Liberal Democrat Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Dirty Dozen #2

By Jonathan Calder | Tue 26th February 2008 - 9:04 am

When I agreed to write this monthly round up of Labour and Tory blogging I said I would aim to “keep a balance between pointing to interesting postings that we Lib Dems may have missed and laughing at the folly of our opponents”.

So here goes.

Posted in Best of the blogs | Tagged ConservativeHome, iain dale, jonathan calder and recess monkey | 3 Comments

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The mysterious case of Mr Clegg, a piece of string and a banana

By The Voice | Mon 25th February 2008 - 7:28 pm

Watch carefully 31 seconds in:

Posted in Online politics | 3 Comments

Is Nick Clegg right to back the Speaker?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 25th February 2008 - 6:57 pm

The House of Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, has found himself in the full glare of unwelcome publicity this weekend, following allegations that he has misused his Parliamentary allowances:

In the past two weeks it has emerged that some black cab trips made by Mr Martin’s wife to buy food were claimed on expenses, that allowances were claimed for a home he owns outright in Scotland, and that he used air miles earned on official business to buy first-class tickets for some relatives to fly to London over the New Year.”

As none of this is outside the rules it might not …

Posted in News and Parliament | Tagged james forsyth, matthew oakeshott and nick clegg | 8 Comments

Nick Clegg on Europe

By The Voice | Mon 25th February 2008 - 4:52 pm

Nick Clegg has a piece in today’s Guardian explaining his view on Europe:

The debate about Europe has been a thorn in the side of British politics for decades. Now the wound has become infected. Europhile and Eurosceptic trading blows about the Lisbon treaty in grand rhetoric that obscures the facts. If you’re pro-European, as I am, you’re accused of being a sellout. If you’re anti-European, like most Conservatives, you’re accused of being a headbanger. It isn’t new, but it isn’t edifying either.

It’s time we pulled out the thorn and healed the wound, time for a debate politicians have been

…

Posted in News | 5 Comments

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Opinion: The academy model should underpin the next stage of education reform

By Elizabeth Truss and Laura Kounine | Mon 25th February 2008 - 4:04 pm

The Labour and Conservative parties have both supported the academies programme as the key driver of educational reform. The Liberal Democrats, in contrast, have been more critical towards academies, ambivalent about their ability to select 10 per cent of pupils by aptitude and their status as a programme of central government rather than of local authorities.

But the Party appears to be revising its position. In his key speech on public sector reform, on 12th January, Nick Clegg said that there is “nothing wrong with allowing schools to exist outside direct daily local government management – as long as …

Posted in The Independent View | 7 Comments

Win mugs, win money

By Mark Pack | Mon 25th February 2008 - 1:55 pm

There are two chances to win, win, win still open:

You have until February 29th to submit any WordPress plugins for the chance to win £200. Details here.
Liberal Democrat Voice is offering one of our fantastic mugs in a prize draw for anyone who promotes the site in their local members and supporters newsletter. Copies of newsletters much be with us by end of March; artwork to put in your newsletter and competition details are here.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Weekly catchup 18th-24th Feb

By Alex Foster | Mon 25th February 2008 - 10:16 am

If you were reading last week, you’ll have seen we’ve decided to make life easier for our readers with a once-weekly post of all of the previous week’s highlights. For the best of LDV, just click the “Catchup” category.

Guest writers this week included Lib Dem Shadow Defence Minister Nick Harvey MP writing about our overstretched armed forces, and Sunny Hindal took the opportunity of our Independent View slot to write a piece about the website Liberal Conspiracy. The man so popular Jonathan Calder founded a cult in his honour, Vince Cable MP, also found …

Posted in A weekly catchup | 5 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #53

By Stephen Tall | Sun 24th February 2008 - 9:46 pm

Welcome to the 53rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (17th-23rd February), together with a quintet hand-picked by Lib Dem blog readers you might otherwise have missed.

Here we go, in descending order of popularity:

Posted in Best of the blogs | 3 Comments

Something for the weekend: Hen Wlad fy Nhadau

By Will Howells | Sun 24th February 2008 - 11:14 am

Hello from Llandudno, North Wales, where you find me wi-fi-ing away in Venue Cymru, the conference centre currently hosting the Welsh Liberal Democrats’ spring conference.

Rare bits in today’s innuendo-packed Something for the Weekend from Wales: Jenny Willott’s future; David Steel’s past; Nick Clegg’s tongue; Vince Cable’s underwear; and more!

Posted in Something for the Weekend | 1 Comment

Ming’s behind-the-scenes account of CK’s downfall

By Stephen Tall | Sat 23rd February 2008 - 9:44 pm

Ming Campbell’s autobiography is due out shortly – you can pre-order it from Amazon here, and earn the Lib Dems some commission – and is currently being serialised by the Daily Mail. No surprise that the first instalment should focus on Charles Kennedy’s battle with alcoholism and his forced resignation as leader in January 2006.

Much of the account is familiar – the growing awareness of Charles’s problems within the Westminster village, and the protectiveness of Charles’s inner team. But Ming also describes his first realisation of how Charles’s drinking was beginning to impede his ability to do …

Posted in News | Tagged charles kennedy and Ming Campbell | 22 Comments

Send in your Golden Dozen nominations

By Stephen Tall | Sat 23rd February 2008 - 9:50 am

Regular readers of our weekly Golden Dozen feature will know that we have opened up five slots to reader nominations. All you have to do is drop me a line at [email protected], highlighting the best Lib Dem blog postings from the past week, and providing the web-link and author, and any tagline comment you care to have published. Self-nomination is just fine. I can’t guarantee inclusion, of course, but will do my best to work my way round different Lib Dem blogs over the weeks.

Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment

Northern Rock: is Gordon or Dave faring worst?

By Stephen Tall | Fri 22nd February 2008 - 7:06 pm

Much of the comment Lib Dem Voice has featured on Northern Rock has centred – understandably – on Vince Cable’s sure-footed performance as the party’s shadow chancellor. Vince was, we all know, the first to warn of the impending credit crunch, and the first to advocate temporary nationalisation of Northern Rock as the least worst way to protect the taxpayers’ interest. As a result, we Lib Dems find ourselves in the unusual position of developing a reputation for economic credibility with the media and public.

But it’s just as interesting to analyse how the other two parties are weathering the Northern …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged ConservativeHome | 3 Comments

Are you on your way to the Forum?

By Stephen Tall | Fri 22nd February 2008 - 11:20 am

Don’t forget, if you’re a party member you can register for the Lib Dem Voice members’ forum – in which case you get to read and post on a rich variety of topics which don’t always make it into the public blog. Here’s a selection of the currently active threads to whet your appetites:

* PPCs for the next General Election
* Cannabis or Skunk?
* Great article on Vince in today’s Guardian
* Artwork for leaflets
* Do you web 2.0?
* Berwick on Tweed
* Blogging help required

(Disclaimer: though LDV’s forum moderators do our best to ensure membership is restricted to party members …

Posted in Site news | 8 Comments

Is this why Lee Jasper was reported to the police?

By Mark Pack | Fri 22nd February 2008 - 11:06 am

Ken Livingstone tells the world he is getting the police to investigate he senior adviser Lee Jasper.

Except that he doesn’t then give the police any specific criminal allegations to investigate.

Result? The police say

To date there have been no criminal allegations reported to us in connection with this individual.

All a bit odd you might think. Why tell the world you are reporting to someone to the police if you don’t then give them something proper to investigate?

The answer may well be in this bit of spin on one Labour blog, that of Tim McLoughlin:

The police have decided that Ken Livingstone’s

…

Posted in London | 1 Comment

Opinion: Britain’s Town Centres – Designed for Disorder

By Benjamin Mathis | Fri 22nd February 2008 - 7:50 am

Last Saturday night I decided to go and buy a loaf of bread. Since I live in the centre of town and don’t own a car, this was a challenge in itself but that’s definitely a theme for another day. What it meant, however was that I came face to face with the reality of what our night-time city centres are really like.

No, there weren’t clusters of ‘hoodies’ dealing drugs or ladettes urinating in the street or any of the clichés of the tabloid town-centre but there was a very odd atmosphere. Everyone but me seemed to be devoted to …

Posted in Op-eds | 21 Comments

BBC Question Time: open thread

By Stephen Tall | Thu 21st February 2008 - 9:47 pm

‘The cult of Cable’ – rather sweetly profiled by The Guardian’s Michael White yesterday – comes to tonight’s BBC Question Time (broadcast on BBC1 and online from 10.35 pm GMT).

And what better week could there be for Vince to be a guest, with Labour having finally accepted the Lib Dem shadow Chancellor’s advice to nationalise Northern Rock to protect the interests of taxpayers, with the Tories left as utterly confused (and clueless) bystanders.

The QT panel will also include the Secretary of State for Transport Ruth Kelly, Conservative shadow secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform Alan …

Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged bbc question time | 15 Comments

Tories lose control of Southampton; Lib Dem defection in Middlesbrough

By Stephen Tall | Thu 21st February 2008 - 6:54 pm

First up, news of the Tories being ejected from the town hall in Southampton:

The Conservatives have lost control of Southampton City Council. The change came as the full council met on Wednesday to agree the 2008/9 budget and fix the new council tax rate. Liberal Democrat and Labour members joined forces to oust the Conservatives and agreed a new budget with a council tax increase of 3.49%.

If you want to find out more, try the Southern Daily Echo report.

Meanwhile news reaches us of a defection from the Lib Dems to Labour in Middlesbrough. There is now …

Posted in News | 1 Comment

Clegg: “I’d love to have one of those really efficient electric scooters”

By Stephen Tall | Thu 21st February 2008 - 6:41 pm

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg answered The Guardian’s questions in their environmental (and virtual) Green Room today. We learn that Nick’s carbon footprint is getting smaller, that he enjoys catching the train, would love an electric scooter, and that he speaks five languages (something sme of us may have heard before). Click here for the full Q&A.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Clegg tackles ID cards on Channel 4

By Will Howells | Thu 21st February 2008 - 3:21 pm

Nick Clegg used his Political Slot on Channel 4 last night to discuss his opposition to the Government’s identity cards and database.

If you missed it, you can watch it right here via the Liberal Democrats’ YouTube account:

Posted in Lib Dem TV and News | 3 Comments

Paddick tops pink poll

By Alex Foster | Thu 21st February 2008 - 1:16 pm

A small but perfectly formed poll on PinkNews.co.uk puts Lib Dem mayoral hopeful into City Hall this May.

Although Labour’s Ken Livingstone wins a plurality of votes, he fails to get over the threshold of 50% needed in the first round for an Supplementary Vote win.

Second-placed Paddick takes enough second-preference votes to push him a hair-breadth ahead of Ken and win the mayoralty.

In the words of Peter Snow, it’s all a bit of fun, and the sample of voters asked is very low – well under the thousand often considered the gold-standard of political polls.

But it’s good news all round …

Posted in London and Polls | 13 Comments

Overstretch

By Nick Harvey | Thu 21st February 2008 - 10:10 am

“Overstretched, underpaid and over there” might be an appropriate modern-day take on the infamous line of the Second World War, used in its original form to describe American GIs in Britain. With intense operations on two fronts, in Afghanistan and Iraq, combined with the cumulative effects of underinvestment by consecutive Conservative and Labour Governments, it is a phrase that pithily describes the modern predicament of our armed forces.

Our Armed Forces are a world-class fighting force, but they are not configured for sustained operations at the present rate. The situation has become so critical …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged armed forces and military covenant | 6 Comments

When is a police investigation not a police investigation?

By Mark Pack | Wed 20th February 2008 - 7:50 pm

When it’s Ken Livingstone it would seem.

The story so far: Ken Livingstone says he’s called in the police to investigate allegations against Lee Jasper and, as a result, has suspended him. He also says the allegations against Jasper are nonsense, which did cause a few people to ask the question of why he was reporting someone to the police when he didn’t think they’d done anything wrong…. (wasting police time, anyone?). But anyway, he says that someone under police investigation has to be suspended for their job, so suspended Jasper was.

And now: the police say actually, despite Ken’s comments, they …

Posted in London | 7 Comments

PMQs: Nick tackles Gordon on Northern Rock and energy prices

By Stephen Tall | Wed 20th February 2008 - 7:45 pm

After last week’s half-term break, there were few surprises at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions: the Lib Dems’ Nick Clegg was able confidently to lead with Labour’s mishandling of the Northern Rock collapse (thanks to Vince Cable’s far-sighted statements), while Tory leader David Cameron (who, with George Osbourne, has been all over the place on the issue) avoided mentioning it in his first round of questions.

Nick followed up – after a pointed dig at the Tories’ “economic illiteracy” – with a ‘bread and butter’ question on energy prices, something which is fast becoming his trademark.

Here’s the Hansard transcript of their exchange:

Posted in News and PMQs | Tagged nick clegg | Leave a comment

Boris on YouTube

By Ryan Cullen | Wed 20th February 2008 - 3:54 pm

Being a high profile celebrity has helped Boris Johnson’s name recognition during the London Mayor contest. But being well known comes with its downside too, as it means that your past failings or blunders are likely to be well known too.

The large collection of films about Boris on YouTube demonstrate this well, he’s a very popular subject, but many of the pieces either mock or criticise him.

We’ve selected five, each of which highlights one particular reason not to support Boris Johnson in the Mayoral election.

You can watch them below, and take part in our online poll to …

Posted in Humour and London | Tagged boris johnson | 2 Comments

Blog awards: Campaign for Gender Balance announces short-list

By James Graham | Wed 20th February 2008 - 9:05 am

The Campaign for Gender Balance has announced the shortlists for its Blog Awards, with the winners to be announced at the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in Liverpool (7th-9th March).

The shortlists are as follows:

BEST BLOG BY A FEMALE LIBERAL DEMOCRAT:

* Charlotte Gore
* Linda Jack’s Lindyloo’s Muze
* Lynne Featherstone’s Parliament and Haringey diary
* Meral Ece’s Meral Musings
* Alix Mortimer’s People’s Republic of Mortimer

This shortlist will form the basis of two awards – …

Posted in Online politics | Tagged Jo Swinson | 13 Comments

Pakistan elections: good news from the North West Frontier?

By Mark Pack | Tue 19th February 2008 - 11:43 pm

Whilst the heavy defeat of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s party has dominated news coverage of the election results, there is also interesting news from the elections in the North West Frontier.

The secular Pashtun nationalist party, the Awami National Party*, appears to be doing well, defeating several Islamist incumbents. This marks a move away from extremists toward moderate secularists in an area that has been widely characterised as a hot-bed of Islamic terrorism and support for terrorism.

* Their website is rather incongrously currently displaying both the latest election results and a “This site is under construction” sign.

Posted in News | 1 Comment

A polite round of applause for The Guardian

By Mark Pack | Tue 19th February 2008 - 10:37 pm

A regular absurdity of political opinion poll coverage in the UK is the way that media outlets often pretend that polls commissioned by other organisation do not exist.

If a polling company carries out, for example, two opinion polls in identical ways for two different newspapers, then the newspaper that publishes the second poll almost invariably ignores the first poll when publishing vote share changes, and instead bases them on the previous poll published in its own pages – even though that previous poll is older than the one published by its rival.

It’s as if at a general election someone reported

…

Posted in Polls | 3 Comments

Hope for 2008

By Kate Heywood | Tue 19th February 2008 - 1:25 pm

Six weeks into the year seems a strange time to think about hope in 2008. Maybe it is a better time than January, away from the pressure of New Year’s resolutions and with a clearer and more realistic view of the year ahead. So here are my hopes for 2008…

Energising new voters

Having recently returned from Washington DC, I was amazed by the way Barack Obama (candidate for Democratic Presidential nominee) had energised people to participate in the democratic primaries. At one of his rallies where I almost saw him (I made it inside, but couldn’t wait the three and a …

Posted in Op-eds | 7 Comments

A liberal conspiracy?

By Sunny Hundal | Tue 19th February 2008 - 10:20 am

I approach this guest article for Liberal Democrat Voice with some trepidation, not least because when I introduced the launch of Liberal Conspiracy a few months ago, it was greeted with some scepticism amongst Lib Dem bloggers. Jonathan Calder called it “a conspiracy against Liberals”, Joe Otten calls us the Lefty Conspiracy and, at worst case, Alix Mortimer said it could be “a plot to draw Liberal Democrats towards Labour”.

There’s no doubt British politics is an incredibly tribal affair and this is reflected in the fact that all our prominent political blogs are tightly aligned …

Posted in The Independent View | Tagged jonathan calder and Liberal Conspiracy | 18 Comments

Op-eds

A plea from a member – more ambition and less equine pacification please… (Nick Baird)
Will the real Green party that cared about people and planet please stand up? (Kobe Bibbon)
We need better conversations on AI and the environment (Josh Matthews)
How to spot a Racist (Ben Rich)
Councils must help music – so music can help their communities flourish (Charlie Clinton & Josh Matthews)

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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

Top of the Blogs: The Dirty Dozen #2

The mysterious case of Mr Clegg, a piece of string and a banana

Is Nick Clegg right to back the Speaker?

More questions over the Financial Service Authority Chairman’s judgement

Nick Clegg on Europe

Opinion: The academy model should underpin the next stage of education reform

Win mugs, win money

Weekly catchup 18th-24th Feb

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #53

Something for the weekend: Hen Wlad fy Nhadau

Ming’s behind-the-scenes account of CK’s downfall

Send in your Golden Dozen nominations

Northern Rock: is Gordon or Dave faring worst?

Are you on your way to the Forum?

Is this why Lee Jasper was reported to the police?

Opinion: Britain’s Town Centres – Designed for Disorder

BBC Question Time: open thread

Tories lose control of Southampton; Lib Dem defection in Middlesbrough

Clegg: “I’d love to have one of those really efficient electric scooters”

Clegg tackles ID cards on Channel 4

Paddick tops pink poll

Overstretch

When is a police investigation not a police investigation?

PMQs: Nick tackles Gordon on Northern Rock and energy prices

Boris on YouTube

Blog awards: Campaign for Gender Balance announces short-list

Pakistan elections: good news from the North West Frontier?

A polite round of applause for The Guardian

Hope for 2008

A liberal conspiracy?

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

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Britain should be proud, but never afraid of the stranger

Lib Dem Women: Amplifying women’s voices at Conference

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