Mark Pack

Media ownership: what have Liberal Democrats said?

By Mark Pack | Tue 9th August 2011 - 8:54 am

Flicking through old general election manifestos of the Liberal Democrats and our predecessor parties at the weekend, I was surprised to find how recent references to concerns over the pattern of media ownership in the UK are. It really is only with the 1997 general election manifesto that explicit policies about protecting or improving the diversity of media ownership feature.

Given the number of technological innovations over the years, it is no surprise that some of the manifesto policies now read as very dated – 1983’s concerns over the impact of video tapes in particular. Yet the actual or feared power …

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Brian Paddick

Brian Paddick writes: Lessons from the Tottenham riots

By Brian Paddick | Tue 9th August 2011 - 7:53 am

What can be learnt from the riots in Tottenham this weekend?  There have been many controversial police shootings in recent years but this would not appear, on the face of it, to be one of them.  The matter is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and from my experience that might be part of the problem.  There are also deeper issues that need to be addressed.

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Nick T

Tune in to Iain Dale’s Lib Dem night tonight on LBC, featuring Nick Clegg, Simon Hughes and others

By Nick T | Mon 8th August 2011 - 4:54 pm

Iain Dale returns to his evening show on London’s LBC radio tonight with a Lib Dem special. First up is a live Q & A with deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, followed by interviews with a whole host of prominent Lib Dems, including three of the four London Mayoral hopefuls as well as deputy leader Simon Hughes.

Here’s the schedule in full from Iain’s blog:

6-7pm Live Q & A with LibDem leader Nick Clegg
7-7.30pm Interview with Nick Clegg (tbc)
7.30-8pm Reaction to Clegg with Lord Oakeshott, Susan Kramer & Jo Phillips
8-9pm Meet the LibDem London Mayoral Candidates – Brian Paddick, Brian

…

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Ryan Cullen

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Ryan Cullen | Mon 8th August 2011 - 3:37 pm

Thirteen blogs have recently joined my Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

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Richard Clare

Opinion: Tottenham points to wider policing problems

By Richard Clare | Mon 8th August 2011 - 1:34 pm

The last couple of evening riots in London, starting in Tottenham and working their way across the capital, seemingly sparing no town in its wake has left us in shock. People are being injured, the police and innocent bystanders as well as the rioters and looters. Again and again though, the question that people keep asking is “What’s going on?”

They are right to ask. Unfortunately, the riots have occurred while a high number of our leading politicians are out of the country. David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, Nick Clegg, they all could have spoken with authority on the …

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Mike Tuffrey

Mike Tuffrey writes… London isn’t working – and the Mayor is asleep on the job

By Mike Tuffrey | Mon 8th August 2011 - 10:23 am

Today 397,000 Londoners are unemployed and looking for a job. As a region, we have the lowest level of skills in the workforce, based on NVQ Level 1 and above. And the problems are getting worse, as we fail to recover fast enough from the cardiac arrest that Labour’s last years in office dealt to the national economy.

Not a pretty picture for our great capital city, powerhouse (so we keep saying) of the whole UK economy.

In fact, weren’t the Olympics meant to help drive forward our economy? A couple of news stories from July sum up for me what’s wrong …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Tagged and | 6 Comments
The Voice

Media reform in the UK

By The Voice | Mon 8th August 2011 - 10:00 am

Anthony Barnett (Our Kingdom), Sunny Hundal (Liberal Conspiracy), Mark Pack (Lib Dem Voice) & Will Straw (IPPR) write…

July 2011 will be remembered as one of those rare moments where the nation came together in shared outrage and disgust. The hacking of Milly Dowler shocked the country and led to a series of unprecedented events which would have seemed inconceivable just weeks before. The drama culminated in the resignation and arrest of several News International executives and senior police officers; the termination of a 168-year old national newspaper; and the appearance of a humbled Rupert Murdoch before a public hearing.

The various …

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The Voice

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Mon 8th August 2011 - 9:23 am

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

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Posted in Site news | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #233

By Stephen Tall | Sun 7th August 2011 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 232nd 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 (31 July — 6th August, 2011), 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

LDVideo: Understanding how opinion polls work, Yes Minister-style

By Stephen Tall | Sun 7th August 2011 - 5:55 pm

Are for the re-introduction of national service, or against it? In this clip Yes Minister explains how you can hold both views simultaneously…

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Caron Lindsay

Opinion: CentreForum’s parenting report is a step in the right direction

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 7th August 2011 - 2:55 pm

Liberal think tank CentreForum has produced a report, Parenting Matters, which advises the Government to do more to promote better quality parenting, specifically targeted at those families who need it most.

Much of the publicity surrounding the report concentrated on its “5 a day” campaign which suggests that parents should:

    1. Read to their child for 15 minutes
    2. Play on the floor with their child for 10 minutes
    3.  Talk to their children for 20 minutes every day with the television off
    4. Adopt positive attitudes to their child and praise them frequently
    5.

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (July 2011)

By Stephen Tall | Sun 7th August 2011 - 1:00 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 34,668 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in July. This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 July 2010 – 30 June 2011) to 509,455.


The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

  1. Opinion: Nick Clegg didn’t suck up to Murdoch – that’s why his minions tried to destroy him (28) by James Percival
  2. Opinion: Verdict from the first Mayoral Hustings – it’s a two horse race (40) by Simon McGrath
  3. What does the Inverclyde result mean for the Scottish Liberal Democrats?

…

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The Voice

‘Nick Clegg is chasing women’, says the Indy

By The Voice | Sun 7th August 2011 - 11:05 am

Under this deliberately playful headline comes news that the Deputy Prime Minister is determined to improve his image with female voters:

… the Deputy Prime Minister is to embark on a campaign to woo female voters – and the Liberal Democrats have hired a new PR guru to help him. … on a breakneck tour of town hall Q&As and private meetings with party members … His team stresses that these are “party” events. … In the first sign of the fightback, Mr Clegg will tomorrow use a speech to debunk the suggestion that women are getting a raw

…

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Mark Pack

A very unusual use for a Conservative Party membership card

By Mark Pack | Sun 7th August 2011 - 9:54 am

Take a young man, alcohol, a police station, a Conservative Party membership card, a police-issue balaclava and a cup of tea, and what do you get? Why, this story of course (with further details from here).

Hat-tip: Richard Clare

Posted in News | Tagged | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

News in Brief: Ming savages Danny, ‘Parenting Matters’, and Don Foster on “rodents with wings”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 6th August 2011 - 6:55 pm

Former party leader Ming Campbell is apparently furious with fellow Scottish Lib Dem, Danny Alexander, according to the Telegraph.

The two MPs are, it appears, at each others’ metaphorical throats over the handing over to the British army of RAF Leuchars in Fife (Ming’s patch), while RAF Lossiemouth in Moray (Danny’s neighbouring patch) — though it should be noted that RAF Kinloss, also close to Danny’s own consituency, will suffer the same fate as Leuchars.

The Telegraph quotes Ming implying with scarcely veiled fury that Danny’s intervention in the defence …

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Stephen Tall

The LDV Friday Five (Late Edition): 6 August 2011

By Stephen Tall | Sat 6th August 2011 - 5:00 pm

It’s Friday. Okay, it isn’t. But at least it’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week in our belated Friday Five:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

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Stephen Tall

David Laws set for ministerial return in autumn?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 6th August 2011 - 3:53 pm

So says The Sun, oracle of all political prophesy, and (as we now know) superbly connected to the occupant of Number 10:

OUTED Treasury chief David Laws is lined up for a surprise return to Government in the autumn, The Sun can reveal. PM David Cameron plans to hand the expenses scandal MP a new role – probably in the Cabinet Office. … Mr Cameron and Deputy PM Nick Clegg believe his peace-making skills within the Coalition will outweigh any backlash about his frontline return. Mr Cameron told a confidant: “Nick and I want David back. September or October is

…

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Posted in News | 34 Comments
The Voice

Vince: This isn’t a banking crisis, this is a debt crisis

By The Voice | Sat 6th August 2011 - 1:45 pm

Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable has sought to reassure the British public that the financial crisis currently destabilising the markets is substantially different to the 2008 crash which sparked the ‘credit crunch’ and recession.

While the Lehmans-triggered crash left the British economy reeling because of the knock-on effect on our banking-reliant financial services sector, notes Vince, this current crisis is the result of the markets’ failure to be convinced by the US and Eurozone efforts to curb sovereign debt — whereas the Coalition’s austerity measures to cut the deficit have the confidence of the markets.

Here is Vince speaking on the BBC today:

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Stephen Tall

Decriminalising drug possession: an idea whose time has come?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 6th August 2011 - 11:25 am

Drug reform has long been the third rail of British politics. Nine years ago, a newly-elected Tory MP was able to write in The Guardian from the safety of backbench obscurity: ‘I am an instinctive libertarian who abhors state prohibitions and tends to be sceptical of most government action, whether targeted against drug use or anything else.’ It’s hard to imagine David Cameron daring to repeat those words now he occupies Number 10.

Yet the Lib Dems are preparing to move the debate centre-stage by recommending at this year’s autumn federal conference the setting up of an independent inquiry into …

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David Thorpe

Opinion: A Liberal idea for welfare reform

By David Thorpe | Sat 6th August 2011 - 9:53 am

Its not often an article which seeks to promote the Liberal agenda gets to use Alan Sugar and Peter Stringfellow as case studies.
But the millionaire duo, are, through no fault of their own, examples of all that is wrong with the approach successive governments have taken to welfare provision.

As Lord Sugar explains, he receives, despite never having applied for it, the winter fuel allowance available to all people over the age of 60.

The businessman even explains that he subsequently spent more than an hour on the phone trying to give the money back, only to be told that he …

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The Voice

Lib Dems gain council seat in David Laws’s constituency

By The Voice | Fri 5th August 2011 - 11:21 pm

The Press Association reports:

Liberal Democrats gained from Tories in this week’s only reported council by-election amid signs of revival in some areas following the hacking scandal.

Candidate Michael Maxwell won Somerset County Council’s South Petherton division on a big swing.

It is covered by the Yeovil constituency of the party’s former Cabinet minister David Laws.

The result comes after it defied Labour at Warrington last week by winning in a marginal ward where it had lost another seat in May’s main contests.

This suggests that Lib Dems could be benefiting from their lack of high level links to the Murdoch empire.

RESULT

Somerset County – South

…

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Posted in Council by-elections | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
James Fearnley

Opinion: Overplaying the power of the “people’s petitions”

By James Fearnley | Fri 5th August 2011 - 11:48 am

The e-petition mechanism to allow a new public petition service has gone live and media coverage about its merit and importance has gone mad. Let’s not over-emphasise the significance of this move and let’s not downplay the power of solid, rational argument.

I disagree with Sir George Young: this won’t give the public a megaphone as such and to say that it will is an exaggeration. What it may do is potentially provoke debate on contentious topics for which Parliament at present has neither the political will, nor the time, to dedicate to matters such as capital punishment, abortion, civil liberties …

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Simon McGrath

Opinion: Don’t make Guido’s day

By Simon McGrath | Fri 5th August 2011 - 10:23 am

What an enjoyable holiday Guido Fawkes must be having. While he is sunning himself in France he is also managing to create a ludicrous fuss in the UK with his campaign to use the new e-petition website to ask for a vote in the Commons on Capital Punishment.

For some reason this seems to have got Lib Dems in particular into a tizzy – blogging, tweeting and generally upsetting themselves about this, to no purpose at all.

Here‘s the thing: there is no chance whatsoever of a vote in the Commons supporting the return of the death penalty. None. …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 30 Comments
Mark Pack

Brentwood & Ongar Conservatives apologise for false claims

By Mark Pack | Fri 5th August 2011 - 8:54 am

Here is the apology leaflet put out door to door by Brentwood & Ongar Conservatives for “false” and “inappropriate” claims:

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Martin Shapland

Martin Shapland writes: A petition to retain the ban on capital punishment

By Martin Shapland | Thu 4th August 2011 - 8:36 pm

You can tell it’s silly season. The top story today is that a petition on the Death Penalty is at the top of the government’s new e-petition site. You might not have noticed that the petition with the most signatures says – ‘Retain the ban on Capital Punishment.’

Yes I launched the petition; no this isn’t a vanity project. Paul Staines (AKA Guido Fawkes) and the Daily Mail, which have both launched campaigns to restore the death penalty, need to be opposed. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and most Members of Parliament happen to be on holiday.

It might …

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes: Hargreaves and site-blocking: a good start

By Julian Huppert | Thu 4th August 2011 - 3:27 pm

I was pleased when Vince Cable announced, yesterday, the government’s response to the Hargreaves Report. Like many people who are interested in IT & IP, I was pretty worried that it might turn out to be another damp squib, where an eminent academic publishes a set of excellent proposals, only for the government to fail to act. This, of course, is what happened after the Gowers Review.

Thankfully the Coalition is supporting all ten of Professor Hargreaves’ recommendations. They are important copyright reforms that could add as much as £7 billion, or 0.6%, to the UK economy – …

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Greg Judge

Opinion: What the US debt ceiling crisis can teach Britain on coalition and compromise

By Greg Judge | Thu 4th August 2011 - 1:51 pm

The crisis in the US Congress has finally come to an end and President Obama was able to raise the country’s debt ceiling without invoking the 14th Amendment. It has been a weekend of worry and apprehension as to how far extremist factions such as the Republican Tea Party were willing to go and whether they were prepared to bring the country to the lowly depths of economic default.

Neither major party had seemed prepared to give up what means most to them; the preservation of continued support for Medicare and Social Security (Democrats) or the need for heavy fiscal cuts …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 14 Comments
Mark Pack

Petition launched to retain the ban on the death penalty

By Mark Pack | Thu 4th August 2011 - 12:15 pm

Does what is says on the tin, and it is here, created by Lib Dem Martin Shapland.

Posted in News | Tagged | 22 Comments
David Hennigan

Opinion: Why Sir Cyril was wrong

By David Hennigan | Thu 4th August 2011 - 11:49 am

Now, it’s easy to pretend that your political hero is perfect. It’s easy to write hagiographical accounts of a life without mistakes.

I felt that about the late Sir Cyril Smith MBE, formerly MP for Rochdale. I shall forever feel proud about how Cyril took me under his wing. I will be forever proud now that Sir Cyril called me his friend and gave me so many tips, so many words of advice about how to do my job. (I was Lib Dem Agent in Rochdale from 2004 – 2009) I wrote about ‘our Cyril’ for his 80th …

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The Voice

New comms team in place at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

By The Voice | Thu 4th August 2011 - 10:35 am

PR Week reports:

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has completed the process of building a nine-strong comms team for Nick Clegg, with the appointment of a Home Office senior press officer.

Helen Cook will move across from her role at the Home Office, which she has held for a year-and-a-half, later this month.

Cook will report to the chief press officer Peter Graham, and takes her place as the final link in Clegg’s comms armoury.

Sorene told PRWeek: ‘The appointment is the end of a process that started last year with the restructure of Cabinet Office and Number 10 comms.

…

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