The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #277

By The Voice | Sun 10th June 2012 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 277th 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 (3-9 June, 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:

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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem donation figures in full (Quarter 1, 2012)

By Stephen Tall | Sun 10th June 2012 - 4:15 pm

The Electoral Commission has recently published the latest donation and borrowing figures for the political parties, showing that the Lib Dems raised £606,724 between January and March this year.

(At the foot of this post is the full breakdown of donations (excluding public funds) received by quarter since 2005, and annually between 2001 and 2004. I’ve uploaded a public Google spreadsheet of all Lib Dem donations between 2001 and 2011 available here; and a separate one for the first quarter of 2012 available here.)

By comparison, the party raised £698,875 in the first quarter of 2007 (the equivalent …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 7 Comments

Opinion: It’s your country, we’re giving it back

By Charles Beaumont | Sun 10th June 2012 - 2:10 pm

All political parties are coalitions. And the messy reality of governing exposes these coalitions for the world to see. Even in the event that the UK economy is running on all cylinders by 2015 (looking increasingly unlikely), we all know that we’re going to be in a tight spot come the general election. So can we expect a debate between Liberal Left and Orange Bookers as we seek to define our message to the country? Between those who think that a distinctively centre-left message will take us back to the heady polling numbers of 2010 and those who argue that …

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Posted in Op-eds | 78 Comments
The Liberator Collective

New edition of Liberator magazine

By The Liberator Collective | Sun 10th June 2012 - 12:40 pm

The latest issue of Liberator magazine (issue no.353 – June 2012) has just been delivered to subscribers. In the unlikely event that you are not yet a subscriber, here’s a summary of the contents:

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Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Local pay for the public sector: a row the Lib Dems and the Coalition will want to dodge?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 10th June 2012 - 10:15 am

The Huffington Post published an excellent dissection of the twists and turns the debate on local pay for public sector workers (sometimes called regional pay) is taking within the Lib Dems:

Letters written by the Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander the number two minister at the Treasury appeared wildly enthusiastic about civil servants being paid different amounts depending on where they work as recently as the start of this year.

But subsequent letters show Alexander softening his stance, suggesting he’s come under pressure from fellow Lib Dems over the proposals, confirmed by George Osborne in the

…

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David Thorpe

Opinion: Lib Dems must avoid “all growth is good” fallacy

By David Thorpe | Sun 10th June 2012 - 9:54 am

Every politician who remains in the public mind, after their term in office has ended, becomes associated, in time, with a particular sound bite or phrase.

John Major will forever be associated with “back to basics”. Tony Blair with “pretty straight kind of guy” and Gordon Brown with “abolishing boom and bust”.

At this stage, David Cameron is probably hoping that “hug a hoodie” is the phrase with which he becomes …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 34 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV survey: Lib Dem members’ favourite Tory ministers revealed!

By Stephen Tall | Sun 10th June 2012 - 8:45 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 560 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Ken Clarke remains Lib Dems’ most popular Tory cabinet minister

The Lib Dems have been in Coalition with the Conservatives for two years — so we thought it would be interesting to find out who our sample of party members think is ‘hot or not’ among our Coalition partners.

LDV asked: Which of the following Conservative ministers have genuinely impressed you since the Coalition …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition: Cameron & Miliband “Cooee!” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 9th June 2012 - 5:12 pm

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…

Here’s Labour leader Ed Miliband waving across the aisle to David Cameron at the Diamond Jubilee service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about them?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Nick.i.am “Hands on with Clinton” Edition.

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Posted in Caption Comp | 23 Comments

Opinion: Why Grant Shapps must be evicted as Housing Minister

By London Liberal | Sat 9th June 2012 - 2:25 pm

Ask teachers what they think of Michael Gove and I suspect that most will reply with derision. Ask doctors and nurses what they think of Andrew Lansley and I would imagine that, similarly, most will spit with rage. Ask housing professionals what they think of Grant Shapps and you certainly get an equally dismissive response from the vast majority.

Does the lack of professional support for the Tory policies being pursued by Tory Ministers in these crucial public services mean that these sectors are hopelessly leftist, resistant to change, and are just keen to protect their status, or is the Government’s unpopularity with them proof that the Tories still are the ‘nasty’ party and are as contemptuous of public services as ever? Or is this tension simply what always exists between public sector industries and the politicians that seek to govern/meddle with them, be they Labour or Conservative (or Liberal Democrat)?

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 25 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV poll: 80% of Lib Dems back wealthier households in social housing paying full market rent

By Stephen Tall | Sat 9th June 2012 - 12:20 pm

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 560 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

4-in-5 back change, just 1-in-10 oppose outright

The Coalition last month announced it was consulting whether to charge a full market rent to those in social housing whose household income is over £60,000. We asked our sample of Lib Dem members for their views…

LDV asked: At the moment, rents in social housing are capped at 80% of the market value. It is estimated …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

The weekend debate: should benefits for pensioners be restricted?

By Mark Pack | Sat 9th June 2012 - 9:25 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

Nick Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith have both been arguing within the government for rich pensioners to have their benefits cut:

Nick Clegg is backing calls for cuts in pension benefits such as winter fuel payments and free bus passes. David Cameron is said to be adamant that the Tories should keep to a pledge made before the general election that the payments remain. But Clegg is understood to have told colleagues he wants the winter payments and free TV licences cut

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 44 Comments
The Voice

Jeremy Browne turns down Argentina invite during 30th anniversary Falklands tour

By The Voice | Sat 9th June 2012 - 8:15 am

The Independent reports that Lib Dem foreign office minister Jeremy Browne has turned down an invitation to attend talks in Argentina when he visits the Falklands next week in what appears to be a diplomatic but pretty unambiguous FU from the FO:

“We have today received an invitation from Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timmerman, for Mr Browne to visit Buenos Aires next week,” the spokesman said. “However he has a full schedule of events in the Falkland Islands to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the conflict there. This has been arranged for some time.

“Mr Browne is grateful for the invitation.

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 8 June 2012

By The Voice | Fri 8th June 2012 - 5:00 pm

It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

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Opinion: The Government should act decisively on unpaid internships

By Tom Wood | Fri 8th June 2012 - 3:23 pm

Last week Alan Milburn’s report Fair Access to Professional Careers was published, with some particularly interesting points about internships. But what’s important on this issue isn’t that he reached the inevitable conclusion that a system – based on who you know, not what you know, and requires people to work essentially full time jobs without being paid – is a bad thing shouldn’t surprise anyone, and the campaign group Intern Aware has been making these points for over a year. What’s important is how the Government responds: with tepid agreement, or decisive action.

The Government has shouted from the …

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Posted in News | 6 Comments
Mary Reid

LibLink: Simon Hughes – Polly’s advice to the Lib Dems is double-edged

By Mary Reid | Fri 8th June 2012 - 2:03 pm

Simon Hughes has a letter in the Guardian today responding to Polly Toynbee’s article “Now is the perfect time for Liberal Democrats to wield the knife“.

Simon writes:

Polly Toynbee’s argument, like some arguments she has made before, is based on a false and misleading premise – that this government is embarking on some ideological dismantling of the state. This does everyone a disservice.

Here are three reasons why: first, by the end of this parliament the government will be spending about £730bn a year, a full 42% of GDP and roughly the same as we did in 2008. Hardly back to

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 52 Comments
Mary Reid

From today’s Lib Dem News

By Mary Reid | Fri 8th June 2012 - 1:00 pm

Posted in Humour | Tagged | 26 Comments
Mary Reid

Equal marriage: imminent deadline for consultation

By Mary Reid | Fri 8th June 2012 - 11:40 am

Members of Liberal Youth have a group blog over at The Libertine.

In this video Harry Matthews reminds us why Liberal Democrats support equal marriage.

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Stephen Tall

LDV poll: 80% of Lib Dem members continue to back current Coalition & 63% open to another Coalition after 2015

By Stephen Tall | Fri 8th June 2012 - 9:25 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 560 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Lib Dem members back Coalition by 80% to 16%

LDV asked: Do you support or oppose the Lib Dems being in the Coalition Government with the Conservatives?

    80% – Support
    16% – Oppose
    4% – Don’t know / No opinion

For all the current difficulties the Lib Dems find ourselves in, it’s actually pretty extraordinary how high support for the party being in coalition with the Conservatives remains. …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged | 28 Comments
Mark Pack

Four councillors, four people who should be voted out

By Mark Pack | Fri 8th June 2012 - 8:25 am

Ah councillors, bless ’em:

…

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged , , , , , and | 8 Comments
Peter Lesniak

Opinion: Iran v. West – breaking the deadlock

By Peter Lesniak | Thu 7th June 2012 - 5:58 pm

George Bernard Shaw used to say that political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes. As things stand in ongoing negotiations between the West and Iran, this seems to be the parallel for what is going to happen in yet another round of talks later this month in Russia. Let us consider the current balance of actions.

Iranian Religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his recent appearance publically accused West of fabricating information about Iran’s nuclear progress to cover up its own problems. In the same speech he warned that Israeli military action against his country will me bet with …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Tim Hicks

The Independent View: A compromise on Lords reform to unite the parties?

By Tim Hicks | Thu 7th June 2012 - 3:26 pm

Lords reform looks set to be one of the more contentious issues in the current Parliament. Pressure for progress from the Liberal Democrat leadership looks likely to meet opposition from a combination of elements from the Conservative and Labour parties. This, despite all parties expressing manifesto support for reform of some kind. Given that, a compromise seems desirable, so I humbly offer one here.

In short, I propose that the reformed chamber should be directly elected, but that abstentions should count as ‘votes’ for an Appointments Commission list of candidates.

The Commission would only be charged with producing a list of potential …

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged and | 8 Comments
Nick T

“I’d love to write a novel” – Clegg

By Nick T | Thu 7th June 2012 - 1:54 pm

Nick Clegg has revealed in an interview his “shockingly bad” attempts at penning a novel on his early twenties. But, as the Independent reports, despite this early setback the deputy prime minister is still keen to try again, spurred on by his passion for fiction:

In an interview with Easy Living magazine, he said he would still like to write one in the “simple, sparse” style of the double Booker Prize winning JM Coetzee.

The Deputy Prime Minister said he reads “religiously, every night before I go to sleep”.

He added: “I cannot think of a time when I have finished the

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

The low earner Liberal Democrats revisited

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th June 2012 - 11:50 am

A couple of years back I posted about the “low earner Liberal Democrats” who have been a major part of the party’s progress, especially in squeezing Labour votes in more rural seats and in making progress in urban areas against Labour. Events in the interim have if anything made this group even more important to the party.

In some ways, with in particular the emphasis on the £10,000 or more income tax allowance, support for a (modified) benefits cap and the Pupil Premium, the party’s policy outlook now addresses all the more their main concerns. However, in other ways, it does not.

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th June 2012 - 10:25 am

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Stephen Tall

LDV poll: Vince or Tim are Lib Dem members’ top choices for leader in event of vacancy

By Stephen Tall | Thu 7th June 2012 - 8:57 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 560 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

28% choose Vince, 21% tip Tim: how you voted

Yesterday we reported the finding that 34% of Lib Dem members surveyed thought Nick Clegg should step down as party leader before the 2015 general election compared to 59% who thought he should stay to fight it. Today we report the hypothetical question we then posed: who should take up the reins if for …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged , , , , , , and | 14 Comments
Mark Pack

Government’s search for an alternative to PFI takes another twist with growth bonds

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th June 2012 - 7:55 am

Labour’s PFI and PPP schemes turned out badly in so many ways, it is easy to forget quite why they were so popular to begin with, both with politicians very much of the central government public spending school (e.g. John Prescott) and also with senior public sector managers wanting to get funding for their areas (e.g. at Transport for London).

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

Our political writers can pretend they know what makes us tick: a response to Matthew d’Ancona

By Stephen Tall | Wed 6th June 2012 - 8:25 pm

Here’s how Matthew d’Ancona could’ve started his article for today’s London Evening Standard, ‘Our political class can now work out what makes us tick’. But he didn’t.

So what was all that about? As the waves of media fervour subside to reveal the bleak promontories of Austerity Commentariat, let us pause and ask what this extraordinary four-day Jubilee told us about journalists, and their obsession with extrapolating about our national life and character.

There then follows some delicious cognitive dissonance. First, an acknowledgement of what is to follow:

The lazy reflex for political observers is to extract the lessons that suit them.

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib-Lab cooperation: there’s one easy way to find out if Labour are serious

By Stephen Tall | Wed 6th June 2012 - 5:55 pm

Today’s Guardian big-ups a call by Labour’s chief whip in the Lords, Lord Bassam, to his Lib Dem opposite number Lord Newby as a sign that ‘elements of the party are preparing the ground for a possible Lib-Lab coalition after the next election.’

I have to say on first reading the tenor of Lord Bassam’s note strikes me more as told-you-so than conciliatory, but maybe I’m being over-sensitive — judge for yourselves from this excerpt:

“The last couple of years have been a bit bruising for your colleagues in this house, and no doubt they will be looking forward to

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 28 Comments
George Kendall

Opinion: Why I am a royalist

By George Kendall | Wed 6th June 2012 - 4:25 pm

There’s nothing democratic about the royal family. They are the descendants of a thug who defeated another thug to become the despot of these Isles. If that was all there was to them, I would be the first in the queue to get rid of them.

The greatest invention in the history of the world is not the wheel, or fire, or the scientific method: it’s democracy and the rule of law. What’s wonderful about democracy is he principle it establishes, that everyone, no matter their colour or creed, is of equal worth. That each person has the same number of …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 24 Comments
Steve Walsh

Opinion: Why I won’t be watching Euro 2012

By Steve Walsh | Wed 6th June 2012 - 2:58 pm

I know for many years that there has been the debate as to whether sport should be brought into politics and am old enough to remember when there was a boycott against the South African apartheid regime.

Watching BBC Panorama last week brought up feelings of disgust, horror, anger and a sense of déjà vu. Had we entered some time vortex back to the 70’s where these chants were all too common on the terraces here in the UK?

It was made worse when the interviewer asked the police chief about what he had witnessed and filmed only minutes earlier to be …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 10 Comments
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