Mark Pack

The technology that will defeat the government’s online monitoring plans

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

Following the Queen’s Speech it is becoming a little clearer – although only a little clearer – what it is that some parts of the Home Office want to achieve by pushing for the Communications Capability Development Programme (CCDP, aka Online Snooping Charter).

One scenario is this: the law enforcement authorities start having solid grounds for suspecting someone is up to no good. Currently, they can then get access to the history of that person’s phone calls – who they rung and when from their landline or mobile. Getting such retrospective data for some forms of internet-based communications is possible, albeit …

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Posted in Humour and News | Tagged | 4 Comments
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Ian Wallace

Opinion: Civil Service strike – the follow up

By Ian Wallace | Thu 10th May 2012 - 8:58 am

“Once more unto the breach” goes the rallying call from my Union Reps as we prepare to strike on May 10 2012. Following up the N30 strike on public sector pensions which I have written about previously on this blog, I issued an alternative rallying call – to get round the table and negotiate. But unsurprisingly ignored.

I find myself weirdly ambivalent this time. I shouldn’t be. It is fundamentally about funding my life throughout retirement and yet, the approach taken by the union since the previous strike does not do anybody any favours.

The three tests for me are: Do we …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Caron Lindsay

And I would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for these pesky Lib Dems – Cameron

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 9th May 2012 - 7:55 pm

I read the Daily Mail every day. It’s worth it because in amongst the inaccurate, scaremongering bile, there’s quite often a wee gem which shows off the Liberal Democrat influence in the Coalition.

Today, it carries an interview with David Cameron in which he tells how these pesky Liberal Democrats have stopped him doing things like getting rid of human rights legislation, eroding people’s employment rights and stopping him introducing a tax break for married couples.

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 25 Comments
Michael Moore

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 9th May 2012 - 6:53 pm

Every week, Michael Moore MP writes a column for local papers in his constituency. Here is this week’s edition.

Burnmouth Harbour

 In Berwickshire we have a stunning coastline with a fine fishing industry and some of the best prawn, crab and other catches in the country. Last week I was at Burnmouth Harbour to meet John Aitchison, the harbour master, and John Affleck, a local fisherman, to discuss the current issues facing the industry and particularly in Burnmouth. We met over lunchtime so I was treated to some delicious sandwiches, made from freshly caught crab off the east coast. I was lucky …

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg e-mails party members: Queen’s Speech has a firm Liberal Democrat stamp on it

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 9th May 2012 - 5:59 pm

Nick Clegg MP sent out this e-mail to party members about the Queen’s Speech this afternoon. He is holding an exclusive web chat for party members only at 1:30 pm tomorrow. Places are limited but there is still space available. If you are a party member and want to take part, please e-mail party Internal Communications Manager and Lib Dem Voice Co-Editor Helen Duffett on [email protected] giving your name, address and party membership number. Here is Nick’s e-mail in full.

Today’s Queen’s Speech has again shown that the Liberal Democrats are punching way above their weight – and we can be proud of

…

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes: What does the Queen’s Speech mean for civil liberties?

By Julian Huppert | Wed 9th May 2012 - 4:45 pm

So – how does the Queen’s Speech rate for those of us who care about civil liberties? Well, there’s some excellent news, and some areas where we need to keep working to get the right result.

First, we have fantastic news about libel reform. I am delighted that the Defamation Bill will finally come into being. As Liberal Democrats we have long made the case that our libel laws are out-dated and in desperate need of improvement.  Our current system unfairly favours the rich because the cost of lawsuits means ordinary people find it very difficult to defend themselves against false …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Two anniversaries: Norman Baker and Stephen Williams

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th May 2012 - 3:25 pm

From Stephen Williams’s blog:

Twenty years ago today I was a candidate, nervously awaiting the outcome of my first electoral contest …

My campaign in 1992 would have been recognisable to candidates from previous decades.  Our volunteers delivered two leaflets and knocked on every door in the ward.  The leaflet text was composed on a typewriter and the black and white photographs were turned into dots for printing by a photo bureau.  The canvass cards for door knocking were made by me and my agent (Sean Emmett, cllr for

…

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The Voice

How to get the most out of your Lib Dem Voice comments

By The Voice | Wed 9th May 2012 - 2:25 pm

How to get a photo to appear next to your comments

You may have noticed that next to some people’s comments is a small picture of themselves, such as:


If you want a picture to appear next to your comments you need to do two things.

  1. Visit Gravatar.com, create an account and upload a picture.
  2. Post a comment, giving the

…

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Posted in Site news | 4 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Queen’s Speech – what have the Liberal Democrats brought to the table?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 9th May 2012 - 1:22 pm

So, the Crown has headed back to the Tower, the Queen has left he building and all the pomp and ceremonial  of the State Opening of Parliament is over for another year. It always strikes me that it must take ages to get everyone in their finery and yet the whole thing is over in less than an hour.

There is much to cheer Liberal Democrats in the planned measures.

  • Lords Reform
  • Green Investment Bank
  • Libel Reform
  • Giving shareholders a vote on directors’ remuneration
  • Flexible parental leave – the measure Nick Clegg’s championed to give families the choices that work for them by allowing parents to

…

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Posted in News | 5 Comments

Europe Day Special: Avoiding the slippery slopes towards euroscepticism

By Sir Graham Watson MEP and Andrew Wigley | Wed 9th May 2012 - 11:56 am

Today is Europe Day. The Treaty of Rome, the EU’s founding treaty was signed 55 years ago; post war Europe sought a new strategy to end old enmities and forge shared prosperity through economic growth. However one measures the achievements of those goals, the conclusion has to be the European Union has delivered on both counts.

For those of us who believe in the EU’s objectives and feel that Britain should be leading in Europe, these are turbulent times.

Restoring faith in a political structure which may appear removed from the citizen, and rebuilding an economic framework which has been proven inadequate …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 10 Comments
Bill le Breton

Opinion: Austerity and defying the Laws of gravity

By Bill le Breton | Wed 9th May 2012 - 10:58 am

“It’s ideology, stupid.” – a subtext to the Queen’s Speech

On Five Live a bond trader says that austerity isn’t working and the government should be more expansionary. In Wake Up to Money a fund manger says that austerity has been overdone and it’s time for countries like Germany and Britain to borrow more.

Yet on Tuesday’s Today programme, David Laws continued to advocate austerity.

It is more and more apparent that ‘economics’ is being used to serve the ideology of a smaller State, damning the idea that the State should have different responsibilities at different times, especially when the private sector is …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 31 Comments
Mark Pack

Ludovic Kennedy: a man who just missed becoming Liberal leader

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th May 2012 - 10:25 am

For many years Adrian Slade has interviewed prominent Liberal Democrats. To mark his recent decision to make his archive of the interview recordings available to researchers and other interested parties, Lib Dem Voice is running a selection of his write-ups of interviews from over the years. The latest is with broadcaster, writer and twice Liberal candidate Sir Ludovic Kennedy from 2003.

In the 1959 general election just 2,000 votes separated Ludovic Kennedy from becoming Liberal MP for Rochdale, and possibly a future party leader.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 7 Comments
Caron Lindsay

LibLink: David Laws “My second half Coalition agenda”

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 9th May 2012 - 9:25 am

Writing in today’s Financial Times, David Laws sets out his key priorities for the Coalition, discussing what needs to happen in the economy to ensure growth is achieved alongside deficit reduction. He writes about how crucial it is for the Government to get it right on the economy.

The coalition still has the potential to be one of the great reforming governments of the postwar era. The changes we are making in education, welfare and pensions are radical and right. The country will judge us over our full term and not on the basis of a turbulent few weeks of “here

…

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Stephen Tall

When did the Tories stop supporting Lords reform?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 9th May 2012 - 8:45 am

From all the debate and angst within the Tory party over the issue of House of Lords reform you’d imagine the plan to inject an element of democracy into the UK parliament had been foisted on David Cameron by sneakily obsessive Liberal Democrats.

Yet the reality is somewhat different. The Coalition Government’s pledge to overhaul the revising chamber (after Labour’s successive, botched failures) built on Tory promises to the electorate over a decade or more — recognising perhaps that such reform is in fact in their own interests.

Here’s what the Tory manifesto said as far back as 2001:

In

…

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Stephen Tall

Is this the day the Coalition admitted reality and buried its claim to be a radical government?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 8th May 2012 - 9:50 pm

One of the iconic images of the early days of the Coalition — in the midst of the summer haze of the leggeron rose garden bromance — was The Economist’s front cover depicting the Prime Minister as a punk, representing the Coalition’s self-appointed claim to be one of the most radical governments in history.

Economically (a cuts agenda intended to rebalance the economy between the private/public sectors), socially (from free schools to gay marriage) and politically (police commissioners to Lords reform) — this ‘liberal conservative government’ was supposed …

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David Heath MP

David Heath MP writes… Freedom of Information and the NHS risk register – we should publish as much as possible

By David Heath MP | Tue 8th May 2012 - 6:55 pm

It was 12 years ago that I sat on my very first House of Commons bill committee, and a pretty important bill it was too. We were considering what was to become the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and I was helping Bob McLennan try to stiffen up what was in danger of becoming, in the hands of the last government, an increasingly flaccid piece of legislation.

After decades of campaigning, the 2000 Act was certainly a longtime in coming for Liberal Democrats. It was Clement Freud who first introduced a Private Members Bill in 1978 that attracted considerable support, …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 40 Comments
Tom Frostick

The Independent View: A Queen’s Speech that liberals can get behind

By Tom Frostick | Tue 8th May 2012 - 12:20 pm

ConservativeHome is busy putting out its own version of the Queen’s Speech. The point of the exercise is to map out what the Conservatives’ legislative agenda might have looked like had they won a majority in 2010.

The leading liberal think=tank CentreForum has done something similar. Last week, we came up with nine measures that we would like to see enacted by a big ‘l’ liberal government. I have listed them below, and placed in brackets the government department that each of them would fall under. With the exception of Lords reform, we don’t expect to hear any …

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged , and | 30 Comments
Mark Pack

What do the academics say? How an intention to move effects turnout

By Mark Pack | Tue 8th May 2012 - 10:50 am

Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today – how intention to move home influences turnout in Britain.

The finding is from “Geographic Mobility, Social Connections and Voter Turnout” by Keith Dowding, Peter John and Daniel Rubenson (Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Vol. 22 No.2, May 2012):

We have shown that the intention to move will reduce the probability that someone will vote, suggesting that people take into account the benefits consequent upon their vote when deciding whether to cast a ballot. Those intending to move are less likely to gain benefits

…

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Posted in What do the academics say? | Tagged | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: From the archives – ‘How Members of Parliament Are Elected (1945)’

By Stephen Tall | Mon 7th May 2012 - 6:24 pm

There now follows a public information film… During the 1940s, the British Council produced more than 120 short films ‘designed to show the world how Britain lived, worked and played’. They’re now available online, and here’s the Pathe-style feature on the 1945 electoral race in Kettering — or, as it’s described in the British Council Film Department Catalogue:

‘The film shows how the candidates, after completing the necessary formalities, plan their election campaigns with the help of their Agents and go round the district addressing the voters. What happens on Polling Day, how people vote, the precautions for secrecy, the counting of the votes and the declaration of the result are shown in detail. The film was made at Kettering in Northamptonshire during the 1945 election.’

The candidates featured are Labour’s Gilbert Mitchison, ‘Independent Christian’ John Dempsey and incumbent Conservative MP John Profumo, and it’s interesting to see the importance attached to public meetings, and the warnings — even after six years of war — of the danger of ‘apathy’.

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Daisy Benson

NOW PLAYING: A post-election playlist

By Daisy Benson | Mon 7th May 2012 - 5:15 pm

Like a lot of Lib Dems this Bank Holiday weekend I’ve been recovering from months of hard slog otherwise known as election campaigning.

A diet of canvassing, leafleting, takeaways and late night phone calls isn’t healthy for an extended period of time, so if you’re feeling knackered – worry not – I have just the thing!

In between resting aching legs/reminding friends and family what I look like/feeding the cats/watching the mayoral election/watching the French Presidential elections/sleeping I have put together a post-election playlist.

I was partly inspired by the Obama 2012 …

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Posted in Humour | Tagged | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Mon 7th May 2012 - 4:25 pm

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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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg – This coalition is stable and the centre will hold

By NewsHound | Mon 7th May 2012 - 2:10 pm

In today’s Guardian, Nick Clegg declares the Coalition isn’t about to lurch to the left or the right in the wake of the governing parties’ bruising election results: “We spent two years on rescue. Now it’s time for reform.” Here are the three lessons Nick says he’s drawing from last week…

1) The coalition must work harder to show that we are governing for the whole country

Both coalition parties got thumped in Scotland, Wales and the north of England. People are afraid for their jobs and their children’s prospects. In my own patch in Sheffield, I know that memories of the

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 49 Comments
Adam Corlett

Opinion: This graph of income tax rates might surprise you

By Adam Corlett | Mon 7th May 2012 - 11:54 am

If this graph seems confusing, it’s because it accurately describes taxation of income in the UK. What alternative can Lib Dems offer? I think there are four key problems and solutions.

  • Firstly, while the personal allowance is rising (to £9,205 next year), the National Insurance thresholds lag behind. As I’ve written previously, raising these is more progressive and, so, equalising the thresholds and the allowance must be the priority before going beyond £10,000.

  • Then there’s the withdrawal of the

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 28 Comments
Mark Pack

Vince Cable: Free Radical – what the memoirs say about the man

By Mark Pack | Mon 7th May 2012 - 10:25 am

A little belatedly, I’ve got round to reading Vince Cable’s memoirs (or rather, listening to the audio book version – what better accompaniment to a delivery round?).

Vince Cable’s memoirs do much to explain both the praise and the criticism he has received. At one point he writes how “I am often asked why I am not party leader…”. Conceit or modesty? You can read that comment either way and it is easy to see why he produces such different views.

Views differ too over quite where …

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Posted in Books | Tagged , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

MORE SHOCK NEWS: Bill that was going to be in Queen’s Speech will be in Queen’s Speech

By Mark Pack | Mon 7th May 2012 - 9:23 am

Pick and mix your allocation of blame between some Tory right-wing MPs and some political journalists, between deliberate deceit and genuine confusion as you wish, but as the dust settles on yesterday’s political stories about the Queen’s Speech the news is remarkably dull:

  • A Bill that was not going to be in the Queen’s Speech will not be in the Queen’s Speech, and
  • A Bill that was going to be in the Queen’s Speech will be in the Queen’s Speech.

Or in other words, ignore the nonsense about how the absence of an equal marriage Bill from the Queen’s Speech means the government …

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Paul Walter

French and Greek election results open thread

By Paul Walter | Mon 7th May 2012 - 7:54 am

Francois Hollande has been elected French President, after promising to work for more growth and to renegotiate the EU fiscal compact.

Initial results from the Greek parliamentary elections suggest a shake-up, with the left-wing Syriza party and a neo-Nazi party gaining ground at the expense of the two old coalition parties, New Democracy and Pasok. There is talk of the new government (when and if it emerges to be sworn in by the men in beards) seeking to “amend” the …

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Posted in Europe / International | Tagged and | 15 Comments
The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #272

By The Voice | Sun 6th May 2012 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 272nd 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 (29 April-5 May, 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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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Mike Tuffrey

Opinion: Learning lessons from London – two and half quick reflections

By Mike Tuffrey | Sun 6th May 2012 - 3:25 pm

Let’s start with the facts….

  • Overall turnout was down to 38%, from 45% last time.
  • Two Liberal Democrat Assembly members elected, compared to three in 2008 and five in 2004.
  • Mayoral vote was 92,000 (4.2% – and deposit lost), compared to 236,752 (9.8%) in 2008.
  • Our Assembly list vote was 150,447 (6.8% – just over the threshold), against 275,272 (11.4%) in 2008.
  • The Greens “pushed the Lib Dems into fourth place”: actually their Assembly vote flat-lined at 8.5%, although their Mayoral vote was up a bit, from 3.2% to 4.5%.

First off, a big thank you to Brian Paddick, his brilliant deputy Caroline Pidgeon, and the …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Tagged and | 27 Comments
Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb writes… Putting two national treasures back on their feet

By Norman Lamb MP | Sun 6th May 2012 - 2:25 pm

Royal Mail and the Post Office are two of our most recognisable and most trusted brands. For hundreds of years the post office has been at the heart of our communities – with a value that goes beyond mere economics to the social and the symbolic. Royal Mail, meanwhile, is a service that covers every part of the country and reaches every part of society. The public, quite rightly, is fiercely protective of both institutions.

Sadly previous governments left them both in a mess. Labour opened up the postal market, thereby exposing Royal Mail to the full force of competition. Ludicrously, …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: From the archives – ‘The Work of Local Authorities (1943)’

By Stephen Tall | Sun 6th May 2012 - 11:40 am

There now follows a public information film… During the 1940s, the British Council produced more than 120 short films ‘designed to show the world how Britain lived, worked and played’. They’re now available online, and here’s the wonderfully of-its-time feature on local government — or, as it’s described in the British Council Film Department Catalogue:

‘A simple description of English Local Government, showing the areas into which England is divided, the system of election and finance, and the many services administered by the local authorities.’

Hark back to a time when local authorities had power over all manner of local services — from public health and education, to the fire authorities and water boards — when councillors were invited to stand for election from every walk of life (“for instance, this businessman or even his wife”), and a little boy would utter the deadpan phrase “I’m going to be a councillor when I grow up, daddy”.

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Posted in YouTube | Tagged and | 11 Comments
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