Stephen Tall

Cumbria update: Lib Dems quit joint Tory administration

By Stephen Tall | Mon 4th August 2008 - 7:08 pm

Last week Lib Dem Voice reported on Shenanigans in Cumbria, and the likely break-up of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition which has run the County Council since 2001 following the dismissal by the Conservative council leader of his Liberal Democrat deputy, Joan Stocker. Well, now, the inevitable has come to pass, and the Lib Dems have called an end to the joint administration, with the Tories now running the council as a minority group until the elections in 2009.

Here’s the local party’s press release:

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Posted in Local government and News | 2 Comments
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Will Howells

Blog of the Year Awards 2008

By Will Howells | Mon 4th August 2008 - 4:31 pm

The Blog of the Year Awards, run in conjunction with Liberal Democrat Voice, are back for their third year. As usual, they’ll be awarded in a budget lavish ceremony at the party’s autumn conference in Bournemouth.

We have retired a few categories from last year and introduced some new ones. This year’s awards are:

  • Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st August 2007)
  • Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office
  • Best use of blogging or social networking by a Liberal Democrat
  • Best posting on a Liberal Democrat blog (since 1st September 2007)
  • Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog
  • Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year

The …

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Posted in Best of the blogs | Tagged | 55 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV members’ survey, August 2008 (1): the Lib Dems and by-elections

By Stephen Tall | Mon 4th August 2008 - 7:45 am

All this week, Lib Dem Voice will be publishing the results of our first ever survey of party members. Some 135 of you accessed the survey via our private members’ forum. We don’t pretend it’s a representative sample, but that doesn’t mean it’s without value either. We hope you, LDV’s readers, find it interesting. Perhaps the wider party will, too. This is the first in what we intend to be a monthly survey – if you have ideas for future survey questions, please email me at [email protected].

We began by asking about the party’s performance in recent by-elections.

LDV asked: …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Clegg: Brown should miss Olympic closing ceremony

By Mark Pack | Sun 3rd August 2008 - 11:04 am

From today’s Indepdendent:

In a letter sent to the Prime Minister today, Nick Clegg calls the decision to award the Olympics to China a “mistake” and appeals to Mr Brown not to give the Games further political endorsement.

“China’s recent behaviour is a humiliation for the International Olympic Committee,” Mr Clegg writes. “Given their utter failure to deliver on their human rights promises, it is simply untenable for any representative of the United Kingdom to give political endorsement to these Games.

“I therefore urge you not to attend the closing ceremony of the Beijing Games, or

…

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Posted in Europe / International | 9 Comments
Tavish Scott MSP

Tavish Scott: why I want to be Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats

By Tavish Scott MSP | Sat 2nd August 2008 - 5:21 pm

Scottish politics used to be predictable: Labour was the largest party, the SNP was bitter about it, the Tories were resented for existing and the Liberal Democrats were a voice of reason. But the results of the Holyrood election and last week’s Glasgow East by-election remind us that times have changed. Political parties are having to reposition themselves and adapt to the new dynamics. It’s a dangerous game, with the future of our country at stake.

For the SNP, the plan is clear. Pick fights with London, luxuriate in Labour’s decline, and hope for a Tory government at Westminster. Salmond’s …

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Posted in Leadership Election, Op-eds and Scotland | Tagged | 4 Comments
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Mark Pack

A case of media bias? The Sun, MySpace and Facebook

By Mark Pack | Sat 2nd August 2008 - 11:51 am

Is The Sun (owner: Rupert Murdoch) indulging in a campaign of partisan reporting designed to damage Facebook, one of the main rivals to MySpace (owner: Rupert Murdoch)?

That’s a question that has been raised a few times on blogs (such as towards the end of this posting ), so I thought I would take a look at The Sun’s website and compare the coverage on there of Facebook versus MySpace.

To be fair to The Sun, I asked the site’s own search engine to give me the top fifteen headlines for stories including the word “MySpace” and then the same …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 19 Comments
Stephen Tall

The PPC Files (6): the 3 best things about being a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate

By Stephen Tall | Sat 2nd August 2008 - 9:20 am

Imagine what it’s like to be a Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate – tasked with leading and motivating a group of diverse volunteers against all the odds, and organising foot-slogging campaigns on a shoe-string budget that will get you and the party noticed.

Lib Dem Voice contacted a dozen PPCs to find out what they really think about the experience. We guaranteed anonymity to ensure those responding felt able to say what they think, and not simply stick to the obligatory it’s-such-a-privilege line. Of the 12, seven are men and five women, and they include one ethnic minority candidate. The …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg in the news

By Mark Pack | Sat 2nd August 2008 - 7:55 am

Nick’s been in the media a lot in the last few days, including talking about housing (interview with 24dash.com), a more general interview with Building magazine, writing about the fight against corruption (with an article in the Yorkshire Post) and the prospects for getting Liberal Democrat MPs in Hull and Derby.

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Mark Pack

Boris Johnson forgets another election promise

By Mark Pack | Fri 1st August 2008 - 8:35 pm

Well, well. Here we go again. Not content with overlooking the existence of a key Olympics memo, forgetting that he spent £465,000 on consultants, both ruling out and also not ruling out North Kent as an airport location, both wanting a statue of Sir Keith Park on the fourth plinth and yet also not wanting one, and of course also failing to ensure that full checks were carried out before he appointed senior staff, Boris has now tried to dodge another election promise.

By claiming he never made it.

Which is a bit of a problem given that …

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Posted in London | Tagged | 12 Comments

Ross Finnie: why I want to be Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats

By Ross Finnie | Fri 1st August 2008 - 2:21 pm

I want to be Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats because I believe I have the ability to drive the Party forward by making Liberal Democrat values and policies relevant to the people of Scotland.

At present I believe our message has become blurred and lacks a distinctive Liberal Democrat edge. We lack a political narrative that brings clarity and cohesion to our political projection.

I want us to concentrate on three themes:-

We must become regarded as the Party that stands up for individual freedom – not only human rights and civil liberties but also freedom from poor education, poor health, poverty …

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Posted in Leadership Election, Op-eds and Scotland | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

A look back at the polls: July

By Stephen Tall | Fri 1st August 2008 - 1:20 pm

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 eight polls published in July:

Tories 41%, Labour 28%, Lib Dems 19% – Populus/Times (8th July)
Tories 47%, Labour 25%, Lib Dems 16% – YouGov/Sunday Times (13th July)
Tories 45%, Labour 24%, Lib Dems 16% …

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Posted in Op-eds and Polls | 11 Comments
Stephen Tall

The PPC Files (5): How has becoming a PPC affected your career?

By Stephen Tall | Fri 1st August 2008 - 9:20 am

Imagine what it’s like to be a Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate – tasked with leading and motivating a group of diverse volunteers against all the odds, and organising foot-slogging campaigns on a shoe-string budget that will get you and the party noticed.

Lib Dem Voice contacted a dozen PPCs to find out what they really think about the experience. We guaranteed anonymity to ensure those responding felt able to say what they think, and not simply stick to the obligatory it’s-such-a-privilege line. Of the 12, seven are men and five women, and they include one ethnic minority candidate. The constituencies …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

Vince: how to tackle fuel poverty

By Stephen Tall | Thu 31st July 2008 - 7:49 pm

The Lib Dems’ deputy leader and shadow chancellor has written for today’s Independent setting out his measures for tackling fuel poverty. You can read the article in full here, but here’s a snippet to whet your appetites:

The recent announcements by British Gas and the French electricity utility EDF, that they plan to increase gas and electricity prices by a third and a fifth respectively, have major, and worrying, implications for those on the edge of fuel poverty. This comes on top of industry-wide increases at the start of the year. Even in the balmy heat of midsummer, people are

…

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Posted in News | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Liberator on the Bones Commission: “Clegg has just effected a power grab”

By Stephen Tall | Thu 31st July 2008 - 5:49 pm

There’s a must-read article in the latest Liberator taking a behind-the-scenes look at the clearly heated internal Lib Dem discussions of the Bones Commission into party reform. You can read it in full here.

Three things stand out:

1. That the report receives a general welcome (albeit some way down the page): “Much of Bones is sensible. Its central thrust seeks to deliver Clegg’s incautious commitment to get 150 MPs by the election after next. Its warning that resources need to be poured into a second tier of 200-odd winnable seats will be widely welcomed, in particular by critics of the …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

Are you using the party’s web browser toolbar?

By Mark Pack | Thu 31st July 2008 - 2:55 pm

If you use Google to search the Internet, then you can redirect some of the advertising revenue from Google’s ads into the party’s coffers (sorry, not your own!) if you use the Google search box in the party’s free Internet browser toolbar.*

Once you’ve got the toolbar, just stick your search queries into its search box rather than into a Google search box anywhere else, and – bingo! – money starts being paid to the party. (We don’t get to see what your searches are, by the way, we just get a cut of the total advertising revenue from all …

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Posted in Online politics | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Membership of political parties –from mass movements to freakish oddities?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 31st July 2008 - 12:11 pm

The news in today’s Telegraph that the Labour party’s membership is now at its lowest in a hundred years is a stark wake-up call for the governing party (and doubtless will in the well-worn cliché of tired journalistic prose “add to the pressure on the Prime Minister”). From 400,000 at the height of Tony Blair’s popularity to just 177,000 today – that’s some drop.

But let’s put to one side the tribal nonsense for a moment – not least because what’s happening to Labour is reflected more widely.

One of the (perhaps fortunately) ignored stories of the last leadership election …

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Posted in News, Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | 27 Comments
Mark Pack

IOC approves China’s censorship of journalists

By Mark Pack | Thu 31st July 2008 - 9:47 am

Via the BBC:

On Tuesday,  were unable to access the website of Amnesty International as it released a report criticising China’s human rights record.

Some international news pages and sites that dealt with issues such as Tibet were also inaccessible, journalists said.

As the BBC explains:

China enforces tough internet controls, but said when it bid for the Games that journalists would be free to report.

And the IOC’s attitude? International Olympic Committee press commission chairman Kevan Gosper confirmed that this had at least in part been agreed to by the IOC when he said that,

Some of the IOC officials had negotiated with the

…

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Posted in Europe / International and News | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

The PPC Files (4): What’s different about being a Lib Dem PPC compared to being a Labour/Tory PPC?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 31st July 2008 - 9:20 am

Imagine what it’s like to be a Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate – tasked with leading and motivating a group of diverse volunteers against all the odds, and organising foot-slogging campaigns on a shoe-string budget that will get you and the party noticed.

Lib Dem Voice contacted a dozen PPCs to find out what they really think about the experience. We guaranteed anonymity to ensure those responding felt able to say what they think, and not simply stick to the obligatory it’s-such-a-privilege line. Of the 12, seven are men and five women, and they include one ethnic minority candidate. The constituencies …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Get the party’s latest films on your iPod

By Mark Pack | Wed 30th July 2008 - 6:40 pm

You’ve probably seen the Liberal Democrat TV feed which appears on numerous sites (such as this one), carrying the latest YouTube films from the party.

Watch the party films on your iPodNow you can also get the films on your iPod, with the latest films automatically appearing as they are released.

The feed to subscribe to is:
http://feeds.libdems.org.uk/LDiTunes

(In iTunes, go to the Advanced menu and then Subscribe to Podcast. Enter the above address in the URL: window.)

This feed supplies the non-subtitled versions of the party’s films. …

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Posted in News and Online politics | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #75

By Stephen Tall | Wed 30th July 2008 - 6:26 pm

Welcome to the 75th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (20-26th July), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

Let’s get straight down to it, in traditional descending order: (Lembit fans may care to avert their eyes).

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

You shouldn’t complain about media bias

By Mark Pack | Wed 30th July 2008 - 6:10 pm

That’s the unconventional conclusion from a thoughtful piece by Danny Finkelstein:

When I worked for the last Conservative Prime Minister and then for the party leader in opposition, we were obsessed with the idea of media bias. I spent hours on memos, assembling evidence.

I vaguely realised even then that it was a waste of time. Now I think it was actively counter-productive.

Why? Read the full piece to see (though I think actually his piece is more about how to avoid complaints that are counter-productive rather than saying that trying to tackle media bias is itself misguided).

Posted in News | Tagged | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

The PPC Files (3): What do your family and friends think about your decision to run for Parliament?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 30th July 2008 - 9:20 am

Imagine what it’s like to be a Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate – tasked with leading and motivating a group of diverse volunteers against all the odds, and organising foot-slogging campaigns on a shoe-string budget that will get you and the party noticed.

Lib Dem Voice contacted a dozen PPCs to find out what they really think about the experience. We guaranteed anonymity to ensure those responding felt able to say what they think, and not simply stick to the obligatory it’s-such-a-privilege line. Of the 12, seven are men and five women, and they include one ethnic minority candidate. The constituencies …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 27 Comments
Stephen Tall

The LDV members’ poll: have you voted yet?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th July 2008 - 6:42 pm

Last Friday we invited Lib Dem Voice readers to take part in our first ever members’ poll. More than 100 of you have so far done so for which many thanks. For those of you who haven’t yet filled it in you have until midnight on Friday, 1st August.

It takes between 5-10 minutes to complete, and you can find the link to the survey in our members’ forum – simply look for the thread, ‘FIRST LDV MEMBERS’ SURVEY – August 2008’ under the ‘General’ heading.

Topics we are asking your opinion on include:
– the party’s performance in recent …

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Posted in Voice polls | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Michael Brown ‘on the run’ ahead of fraud trial

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th July 2008 - 5:22 pm

According to Sky News:

Police have issued an arrest warrant for Michael Brown after he skipped bail. He is the Lib Dems’ biggest ever donor, having given £2.4m to the party in the run up to the 2005 General Election. He was due to stand trial in September accused of a string of fraud and money laundering offences. But a judge at Southwark Crown Court issued an arrest warrant today after he breached his bail conditions.

All credit to Sky, though, for noting what few other news outlets ever do – but which LDV always does – the view of …

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Posted in News | 1 Comment
The Voice

Nick Clegg’s summer message

By The Voice | Tue 29th July 2008 - 2:34 pm

Courtesy of the party website, here’s a video of Nick Clegg’s summer message to Liberal Democrats:

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Posted in Lib Dem TV and News | 48 Comments
Stephen Tall

Shenanigans in Cumbria – when should elected representatives get the blame?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th July 2008 - 1:33 pm

There’s an interesting report in yesterday’s Cumbrian News and Star reporting on the seemingly likely break-up of the Conservative / Lib Dem alliance that has run the County Council for the last seven years. This follows the sacking by the Conservative council leader of his Liberal Democrat deputy, Joan Stocker, following a significant audit failure in the Council’s finance department:

It emerged on Friday that millions of pounds of spending had been wrongly categorised in the 2007-8 accounts. Although no cash has gone missing, the errors have ruined any chance the council had of improving its rating as one of

…

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Posted in Local government and Op-eds | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV readers say: Margaret Thatcher was a Bad Thing for Britain

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th July 2008 - 1:07 pm

That’s the overwhelming verdict of almost two-thirds of Lib Dem Voice readers, according to our recent poll asking, “do you think Margaret Thatcher was a good or a bad thing for Britain?”

Here are the results in full…

We asked: “On balance, do you believe Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister was a good or a bad thing for the UK?”

You said:
• Yes, Margaret Thatcher was a Good Thing on balance: 162 (37%)
• No, Margaret Thatcher was a Bad Thing on balance: 272 (63%)
Total Votes: 434. Poll ran: 19th-28th July 2008

Posted in Voice polls | 14 Comments
Stephen Tall

The PPC Files (2): what do you wish you’d known before you became a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th July 2008 - 9:20 am

Imagine what it’s like to be a Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate – tasked with leading and motivating a group of diverse volunteers against all the odds, and organising foot-slogging campaigns on a shoe-string budget that will get you and the party noticed.

Lib Dem Voice contacted a dozen PPCs to find out what they really think about the experience. We guaranteed anonymity to ensure those responding felt able to say what they think, and not simply stick to the obligatory it’s-such-a-privilege line. Of the 12, seven are men and five women, and they include one ethnic minority candidate. The constituencies …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

NEW POLL: Do you think Barack Obama is all that?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 28th July 2008 - 9:07 pm

There are now, believe it or not, only 100 days until the race to become the 44th President of the United States of America is decided. And there’s no doubt who continues to grab the headlines, and not only here in Europe: Barack Obama’s candidacy has enthralled not just the Democratic party, but much of the western world. But why?

Perhaps for some it is the relief of having a plausible Democratic presidential nominee; that he isn’t George W. Bush; that he claims to represent a ‘new politics’ of change; that he can forge bipartisan consensus; that he is a compelling …

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Posted in LDVUSA and Voice polls | 23 Comments
Stephen Tall

Is this the beginning of the end for Brown?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 28th July 2008 - 6:34 pm

It’s silly season, so the temptation to dismiss the current media frenzy over Gordon Brown is a reasonable one. The faint sound of a barrel being scraped can be heard when MPs like Gordon Prentice – a long-term foe of Mr Brown – are given the platform to keep the wheels of the bandwagon rolling (to mix my metaphors). Yet it’s evident, even to outsiders, that the Prime Minister is in serious, serious trouble.

When your deputy as party leader can argue that the country has “not yet seen the best of the Prime Minister” – and that …

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Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments
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