Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 179th 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 (18th – 24th July, 2010), 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:
LDV Co-Editor Mark Pack – who has written here and here about the Channel 4 News reports of MPs allegedly stretching their election exenses – has been interviewed by the channel about the complex rules.
As the Syrian Government introduces a ban on the niqab in universities, the debate on Islamic veils has moved beyond Europe and into a wider discussion about personal freedom and national identity.
A niqab ban in a Middle Eastern country will give weight to those British critics who claim that their objections are grounded in values, not race, and the UK’s Muslim community will face scrutiny once more. The opinion formed by armchair pundits is that the niqab is not acceptable to our British values, but is it a threat to them?
The government of Syria saw veils as a destabilising force, …
Here’s Jeremy Browne, Taunton Deane Lib Dem MP and Minister of State at the Foreign Office, marking the launch of the Indonesian Embassy’s new hybrid car “Prius” at the Ambassador’s residence. What do you think Jeremy or the Ambassador might have been saying or thinking?
Do you like football? Are you a Liberal Democrat? Do you want the opportunity to win a small prize?
Well in that case why not join the unofficial Lib Dem fantasy premier league? Here’s an opportunity to put together a team with some of your favourite players in, and compete against other Lib Dem football fans.
To set up a team go to http://fantasy.premierleague.com (http://m.fantasy.premierleague.com from a smart-phone) and follow the instructions to register. Choose your team name and design your club’s strip, then pick your squad for the season.
Once that’s done, you can choose to join a private league …
In a thundering attack this morning, the Mail on Sunday lays into Harriet Harman, acting leader of of the Labour party for…erm… doing nothing wrong at all.
Ms Harman, it appears, accepted money legally and properly given by a Labour Party supporter and then, as is one of the jobs of an MP, assisted the same person with a problem.
The whole affair, which the Mail on Sunday would really like you to think is some sort of sordid scandal, is summed up in the first few paragaphs of their story:
Harriet Harman was last night facing damaging claims that she lobbied
We have never really been able to call the UK a true democracy. We have an unelected second chamber, made up of Lords Spiritual (Bishops), Lords Temporal (those granted hereditary peerages and selected by unelected party leaders) and Lords Surprising (Messrs Sugar and Prescott). The electorate in this country is allowed to vote for a change in government, so far, only at times that suit the government of the day and we have no codified constitution that outlines, irrevocably, a list of rights and freedoms.
The most obvious and fundamental issue with our democracy, however, is obviously the extent to which …
The Cumbrian News and Star reports on rising star Tory MP Rory Stewart’s fulsome apology following some bizarrely gauche comments about his constiutuency to a journalist, including the remark: “Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine and that sort of thing.”
His local paper says that the Tory MP’s put-downs:
… have been branded as arrogant and crass and the 37-year-old has since admitted he was ‘extremely foolish’. He said his remarks were merely meant to illustrate how some areas of the county were living in real poverty.
Duncan Hames, the Lib Dem MP for Chippenham is the second of our newbie MPs to take part in a viral video campaign called ‘Mpinions’. Here’s the spiel from its creators:
Mpinions is allowing new MPs to properly introduce themselves to you and all in a few easily-digestible minutes! Consider it the speed dating of the political world! The video campaign itself will be running until the end of August and is being sponsored by The Electoral Reform Society and supported and promoted online by the Hansard Society, Operation Black Vote, Dod’s Parliamentary Communications and The British Youth Council. Videos
Nick Clegg has hit back at attacks on the coalition and media suggestions that he ‘gaffed’ by terming the Iraq war illegal during Prime Minister’s Questions this week.
… when you do something new, in politics as much as in any other walk of life, of course people are going to react against it and say: ‘I prefer the old way, I think this isn’t going to work’. And of course you get that in both parties, Conservative and Liberal Democrat. I think it would be more suprising if there was not a ripple of anxiety across both parties. People will always come up with interesting ways to describe the coalition – some flattering and some not so. Of course it’s important in any colaiton that the people at the top know how to work together, but it’s a partnership government.”
And has this to say about his labelling of the Iraq war as illegal:
It was quite obvious to anyone outside the slightly odd world of Westminster that what I was doing was repeating something about which I have strong personal views in a way that wasn’t binding on the government as a whole.
A couple of days ago, Lib Dem Voice tweeted an instant poll asking the question, “Was it right or wrong for BNP leader Nick Griffin to be denied entry to the Buckingham Palace garden party?”
The poll’s still open, and you can vote here – here’s how voting currently stands:
All in all, pretty close, with 39% saying it was right, 33% saying it was wrong to deny him entry, and 26% saying he shoudn’t have been invited in the first place.
Here’s an important story that Lib Dem Voice omitted to give the space it deserves this week:
Commenting on the Coalition Government’s announcement that it has introduced a Bill to compensate Equitable Life policyholders, Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Treasury Policy Committee, Stephen Williams said:
“The Labour Government had 10 years to help the those who had their lives ruined by the collapse of Equitable Life and did nothing. In just 10 weeks the Coalition Government has taken real action to ensure that those who saw their pensions and life savings hit hard get the compensation they deserve.
Many thanks to Mark Valladares, who this week was the first in a series of guest editors. They will be running this site for a day each over the next few months.
As Mark demonstrated so well, having a guest editor can give the site something new; in his case a very pertinent theme for the day and a range of new contributors.
If anyone else would like to be a guest editor for the day, please drop an email to [email protected] with some details of your blogging or editing experience.
In just over an hour’s time, at 2pm, the Lib Dem leader is holding the first of his ‘Nick Clegg meets …’ open question-and-answer sessions outside of his own constituency. This isn’t a party event: this is a chance for voters to question the Deputy Prime Minister, and will be broadcast live on TV.
It’s being billed as follows:
An opportunity to ask the Deputy Prime Minister anything you like…
– What will the coalition government’s programme mean for me?
– How will the current spending
The 10th July is an anniversary I forgot to mark here on Lib Dem Voice. For it was two years ago, on that day, that David Davis won the Haltemprice and Howden by-election he had himself forced as a self-declared referendum on civil liberties.
At the time, I was fairly sympathetic to the impact of Mr Davis’s stance, arguing “it would be churlish to deny that a significant number of folk chose to have their say”, and that this afforded the former Tory shadow home secretary “a commanding personal mandate”.
In truth, I was over-generous to Mr Davis: Jonathan …
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?
Do you know of a blog by a LibDem which isn’t listed? Why not get them to add it as well?
Whether you are one of these new bloggers or someone who has been on the aggregator for rather longer, why not add you blog to the Wikio Directory? It’s a simple online form, gives your own blog a little more publicity and adding your blog means any links you make to other blogs helps raise them up the Wikio rankings.
Privatisation and progressive politics are not always natural bedfellows, so Tory veteran Tim Yeo’s suggestion that motorways could be privatised and tolls erected in the interests of the fight against climate change was always likely to be greeted with a mixture of suspicion and scepticism by Lib Dems.
But like most privatisations – if done correctly – Mr Yeo’s proposals could lead to a fairer, greener and more Liberal Britain.
The existing tax on road usage is road tax, which is essentially regressive as it doesn’t take income and amount of usage of the road network into account. While road tolls …
Samuel Pepys is not often associated with Nigerian internet scams, yet there is an uncanny echo of modern problems in his own forgery of 1661. In August of that year the famous diarist recorded that he “counterfeited a letter to Sir W. Pen, as from the thiefe that stole his tankard lately”. A follow up letter offered to return the tankard in return for 30 shillings, a trick than William Penn fell for. Pepys retired to a pub to spend the 30 shillings drinking with his friends, where they were joined by the poor Penn who was – perhaps thankfully …
Cause for celebration this week with a good set of by-election results:
Liberal Democrat Andrew Baldrey won St Mary’s with Summercombe (Torbay UA) from the Conservatives with a huge swing:
LD Andrew Baldrey 801 (52.7%;+16.4)
Con 365 (24.0%;-23.9)
Lab 195 (12.8%;+12.8)
UKIP 159 (10.5%;+10.5)
Turnout 26.2% Percentage change is since May 2007
Elsewhere, the Liberal Democrats held all the seats that we were defending: the principal elections were Kidlington North on Cherwell District Council; Nethermayne on Basildon District Council (the seat previously held by Ben Williams who stood down to become a special advisor to the Government’s deputy chief whip) and Thatcham South and …
Good to see that The Straight Choice website has been picked up in Australia and is being used in the federal election coming up there:
The idea was spawned following the Lindsay pamphlet scandal, in which Liberal Party volunteers distributed bogus election pamphlets claiming to be from “The Islamic Australia Federation”, which was later found not to exist.
The pamphlets claimed the Labor Party candidate would support clemency for convicted terrorists and the construction of a mosque in the area. The husband of then Liberal candidate for Lindsay Karen Chijoff and the husband of outgoing Liberal MP Jackie Kelly were
The Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) has published a report, Beyond 2010: the future of electoral administration in the UK, reviewing the workings of the electoral system in this year’s May elections and calling for major changes to be introduced.
The report repeats previous calls for the laws governing elections to be made simpler and codified into one act, rather than as at present scattered across numerous different acts. The AEA is also calling for a review of the way that the running of elections is funded and structured.
More controversially, the AEA also calls for a new system for enforcing election laws with the introduction of,
a clearer and local system of accountability and challenge through the introduction in election law of a formal complaints system. This should establish a court of first resort to deal with complaints arising from the conduct of elections.
A low level complaints system may help filter off some issues, such as partially missing imprints on leaflets which nonetheless are clearly from a particular party or candidate, which take up police time to little end. However, given the existing overlapping roles for Returning Officers, the Electoral Commission, the police, the CPS, Parliamentary authorities and even local government standards systems (who have dealt with complaints over leaflets), adding in a new formal complaints system could increase rather than reduce complexity and result in more time being consumed as an issue is raised repeatedly via different routes.
Electoral administrators are also calling for a lengthening of the timetable for general elections and Parliamentary by-elections. Although motivated by giving more time for administrative tasks to be completed during the campaign, such longer timescales would also tackle the long-term decline in the length of Parliamentary by-election campaigning with the resulting decrease in the time in which voters can find out about candidates and policies. (On this last point see my research Parliamentary by-elections get four weeks shorter – and why it matters.)
The review also includes a very sensible suggestion that where postal votes end up being rejected because of a human error by a valid would-be voter (e.g. they transposed date and month of birth by mistake on their original application), then Returning Officers should have more power to contact the person to tell them something has gone wrong and give them a chance to rectify the problem before any future election which is also covered by that faulty postal vote application.
The Association of Electoral Administrators is calling for election writs to be modernised and electronic delivery and return to be possible, along with electronic filing of election expense returns.
Here is the full report along with all the recommendations:
As a long-term believer in the need for a more progressive politics, I take no great joy in the spate of polls showing the Liberal Democrats in free fall.
The latest projections from UK Polling Report show that a Lib Dem collapse to 15% in the polls would deliver a Conservative majority of 18 and the balance of power being held by the Tory right rather than the Lib Dem right. The Lib Dem concessions on inheritance tax, capital gains tax, and Europe – for which they should be praised – would go in a flash.
Mmm, well this is one approach to take to the internet:
TERMS & CONDITIONS
…
Do you want to add a link from your website to the Shropshire Council website? Do you want us to add a link to your website through our Community Directory?
Please email the Community Directory Officer ([email protected]) with ALL the following details:
link TO www.shropshire.gov.uk or a link FROM www.shropshire.gov.uk?
organisation
job title or position
name
address (including postcode)
telephone (including area code)
email
domain name of your website
brief description of the purpose and contents of your website
reasons for requesting a link
Alas, Shropshire Council have so far declined to respond to my request for a comment explaining …
For a decade or so now governments have been firmly fixed on the idea that students should pay for their own education. So firmly fixed, in fact, that it’s easy to forget that until 1998 Higher Education was funded from general taxation and was, to the student, completely free.
It’s true that most taxpayers are in no further need of Higher Education. But that doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from its existence. Since most tax payers will one day be dependent on a pension (public or private) it’s in their interests that the next generation of wealth …
Welcome to a series where old posts are revived for a second outing for reasons such as their subject has become topical again, they have aged well but were first posted when the site’s readership was only a tenth or less of what it is currently or they got published and the site crashed, hiding the finest words of wisdom behind an incomprehensible error message. Today’s is about Google. I’ve updated the social network usage figures.
Google dominates the search engine market, both in the UK and internationally. Although there are some countries where a local search service has the lead …
Channel 4’s investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism into MPs’ election expenses has raised questions about another five MPs in addition to Zac Goldsmith.
Having already looked at some of the legal questions around Zac Goldsmith, how do the other five stack up? Two raise important points of how the law should be interpreted, one has unclear evidence so far and two appear to involve administrative errors without any actual overspending.
I hope that readers of Liberal Democrat Voice have enjoyed today’s series of pieces on the House of Lords – I know that I’ve had a lot of fun writing, editing and commissioning the various postings. However, I’d like to finish with a few serious points.
Firstly, I am of the view that we need to value our Peers more and, whilst that may seem like special pleading, I’m convinced that, by doing so, everyone gets to benefit. For instance, there are parts of the country, my own county of Suffolk for example, where we don’t have an MP, but do …
In recent weeks, LDV has been bringing its readers copies of our new MPs’ first words in the House of Commons, so that we can read what is being said and respond. You can find all of the speeches in this category with this link. Today’s guest editor Mark Valladares feels that it was only right that the same honour should be offered to new Peers, and here we bring you the words of Lord Shipley.
Lord Shipley: My Lords, it is with a great sense of privilege, tinged with a certain degree of nervousness, that I rise to make my maiden speech in this debate, particularly after so many distinguished contributions and excellent maiden speeches have been made already. I thank all the staff, all my colleagues and my sponsors for the warmth of their welcome and for their willingness to go out of their way to explain the workings of the House to me. There is much to learn. The support that I have received has been exceptional and I am deeply grateful for it.
I am a Yorkshireman by birth, although not from the town whose name I bear. I was born and brought up on the Yorkshire coast, in Whitby, but have been an adopted Geordie for the past 40 years in Newcastle upon Tyne, where I worked for many years for the Open University and where I have been a councillor for more than 30 years. I would like to concentrate on that latter connection in this debate.
Nigel Jones "I feel like we should have expressed a lot more enthusiasm for working with Burnham, but saying what we could bring to the table." AND "Let's be a bit more co...
Nigel Jones Good work and urban areas should be more of a focus for our party. There is at least one thing missing from the party strategy and that is the need to link loca...
Mick Taylor I really do despair at some in our party supporting the scrapping of the triple lock. Let's put some facts out there. Even with the triple lock UK pensions are ...
Matt (Bristol) David Allen, I don't know about 'broad progressive movement' but the PM wants to make movement on topics where there is both entrenched warfare but also enough ...
David Allen Here's a contrast (BBC news today):
"Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said ... "Talk is cheap. Burnham must stop with all the 'maybes' ... " Just carping from t...
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The geography of Liberal Democrat potential (LDN#214)
The sun still shines on PM Burnham
The Joy of Six 1584
Farage fails the cool, calm leadership test
Burnham's PR pledge: Should Lib Dems be optimistic?
A Liberal View on Burnham's Speech
Nigel Jones
Mick Taylor
Matt (Bristol)
David Allen