrote to Sir john Chilcot last month setting out the Lib Dems’ wishes for the inquiry, and has reponded to today’s announcement:
Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free’s ‘A New Politics’ strand, Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Newcastle East Greg Stone argues that we need to restore the health of our democracy by delivering fair voting to those dispossessed by a rotten system. You can read an excerpt here:
… while there may not be fevered discussion about AV+, STV, or d’Hondt, there is an almost universal cry for political change from the voters I speak to. The view that two-party politics and a winner-takes-all electoral system are a fundamental part of the problem is at last becoming widespread. …
Electoral reform would
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