Mark Pack

Derek Draper, LabourList and all that stuff

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th February 2009 - 11:55 am

I’ve not blogged about some of the latest to-ings and fro-ings over Derek Draper and LabourList as plenty of other people have covered the topic, but this post in particular from a former Labour insider is worth highlighting. I think he underestimates a bit the scope for the internet to make an impact on British politics, but his analysis is thoughtful and measured:

It’s taken thirty-six years but last week it finally happened. I found myself – however I might wish for it to be otherwise – agreeing with an article in the Daily Mail. It was a

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 15 Comments
Advert
Alex Foster

Bumper Catchup

By Alex Foster | Mon 16th February 2009 - 11:25 am

It’s been a while since we last caught up with the best of Lib Dem Voice, so here is a whistlestop tour of the last four weeks:

Some of the most viewed stories (according to Google Analytics):
Charlie Gordon MSP’s expenses
Is Progressive London a front for Ken?
Former members of the SDP – are there more in the Tories than the Lib Dems?
Stephen Tall’s excellent “25 random things about the Lib Dems”

catchup2

The stories you commented on the most:
Was Chris Huhne right to say Geert Wilders should be banned from …

Continue reading »
Posted in A weekly catchup | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Do you remember how PFI was meant to work?

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th February 2009 - 11:07 am

David Miliband, House of Commons, debate on PFI in the education sector, 2004:

The public-private partnerships enable the public sector to use private sector resources to deliver elements of services that the latter, through its skills and expertise, is best placed to provide through a structure in which the private sector puts its capital at risk so that it is paid only when it delivers.

That’s of course how PFI was always sold to us by Labour (and in its previous forms by the Conservatives before that*). And now that the private sector is struggling to deliver PFI schemes for schools, …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

US soldiers given citizenship

By Alex Foster | Mon 16th February 2009 - 9:52 am

The NY Times reports:

U.S. Military Will Offer Path to Citizenship

Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

What to do if you liked anything you read on this site last week

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th February 2009 - 9:20 am

With a few simple clicks, you can help any story you liked reach a wider audience:

  1. Take a look at our Archive page, find the post(s) you liked.
  2. Click through to them.
  3. Use the “Share this story with your friends” section at the foot of each post to share the story with other people. Even something as simple as saving it to your Facebook profile or Digg helps bring in a bigger audience. A bigger audience means more people get to enjoy the post, more people who may think “Oh, I could write a guest piece too”, even more interesting discussions in

…

Continue reading »
Posted in Online politics and Site news | Leave a comment
Advert
The Liberator Collective

New edition of Liberator

By The Liberator Collective | Mon 16th February 2009 - 8:20 am

The latest edition of Liberator magazine has just landed on subscribers’ doormats. Here’s a preview of the contents:

• ‘Commentary’ editorial praises Nick Clegg for making some bold statements in recent weeks. It concludes: “His recent statements on Gaza, the euro and the City are morally right, clear and distinctive. The party needs more statements like this and less of the PR twaddle.”

• The insider gossip column ‘Radical Bulletin’.

• Our lead article ‘Peace from Gaza’s wreck?’ is written by Jonathan Fryer. He argues that Israel’s real friends must admit that the Middle East conflict cannot have

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | Leave a comment
The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Tim Leunig – Co-ordinated inflation could bail us all out

By The Voice | Sun 15th February 2009 - 10:40 pm

Over at the Financial Times, Tim Leunig – occasional contributor to LDV, and reader in economics at the London School of Economics – considers the unusual financial origins of the current recession. Here’s an excerpt:

The global economy would benefit from a pre-announced, temporary, globally co-ordinated bout of moderate inflation. Since it takes about two years for central-bank policy fully to influence inflation, a sensible policy would be to target 4 per cent inflation for the five years from 2011, followed by 2 per cent thereafter. … An increase in inflation by an extra 2 percentage points for a period

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #104

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th February 2009 - 10:04 pm

Welcome to the 104th – yes, it’s our second anniversary, folks! – of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (8th-14th February 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down.

Continue reading »
Posted in Best of the blogs | 2 Comments
The Voice

And the moral of the story is…? Energy efficiency begins at home

By The Voice | Sun 15th February 2009 - 9:26 pm

From Friday’s Guardian, Lib Dems unveil plan for energy-efficient households:

Every UK home will be made energy-efficient within 10 years in a compulsory revamp of British housing stock equivalent to the “digital switchover”, the Liberal Democrats will promise today. … The party’s ambitious pledge increases pressure on the government, which will today announce its own plans to offer voluntary eco-makovers to one in four British homes. … It is estimated that carbon emissions from British homes account for a quarter of the country’s total. Under EU agreements, the government has 42 years to cut emissions by 80%. …

Announcing his party’s

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Times features Nick’s and LDV’s ’25 random things’

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th February 2009 - 9:14 pm

You know a craze is over when the Sunday supplements start featuring them – from today’s Sunday Times, ’25 random things’ confession craze sweeps the internet:

Millions of people are revealing 25 ‘random’ and often embarrassing things about themselves in the latest phenomenon to sweep the internet … The first of 25 random things is: “The weirdest thing I have ever eaten is fried bees in China.”

Clegg, you might think, sounds like a fearless action man. Study his list more closely, however, and he comes across as too slick by half. He oils his eco-credentials with his second

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , and | Leave a comment
Helen Duffett

The next six groups to get ID cards?

By Helen Duffett | Sun 15th February 2009 - 11:23 am

The Government continues to (micro)chip away with its incremental plan to introduce ID cards to all.

The Home Office has formally applied to widen the scope of ID cards for foreign nationals granted further leave to remain in the UK.

Regulations laid before Parliament last week mean that six more categories of applicant would have to provide their biometrics (fingerprints and photo) from 31 March 2009:

• Academic visitors granted leave for a period exceeding six months
• Visitors for private medical treatment
• Domestic workers in a private household
• United Kingdom ancestry (Covers people who are Commonwealth citizens, have a British grandparent …

Continue reading »
Posted in Big mad database and News | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Canonical URLs: improving your website’s performance in search engines

By Mark Pack | Sun 15th February 2009 - 7:48 am

A rather more technical post than usual, but if you are used to playing around with HTML tags or fiddling with the innards of systems such as WordPress, this post has some good news that could make your website perform better in search engines…

The multiple URLs problem

It is quite common for a page on a website to be accessible via more than one web address. For example:

http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/new-government-bailout-is-blank-cheque-131421437;show

and

http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/new-government-bailout-is-blank-cheque-131421437 (i.e. without ;show at the end)

both link to the same page.

There are two reasons this might be a problem. First, a search engine may fail to realise that these are the same page and so search results get clogged up with duplicates. Second, some people may link to one version of the URL and other people to the other. Splitting links between these two versions can mean the page performs less well in search engines than if all the links were to just the one.

Search engines are pretty good at trying to deal with this sort of problem, but they aren’t perfect.

Continue reading »
Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Two key figures sacked in surprise government reshuffle

By Mark Pack | Sat 14th February 2009 - 3:21 pm

In an unexpected reshuffle that is likely to see a shift in government policy, two powerful figures have been sacked and a woman appointed to the highest post ever held by a female.

The news is from Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah has sacked Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan, who was the country’s head judge and had talked about it being acceptable to kill the owners of TV channels that broadcast immoral shows.

Also gone is Sheikh Ibrahim al-Ghaith, the former head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (aka Saudi Arabia’s religious police).

Norah al-Faiz has become …

Continue reading »
Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged | 4 Comments
Lib Dem Riso Monkey

Riso Monkey Diary… Have you MET the public?

By Lib Dem Riso Monkey | Sat 14th February 2009 - 12:20 pm

Another email drops into the inbox of The Voice from A Liberal Democrat Organiser Who Wishes To Remain Anonymous. You can catch up with the cheeky chappy’s earlier offerings by clicking here.

The phone rings, as it has a habit of doing when I have my hand wedged deep inside the stuffing machine to retrieve a mangled envelope. I snatch it up, and a voice at the other end says, “Hello, is that the Liberal Democrats?”

“Yes,” I say, personifying the entire party for a moment.

“I’ve got something I want to talk to you about. I think your stance on Gaza …

Continue reading »
Posted in Humour and Op-eds | 8 Comments
Alex Foster

Tom Brake wuz robbed

By Alex Foster | Sat 14th February 2009 - 8:52 am

Yesterday we at LDV Towers received an embargoed press release containing the details of Britain’s Sexiest MPs, as determined by a representative panel of Britain’s electorate using STV Sky hacks using the back of a fag packet.

And there’s good news for Lib Dems, with a high showing in the top ten including our dear leader himself, Julia Goldsworthy at number five (down three from last year) and with fruity blonde Lynne Featherstone leading the charge at number 2.

Further information on the embargo-busting Adam Boulton Blog, including a handy link to a batch of photos that allow you …

Continue reading »
Posted in Humour | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Searching YouTube: two handy sites

By Mark Pack | Sat 14th February 2009 - 7:55 am

YouTube’s built in search facilities are pretty good for finding clips based on keywords. There are though a range of other free tools which search YouTube and present the results in different ways. Two of these are likely to be of particular interest to people involved in politics.

Mappeo: searching an area

Mappeo lets you see all the recent films added to YouTube plotted on a map – handy for people wanting to see what’s been added in their ward, constituency or region.

This only works on films which have had their location set by the person who uploaded them, but many …

Continue reading »
Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , and | 1 Comment
David Howarth

David Howarth MP writes… My top priorities as Lib Dem shadow secretary of state for justice

By David Howarth | Fri 13th February 2009 - 5:05 pm

The main responsibilities of the Ministry of Justice are the criminal justice system, including prisons and probation, and constitutional reform. Crime has not been seen as a political strength for us in the past, but I believe that it could be, because we have very distinctive things to say. Constitutional reform is one of our traditional strengths, but the task there is to make it relevant to current politics.

There is a crisis in the criminal justice system of staggering proportions. The prison population is at a record high, and is eating up £ billions in public expenditure. 70% of …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 5 Comments
Helen Duffett

£46m to spy on our communications – and we have to pay for it

By Helen Duffett | Fri 13th February 2009 - 2:56 pm

The Home Office has revealed the cost of capturing our communications data from selected Internet Service Providers – and has also broadened the terms of this to include text messages.

At a total cost of £46.58m over 8 years, the Home Office (i.e. The Taxpayer) “will bear all costs relating to the design, development and installation of Data Retention Facilities with communication companies.”

The communications companies which were consulted (including BT, Cable and Wireless and O2) welcomed the news that they wouldn’t have to foot the bill for retaining data not required for business purposes.

So in return for the Government’s function creep generosity, what do we get and how was it decided?

Continue reading »
Posted in Big mad database and News | 2 Comments
George Turner

Opinion: Wilders’ Contradictions

By George Turner | Fri 13th February 2009 - 1:22 pm

The proclamation by Geert Wilders, as he was being detained awaiting deportation yesterday, that he was being denied his inalienable right of freedom of speech as a citizen has unfortunately provoked many members of the Liberal grass roots to his defence. I say unfortunately because Wilders’ freedom of speech is nothing more than a rhetorical trojan horse to allow him to propagate an ideology that runs so contrary to anything that may be called liberal or free.

Wilders himself is certainly no believer in freedom of speech. A 2007 article for the Volkskrant, a Dutch daily paper, called for a …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | 25 Comments
Stephen Tall

BBC Question Time (12/2/09): open thread

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th February 2009 - 10:20 pm

For the second week running, there’s no Lib Dem representative on tonight’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm GMT) – in fact, to be honest, it looks like it’s going to be a depressingly tedious show this week. But don’t let that put you off contributing to our LDV Open Thread!

The panel comprises Labour’s Minister for the Cabinet Office Liam Byrne (let’s hope he’ll have had his cappuccino and soup), Tory shadow minister for communities and local government Justine Greening (whose face was beamed out of Putney on election night 2005), Birmingham City councillor and leader of …

Continue reading »
Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Does the Israeli election result prove PR just doesn’t work?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th February 2009 - 8:22 pm

Whenever electoral reform – ie, proportional representation or ‘fair votes’ – is debated, those who oppose it will almost inevitably use a variation on the following arguments:

• it produces coalition governments which are weak, divided and indecisive (far better, obviously, to have strong government regardless of whether a majority of people actually voted for it);
• coalition are created by political deals in “smoke-filled rooms” which the voters have no control over (unlike our Parliamentary system of whipping and Prime Ministerial patronage, of course);
• The government which emerges bears no relation to the individual parties most voters support (compared with …

Continue reading »
Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Was Chris Huhne right to say Geert Wilders should be banned from the UK?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th February 2009 - 7:09 pm

As the BBC reports:

A Dutch MP who called the Koran a “fascist book” has been sent back to the Netherlands after attempting to defy a ban on entering the UK. Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders had been invited to show his controversial film – which links the Islamic holy book to terrorism – in the UK’s House of Lords.

But Mr Wilders, who faces trial in his own country for inciting hatred, has been denied entry by the Home Office. He told the BBC it was a “very sad day” for UK democracy.

Interviewed on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , and | 204 Comments
Stephen Tall

Jenny Randerson lodges official complaint against Rhodri Morgan with, erm, Rhodri Morgan

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th February 2009 - 6:19 pm

Jenny Randerson AM, Welsh Lib Dem Assembly Member for Cardiff Central, has today lodged an official complaint against Wales’s First Minister Rhodri Morgan amid concerns he may have broken the Ministerial code when discussing school closures in Cardiff. Her letter of complaint was sent by Jenny to Wales’s First Minister Rhodri Morgan because, as she noted in her letter:

My enquiries have shown that I have no alternative to write to you yourself over this issue as the Ministerial Code does not make provision for how to complain about the First Minister, only Welsh Ministers as a whole. I trust that

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

LibDig sprouts two new features

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th February 2009 - 5:41 pm

Ryan’s LibDig is a social bookmarking service for Liberal Democrats. In other words, it’s an easy and convenient way for party members to share interesting, funny, useful or panic-inducing stuff* they find on the internet, and to see what other people have come across.

If you are a LibDig user, thanks to some new coding by Ryan you can now use an RSS feed to display your choices in other places, such as on your website. For example, if you look at my page – http://libdig.co.uk/profile.php?id=5&cmd=dugg – there is now an “RSS” option to the right of the photo.

Why …

Continue reading »
Posted in Online politics | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Boris Johnson: you shouldn’t have expected me to be good on details

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th February 2009 - 4:50 pm

You’re about to appear before a Parliamentary Select Committee. You’ve been in some controversy about who you spoke to and when. It’s an affair involving the police, Parliament and heavy media coverage. Do you therefore:

(a) Prepare yourself to answer detailed questions about what you did and when, or
(b) Stuff all that, decide to turn up, wing it and moan afterwards if people complain you keep on changing the details of what you said?

If (b), congratulations – looks like you have what to takes to be Mayor of London, for as the Evening Standard reports:

Boris Johnson launched a furious F-word

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged | Leave a comment
Matthew Sowemimo

Social Liberal Forum launched

By Matthew Sowemimo | Thu 12th February 2009 - 4:20 pm

A group of party activists has launched the Social Liberal Forum to help set out a bold Liberal Democrat vision to tackle inequality in Britain. The SLF is a new progressive voice in the party that will focus on how the mainstream social liberal traditions of the party should be applied to the huge challenges facing British society and the world.

The Conservative Party tries to disguise its indifference to poverty with empty words about a broken society. Labour rhetoric on equality has not been matched by actual achievements. The challenge for the Liberal Democrats, in the next election manifesto and …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | 40 Comments
Mark Pack

Early voting: why did we bother spending years (and lots of money) on piloting it?

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th February 2009 - 2:31 pm

For several years, the idea of letting people vote in person ahead of polling day (e.g. at the Town Hall or in a local shopping centre) was tested out in a range of different British elections. Lots of time and money went on the tests, all of which came up with the same answer: it makes almost no difference to turnout, and the money that it takes up could have gone on other measures which would have been just as good, if not better, at raising turnout (e.g. general publicity campaigns reminding pepole to vote).

The pilots themselves went on long …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 12 Comments
James Graham

Lib Dig Pig #10

By James Graham | Thu 12th February 2009 - 11:12 am

Welcome to the tenth edition of Lib Dig Pig, being a roundup of non-Lib Dem oriented gems on the internet, as voted by Lib Dem members using Lib Dig (if you aren’t one, and are a Lib Dem member, sign up here: http://libdig.co.uk).

You can now get twitter updates of stories which appear on libdig – simply “follow libdig” (http://twitter.com/libdig) to sign up.

1. Henry Porter: The horror of the ID card system (Comment is Free). Submitted by me: “Welcome to your future: a world were bureaucrats screw up your data and then you have to sort it out.”

2. Er, “help”. Legal Chill from LBC 97.3 and “Global Radio” over Jeni Barnett’s MMR scaremongering (Bad Science). Submitted by Mark Pack: “LBC vs Ben Goldacre. This one is likely to run.”

3. George Monbiot: Just what exactly do you stand for, Hazel Blears – except election? (Comment is Free). Submitted by me: “He’s mad as hell and not taking it any more!”

4. Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit (April Winchell). Submitted by Will Howells: “The child in me is so, so happy.”

Top Video

Continue reading »
Posted in Best of Lib Dig | Leave a comment
The Voice

Lamb criticises “MMR scaremongering”

By The Voice | Thu 12th February 2009 - 10:40 am

Norman Lamb has tabled Early Day Motion 754, “MMR vaccine and the media“.

This follows a public dispute between award-winning blogger Ben Goldacre and radio station LBC over a broadcast by Jeni Barnett that Goldacre describes as a “44 minute tirade against MMR”.

According the party’s press release, Norman said:

“Suggesting that the MMR vaccine is dangerous in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary is massively irresponsible and could put children’s lives at risk.

“This kind of scaremongering has had a serious impact on public health in the last decade.

“Cases of measles have risen dramatically in the

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Alix Mortimer

Ecstasy – a very political drug

By Alix Mortimer | Thu 12th February 2009 - 10:06 am

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has recommended that ecstasy be downgraded to Class B. The Council’s chair, Professor David Nutt, likened the levels of harm caused by ecstasy to those caused by horse-riding. Apparently, horse-riding causes about 10 deaths per year and the use of ecstasy in isolation causes between 10 and 17.

So have the government accepted the evidence of their own advisory body this time, having recently rejected their advice by upgrading cannabis from C to B? What do you think? The Guardian has more:

The credibility of the

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • David Allen
    Alex Macfie: In principle, of course you are right. However, the EU will be unlikely to give us the time of day unless we find a way to make a Yes vote effecti...
  • David Sparrow
    I agree with Jana, and after today’s KB speech to Tory conference it may be his only option too!...
  • Alex Macfie
    @David Allen: The "promises" you suggest would be worthless. The simple fact is that one parliament cannot bind any future parliament — that's how parliamenta...
  • Roger Billins
    I joined ULS at UCL in 1975 and the party at the same time. I am still a member 50 years on. My activism is circumscribed by the drugs I take to fight prostate ...
  • Peter Chambers
    > £17bn of tax cuts to Income Tax and Fuel Duty So we are said to be proposing increased subsidy for fossil-fuels? Instead of pushing ahead with a Green t...