Mark Pack

Sadiq Khan, master of political caricature, I salute you

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th October 2011 - 7:59 am

Listening to Deputy Prime Minister’s Question Time and also the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s hearing this week, I was tempted to blog about how in a throwback to the worst of New Labour, many Labour MPs seemed to be confusing something being a “civic duty” with it being a legal requirement. After all, it doesn’t say much for your idea of “civic duty” if you think it is synonymous with “legal requirement”.

I didn’t have time to blog about this… but then today Sadiq Khan writes for The Guardian:

The compulsory nature of our interaction with registration officers may seem

…

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Stephen Tall

New constituency boundaries in Scotland: the impact on the Lib Dems

By Stephen Tall | Fri 14th October 2011 - 7:20 am

Last month it was the turn of English MPs to look nervously at the proposals of the Boundary Commission’s re-drawing of constituencies — Scotland’s turn has now come, with its national Boundary Commission yesterday publishing its proposals for public consultation.

The Financial Times has undertaken a quick reccy to work out what it might mean:

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Posted in News and Scotland | Tagged , , and | 15 Comments

The Independent View | Women: Achieving a New Kind of Leadership

By Caroline Watson | Thu 13th October 2011 - 3:55 pm

There’s still a shocking absence of women from the top in politics and leadership roles across society. We can all see that for ourselves.

Progressive Women set out to bring women together to discuss issues of inequality, and to network. In the two years since we were established it’s become blatant to us that we need to do more than just talk.

That’s why Progressive Women are taking practical action to help and support potential future women leaders. That’s why we are launching our leadership development series of workshops, tailored specifically to enable women to develop the requisite tools …

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George Kendall

Opinion: Labour’s problem

By George Kendall | Thu 13th October 2011 - 2:25 pm

There’s been nothing dramatic about this conference season apart from a few gaffes, but under the surface, I think the Labour conference was significant.

While I enjoyed the Lib Dem conference, I don’t think the journalists did. Whenever I passed a well-known TV presenter, they had a face like thunder. They were looking for factionalism and controversy, but all they found was Lib Dems facing up to a difficult situation with determination and loyalty. That makes dull TV, so they must have been tearing their hair out.

The Tory conference was more entertaining.

Theresa May’s remark about cats, and the more recent

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Posted in Conference and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 35 Comments
Jenny Willott

Jenny Willott MP writes: 18 months and over a Billion pounds – Lib Dem victory on Women’s State Pension Age

By Jenny Willott | Thu 13th October 2011 - 12:53 pm

The UK is getting older. In 1970 a person reaching 60 could expect to live a further 18 years. Last year, this had become 28 years. Advances in healthcare, living standards and technology mean that people are living longer and life expectancy is rapidly increasing.

That is why the Government took the decision to bring forward planned increases in the State Pension Age. As I’ve said on Lib Dem Voice before, it is absolutely right for the Government to do this. It’s not a nice decision but doing nothing would risk plunging future pensioners into poverty with less and less …

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Mark Valladares

Opinion: Ever wanted to be a European Liberal Democrat, if only for forty-eight hours…?

By Mark Valladares | Thu 13th October 2011 - 12:15 pm

In my capacity as one of Liberal Democrat Voice’s foreign correspondents, I’ve been covering ELDR events for a few years now. So, why might you be interested, and how do you get to go to an ELDR Congress?

The annual Congress of the European Liberal Democrats (ELDR) is an opportunity for liberals from across Europe, including beyond the European Union, to discuss the issues of the day, and to get a sense of how liberals in the European Parliament are responding to them. Delegates get to debate with parliamentarians, take part in sessions with Commissioners and leading academics and, perhaps of …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged | 1 Comment
Paul Walter

DPMQs: Something has happened here

By Paul Walter | Thu 13th October 2011 - 9:53 am

Whisper it. A quiet revolution has happened. Keep this quiet, please!

Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions used to be akin to Bear Baiting (with apologies to bears and ursine mammal lovers everywhere). Nick Clegg would stand up and have all sorts of sticks prodded into his midriff by Labour members, while their sistren and breathren used to shout and jeer. The poor bear Clegg used to get all red in the face and start shouting back at them, before escaping to nurse his wounds.

Something has changed.

This week, apart from the odd bit of rowdiness during a question on the consultation concerning …

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Posted in News and Parliament | Tagged , and | 10 Comments
Alex Feakes

Opinion: Summer schools? Little more than a sticking plaster

By Alex Feakes | Thu 13th October 2011 - 9:25 am

Nick Clegg’s conference announcement of £50m to fund summer schools for the disadvantaged caught the headlines (even in the Daily Mail!), and received some support in editorials and from some Lib Dem bloggers. However, though it might be a crowd pleaser and a nice idea, in truth it’s little more than a sticking plaster for deeper problems.

Would I have them rather than nothing at all? Possibly, but I’d rather the money stayed in the Pupil Premium where it is at least targeted through mechanisms (schools) that are already set up to identify and address students needs. Perhaps even

…

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Mark Pack

Gay marriage, animal insults and a pair of Conservatives

By Mark Pack | Thu 13th October 2011 - 7:25 am

Conservative Councillor James Malliff  is in trouble with his party after attacking David Cameron’s support for gay marriage, saying that you “may as well legalise marriage with animals”. The Conservative Party says that action is being taken against him for “completely unacceptable” language.

But wait, rummage through your political memories and recall this?

If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.

That would be one Mr B. Johnson, subsequently twice appointed …

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Mark Pack

Where Lynne Featherstone leads, David Cameron follows – once again

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 7:36 pm

We’ve covered before on Lib Dem Voice the campaign by Lynne Featherstone and others to end the built-in sexism in the rules of Royal succession, whereby men automatically come ahead of women in the line of succession (‘Royal primogeniture’), a cause which has overwhelming public support.

One complication is that our monarch is also the monarch of other countries, which makes changes the rules a matter of both international diplomacy and domestic action. So good news today with David Cameron’s decision to write to 16 Commonwealth leaders about getting the rules changed.

As Lynne Featherstone put it previously about …

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Ruth Bright

Opinion: None shall be enslaved by….maternity?

By Ruth Bright | Wed 12th October 2011 - 3:54 pm

Nick Clegg bemoans the maleness and paleness of the Lib Dems and his sense of shame that our parliamentary party is 88% male seems genuine enough.

What is it about the culture of Lib Dems that has brought about this striking gender imbalance?

My own experience as a councillor and candidate is that being a (young, childless, solvent) woman is a huge advantage. When I was approved and selected in 2001 you could almost smell the desperation of the party to promote women. The glass ceiling – what was that?

But then I did what women do and I had children and …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 29 Comments
Paul Walter

PMQs: Ed Miliband just about hits the barn door

By Paul Walter | Wed 12th October 2011 - 1:53 pm

From memory, this was the first time the Cameron/Miliband exchange centred wholly on the economy.

There was plenty of ammo for Miliband to fire at Cameron. Unemployment up to its highest for 15 years. Women’s unemployment at its highest since 1988. Youth unemployment at its highest since 1992. He started with a quote from David Cameron himself saying that “Unemployment will fall this year, next year and the year after”. (Bit of daft hostage to fortune that was.)

Cameron was well armed with all the programmes the government is starting: Welfare to Work programme, Welfare reform, Apprenticeships etc etc. And we have …

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Posted in News, Parliament and PMQs | Tagged , , and | 14 Comments
Mark Pack

Bromley Council pulls a controversial novelty with a lollipop lady petition

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 1:50 pm

Tsk, tsk, Bromley Conservatives.

There is a council by-election campaign underway in Shortlands ward, Bromley where the excellent Anuja Prashar is the Liberal Democrat candidate. (So excellent, I’ll forgive her for organising a raffle once that broke all my Lib Dem raffle rules.) She has been campaigning against council plans to axe the lollipop ladies at two local schools and, as part of that, presented a petition signed by 283 residents to the council.

And then things started being done differently…

For the first time, Bromley Council decided to respond personally and directly to all the signatories on a petition, posting out …

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Posted in Local government and London | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments

The Independent View: Lib Dems need to champion new ideas for tackling child poverty

By Laura Bradley | Wed 12th October 2011 - 12:25 pm

Figures released this week by the IFS show that the UK will witness a severe and sustained increase in child poverty over the coming decade, with almost a quarter of British children set to be living in relative poverty by 2020, compared to one fifth in 2009/10. This is despite a projected 7 per cent reduction in real terms median income over the next three years, reducing the amount of income it takes to cross the poverty line.

These figures highlight the growing gulf between the targets set out under the Child Poverty Act, which require the government to reduce …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Media spin, 1966 vintage

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 11:55 am

Hello again to an old story which I came across in the archives whilst looking for something else. Trust me, it’s more interesting than the Something Else which, even with the use of capital letters and ominous music, turned out to be a damper squib than the empty chocolate wrapper left in the work kitchen last week.

So instead… it’s back to 1966, again.

During the 1966 general election campaign, Prime Minister Harold Wilson visited the Birmingham Rag Market for a public meeting (scene of a famous* public meeting in the 1964 campaign when the then Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home got shouted …

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Mark Pack

Will polling stations start being moved to raise turnout at elections?

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th October 2011 - 10:55 am

I’ve blogged a few times before about the way that increasing the number of polling stations, or locating them better, can increase turnout, by reducing the average travel time for (non-postal) voters to get to their polling place.

However, whilst things that involve technology and electricity (text voting, internet voting et al.) tend to grab the headlines and get demands for action (usually from people who haven’t noticed the previous British trials which showed their failure to have a significant impact on turnout), the rather more prosaic act of wondering about which school halls to use and where to locate …

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Posted in Election law | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Sarah Teather

Sarah Teather MP writes: Pupil Premium – coming to a school near you

By Sarah Teather | Wed 12th October 2011 - 9:47 am

Usually it’s quite hard explaining how being a Liberal Democrat Minister in government makes a difference to the people in my constituency. But the Pupil Premium is an exception to that rule. It is a policy with two key characteristics – it has an identifiable impact in every local area, and it’s distinctively Liberal Democrat.

Today the Government released the final Pupil Premium figures for English schools. In the financial year 2011-12 schools are receiving £488 for each child on free school meals they have on their roll.

Anyone can visit the DfE website and search for their local …

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

Can you guess who said what?

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th October 2011 - 7:10 pm

Take two people: one a successful female businesswoman and one a male Tory MP.

Then take two public statements: one calling female Cabinet members “an ugly bunch” and “I could not look at them”; the other calling for companies to be better at ending the male dominance of the boardroom.

Who do you think would have said which…?

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Judith Jolly

Baroness Judith Jolly writes… The House of Lords will challenge, revise and improve the Health Bill

By Judith Jolly | Tue 11th October 2011 - 4:53 pm

Tony Blair, on the eve of the 1997 General Election, famously proclaimed that we have just “24 hours to save the NHS”. A nice rhetorical flourish, but lacking in objectivity. Perhaps somewhat like the Labour party. Similar language is once again being used this week as the House of Lords debates giving a second reading to the Health and Social Care Bill. Opposition groups have jumped on this by suggesting that this is the last chance to ‘stop’ this Bill. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the complexity of the inner workings of the House of Lords, this doesn’t properly reflect …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 18 Comments
Paul Rowen

Opinion: Tackling violence against women

By Paul Rowen | Tue 11th October 2011 - 2:54 pm

The conference motion “Tackling Violence Against Women” rightly highlighted the fact that only 10% of local authorities offer dedicated services for Black and Ethnic Minority Women many of whom are subjected to specific forms of violence such as female mutilation and forced marriage.

In areas like Rochdale with a large Pakistani/Kashmiri and Bangladeshi community, the need for such services and support is very real. This is particularly the case when the arranged marriage involves someone from the Indian sub-continent and the marriage breaks down within two years.

Under our current immigration system these women (and some men) are subject to the NRPF …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

After the Coalition: A Conservative agenda for Britain

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th October 2011 - 10:25 am

Collections of policy essays from new or junior MPs rarely have much of an impact or shelf-life in British politics, but however fallible their predictions for the future they can be illuminating about the current state of the authors’ party and its broad ideological direction.

So it is with After the Coalition which is very different in tone and hope for the future from last year’s Which Way’s Up? by Nick Boles. The contrast is there in the sub-titles for the two books. Boles had “The future for coalition Britain” whilst the five authors behind this volume have gone for …

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Mark Pack

Ed Miliband certainly got one thing right in his reshuffle

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th October 2011 - 8:25 am

Though others are viewing the demotion of Angela Eagle from Shadow Chief Secretary as a move by Ed Miliband to clip the wings of Ed Balls, it does mean Miliband has sacked from his Treasury team one of the Labour MPs with the most dramatically wrong track-records when it comes to economic predictions.

Keeping her well away from future economic policy it would seem is no bad move at all on Ed Miliband’s part.

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

Once again, Osborne is the obstacle to green action

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 11:17 pm

Today’s Times reports how:

The Chancellor has infuriated No. 10 and Cabinet colleagues by refusing to endorse a key component in the policy to boost renewable energy.

In an extraordinary move last week George Osborne was rebuked by David Cameron’s aides for failing to come on board for a key green policy.

At a meeting on Monday the prime minister’s most senior official, Jeremy Heywood, gave a dressing down to an Osborne adviser over the Chancellor’s failure to rubber stamp the new price that power companies will pay for renewable energy such as solar, wave and wind power.

Osborne has form on this, for …

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Jeremy Browne MP

Jeremy Browne writes: World Day Against the Death Penalty

By Jeremy Browne MP | Mon 10th October 2011 - 6:53 pm

Jeremy Browne with Eastlea Amnesty Youth Group

Today I met with a group of students, activists and academics to mark the eighth anniversary of the World Day Against the Death Penalty, and the fourth anniversary of the European Day Against the Death Penalty.

It has been a longstanding policy for the UK to oppose the death penalty in any and all circumstances as a matter of principle. As an individual, as a Liberal Democrat and as a Minister, I have always worked hard …

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Mark Pack

BNP accused of fraud over false invoices

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 6:11 pm

The BBC reports:

The British National Party is under investigation by the European Union and the Metropolitan Police for alleged fraud and breaches of electoral law.

The dual investigations come as a former BNP administrator told the BBC’s Panorama programme that she was instructed to falsify invoices.

Those invoices were then submitted by the BNP to the Electoral Commission.

The BNP has strongly denied any suggestion of wrongdoing…

Former party worker Marion Thomas said after the 2010 general election she was instructed by the party’s treasurer, Clive Jefferson, to alter invoices and in at least one case stamp an outstanding invoice as “paid”.

The invoices were

…

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Posted in Election law | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg: Lib Dem MPs are ‘too male and too pale’

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 6:06 pm

The Daily Telegraph reports:

The Deputy Prime Minister said he was ‘ashamed’ at the lack of women Lib Dem MPs and their absence from the Coalition cabinet.

“It is a very serious problem,” he told an audience at Cheltenham Literature Festival.

“It is a source of endless shame to me that the Liberal Democrat party I lead, which believes in the diversity of Great Britain in gender and everything else does not represent contemporary Britain in Parliament.

“We are too male and too pale.”

Only seven of the current 57 Lib Dem MPs are female. The Conservatives have 49 women MPs, while Labour have 81.

Earlier

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Helen Duffett

New on Twitter: Deputy Prime Minister’s Office

By Helen Duffett | Mon 10th October 2011 - 3:59 pm

@DPMoffice Twitter screenshot
Nick Clegg has added another string to his social media bow – this time it’s a new Twitter account.

@DPMoffice will be “Tweeting the official business of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.” It will be run separately from his existing party Twitter account, @nick_clegg, which will still cover Nick’s Liberal Democrat and Government-related activities.

See also the Deputy Prime Minister’s website, his (Cabinet Office) Flickr gallery and the Deputy Prime Minister’s YouTube channel.

Posted in News and Online politics | Tagged , and | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Ten tips for running a better local party AGM

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 11:50 am

Despite the weather’s recent best efforts to pretend we are currently in June and in the south of France, the encroaching nights mean that local party AGM season is nearly upon us.

To help local parties get the most out of them, I’ve written in conjunction with London Liberal Democrats a simple factsheet giving 10 tips to lift an AGM from being a boring, business meeting that no-one comes to into an interesting and successful event. Though written for London, the tips are applicable elsewhere.

Hope you find it useful – and of course please do share this post (or this pdf) with whoever is involved in organising the AGM in your own local party.

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

MOO giveaway with Liberal Democrat Voice

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 9:50 am

We’re pleased to be working alongside the team at MOO in offering a competition to win some great MOO products for our readers. The grand prize winner will get 100 of MOO’s business cards (a product which I’ve been a happy user of for many years) and a ShowCase business card holder. Two runners up will be receiving 100 business cards each.

Who is MOO?

In case you’ve not come across MOO before, they are business card printing experts, but also do stickers, greeting cards, MiniCards, labels and …

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Mark Pack

Michael Meacher has me confused over individual electoral registration

By Mark Pack | Mon 10th October 2011 - 7:50 am

Dear Michael Meacher,

I’m puzzled by your views on individual electoral registration. You call it “insidious”, “underhand”, “utterly anti-democratic” and “Tory”. Yet the legislation for it was introduced by a Labour government, Labour’s 2010 manifesto boasted about Labour’s achievement in passing that legislation and – as far as I can see – you didn’t rebel once over the legislation when it was going through Parliament.

Of course there are issues about whether or not electoral registration should be voluntary and whether the annual canvass should be kept in 2014, but those are not the target of your written ire. Your …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 13 Comments
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