We’ll be covering the US Election results night live here on Liberal Democrat Voice from 11pm on Tuesday.
You can join in by using the Twitter hashtag #LDVUSA, which will include your tweet on the scrolling page here on LDV. You’ll also be able to comment here on the screen using the Coveritlive.com tool.
There’ll be commentary from the LDV editorial team and Lib Dem bloggers throughout the night, plus updates from leading US news and commentary Twitter streams.
It’ll be a good place to …
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 550 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
LDV asked: Do you support or oppose the Lib Dems being in the Coalition Government with the Conservatives? (Comparison with September’s figures.)
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 298th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (28 October-3 November, 2012), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
MP John Hemming’s fury over ‘cover-ups’ (Daily Express)
A LIB Dem MP threatened to resign the party whip last night and sit as an independent unless child protection was treated “more seriously”. John Hemming said the Government was “dangerously complacent” about the level of cover-ups at children’s homes and in the wider family justice system. He said if ministers did not demonstrate “a change of attitude”, he would withdraw his “personal support for the Government”.
Mentally impaired people ‘exploited by court-appointed deputies’ (BBC News)
Action is needed to prevent vulnerable people being ripped-off by those appointed by the courts to manage
…
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 550 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
LDV asked: If you had a vote in the US presidential election, would you support Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?
Last Wednesday I was up before the selection panel. Beforehand I was experiencing that curious mix of feelings that is at once confidence and nervousness. I had no idea how to dress. What does a typical Lib Dem wear? A bit of lippy and my poshest high heels? My usual casually crumped look, replete with a hat that Dr Seuss would be proud of? A business suit? Lipstick and high heels won.
The day began badly with an encounter with Maxwell Tarmac-Smyth – the “Mad Max” of Libbyshire politics. He’s second peg in the Tory oligarchy that runs Libbyshire. He’s the …
The first of Nick Clegg’s new ‘Letter from the Leader’ series has been emailed to party members this morning. Here it is:
I want to start writing to you, as a supporter of the Liberal Democrats, regularly and more informally than I have in the past. I want to give you a bit more of an insight into what’s going on behind those Whitehall doors and how we, as Lib Dems, are dealing with the issues and challenges that come up.
An issue that gets raised again and
…
Thanks to the kind efforts of Tim Pickstone and colleagues at ALDC and Tim Prater and co. at Prater Raines, the newly revived Liberal Democrat campaign buttons have now been tested successfully on websites run using their own systems.
Sometimes having a microphone thrust under your nose instantly crystalizes your thoughts. As you hear yourself speak, you realise you have strong opinions when a moment before you didn’t know what to think.
On Thursday night, as I left a Police and Crime Commissioner hustings in Shropshire, I was struggling to gather my thoughts. A reporter from BBC Radio Shropshire, gloriously named James Bond, thrust a microphone at me. “Andy. What did you think of the candidates?”
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 550 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
LDV asked: Do you think, as a whole, the Liberal Democrats are on the right course or on the wrong track? (Comparison with September’s figures.)
Over at the Endeavours Public Affairs blog, Lib Dem MEP for London Sarah Ludford looks at this Tuesday’s presidential election and what it means for Europe. Here’s an excerpt:
The Obama administration has in any case been perceived as not very interested in Europe, except as a source of financial and economic worry, with a strategic shift of US focus to the Asia-Pacific region distracting from relations with the EU. It’s a sobering cause for reflection that neither candidate has talked about Europe in their campaigns, even in the televised debate devoted to foreign affairs.
Mark Valladares reported here yesterday the ‘temporary withdrawal of the Election Registration and Administration Bill’. That temporary appears to have become a bit more permanent, according to the BBC:
A Lords vote to delay the review of constituency boundaries until 2018 has been postponed “indefinitely”. The vote on an amendment to delay the changes, tabled by Labour and signed by Lib Dem and other peers, was originally expected on Wednesday and postponed until Monday. But government sources say it has now been delayed to an unspecified date. It follows reports that Downing St was unaware Lib Dems supported the motion
…
I blogged last month about the new pamphlet from the Liberal Democrat History Group, Mothers of Liberty: Women who built British Liberalism, a series of biographies of famous women liberals, which details the contribution of women to Liberal politics from the eighteenth century to the present day.
That was launched at a conference fringe meeting, chaired by Lynne Featherstone and featuring three excellent speakers:
Here’s an interesting twist to the tale of Lee Barron, the latest Labour Police Commissioner candidate who has had to pull out for a previous conviction.
This has come to light too late in the day for him to actually pull out of the election, so his name will still be on the ballot paper with the Labour Party’s name and logo next to it. If he’s elected, he will have to immediately resign, triggering a by-election.
For voters who don’t follow the news that closely, there is therefore …
It’s Saturday morning, so here are twelve thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices…
Where now for the immigration debate? – Sarah Mulley in the New Statesman with an excellent analysis: ‘the public don’t (on the whole) feel that immigration is a problem in their own local communities, although a large majority do feel that it is a problem for the country as a whole.’
The Empire Strikes Back: Ofqual, and the omnishambles of assessment – Tom Bennett on the latest GCSE controversy: ‘let’s be …
It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:
With the impending demise of Liberal Democrat News, the question of what to do about advertisements for Parliamentary and other candidate selections suddenly becomes important. Happily, the English Candidates Committee is on the case. Returning officers around the country have received an e-mail from Great George Street as follows;
Dear Returning Officer,
As you may be aware, Lib Dem News is changing to be a monthly magazine from 16 November onwards and the old libdems4parliament site no longer functions effectively. As such, in future, selection adverts will go direct to the Candidates Office and adverts will be hosted for free online on …
The sad fact is that the UK has the highest proportion of pedestrian road deaths of any European country – followed closely by Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece. An even sadder statistic is that the most common cause of death among 5-14 year olds (more boys than girls) is being a pedestrian hit by a motor vehicle.
All the evidence suggests that moving from a 30mph to 20mph limit on residential roads will reduce the death toll. A recent PACTS (Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety) report found that child casualties fell by 67% where 20mph schemes were introduced.
The lack of a joined-up growth strategy has been this Government’s Achilles heel. This week’s report from the Heseltine Review finally provides one. Some on the Tory backbenches will urge David Cameron and George Osborne to ignore many of the recommendations, and the swathes of evidence standing behind them, in favour of abdicating responsibility for the economic recovery to the private sector. Jacob Rees-Mogg predictably caricatures the findings as favouring a 1960s approach to regional development – his preferred course being deregulation. The Heseltine Review embodies …
It would be fair to say that this week’s preview is, how should I put it, rather provisional, as a large chunk of next week’s scheduled business is… ummmm… no longer scheduled. That may have something to do with this week’s developments over the Election Registration and Administration Bill…
Election registration bill withdrawn from Lords business as Tories facing defeat over cancelling boundary review.They still won’t succeed.
— Chris Rennard (@LordRennard) November 1, 2012
However, here’s what we’re expecting…
It’s fair to say that Monday’s business has been gutted, following the temporary withdrawal of the Election …
I spent months canvassing for the Euro-elections last time around. No voter said they wanted more EU spending. Only one voter (step forward, Welwyn Garden City) told me that we would get his vote in the Euro elections because his normal party was too anti-European. So Stephen Tall is right to suggest a doorstep test on EU finance. And no one can be very surprised that the House of Commons voted in favour of a cut.
But Nick Clegg was surely right yesterday morning to point out that a real-terms cut is undeliverable. The negotiations on the next MFF (seven …
OK, I know due legal process and all that is important. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
But sometimes you don’t have to wait until the police and legal systems have done their stuff to have a firm view.
And when you look at all the evidence the media has been reporting, it’s pretty clear he’s guilty, isn’t it?
It’s even become a standing joke that you just have to look at him to know he’s just the sort of person who would commit those crimes. Perhaps like me you heard the jokes on the last episode of the News Quiz and …
Nick Clegg made a speech earlier today setting out his vision for the role the UK should play in the European Union.
You can read what Clegg had to say (minus, unfortunately, the “party political” segment which has been removed by the Cabinet Office) below, and what the Voice’s Stephen Tall thinks he should have said here. And here’s his fellow co-editor Mark Pack’s take on the speech.
A bit of party news today with various posts being filled. Paul Burstow has been elected chair of the Parliamentary Party, succeeding Lorely Burt who in the reshuffle became PPS to Danny Alexander.
Meanwhile there have also been changes at both the Commons and Lords end to the Co-Chairs of various Liberal Democrat Party Parliamentary Committees (often given the same acronym, PPCs, as used for party candidates).
The full list of names now is:
Writing in the Guardian, Lord (Matthew) Oakeshott is typically forthright in his assessment of the chancellor’s performance and the changes he would like to see:
What we need instead is a far bolder plan for economic recovery. I call it plan C for construction and capital investment rather than plan B but we can all agree at least, on this side of the debate, that Osborne isn’t working. We must be mad to treat our record low long-term interest rates as some sort of virility symbol, instead of an unrepeatable opportunity to finance desperately needed investment.
The pension funds and insurance companies
…
I take my hat off to Michael Heseltine for producing a report on growth that has passion, commitment and vision. It is far cry from the usual dry as dust, Treasury reports that obsessively tinker at the economic margins. Alas, despite its punchy prose the Heseltine report is flawed.
There is a lot to celebrate in this report. Heseltine condemns a dysfunctional Whitehall for neutering local leadership: “As Whitehall has taken more powers so its distrust of local decision makers has increased. At the first sign of trouble, further powers are wrested back to the centre.” But like Eric Pickles, he does not trust
Nick Clegg will today make the kind of speech which makes it very hard for Lib Dems to push the idea that our party is serious about reform of the European Union. According to the BBC, he will dismiss the chances of any significant changes to the EU’s budget:
In a speech to be delivered to the Chatham House international affairs think-tank, Mr Clegg will say Labour is well aware there was “absolutely no prospect” of achieving a real-terms cut. “Their change of heart is dishonest, it’s hypocritical.
…
Dundonald ward, in Merton, was awarded the “most canvassed ward in London” at the London Liberal Democrats regional conference. As one of the people co-ordinating the campaign in the ward, it was great that the hard work was recognised, but I was also a bit surprised.
Not surprised as in “can’t believe we’d won”, but surprised in the fact it didn’t feel like hard work, once the initial groundwork had been done. In reality, although there were times where we were out doing surveys, recruiting or canvassing twice a week, it averaged about once a week. The canvass teams were never huge, 3-5 people, with the
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Conference or What? (Roderick Lynch)
Where next on the Triple Lock? (Shaun Ennis)
I watched Ed Davey’s speech. Here’s why it matters (Kamran Hussain)
Citizens abroad and party strategy (Tom McAdam)
How to capture the Tonbridge Tories (Cody Butler)
Alan Garner: The Edge of The Ceiling
My days in the Lib Dem News broom cupboard with Jock Gallagher
Children and their parents need holidays
The Joy of Six 1581
Jeremy Clarkson left red-faced over 'stolen' sheep that were never even missing
Lib Dems come from third to win by-election in Katie Lam's constituency
Brexit was a 'unilateral declaration of political impotence'
Ken Farnes: The forgotten England fast bowler who died in WWII
Local campaigner wants to see the River Teme given rights
PM 
Peter Davies 
Mick Taylor 
Peter Wrigley 
Mary Reid 
