Mark Pack

Taxis ahoy: how Boris Johnson is spending other people’s money

By Mark Pack | Sat 7th February 2009 - 2:16 pm

Tory Troll has highlighted just how Boris Johnson’s political rallies public meetings are racking up the bills, including taxi fares and very expensive “Audio/Visual services” for one. What on earth was done at one meeting to require £9,800 on “audio/visual services”, and why should a meeting in London which ends mid-evening require £1,000 in taxi bills?

Posted in London and News | Tagged | 5 Comments
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Millennium Elephant

Millennium’s Credit Crunch Diary… January: So is it our Winter of Discontent now?

By Millennium Elephant | Sat 7th February 2009 - 11:20 am

January was a GOOD NEWS / BAD NEWS / MORE BAD NEWS kind of a month.

The GOOD news was that no one shot new President Barry O at his inauguration (unless you count the Chief Justice helping him shoot himself in the foot); the BAD news, dominating the first half of the month, was the hand-grenade of heavy-handed retaliation that Israel chose to lob though the window of opportunity presented while the Monkey-in-Chief was still in the Oval Office; the MORE BAD news was the continuing financial apocalypse, now officially a recession. (Like we didn’t know!)

Economic crisis, businesses failing, …

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Posted in Humour and Op-eds | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

Labour ‘scrap plans to block wealthy donors’ spending in marginal seats’

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th February 2009 - 10:33 am

From today’s Guardian:

Ministers have abandoned plans to block wealthy Tory donors such as Lord Ashcroft from spending huge sums of money in marginal seats between general elections. … The amendment scraps a planned “trigger” which would have meant that would have meant that, the moment a candidate was adopted, their campaign spending would have been subject to restrictions.

The Guardian understands ministers have been warned that the rules would be very difficult to police. In its place, the government has set a date – 55 months after the new parliament first sits – when new restrictions, set at £25,000 per

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

Baker rejects air flight rationing

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th February 2009 - 10:20 am

Today’s Telegraph reports that Lord Turner, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, has said people should be given personal flight limits to lower pollution from the aviation industry:

“We will have to constrain demand in an absolute sense, with people not allowed to make as many journeys as they could in an unconstrained manner,” he told the Commons environmental audit committee. Lord Turner, whose committee is investigating whether the air industry can meet a target of reducing emissions to below 2005 levels by 2050, said the restriction may need to become permanent. He added: “It is at least possible

…

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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem councillor ‘faces down youths goading dog to attack tree’

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th February 2009 - 9:52 am

And, no, she didn’t need to call the police/council, or threaten litigation to deal with the matter. And, no, the young people in question did not threaten violence against her as a result of her intervention. From the Islington Tribune:

FACED with a group of youths goading a Staffordshire Bull Terrier to strip bark off trees to toughen its jaws, a lesser person would walk away. But 82-year-old deputy mayor and Lib Dem councillor Anna Berent is not a lesser person – she once bit a burglar – and the safety of the tree, in Petherton Road, in Highbury, was

…

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged | 2 Comments
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Stephen Tall

43% of LDV readers say: yes to managed immigration

By Stephen Tall | Fri 6th February 2009 - 9:36 pm

A couple of weeks ago, LDV asked our readers the question, What’s the liberal response to immigration?
 It sparked a fascinating comments thread, and our poll attracted over 500 votes. Here’s what you told us:

LDV asked: What do you think should be the basis of the UK’s immigration policy?

You told us:

>> 23% (121) Open the borders, and impose no immigration restrictions
>> 43% (225) Have managed immigration, eg through a points system
>> 15% (79) Operate an annual cap on immigration, with work-permits strictly limited to 4-years
>> 18% (95) Close the borders, and accept no more immigrants
Total Votes: 520.

…

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Posted in Voice polls | Tagged | 11 Comments
The Voice

The Indy asks The Big Question of Lib Dem class sizes proposal

By The Voice | Fri 6th February 2009 - 6:28 pm

Yesterday LDV reported on Nick Clegg’s announcement of the Lib Dems’ radical new education policies to fix inequalities in Britain’s ‘class-based education system’. In today’s Independent newspaper, there The Big Question feature has a very fair and balanced look at the issue, which you can read here – here’s an excerpt:

Why are we asking this now?

Because the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has announced that, if elected, his party would dramatically reduce class sizes for children aged five to seven – to just 15. it would be part of a £2bn cash injection into education spending.

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Jo Shaw

Camden Labour reels as councillor defects to the Lib Dems‏

By Jo Shaw | Fri 6th February 2009 - 3:49 pm

Last night Labour’s last councillor in Haverstock ward in Camden resigned his membership of the party and defected to the Liberal Democrats. Councillor Syed Hoque cited the Labour government’s response to the recent fighting in Gaza as central to his decision. He has also described his unhappiness with the Camden Labour group, in particular his belief that those in charge of Camden Labour are rude, arrogant and out of touch with local people.

This takes the number of Camden Liberal Democrat councillors to 24, an all time high. The number of Liberal Democrat councillors in Holborn & St Pancras constituency is now 11, a rise of 1000% from prior to the 2006 borough elections.

Councillor Hoque is by no means the only former Labour supporter in Camden to be feeling let down and disillusioned by a party that seems to have forgotten about ordinary people.

Labour are at rock bottom nationally and losing support every day. In Camden many people feel Labour has taken them for granted for years. Fortunately, all those who believe in ethical foreign policy, defending our civil liberties, and protecting those on the lowest incomes will find a natural home with the Liberal Democrats.

Statement from Councillor Syed Hoque, Haverstock Ward:

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Posted in News | Tagged | 3 Comments
Alix Mortimer

Carnival on Modern Liberty. Part the Third.

By Alix Mortimer | Fri 6th February 2009 - 2:19 pm

Roll up, roll up and then carefully insert the filter tip into this, the third Carnival of Modern Liberty! (I don’t know whether it’s just mounting hysterical terror, but I find my puns getting steadily worse with each passing week as the government unleashes some fresh illiberal hell on us.)

Anyway, should you need a bit of refresher scaring, today’s BBC report on some recent recommendations of the Lords’ committee for constitutional reform is as good a way as any to remind yourself of what is at stake here:

Electronic surveillance and collection of personal data are “pervasive” in British society and threaten to undermine democracy, peers have warned.

The proliferation of CCTV cameras and the growth of the DNA database were two examples of threats to privacy, the Lords constitution committee said.

Those subject to unlawful surveillance should be compensated while the policy of DNA retention should be rethought.

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Posted in Big mad database and News | Tagged and | 4 Comments
Nick Clegg MP

Back our campaign to get an elected House of Lords

By Nick Clegg MP | Fri 6th February 2009 - 12:00 pm

Over the last few weeks our newspapers have been filled with headlines about alleged corruption in the House of Lords. The accusations of peers amending laws in exchange for cash are deeply shocking, and this case points to the urgent need to reform our Parliament and revive British democracy.

The truth is, it’s high time we drag our political system into the 21st century. For millions of people across the UK our Parliament feels remote and out of touch and nowhere more so than the House of Lords, where power still rests on privilege. Labour has failed to live up to …

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Posted in News, Op-eds and Parliament | Tagged and | 20 Comments
Stephen Tall

BBC Question Time (5/2/09): open thread

By Stephen Tall | Thu 5th February 2009 - 10:20 pm

There’s no Lib Dem representative on tonight’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm GMT) – but liberalism will be represented, at least to some degree, by Shami Chakrabati, director of Liberty (and, more importantly, the original LDV Liberal Voice of the Year 2007).

Shami will appear alongside Labour’s Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon (the man who somehow, miraculously, escaped being sacked as defence secretary following the David Kelly affair), Conservative shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May (who somehow, miraculously, escaped being sacked from the shadow cabinet for general inspidness), the leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage …

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Ambulance-chasing, Colin Rosentiel, the Standards Board, and our loss of civic pride

By Stephen Tall | Thu 5th February 2009 - 8:40 pm

Some may feel I’m asking for trouble by highlighting for a second day running the case of Colin Rosentiel, the Lib Dem Cambridge city councillor who allegedly blocked an ambulance on an emergency call to protect some common land. But, having reported the story here yesterday, it prompts a wider question than the rights and wrongs of an individual councillor.

A couple of folk linked in the comments thread to the report of Cambridge city council’s monitoring officer to its standards committee – you can read it in full here. And I mean in full – it’s …

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Posted in Local government and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 11 Comments

David Miliband – two questions no-one asked him

By Hywel Morgan | Thu 5th February 2009 - 6:15 pm

So, David Miliband’s statement about the Binyam Mohamed case today wasn’t as exciting as I thought. But he has still left too much detail still to be clarified.

Listening to his statement you’d think the information he was so keen to keep secret was a bulging file, stamped “Top Secret, for your eyes only” and containing lots of reports from undercover 007 types operating deep undercover.

At least I can’t put any other interpretation on his frequent use of “intelligence documents” in his statement, which included phrases such as:

Yesterday’s judgment whether an English court should, in the interests of

…

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James Graham

Lib Dig Pig #9

By James Graham | Thu 5th February 2009 - 5:19 pm

Welcome to the ninth 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).

It’s a pretty random list this week:

1. Charlie Brooker to focus on news in BBC4 Screenwipe spin-off (Media Guardian), submitted by Stephan Tall: “’Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker is to take a satirical look at the news media in a spin-off from his BBC4 show Screenwipe.’ Yay 🙂 If you missed the 2007 Screenwipe news episode, you can glimpse its brilliance here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5RRmE0_n0K4”

2. Brian Coleman’s interests – the wordle’s out (vickim57), submitted by Alex Foster: “Fat cattery via Wordle ”

3. Manchester ‘could pilot ID cards’ (BBC News), submitted by Nigel Ashton: “Manchester could be one of the testing grounds for the government’s ID cards scheme, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said during a visit to the city.”

4. Confidence In Blog Postings Over Time (SlideShare), submitted by Iain: “It’s like there’s someone in the room with me. ”

5. Chart Porn: Create Your Own Original Star Trek Story (io9.com), submitted by me: “40 years too late sadly.”

Top Videos

We didn’t have a video this week. So as an alternative, I thought I’d pick out a random vlog. This one has a certain inspired genius, don’t you think?

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Posted in Best of Lib Dig | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

An unusual messaging choice by the London Labour Party

By Mark Pack | Thu 5th February 2009 - 4:59 pm

You run the London website for a political party. You’ve been told to put a series of photos of people on the front page of your site. Who do you think you’d select? Perhaps some of your London MPs? MEPs? Council group leaders? GLA members? If you’re Labour, the answer is … er, none of them. Instead you feature photos of all your staff. Me? I’m off to put a big photo of myself on all our sites I can find. It’s clearly the way to go.

Posted in Online politics | 2 Comments
Helen Duffett

Steve Webb MP in “Facebook surgery” first

By Helen Duffett | Thu 5th February 2009 - 3:10 pm

Steve Webb, Liberal Democrat MP for Northavon, held a “drop in surgery” with a difference this morning – on social networking website Facebook.

He’d advertised the time in advance, to his 3,867 Facebook friends: “Steve will be online on Facebook Chat tomorrow (Thursday) between 11 and 11.30am. Log on and chat if you want to raise anything with me.”

This morning around 200 of them – a mixture of constituents, party members and others – were online for the chat session. Steve likened the experience to “one of those plate-spinning acts that you see on variety shows on the TV”. (Fortunately, he types fast!)

Shortly afterwards, I spoke to Steve, who declared the experiment a success. I asked him why he chose Facebook’s live chat facility.

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Posted in News and Online politics | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

NEW POLL: was the BBC right to ban Carol Thatcher from The One Show?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 5th February 2009 - 2:25 pm

I’ve avoided for as long as possible the uber-hyped ‘nowtrage’ over Carol Thatcher’s off-air-but-in-the-studio comment that a still-to-be-identified tennis player looks like a ‘golliwog’.

It does of course pose lots of interesting questions for liberals: the conflict between freedom of speech, and the offence that may cause; to what extent unbroadcast behind-the-scenes remarks should be regarded as private; whether remarks that cause offence are best dealt with by individuals at the time, rather than by being referred to an ombudsmanperson.

The Lib Dem blogosphere has wrestled with many of these issues and more, and given more time to …

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Posted in Voice polls | Tagged , , , , , and | 15 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg announces radical education proposals for England

By Mark Pack | Thu 5th February 2009 - 1:06 pm

Today’s the day when the education policy paper going to our Harrogate conference is released to the media.

The official news release doesn’t hold back on the scale of the challenge or the ambitions for the policies:

Nick Clegg announced radical new education policies to fix inequalities in Britain’s ‘class-based education system.’

The plans would narrow the gap between the state and private sector, raising funding for the most disadvantaged pupils to private school levels and delivering extra money to cut infant class sizes to 15.

The proposals will reverse decades of standardisation and centralisation. In its place, more freedoms would be granted to

…

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 13 Comments
Alix Mortimer

PMQs: Clegg on the tax system and how it is abused

By Alix Mortimer | Thu 5th February 2009 - 12:22 pm

And so to our belated PMQs coverage, belated owing to my having decided to have a little snooze instead staff shortages due to the continuing adverse weather conditions.

Cameron began by toning his recent braying performances down considerably, and used two fairly calm and measured questions about protectionism to set up a telling point about the “British jobs for British workers” slogan. He correctly pointed out that it “encourages protectionist sentiment” even while Brown lectures the world on the “evils of protectionism” and zeroed in on Brown’s inability to apologise for misjudgements, including this one. But he can never resist being shrill for long. His last question ended “…and will he make a promise not to do it again?”, which just makes him sound ridiculous. The snarky schoolboy is never far away.

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Posted in Parliament and PMQs | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Merlene Emerson

Reflections on Morecambe Bay

By Merlene Emerson | Thu 5th February 2009 - 8:51 am

Today is the 5th anniversary of the tragedy at Morecambe Bay. Many are surprised to learn that 5 years have passed already. Perhaps it is because shock and sorrow have a way of lingering on after a death… or 23 deaths in this case.

You may recall that there were a number of casualties. In addition to the cockle pickers from the Fujian Province of China who drowned in Lancashire, there was the Tory MP, Ann Winterton. The latter was suspended by Michael Howard, then leader of the Tories, for a month for an offensive and insensitive …

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Joe Taylor

Helpful advice from the Tories about how to beat them at the next election

By Joe Taylor | Wed 4th February 2009 - 7:46 pm

I was browsing ConservativeHome.com the other day (as one does), and came across an interesting piece from one of its two editors, Jonathan Isaby. He was warning Tory activists not to sound triumphalist about the prospect of winning a 100-seat majority at the next election, in case it turned off electors – particularly in Lib Dem-held target seats.

Mr Isaby states that, if they are to win a majority, the Tories must

try and win back most of the thirty-odd seats which the party has lost to the Liberal Democrats over the last decade or so.”

Warming to this …

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

CommentIsLinked@LDV: James Graham on the Channel 4/YouGov poll of marginals

By Stephen Tall | Wed 4th February 2009 - 6:50 pm

Over at the Channel 4 News politics website, Lib Dem blogger James Graham gives his brief take on the latest YouGov poll of Conservative-Labour marginals showing Labour on 36% (-2% since Oct ’08), the Tories on 43% (n/c) and the Lib Dems at 13% (+1%). Here’s an excerpt:

This poll tells us nothing about how the Lib Dems might be doing in terms of seats because of the constituencies chosen, but nonetheless it does give us some idea about how the party is doing in terms of fighting the ‘air war’. The headline figures show a small, albeit statistically insignificant,

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem councillor accused over ambulance

By Stephen Tall | Wed 4th February 2009 - 6:26 pm

Plenty of media coverage today of Lib Dem Cambridge city councillor Colin Rosentiel following a complaint made against him to the Standards Board for England – the Telegraph’s account is the most detailed I’ve seen:

Liberal Democrat councillor Colin Rosenstiel stopped the vehicle as crews tried to reach an injured person at a summer festival on common land in Cambridge. Mr Rosenstiel rode his bicycle into the path of the ambulance, blocking the entrance, and refused to budge because he claimed cars were not allowed on the grass.

The emergency crew eventually manoeuvred around him but, on leaving the ground, after

…

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged and | 26 Comments
Richard Huzzey

Suppression of Torture Evidence

By Richard Huzzey | Wed 4th February 2009 - 5:16 pm

Maverick Tory MP David Davis today raised, in the House of Commons, an explosive question which requires immediate answers. It follows a High Court judgement in which British judges lamented they were unable to publish evidence of human rights abuses in the case before them, because the US had threatened it would cease cooperation with Britain.

Questions must also be raised as to the repeated assertions of Tony Blair, Jack Straw and numerous other Labour officials that Britain was not complicit in torture (as detailed, with sources, here).

It is suggested that the suppression of evidence comes because of a …

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Posted in LDVUSA and News | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

John Prescott vs Iain Dale

By Mark Pack | Wed 4th February 2009 - 2:49 pm

Earlier this week, Iain Dale doubted whether or not John Prescott really pens his blog. John Prescott has taken to YouTube to make his case:

Iain seems to have taken it all in good heart.

Posted in Online politics | Tagged and | 2 Comments

Opinion: British jobs for good workers

By Rich Wilson | Wed 4th February 2009 - 2:20 pm

Go to a restaurant, or a hotel. Look around. You’ll notice a distinct lack of something.

Employees? No. Quality Service? Hopefully not?

The answer is British people. The man carrying your luggage probably hails from Eastern Europe. The sommelier has come from Turkey. The lady cleaning the toilet in your room may well be from Brazil. So why is no-one striking for them?

One of the most British things imaginable, horse racing, employs a significant number of Poles, Arabs, etc. Not too many British people. So why aren’t people on the streets for them?

Why does no-one care that, in …

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Posted in Op-eds | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

Why giving out your web address may not be such a good idea

By Mark Pack | Wed 4th February 2009 - 12:10 pm

Over the last few months, Transport for London has been running a series of adverts, principally on tubes, buses, stations and shelters encouraging people to behave responsibly when using their services and encouraging people to visit their site www.togetherforlondon.org.

However, the website side of the campaign has been criticised for getting only derisory amounts of traffic with, for example, only 12 ideas posted up during December. Or as an Evening Standard story put it before Christmas:

An official website hailed as “Facebook for commuters” was branded a disaster by experts today.

Together for London was billed as a forum where travellers could work together to improve the capital’s transport system. Yet two months after a high-profile launch by Transport for London, the site is a virtual ghost town.

So what went wrong? And what are the lessons which also apply to advertising political sites?

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Why should opting out of double-glazing direct mail stop you hearing about a local planning application?

By Mark Pack | Wed 4th February 2009 - 10:20 am

Use of the electoral register is, quite rightly, tightly controlled. The full register can only be used for running elections and a very small number of other tasks, such as if the police want to use it to help track down a person. As a database of names and addresses is also useful for a wide range of other purposes there is an ‘edited’ version of the register which anybody can buy – but which anyone can also opt out from appearing on.

However, by having just the one type of register available for wider use all sorts of different uses …

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Mark Pack

Charlie Gordon MSP: the curious case of high expense claims and payments to his son

By Mark Pack | Tue 3rd February 2009 - 10:22 pm

Labour MSP Charlie Gordon has been in the news over his high level of expense claims. It’s not the first time he, money and politics have been in the news, for he’s the man who resigned as Labour’s transport spokesman over a dodgy overseas donation for Wendy Alexander’s Scottish Labour leadership campaign.

Charlie Gordon’s payments to his son

This time though it’s the level of expenses he has been claiming as an MSP that are in the news – including the fact that a large part of them have been paid to his son, Gavin …

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Posted in Online politics and Scotland | Tagged | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem Scottish and London budget news

By Stephen Tall | Tue 3rd February 2009 - 8:45 pm

Okay, okay I admit it – that title isn’t likely to entice in hordes of readers. But it is kinda important, so read on…

In Scotland:

The SNP will be able to pass its budget, second time around, thanks to the support of the Lib Dems. As the BBC reports:

In return for the party’s backing, ministers have agreed to take forward a strategy for boosting the economy. … The agreement was reached after Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens combined to vote down the budget in parliament last week, saying it would fail to help the Scottish economy through the

…

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Posted in London, News and Scotland | Tagged , , , , , and | Leave a comment
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