The Lib Dem fantasy football league: will you be the 70th player?

By Chris Wilson | Thu 19th August 2010 - 7:45 am

After the exciting start to the Premier League Season – and much more importantly the Lib Dem Fantasy Football League – I can reveal the answer to the question on everyone’s lips… my team, Dynamo Chicken Kiev, are currently in 64th place out of 69!

For those of you who missed the original post, Peter Taylor and I have started up an unofficial fantasy football league for readers of Lib Dem Voice (although all Lib Dems are welcome). Sixty-nine people have created teams in the hope of winning the prestige – and small prize – of being crowned the league …

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Mark Pack

The Miliband campaigning house parties

By Mark Pack | Wed 18th August 2010 - 11:12 pm

Over on the Total Politics website they’ve been poking fun at the ‘house party’ instructions issued by the David Miliband campaign. On reading the piece at first I thought it was being a little harsh, because house parties (where you invite electors – Labour members in this case – to a small event to discuss things face-to-face) have a great role in campaigning. And yes, the instructions are a bit detailed at points – but then many people will be hosting this sort of event for the first time ever.

Then, however, I got to this part:

Read your guests a

…

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Mark Pack

Who is who behind the scenes in the coalition?

By Mark Pack | Wed 18th August 2010 - 11:07 pm

Today’s Guardian has a pretty decent go at covering who the key advisers are, on both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative side, how they are working together, who talks to who and so on.

The piece has been praised by others today, but I only say “pretty decent” because it doesn’t mention Alison Suttie. Talking about Lib Dem advisers without mentioning her is a bit like talking about Lib Dem MPs without mentioning Vince or my diet without mentioning chocolate. Previously for Ming Campbell and now for Nick Clegg she’s played an absolutely key role in a deputy chief of …

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg – Judge us on five years, not 100 days

By NewsHound | Wed 18th August 2010 - 8:45 pm

Over at The Observer at the weekend, Nick Clegg anticipated this week’s Coalition anniversary with an article setting out some of the Government’s achievements to date, but stressing that the Lib Dems and our Conservative partners are in it for the long haul:

A coalition can only work if it is upfront about the differences between the two parties and explicit about the partnership it is seeking to create. It requires collective decision-making and a high level of candour as two different parties seek to govern together. … our painstakingly negotiated programme for coalition government all about a five-year plan

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged | 16 Comments
Stephen Tall

What Lib Dem MPs are reading this summer

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th August 2010 - 7:12 pm

The annual Waterstone’s ComRes survey of MPs’ summer reading choices has just been published. You can read about the overall responses here, but I had a quick scan of the findings of the 12 Lib Dem MPs who replied to see what our party folk are planning to dip into during the parliamentary recess…

…

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Iain Roberts

If you don’t like a system that can produce coalitions, how would you change it?

By Iain Roberts | Wed 18th August 2010 - 5:28 pm

We have a well understood way of electing MPs and forming governments for UK-wide elections. Not that you’d know it from the comments of some, particularly those opposed to the coalition.

Here’s how it works. We elect MPs by first past the post. Those MPs then decide who forms a government. If a Prime Minister can get the support of a majority of MPs, he or she can form a government. If the PM loses that support, the government will normally fall.

That system has produced some odd results over the years (as do all systems, depending …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 18 Comments
Stephen Tall

Clegg on social mobility: “making opportunity a right of the many, rather than a privilege of the few”

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th August 2010 - 3:45 pm

Nick Clegg today delivered his widely trailed speech on improving social mobility today, marking the 100th day of the Lib Dem / Conservative Coalition Government. You can read the full text below, also available at the party website.

Lib Dem Voice Co-Editor Mark Pack has put on his professional hat over at the Mandate blog to offer his commentary, concluding there might be some internal juggling going on between the Coalition partners:

Perhaps too there is a piece of internal coalition manoeuvring going on here: let the Conservatives be the hard-nosed people who balance the books and grudgingly win

…

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Stephen Tall

100 Days: the Coalition is still enjoying a honeymoon

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th August 2010 - 2:15 pm

Last month, YouGov’s Peter Kellner penned a rather premature post, which stated categorically: The honeymoon is over. I took him to task at the time, and stand by my view that the Coalition is still regarded generally favourably by a plurality of the public.

It’s been interesting, then, to read some of the barrage of opinion polling which has greeted the Coalition’s first 100 days. Perhaps most significant is this article in The Guardian – Coalition winning argument on economy – detailing ICM polling which shows 44% believe the coalition is doing a good job in securing economic …

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Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Tagged , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Still the best political advert I’ve seen all year

By Mark Pack | Wed 18th August 2010 - 1:20 pm

The stretch from 7 seconds in until 22 seconds in is fairly normal. But as for the rest…

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Posted in Europe / International | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Jo Shaw

Political reform: the Dragons Den

By Jo Shaw | Wed 18th August 2010 - 12:23 pm

Next year there will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to get rid of the first past the post system and replace it with the Alternative Vote system; The House of Lords is about to be reformed; the number of parliamentary constituencies is about to be reduced.

As Liberal Democrats we have a once in a generation opportunity to shape the discussion about the kind politics which will best serve the British people. Our autumn conference fringe event will explore that – but not in the normal way, with the normal suspects. We want to do this in a “new …

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Peter Black

Opinon: fighting for funding – Wales and coalitions (part 2)

By Peter Black | Wed 18th August 2010 - 11:20 am

Previously, I referred to the fact that the Coalition Agreement contained three specific provisions relating to Wales. One of these concerned the drawing down of legislative powers over housing.The second provision relates to the way that Wales (and Scotland for that matter) is funded. This is a matter of some controversy here and the coalition agreement offers little clarity on how it is to be resolved. It is safe to say that the rather esoteric phrase referring to it needs to be subject to negotiation with UK Treasury Ministers so as to establish the best way forward.

Funding has been …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

100 days of the Coalition: how the news media has turned out to be the biggest, sorest loser of them all

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th August 2010 - 10:10 am

One hundred days. How the media loves a yardstick.

We have US President FD Roosevelt to thank for the obsession with the first 15 weeks of a new government’s activity: in a race against time to save the US economy from its Depression slump, he signed into law over a dozen recovery programmes. Some worked, some didn’t… You can draw your own analogy.

It is of course far too early to know if the Coalition will succeed. It is also far too early to know whether the Lib Dems will be boosted by our involvement in government, or if we’ll be …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 19 Comments
Mark Pack

Book review: Campaign 2010, The Making of the Prime Minister by Nicholas Jones

By Mark Pack | Wed 18th August 2010 - 8:50 am

I am usually sceptical about instant history book as they come out before there has been time for reflection or analysis and yet whilst events are still fresh in your mind. Too often therefore the instant history account simply tells you what you can still remember, and no more. However, Nicholas Jones’s book does a good job of avoiding this trap by being rather more about Campaign 2005 – 2009 than Campaign 2010. The book may be titled Campaign 2010, but much of it is better reflected in the subtitle, The Making of the Prime Minister, for it is about the longer story of where David Cameron came from and how he repositioned the Conservative Party.

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Stephen Tall

In praise of… Tony Blair

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th August 2010 - 7:43 am

I voted for Tony Blair as Labour leader in 1994; I voted for him again to become Labour prime minister in 1997. I soon learned my lesson.

As Prime Minister, he failed. Not so much domestically: sure, he disappointed but show me a political leader who doesn’t.

But in foreign policy, Mr Blair was an unmitigated disaster, the most incompetent post-war Prime Minister bar none (yes, even worse than Anthony Eden).

His intentions are irrelevant: the results of his – and it was his – decision to wage war against Iraq have made Britain and the world less safe at huge …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 14 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg – My vision for a new political map and voting system

By NewsHound | Tue 17th August 2010 - 7:45 pm

Acting Prime Minister… are we allowed to call him that? No, okay then: Holding the Fort Prime Minister Nick Clegg has an article in today’s London Evening Standard setting out how he thinks the way in which people vote can be improved by the next general election, in 2015.

He looks at three issues. First, Nick notes the current unfairness that unequal constituency sizes mean that the votes of 87,000 voters in the East Ham constituency are worth less than the 66,000 voters living 10 miles away in Islington North: “So, if you live in Islington, your voice counts for more.” …

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , , , and | 34 Comments
Ryan Cullen

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Ryan Cullen | Tue 17th August 2010 - 6:53 pm

Four 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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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Sky News leads with ‘exclusive’ voodoo poll as broadcaster’s credibility slumps

By Stephen Tall | Tue 17th August 2010 - 5:11 pm

Exclusive: Support For Clegg’s Lib Dems At 8% screams Sky News’s report marking the 100 days of the Coalition. Disaster! Woe! Panic!

Erm, except Sky News isn’t reporting a poll conducted by a reputable polling organisation of a representative sample of the British public. I mean, you didn’t seriously expect journalistic integrity and news values from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News-lite, did you?

The figure of 8% support for the Lib Dems is the result of a Sky News Panel survey. The surveys are open to any viewer to join and answer. Sky makes no claim that its Panel is representative, …

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Posted in Polls | Tagged | 14 Comments
Chris White

Opinion: who’ll watch the watchmen when the auditors are away

By Chris White | Tue 17th August 2010 - 4:20 pm

Have a thought for the Audit Commission. This ‘public spending watchdog’ is not well understood. Its principal function is to be an auditor cum audit regulator. It is also tasked with producing national studies into good practice in local government (and to some extent the NHS). Its more famous, but essentially minor, inspection role – now anyway abolished – was bolted on recently by the dirigiste regime of Blair and Brown.

Three issues now need urgently to be tackled.

First: will communities really benefit from councils being able to appoint their own (private sector) auditors? The private sector already supplies a minority …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 16 Comments
Jonathan Collett

The Independent View: PCC responds to party motion on its future

By Jonathan Collett | Tue 17th August 2010 - 2:20 pm

The motion on the Press Complaints Commission which has been selected for debate at the Liberal Democrat conference is concerning. It contains a number of inaccuracies and appears to be based on several false premises. It is especially disappointing because the philosophy behind the PCC and its independent self-regulation of the newspaper and magazine industry is entirely in tune with the Liberal tradition.

The PCC exists to protect freedom of expression, while upholding standards by ruling on strict criteria of inaccuracy, intrusion, harassment (and so on), and by establishing case law and the acceptable boundaries of practice. It provides a public service which is easily accessible, free to use and which speedily …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged | 10 Comments
Iain Roberts

Goodbye to rogue wheel clampers – another Lib Dem policy to become law

By Iain Roberts | Tue 17th August 2010 - 1:20 pm

Lynne Featherstone has announced that the Lib Dem policy to ban wheel clamping and towing away of vehicles on private property is to become law. The measure will bring England and Wales in line with Scotland.

As Lynne writes on her blog

There cannot be an MP in the land who has not had constituents come to them who have been clamped ‘unfairly’. The complaints that have come in to the Home Office are tales of exorbitant fees, abusive behaviour, signage being invisible and so on.

In a recent adjournment debate I recall that examples were given of a disabled motorist

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 35 Comments
Mark Pack

Helicopters and Trident face cuts as financial squeeze hits the MOD

By Mark Pack | Tue 17th August 2010 - 12:20 pm

Both Conservative and Liberal Democrats made plenty of justified political hay out of helicopter problems faced by our armed forces back under the Labour government. Now it looks as if both parties will be having to perform a sensitive political change of gear as the Ministry of Defence turns to making helicopter cuts.

Apart from the need to save money, there are good substantive policy reasons for this change. One is that the previous shortages have been tackled. As Paul Waugh recounts it,

When a newly-elected Prime Minister Cameron held his first meeting with defence chiefs in Number 10, he was

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 23 Comments
Peter Black

Opinion: four party government – Wales and coalitions (part 1)

By Peter Black | Tue 17th August 2010 - 11:20 am

The Welsh Assembly is in a unique situation. Each of the four parties represented there are in government at some level. Whilst the Liberal Democrats have entered government in Westminster for the first time, Labour and Plaid Cymru are in their final year of coalition government in Cardiff Bay.

This has made for interesting Plenary sessions with both the Welsh governing parties intent on blaming the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives for long-standing problems, whilst we are intent on continuing our scrutiny of their record.

The Coalition Agreement contained three specific provisions relating to Wales. One of these concerned the drawing down …

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Mark Pack

Why hearing the shipping forecast makes me optimistic

By Mark Pack | Tue 17th August 2010 - 10:20 am

When the dulcet tones of the BBC’s Shipping Forecast turn to the weather in German Bight, two thoughts often flit through my mind – both related to the history of Heligoland, an island (or strictly speaking, an inhabited island and a small uninhabited neighbour) that previously gave its name to that shipping forecast area until a name change in 1956.

The first thought is a reminder of how unbalanced  the information provided online can be. Google “Heligoland” and you will usually find results dominated by music (Heligoland was an album title for Massive Attack) and military history (Heligoland was the site …

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Mark Pack

UKIP leader Lord Pearson stands down

By Mark Pack | Tue 17th August 2010 - 8:34 am

The BBC has the story about Lord Pearson standing down as UKIP’s leader following his less than successful general election performance (with that TV interview):

In his resignation statement, Lord Pearson said he was “not much good” at party politics and UKIP “deserved a better politician… to lead it”.

The outgoing leader had a difficult general election campaign, telling one interviewer he could not remember his own manifesto in detail.

An interim leader will be chosen at UKIP’s annual conference next month.

I must admit I’m a little impressed with his departure – it’s a rare person who admits they aren’t up to …

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Mark Pack

Conservative MP goes to court over election expense limit breach

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th August 2010 - 9:37 pm

David Mundell MP (Conservative) is taking to the courts to apply for official relief for breaking his election expense limit during the general election.

The relief process is designed to allow people who make innocent and inconsequential mistakes to admit to their mistake and avoid prosecution. A typical example is if a candidate by mistake leaves a small bill off their expenses return. However, David Mundell’s case is slightly more complicated as although he too left a bill out of his short campaign expense return, adding it in takes him over the limit.

The Herald explains:

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George Kendall

Opinion: why we should wish Labour well

By George Kendall | Mon 16th August 2010 - 4:20 pm

Many Lib Dems are angry: at Labour popularism on immigration and law and order to wrong-foot their opponents . That they’ve left the country in such a terrible financial mess. And that as we engage in the awful process of cuts, they jeer from the sidelines, making political capital out of their own mistakes.

But we need to temper our anger. Labour lost their way, but they may find their way back.

And for all their faults, they have qualities we share. A desire to help the unfortunate. A commitment to the welfare state. A belief in internationalism.

At the last election, Nick …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 102 Comments
Mark Pack

Reform of Press Complaints Commission to be debated at conference

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th August 2010 - 2:20 pm

The future of the Press Complaints Commission is up for debate at the party’s autumn conference in Liverpool. A motion from Truro & Falmouth echoes many of the criticisms made of the PCC by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in its recent report. The motion calls for a fully independent regulator to take the place of the current structure which is heavily staffed by people holding current senior newspaper roles.

The motion also supports a shift in the PCC’s role from handling individual complaints towards upholding and improving press standards more generally. That’s a question I wrote about …

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Posted in Conference | Tagged and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Council website spending put under scrutiny

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th August 2010 - 1:13 pm

Today’s Telegraph has a piece looking at the large sums being spent by many councils on new or revamped websites.

In itself, an expensive website is not necessarily a poor use of funds as good, popular sites often also save costs (e.g. by reducing the number of phonecalls the council has to handle). As a result, Medway Council – one of those picked out in the article – may have a good case for spending £250,000 in revamping its site given that the last major revamp was in 2003. In the last seven years the internet has changed significantly as have …

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Posted in Local government, News and Online politics | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Office of the Public Guardian finally starts to get some serious public scrutiny

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th August 2010 - 12:20 pm

The Office of the Public Guardian should be a wonderful public service, helping people have more control over how their lives are sorted out if they get to a point where they can’t make decisions for themselves. That’s the theory anyway. The reality is somewhat different, as I’ve chronicled with their long and complicated paperwork:

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Simon Wright MP

13 Norwich by-elections on one day – can you help?

By Simon Wright MP | Mon 16th August 2010 - 11:20 am

In just one month voters in Norwich will be going to the polls again

Here in Norwich, we’re fighting not 1, not 2, not even 10 council by-elections this summer. We’ve got 13.

We won Norwich South at the General Election by just 310 votes. These elections are set to be just as close. Many people came to help us in May, and we’re appealing for even more people to come and help us now. We’re especially looking for people to make a few phone calls from home.

Back in December, following a drawn-out and bitter process that split political parties …

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Posted in Council by-elections | Tagged and | 7 Comments
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