Liberal Democrat Voice

Live from Vince’s crowded mantelpiece

By Alix Mortimer | Thu 12th February 2009 - 9:44 am

We asked you to submit the coronation plans, and you did. Now, to the universal and overwhelming lack of surprise of the entire political world, Vince Cable has won the Channel 4 News Political Impact Award 2009, voted by C4 viewers. C4 has this:

Few politicians can reliably claim to have seen the recession coming, but Vince Cable is one of them.

The housing market bubble and the surge in household debt were among his key battlegrounds long before the credit started to crunch.

The collapse of British banks – and the subsequent recapitalisation process

…

Posted in News | Tagged channel 4 and vince cable | 1 Comment

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Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #103

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th February 2009 - 8:20 pm

Welcome to the 103rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (1st-7th 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.

Posted in Best of the blogs | 2 Comments

Brake: fears Olympics will turn into new Millennium Dome

By The Voice | Wed 11th February 2009 - 7:50 pm

The Times reports:

Taxpayers face a multimillion-pound maintenance bill at the Olympic Park after organisers admitted that they had failed to find a commercial operator to take over the main venue after 2012. … The Times has learnt that the Olympic stadium will cost at least £800,000 a year to keep open. Projected revenues from athletics events and a proposed sports academy will leave a big funding shortfall at the venue, where building costs have already spiralled from £282 million to £547 million. There are fears that the final bill could be much higher.

As Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrats’ Olympics …

Posted in News | Tagged millennium dome, olympics and tom brake | 2 Comments

Laws: schools focus on average pupils to ‘flatter league tables’

By The Voice | Wed 11th February 2009 - 6:26 pm

The Telegraph reports:

Schools are increasingly focusing on average pupils in an attempt to “flatter” official league tables, according to research by the Liberal Democrats. They are prioritising teenagers on the cusp of getting C grades – officially a good pass – at the expense of the very brightest, it is claimed. Figures show the number of pupils getting these grades in GCSEs has increased quicker over the last decade than in other areas. Focusing on so-called “borderline” candidates can dramatically improve schools’ positions in national rankings.

David Laws, the Lib Dems shadow secretary of state for schools and children, is …

Posted in News | Tagged david laws and schools | 11 Comments

A letter to Conservative Central Office

By Mark Pack | Wed 11th February 2009 - 6:26 pm

Dear Conservative Central Office person,

If your party leader has got his facts wrong, editing Wikipedia to try to hide this isn’t likely to work. (Whisper it quietly, but, you know, there are other places people get information from.) Editing from a Conservative Party IP address is also likely to be spotted.

Yours,

Mark

PS Nice to know though that it was someone in Conservative Central Office who made the anonymous comment on LDV last year saying, “I would hate to live in Dr Packs bitter world of bile”. I may well quote that as an endorsement in future 🙂

Posted in News | 3 Comments

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PMQs: The say-everything-do-nothing Prime Minister

By Alix Mortimer | Wed 11th February 2009 - 6:22 pm

First up, apologies for PMQs lateness once again. The more Twittery among you will know that this is not (this time) due to my being an indolent wossname, but instead due to my having been listening to and commenting on it on BBC 5Live from the most charmingly antiquated studio room you can imagine in Guildford (or any other prosperous southern town; I prescribe no limits to your imagination in this regard).

Here’s a thing – so far as I can recall I’ve never listened to PMQs before, only watched it, and I found the whole business

…

Posted in Parliament and PMQs | Tagged nick clegg and PMQs | 2 Comments

Evan sticks up for drug adviser in ecstasy row

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th February 2009 - 6:20 pm

As the Guardian reports:

The government’s drugs adviser last night apologised for saying that the risk in taking ecstasy was no worse than in riding a horse. Home secretary Jacqui Smith had yesterday carpeted Dr David Nutt over comments that emerged 48 hours before his committee was expected to recommend downgrading the drug. …

Smith’s attack on Nutt, the new chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, comes when this week it will publish a report expected to recommend downgrading ecstasy from class A to class B. Smith has made clear she will veto the council’s view as

…

Posted in News | Tagged daily mail, drugs, evan harris and jacqui smith | 5 Comments

LDV readers say: BBC not justified in banning Carol Thatcher

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th February 2009 - 3:30 pm

Last week, in the wake of the whipped-up hysteria surrounding Carol Thatcher being banned by the BBC from The One Show for using the term ‘golliwog’, LDV asked our readers if you thought the corporation was justified in its actions.

Here’s how you voted:

Yes, the BBC was justified – 44% (116 votes)
No, the BBC wasn’t justified – 52% (139)
Don’t know – 4% (11)
Total Votes: 266. Poll ran: 5th-10th February 2009

So, a bare majority of you think the BBC over-reacted to Carol Thatcher’s use of racially-loaded language.

The poll was picked-up by the Telegraph’s James Kirkup, who used it …

Posted in Voice polls | Tagged carol thatcher, daily telegraph and james kirkup | 7 Comments

Reasons to doubt that Darwin poll

By Mark Pack | Wed 11th February 2009 - 11:54 am

Last week, an opinion poll supposedly showing relatively low levels of public belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution did the media rounds. Typical was this write-up from the Daily Telegraph:

Poll reveals public doubts over Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
Belief in creationism is widespread in Britain, according to a new survey.

Having heard some more coverage of the poll this morning, I thought I’d take a look at what the poll actually said. It was conducted by ComRes, a reputable polling firm (and, regularly readers of my posts about BPIX will be glad to hear, a member of the British Polling …

Posted in News | Tagged bpix, charles darwin, comres, daily telegraph and evolution | 11 Comments

Why are we still waiting for details on how MPs spent their Communications Allowance?

By Hywel Morgan | Wed 11th February 2009 - 9:58 am

The Communications Allowance is a fund for each MP of £10,000 a year of taxpayers money to spend on ~~ensuring their re-election~~ communicating with their constituents. That is a pretty massive sum. At current prices as a sitting MP I could have a full colour A3 delivered to every house in a constituency four times a year. By anyone’s standards its a massive boost to local campaigning

So I’m awaiting details as to how MPs have spent this windfall with interest. And it will be declared by the Parliamentary authorities.

Eventually at least.

According to www.parliament.uk, “Costs will …

Posted in News | Tagged #MPexpenses and parliamentary reform | 5 Comments

What Nick’s Facebook friends are saying about his 25 random things

By Stephen Tall | Tue 10th February 2009 - 8:21 pm

On Sunday, LDV published* Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s contribution to the Facebook meme ~~afflicting~~ sweeping the nation, 25 random things, in which ‘tagged’ Facebook users list, erm, 25 random things about themselves. Here, anonymised, are a selection of the comments that Nick’s Facebook friends have posted in response:

>> Brilliant stuff – good to see a politician keeping on trend with the meme surveys 🙂
>> Careful Nick…you’re coming across as too interesting. people might not believe you’re a real politician
>> #25 made me laugh!
>> Wow, that’s great! It’s nice to see politicians who are so down to earth.
>> Even

…

Posted in News | Tagged facebook and nick clegg | 9 Comments

Vince to take over from Nick

By Stephen Tall | Tue 10th February 2009 - 7:59 pm

Before you get too shocked/excited (delete according to taste) by the news, Jon Craig at Sky News’s Boulton & Co blog gives the background:

Vince revealed at a Parliamentary Press Gallery lunch that he is to stand in for Nick Clegg for “two or three weeks” when the Lib Dem leader takes paternity leave. … Cable expects to stand in for Clegg at at least two Prime Ministers Questions next month in the run-up to Parliament’s Easter recess. … I don’t suppose Gordon Brown will be relaxed about the prospect of facing a few more painful jolts from the electric

…

Posted in News | Tagged nick clegg and vince cable | 3 Comments

Would the Tories kick Lord Belize Ashcroft out of the Upper Chamber?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 10th February 2009 - 6:40 pm

Over at the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire & Friends blog, Jason Beattie asks if the Tories are on the point of reversing their U-turn, and supporting a Lib Dem motion obliging anyone who sits in the House of Lords to be a UK resident for tax purposes:

This may seem like an obscure requirement but it could mean Lord Laidlaw (a Tory) Lord Paul (Labour) and possibly Lord Ashcroft (a Tory who has never come clean about where he pays his taxes) face being kicked out of the Upper House. When this bill was first introduced by the Lib Dem Lord

…

Posted in News | Tagged david cameron, house of lords, jason beattie, lord ashcroft, lord strathclyde, matthew oakeshott and party funding | Leave a comment

Opinion: We must fight the Tories’ plans to privatise the education system

By Joe Taylor | Tue 10th February 2009 - 4:40 pm

I couldn’t help but to raise an eyebrow at the Telegraph’s recent front page splash, in which David Cameron unveiled his education plan for the future: “a new generation of comprehensive schools.”

Say what? Has he at last morphed into Tony Blair, grin and all? Well, no. The truth behind the headline (as usual with the Tories) is more sinister – and a glimpse of this truth could be found in the Telegraph’s leader on the story. It says:

Charities, private companies and parents’ groups will also be allowed to set up schools – competing with existing primaries

…

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged conservative party, david cameron, education, harrogate 2009 conference, higher education, privatisation, schools, tuition fees and universities | 43 Comments

Do you fancy being Vince’s voice to the press?

By The Voice | Tue 10th February 2009 - 1:49 pm

What more fun job could there be currently than to brief an agog media on the latest eminently quotable words of wisdom from the Lib Dems’ deputy leader and shadow chancellor, Vince Cable? If your answer to that is, ‘No job could be more fun’, then why not consider applying for the vacant post of Lib Dem Deputy Head of Media /
Press Officer for Shadow Chancellor:

This senior position strengthens our 24-hour media operation, supervises staff and their work rotas, promotes the Liberal Democrats as part of the duty rota cover team including acting as Press Officer for Shadow Chancellor on

…

Posted in News | Tagged jobs (Lib Dem), media and vince cable | Leave a comment

The political make-up of the House of Lords

By Mark Pack | Tue 10th February 2009 - 12:25 pm

Cross-posted from The Wardman Wire:

With reform of the House of Lords back in the news following the latest scandals over who is in it and how they behave, now seems a good time to provide some background on its political make-up.

Since political parties first emerged in British politics, the then wholly hereditary House of Lords consistently had a very large Conservative majority.

For example, in 1900 there were 354 Conservative peers out of the 574 adult peers, giving a “majority” of 134. By 1938 it had grown to 761 adult peers, and of these 519 were Conservative, giving a “majority”

…

Posted in Parliament | Tagged house of lords | 1 Comment

NEW POLL: what should be done about bankers’ bonuses?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 10th February 2009 - 11:20 am

One thing you absolutely cannot accuse the Lib Dem leadership of – going soft on the pay bonuses for executives at those banks which have been re-capitalised by the government. Here’s Vince Cable, Lib Dem deputy leader:

The Government must freeze all bonus payments for employees of semi-nationalised banks and ensure that the pay details of those earning over £100,000 a year are published.”

And Nick Clegg has also strongly criticised Labour for not taking a tough line, instead suggesting bankers ‘ask themselves whether accepting these payments is the right thing to do’, and setting up a review:

You don’t need a review

…

Posted in Voice polls | Tagged banking, nick clegg, recession and vince cable | 14 Comments

Clegg & Cable spell out Lib Dem public spending cuts to fund education priorities

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th February 2009 - 8:44 pm

In his 2008 conference speech, Nick Clegg promised the Liberal Democrats would soon spell out exactly how the party would fund its policy priorities – new spending on Lib Dem policies, including tax cuts for the vast majority of citizens:

I want this to be the most progressive – most redistributive – tax plan ever put forward by a British political party. Using just a little of the money the government wastes every day. To help people in their everyday lives. That doesn’t mean cutting help for the poorest, of course. It doesn’t mean stopping vital investment in hospitals and

…

Posted in News | Tagged education, nick clegg, public spending, tax and vince cable | 5 Comments

Hemming campaigns for Britannia coin comeback

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th February 2009 - 8:14 pm

Has Britannia been missing form your life? Last year, the Royal Mint removed the image of Britannia from the UK’s coins, where her image has appeared since 1672. Now Lib Dem MP John Hemming has launched a new campaign to restore Britannia to her rightful place. I kid you not. The Birmingham Post reports:

John Hemming (Lib Dem Yardley) wants Britannia to make a comeback and believes the £2 coin would be the perfect place for her return. The campaign has won the support from MPs of all parties after setting out his proposal in a House of Commons motion.

Britannia was

…

Posted in News | Tagged birmingham post, john hemming and single currency | 9 Comments

Lembit reveals all to the Mail (Part II)

By The Voice | Mon 9th February 2009 - 1:46 pm

After a year of reading about himself in the press, Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik has decided to open up to the Daily Mail about last year’s annus horribilis by writing an exclusive two-part feature article. The first part focused on Lembit’s relationship with Gabriela Irimia; the second part recounts their split-up, his unsuccessful bid for the party presidency, and how the year ended with Lembit beginning to discover himself – here’s an excerpt:

As 2008 passed into 2009, everything went quiet. Work returned to its weekly rhythm. The photos of lost loves faded from the pages of the Press

…

Posted in News | Tagged lembit opik | 15 Comments

DLT: Keynesianism

By Dictionary of Liberal Thought | Mon 9th February 2009 - 11:04 am

For the past year, Duncan Brack and Ed Randall, authors of the Dictionary of Liberal Thought, have kindly agreed to let us publish extracts on Lib Dem Voice. Last month’s instalment was John Maynard Keynes; this month, Keynesianism. You can read previous chapters on LDV here. The entire book is available on Amazon here and can also be bought at the Westminster Bookshop.

Keynesianism

A school of economic thought inspired by the work of John Maynard Keynes, especially his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynes’s challenge to the ideas underpinning classical and neo-classical economics, and in particular to the proposition that market economies would always find an equilibrium consistent with the highest possible level of economic output, became the foundation for macroeconomics, and Keynesian ideas came to underpin the economic policy of Western governments for the three decades following the Second World War.

In the General Theory, first published in 1936, John Maynard Keynes (q.v.) challenged the majority of his peers in the economics profession, who had steadfastly rejected his notion that there was any need for a branch of economics that distinguished between the behaviour of individual economic actors and the operation of the economy as a whole.

Posted in Dictionary of Liberal Thought | Tagged keynes and keynesianism | 3 Comments

Y Barcud Oren #4

By Gareth Aubrey | Mon 9th February 2009 - 10:31 am

Greetings from a less-than-snowy Cardiff, where the lack of meteorological chaos has allowed the business of devolution to continue unabated. More’s the pity…

Power To The Pobl

The big news is, of course, that the Welsh Language LCO is upon us. To the uninitiated (and, indeed, most of the initiated) it might seem strange that Welsh language powers aren’t already devolved, but that would be to assume that the current devolution settlement was designed with … well, anything really.

Not that the LCO does anything like devolving Welsh language powers anyway. Instead, it spends three pages caveating its way around the …

Posted in Wales | Tagged david davies, janet ryder, plaid cymru, welsh assembly and welsh language | 5 Comments

Secrecy row over MPs’ foreign trips

By Helen Duffett | Sun 8th February 2009 - 8:36 pm

The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, has blocked the release of details about MPs’ foreign trips with the British Council.

From The Telegraph:

Since February 2007, 12 MPs have travelled overseas with the British Council to destinations including Thailand, India and Malawi, often at a cost of thousands of pounds.

MPs must normally declare any hospitality they receive from outside organisations, and the British Council does not appear on a list of bodies whose gifts are exempt from the requirement.

When The Sunday Telegraph used the Freedom of Information Act to ask the Commons authorities why the trips were not

…

Posted in News and Parliament | Tagged #MPexpenses, michael martin and mps expenses | 6 Comments

Evan wins Secularist of the Year 2009

By The Voice | Sun 8th February 2009 - 6:46 pm

We may be only five weeks into 2009, but Lib Dem MP Evan Harris has already won an award – Secularist of the Year. The BBC reports:

The Liberal Democrat was named joint winner, with Lord Avebury, for their work in abolishing the blasphemy libel law in England and Wales. Dr Harris called the law “ancient, discriminatory and illiberal” as well as not compliant with human rights and against free speech. The offences of blasphemous libel and blasphemy were abolished last summer. …

Dr Harris has also campaigned to separate religion and the state claiming the current system has a number

…

Posted in News | Tagged evan harris, free speech, human rights, lord avebury, religion and secularism | 2 Comments

Government to follow me on holiday? Give me a break!

By Helen Duffett | Sun 8th February 2009 - 4:53 pm

News today of yet another way for us to surrender our personal lives to the Government, while the Government doesn’t reciprocate.

A new database is being built, to store all Britons’ international travel details, including passengers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card details, seat reservations, itineraries, and possibly details of travel companions.

While our travel details will be reported and logged, the Home Office wants to keep the location of their surveillance centre a secret. Believed to be in Wythenshawe, Manchester, staff are supposed to refer to it only as “ a new operations centre in the northwest.”

The Sunday Times …

Posted in Big mad database and News | 7 Comments

Authoritarianism: the Greatest Hits 1

By Alix Mortimer | Sun 8th February 2009 - 3:30 pm

With barely three weeks to go now before the Convention on Modern Liberty, we bring you a quick refresher course (courtesy largely of the Guardian’s excellent Liberty Central A-Z) in how we’ve arrived at today’s crisis in civil liberties. The tour will be chronological, so cast your minds way, way back to 1998, the last age of innocence, and the bullishly named Crime and Disorder Act…

Posted in News | Tagged barnardo's | Leave a comment

25 more things

By Alex Foster | Sun 8th February 2009 - 10:00 am

Stephen Tall’s excellent “25 random things about the Lib Dems” piece last week took an internet meme and applied it to the party as a whole.

But amongst the many tagged to write their list of 25 things was our leader, Nick Clegg.

And he has duly obliged. His friends on Facebook can read his list here but for now, here’s some highlights:

It’s a real sign that Clegg and his internet team are understanding how Facebook and the internet work. But is it the start of a slippery slope? How many more memes will he be …

Posted in Humour and Online politics | Tagged nick clegg | 3 Comments

How accurate are YouGov polls?

By Mark Pack | Sun 8th February 2009 - 8:50 am

It’s a well-established pattern during this Parliament that YouGov generally gives lower ratings to the Liberal Democrats than other pollsters, and this appears to be due to YouGov finding female voters to be more Conservative than other polling companies. Whilst YouGov did well in last year’s London Mayor elections, its record in other elections is more mixed. Most notably, its exist poll at the last European elections got the Conservative and UKIP vote shares badly wrong.

Interesting then to see Ben Goldacre’s column in yesterday’s Guardian which, on the way to rubbishing the PR of an insurance company, took to …

Posted in Polls | Tagged ben goldacre and yougov | 5 Comments

How accurate should forecasts claim to be?

By Mark Pack | Sat 7th February 2009 - 6:25 pm

In a blog posting earlier today I touched on the issue of forecasts which are given to a spurious degree of accuracy, and by coincidence I’ve just come across another example, this time from the world of online advertising.

Nate Elliott of Forrester has produced a report on the outlook for online advertising, saying that:

We had previously forecasted that online ad spend would account for 12.6% of all European advertising in 2012; thanks to the recession, we’ve increased that forecast to 14.8%.

Do you think that you can forecast (a) how much advertising there will be in Europe in three years …

Posted in News | 6 Comments

Credit where credit’s (mostly) due: Sunday Telegraph and polling

By Mark Pack | Sat 7th February 2009 - 2:58 pm

The internet seems to have got a bit excited about the latest ICM poll, something which The Voice tends not to do, but given my past complaints about the media and polling it seems only fair to point out that the Sunday Telegraph looks to have given up its brief flirtation with a non-British Polling Council firm (a flirtation I criticised at the time).

Moreover, the paper’s report sensibly compares the poll results with the previous ICM poll, even though that was commissioned for (shock! horror!) a different newspaper. The tendency to airbrush out polls carried …

Posted in Polls | Tagged bpix and icm | 14 Comments

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Vince Cable writes: Drill, baby, drill…or not

Lib Dems must do better on Burnham

Britain should be proud, but never afraid of the stranger

Lib Dem Women: Amplifying women’s voices at Conference

Live from Vince’s crowded mantelpiece

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #103

Brake: fears Olympics will turn into new Millennium Dome

Laws: schools focus on average pupils to ‘flatter league tables’

A letter to Conservative Central Office

PMQs: The say-everything-do-nothing Prime Minister

Evan sticks up for drug adviser in ecstasy row

LDV readers say: BBC not justified in banning Carol Thatcher

Reasons to doubt that Darwin poll

Why are we still waiting for details on how MPs spent their Communications Allowance?

What Nick’s Facebook friends are saying about his 25 random things

Vince to take over from Nick

Would the Tories kick Lord Belize Ashcroft out of the Upper Chamber?

Opinion: We must fight the Tories’ plans to privatise the education system

Do you fancy being Vince’s voice to the press?

The political make-up of the House of Lords

NEW POLL: what should be done about bankers’ bonuses?

Clegg & Cable spell out Lib Dem public spending cuts to fund education priorities

Hemming campaigns for Britannia coin comeback

Lembit reveals all to the Mail (Part II)

DLT: Keynesianism

Y Barcud Oren #4

Power To The Pobl

Secrecy row over MPs’ foreign trips

Evan wins Secularist of the Year 2009

Government to follow me on holiday? Give me a break!

Authoritarianism: the Greatest Hits 1

25 more things

How accurate are YouGov polls?

How accurate should forecasts claim to be?

Credit where credit’s (mostly) due: Sunday Telegraph and polling

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