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NewsHound

Willie Rennie: Look at the things we got right, not the thing we got wrong

By NewsHound | Published Sun 19th April 2015 - 12:30 pm

Willie Rennie has given a candid interview to the Scotsman about the prospects for the Liberal Democrats and our record in government. Given the tuition fees question, he is apologetic but asks people to look at the whole picture:

Saying sorry isn’t a tactic,” he insists. “People who are annoyed with us will be annoyed with us, but they deserve an apology. Some will never understand or forgive. They’re entitled to do that. My only plea to them is look at all the things we’re getting right, not just the thing we got wrong.”

Repentance and sincerity are unnatural political bedfellows, but convincing Scotland’s electorate you mean what you say should be easier for a Fifer with a buzzcut than an Old Etonian.
There’s quite a sympathetic approach – the journalist suggests that he is a genial, robust and consensual presence at Holyrood, a bulwark against the SNP’s more illiberal instincts, but the party’s baggage hangs over him.
It could be understood if Willie were to try to put some distance between the Scottish party and them in Westminster, but he doesn’t, not just because it wouldn’t be credible, but because he wouldn’t do that to colleagues:
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Caron Lindsay

Video: Charles Kennedy’s 30 years of service to the Highlands

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 19th April 2015 - 8:56 am

Charles Kennedy’s team has put together a video of pictures from his 32 years as an MP. When I first watched it the other day, It actually made me cry. That’s not just because it scares me to be old enough to remember things that happened three decades ago. It was quite something for me, growing up in Caithness, to have someone just 7 years older than me elected in the next constituency.

During the 1984 European election campaign, Charles Kennedy, Alan Beith and Bob Maclennan held a public meeting in Wick to support Russell Johnston’s campaign for the European Parliament. As the youngest member of the local SDP by some margin, I was invited to deliver the Vote of Thanks at the end of this meeting. It was one of my first ever public speeches and one which is probably not worth remembering. Before the meeting I was invited to High Tea at a local hotel with all the speakers. All my contemporaries at that time were mad on Wham, but I was completely starstruck by Russell and Charles.That was the same campaign I got into big trouble for inadvertently propping up a Russell leaflet on my windowsill. My parents were none too impressed when they discovered it after about a week of it being there. Funnily enough, my nephew tried the same trick (sadly for a different party) recently with similar results.

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg’s BBC1 interview – Evan Davis disappoints with constant references to Clegg’s multi-national background

By Caron Lindsay | Published Mon 13th April 2015 - 11:23 pm

I’m normally a big fan of the BBC’s Evan Davis. He knows how to make people squirm and we knew that he would do a thorough job on Nick Clegg tonight. And he did. All the difficult questions were in there, on tuition fees. that broken promises broadcast, was the coalition worth it when we’ve lost so much support. In fact, the tone was set right from the word go with “How does it feel to have gone from hero to zero?” which Nick took with his customary good grace.

No complaints about those tough policy questions. There was something else, though, which disappointed me. Davis showed a clip of Clegg speaking Dutch during the 2012 elections. Then he started to ask a series of questions around his family background,  whether it was the fact that his mother was Dutch and his father from Russian heritage that made him look to other countries for different ways of doing things. He’d found a quote from pre 2010 where Nick had talked about how, as a child in the 70s, he felt that the Netherlands were doing things much better than we were. Surely everybody looks to other countries to see what we could learn from them? Just look at the most popular dishes on every menu in the country for evidence of that. I’ve always admired many Scandinavian ways of managing their public services and the way they’ve enforced the International Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes for a start.

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Newspuppy

Pigeon killed by Lib Dem bus and the internet laughs

By Newspuppy | Published Sat 11th April 2015 - 3:45 pm

A story you might have missed from earlier this week from the BBC:

The Liberal Democrat campaign bus arrived in Poole, Dorset, with a bang on Thursday. Unfortunately, it was the sound of the bus rolling over a pigeon.

Cue all the journalists reporting it on social media and then the humour started. Click on the link to see them do their worst. We even got a mention:

The pigeon …

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Caron Lindsay

Sussex Police withdraw victim-blaming rape prevention campaign

By Caron Lindsay | Published Fri 10th April 2015 - 7:21 pm

My post earlier this week about Sussex Police’s latest rape prevention campaign proved controversial. Former Lib Dem presidential candidate and parliamentary candidate for Mid Sussex Daisy Cooper and others complained to the force after the posters were tweeted out last Saturday:

Now Sussex Police have listened to the enormous amount of feedback they have had about this campaign and withdrawn it, as the Argus reports:

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Newspuppy

Well that’s different! Boyband broadcasts and Nick Clegg going ape

By Newspuppy | Published Wed 8th April 2015 - 10:21 pm

So what do you make of the Greens boy-band broadcast?

I love the idea. It’s something a bit different. However, it is not fair to put the Liberal Democrats in the same group as Nigel Farage and UKIP. I really object to that. I don’t like being lumped into the establishment with Tories and Labour, but Farage is going too far. Lumping any of us in with a party whose leader thinks demonising people with HIV as part of his “be shocking and awful” strategy is really unfair.

We can be sure that everyone’s going to watch it. I suspect there will be many people who hadn’t realised what an old-fashioned socialist bunch this lot were. Nationalise the railways? How much is that going to cost?

It’s interesting that they’ve done a broadcast that doesn’t even have their leader in it.

It’s all a bit unconventional.

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Caron Lindsay

Liberal Democrat candidate Paul Childs talks about living with HIV

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 8th April 2015 - 12:55 pm

Liverpool Liberal Democrat candidate Paul Childs had been thinking of speaking publicly about his HIV status and was inspired by Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett’s powerful interview last week to do so. Nigel Farage’s horrible comments about the NHS treating foreigners with HIV in last week’s debate finally made up his mind and he contacted Buzzfeed.

He talked about how it felt when he was diagnosed:

I was never expecting it to happen. I remember being at work, sitting in a corridor and bursting into tears. I started shaking and getting really scared.” He went back to the hospital the next day. The second test was also positive.

I cried in front of the nurse – the staff were very supportive. I knew a little bit about what HIV meant because I’d done some work with a gay men’s health charity in Glasgow but I still had in my head that it was a terminal diagnosis. I asked the doctor how long I had to live.

He learned, though, that the condition could be kept under control, though:

Childs’ doctor explained that when treated properly, HIV is an entirely manageable chronic condition with a near normal life expectancy.

That simple sentence is something many people don’t realise.

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David Babbs

The Independent View: An apology from 38 Degrees

By David Babbs | Published Mon 6th April 2015 - 9:55 am

On 26th March, the staff team at 38 Degrees posted an image to our Facebook page, attempting to simplify the confusing debate on pledges to fund the NHS. Unfortunately, we got the numbers jumbled up and drew criticism from several different political parties – including Lib Dems on this website. This is an apology and an attempt to explain where we went wrong.

Our graph compared NHS funding pledges for 2015-16 from the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour, against the additional £8bn of funding that NHS England says it needs by 2020. We ended up comparing apples and pears. Lib Dems quite reasonably complained that presenting the information in this way obscured their flagship pledge to match that £8bn target by 2020. Both Labour and Conservatives have avoided matching that pledge.

Labour supporters also complained. We showed the Labour figure on the graph as £2.5bn – based on their pledge of £2.5bn in the “time to care” fund. But Labour says this £2.5bn is additional funding – £2.5bn on top of what the government has already said it’ll spend. And it’s due to be realised much sooner than 2020 (though it seems it’s disputed exactly when). So they argued that their bar on the graph should have shown them £2.5bn higher than the Conservatives or Lib Dems. Meanwhile, some Green Party and UKIP supporters complained that we’d failed to feature their positions at all.

It’s extremely hard to compare like-for-like pledges on NHS funding, given the different timescales and assumptions on which each of the parties claims are based. It’s well nigh impossible to compare them through the medium of one, simple bar chart which conveys all the relevant information.

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Posted in Op-eds, The Independent View | Tagged , , | 12 Comments
Caron Lindsay

AIDS organisations and Elton John support Liberal Democrat candidate Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett over HIV disclosure

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 1st April 2015 - 11:24 am

On Monday, Liberal Democrat candidate for Vauxhall Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett told Buzzfeed about his HIV status which means that he’s the first openly HIV positive candidate to contest an election in the UK. Yesterday, as Buzzfeed reports, Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish praised his courage.

After hearing about the story, Elton John and his husband David Furnish contacted BuzzNews News with a heartfelt message of support for Adrian.

“Elton John and David Furnish applaud Adrian Trett for his courage and bravery in publicly acknowledging his HIV+ status,” the statement said. “He is a fine example that HIV+ people live robust, happy and productive lives. We wish him all the best.”

Adrian was really chuffed with this:

He told BuzzFeed News: “I’m completely overwhelmed to have the support of Elton John and David Furnish and particularly appreciate it coming as a result of disclosing my HIV status. Their kindness means a lot to me, not least because Elton and David, along with the Elton John AIDS Foundation, have worked tirelessly on combatting HIV/AIDS – and the stigma surrounding it – for years.”

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Caron Lindsay

Former LGBT+ chair Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett becomes Britain’s first openly HIV positive candidate

By Caron Lindsay | Published Mon 30th March 2015 - 10:54 pm

Adrian Hyyrylainen-TrettI am feeling incredibly emotional this evening. What I’m feeling ranges from intense pride in a friend whose courage in telling his story will help others, to equally intense, ice-cold rage at what he has had to endure over the years. Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Vauxhall. He is a former chair of LGBT+ Lib Dems. Tonight, he has spoken to Buzzfeed about the bullying he suffered at school, how this led him to contemplate suicide at the age of just 14 and how his mental health deteriorated during his early adult life. He tells how he contracted HIV 11 years ago.

The fact that Adrian’s health has improved, he has found happiness in his personal life and professional success will be an inspiration to other young people who are suffering in the same way. I understand a little bit of what it’s like to be that teenager everyone hates who thinks the world would be so much better without her. Except when I was a teenager, nobody talked about this kind of stuff and I thought I was alone and the feelings I had were because I was a bad person.

You need to read the whole interview. It’s powerful, eloquent and very, very frank.

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Caron Lindsay

A few quick thoughts on last night’s Dispatches

By Caron Lindsay | Published Tue 24th March 2015 - 1:23 pm

Channel 4’s Dispatches programme last night featured the attempts of one business man to give lots of money to Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The programme has already led to Liberal Democrat peer Paul Strasburger temporarily resigning from the Liberal Democrat group in the House of Lords pending an investigation from the Electoral Commission. Here are my thoughts on the programme:

Lib Dems should not keep this money – and we aren’t

My instincts on seeing the programme was that the donation that he has procured should be returned because the programme made clear that it didn’t come from the person whose name was on the cheque. That’s not to say that I think there was conclusive evidence of wrong-doing. The Electoral Commission will rule on that and we should let them do their job. What is clear is that the Federal Party had no way of knowing that the donation had come from anyone other than the name on the cheque. I was glad to see Olly Grender confirm on Twitter that we are not keeping the money. It will either go back to the donor or to the Electoral Commission. Guidance is awaited on that point.

Cash for access?

The programme certainly gave an insight into the world of political fund-raising with the businessman concerned Paul Wilmott being invited to events with senior figures from the three parties in fairly short order. This I think is a much bigger deal in the Labour and Conservative parties than it is in the Liberal Democrats. Let’s face it, I’ve had longer conversations with Vince Cable than Paul Wilmott did and I don’t have loads of money. Senior Liberal Democrats are much more accessible than the likes of Cameron and Miliband. Let’s face it, I saw a new member at her first conference in Liverpool last week meet Nick Clegg and chat to him 3 times in the first evening. Our senior figures also spend massive amounts of time supporting local party dinners and campaigning. If you turn up to go canvassing in a key seat, there’s every chance you might be out with one of our senior MPs or Lords. It’s not like the Tories where your position in the room at a dinner depends on how much you have paid for your ticket.

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Caron Lindsay

The attacks on Tim Farron need to stop – Vince Cable should know better

By Caron Lindsay | Published Tue 24th March 2015 - 11:23 am

Tim Farron Social Liberal Forum conference Jul 19 2014 Photo by Paul WalterNot even a charming account of his Friday dance class as reported by Buzzfeed’s Emily Ashton can assuage my annoyance with Vince Cable this morning. I have to say that he is an unusual candidate for my ire. His work rate of good, decent, liberal stuff in this parliament from stopping the Tories allowing employers to hire and fire people at will to strengthening consumer rights, tackling payday lenders and bringing in shared parental leave has been excellent. His economic wisdom and willingness to call out the Tories on their silly immigration targets has been much appreciated, as has his honesty about the realities of being in coalition with the Tories.

But he’s been the target of enough critical press briefings over the past five years to be aware of how destructive they can be. The fact that he’s prepared to put his name to trashing Tim Farron’s reputation and prospects doesn’t make it that much better. Speaking about the interview in which Farron was reported as saying that he’d give 2/10 for our handling of some aspects of the coalition (which is so totally out of character for Tim that I doubt its accuracy), Vince said:

“It wasn’t at all helpful,” Cable says bluntly. “I mean, he’s a very good campaigning MP, but he’s never been in government and has never had to make difficult decisions and I think his credibility isn’t great. You know, he’s an entertaining speaker and has a bit of a fan club. But I suspect he would not be seen as a very credible leader, at least now. Maybe in five, 10 years’ time, things are different.”

Credible politicians must be more consensual than extreme if they want to get things done, Cable suggests. He says pointedly: “The closer we get to an election and the more uncertain it seems, the more people will want people who are seen to be competent and reliable.”

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The Voice

In full: Willie Rennie’s speech to Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference – personal stories which show the good Liberal Democrats have done

By The Voice | Published Sat 21st March 2015 - 4:00 pm

This is Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie’s speech just delivered to the party’s Spring Conference in Aberdeen. It’s full of real, practical accounts of how the Liberal Democrats have improved people’s lives. 

George is a young man. He lives in the Borders.  George works hard but is not rich.  He earns £12,000 a year.

Before Liberal Democrats were in Government he used to pay over £1,100 income tax. But this year it will be cut to £200.

George is not alone.  Over 2 million Scots have had their income tax cut.

I believe fair tax is necessary for a fair society.

It makes work pay, so people can stand on their own two feet.

It is what liberals are for – giving everyone the opportunity to get on in the world.

Without Liberal Democrats in Government this would not be possible.

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg’s Q & A: Live blog

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sat 14th March 2015 - 3:43 pm

Nick Clegg Q&A Liverpool Spring conference 2015 Photo by Liberal DemocratsWhen I tried to live blog Nick Clegg’s q and a in Glasgow it all went horribly wrong. I’d got about 20 minutes in and then lost the whole thing. I will be a bit more diligent about saving and updating this post.

In the style of the Daily Mail writing about female politicians, Nick Clegg, a 48 year old father of three has come on stage wearing a smart blue suit with a lighter shirt. His hair is not as sleek as it could be. He could have done with a few minutes with his hairbrush this morning.

The first question is about our relative spending on defence and aid. Nick said we should look more holistically – aid is an important part of our own national interest. He was then asked if the EU idea and said definitely No. A barmy idea, a barmy army, he said. He did say, though, that Britain and France were the only countries with any large military capability so if the EU wanted to be more self sufficient on this, there should be more long term thinking on building it up so we didn’t have to rely on “uncle Sam’ to bail us out.

Right and left abhor us being in government more than they abhor each other

Why are our poll ratings not better when we’ve done so much in government is the next question.

Nick says that it’s the first coalition at a time of real economic crisis. The powerful financial and media vested interests of right and left “abhor the Liberal Democrats in government more than they abhor each other.” They want to reclaim their binary system and us being in government puts a spoke in that.

He says that polls look much better where we can tell our side of the story and where we do that, we are going to win. 

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Kirsten Johnson

Opinion: We must not be complacent!

By Kirsten Johnson | Published Mon 9th March 2015 - 9:18 am

internationalwomensday

Yesterday was International Women’s Day. We have a lot be proud of, but there is still a long way to go.

On Friday I spoke at a hustings organised by Youth Parliament. Afterwards, I had several young women come up, inspired and engaged with what I had to say. It was brilliant to see them keen on becoming politically active.

But as I left I was approached by two teenage lads, well-spoken, but of a completely different mindset. They asked me why women should be encouraged into politics because “it is a career which suits men.” I was aghast. I could not believe that attitude could exist among young people today. I am prepared for sexism from older generations, but my generation and those younger than me surely have been brought up in a world where men and women are equal?

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Caron Lindsay

Who’s the woman who has inspired you most?

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 8th March 2015 - 10:13 pm

Caron and ShirleyIt’s International Women’s Day today and on Twitter, there’s been an #inspiredby meme on Twitter where we have to say which women have inspired us.

I went a bit mad, as you can see from my Twitter feed. I’ve been lucky enough to know so many fabulous women in politics from all parties that if I started writing about them now, I’d still be here this time next week. And that would just be politics. So I’m going to limit myself to just two.

The first is someone who was my first political hero, ever since she made that speech at that first SDP conference where she talked about being required to scale unscaleable heights as she announced her candidacy for the Crosby by-election. She’s done so much to advance and advocate women’s rights internationally. She was a minister in a world where it was ok for interviewers like Robin Day to compliment female MPs on their outfits and say how pretty they looked. She was brave enough to recognise that she and the Labour Party had come to the end of the road and to branch out in a new direction when the SDP was formed. Her energy even now, at the age of 84, is incredible. It was fantastic to have her come to Scotland for the best part of the last 10 days of the referendum campaign last year. She was filling halls and winning debates right up till the last minute. I found it quite emotional to see a Yes campaigner come up to her on Dunfermline High Street and say that she’d been her hero all her life too. I’m talking of course about Shirley Williams. She’s had such a fascinating life. It must have been so hard to have been uprooted and sent to strangers across the Atlantic during the War, thousands of miles from her parents but she threw herself into that experience. As she grew up she met some of the most progressive thinkers of her day.

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Caron Lindsay

The Herald: “All power to the Lib Dems for standing up for our liberties”

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 8th March 2015 - 7:39 pm

Willie Rennie - Some rights reserved by Liberal DemocratsHerald columnist Ian Macwhirter is not known for writing nice things about Liberal Democrats. In fact, I think it actually causes him pain to do so. It is always welcome when someone who is not your biggest fan says nice things about you. He was very complimentary about Willie Rennie the other day. As someone pointed out on my Facebook when I posted this originally, “All Power to…. is not the most civil-liberties friendly headline, but it’s appreciated nonetheless.

As James Baker wrote a few weeks ago, the Scottish Government were trying to sneak in plans for what is effectively a massive ID database capable of even more surveillance than that set up by Labour. Once Willie got to hear about it, he set about questioning it and used a rare Liberal Democrat opposition day debate in Parliament to highlight the issue. He called for the creation of such a database to be the subject of primary legislation. He was never going to win, because, you know, SNP overall majority and all that – and they don’t take kindly to rebellion or even criticism from their parliamentarians – but he inflicted a bloody nose on the Deputy First Minister John Swinney.

Macwhirter wrote:

I think now we have an answer to what the LibDems are for: they’re the only major party, Greens aside, that really takes issues of civil liberties seriously, as we saw yesterday with their debate on the Scottish Government’s plans effectively to create a national identity database.Leader Willie Rennie’s motion to stop the measure being rushed through without proper parliamentary scrutiny succeeded by 65 votes to 60 in the Scottish Parliament after an intelligent and thoughtful debate; a rare occasion on which Deputy First Minister John Swinney was sent back to think again

We need parties that keep a vigilant eye on government. Labour has never quite got this privacy thing having been, for most of its existence, a party very much of and for the big state. The Tories are supposed to be the party of the individual but their law’n’order populism, hostility to immigration and preoccupation with state security have made them suckers for any agency – police, spooks, tax authorities and so on – that wants to snoop into our affairs.

The Tories seem to recognise threats to civil liberties when in opposition. Their spokeswoman Liz Smith MSP is opposing the latest plans from the Scottish Government as “identity cards by the back door”.

The SNP are similarly schizophrenic. They opposed the introduction of a national identity database in 2005 when it was proposed by Tony Blair’s Labour government. But once the Nationalists got into government they started succumbing to the same pressures to tighten up all round and, of course, to praise our wonderful police, as Nicola Sturgeon did last week.

That would be the same wonderful police, by the way, whose senior management are, for the second time, being hauled back before a parliamentary committee for failing to deliver what they said they would. On both stop and search and armed police they have not kept their word and their chief constable has not shown an acceptable attitude towards scrutiny.

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Caron Lindsay

Ashcroft polls predict SNP gains – including Bob Smith and Charles Kennedy’s seats – but don’t panic yet

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 4th March 2015 - 11:27 pm

If tonight’s Ashcroft polls are worrying for Liberal Democrats, they will be petrifying for the Labour Party – and not just in Scotland where their new leader Jim Murphy’s seat is on a knife edge. Of the eight Scottish seats polled, six are predicted at this stage to go to the SNP. These include the seats of Liberal Democrats Bob Smith and Charles Kennedy. The loss of these  north east and highland heartlands would be a massive blow to the party.  You can see the figures in this table:

Ashcroft polls 4 March 2015

The race in Charles’ seat is pretty close, with just 5 points between Charles and the SNP with 22% of a squeezable Labour and Tory vote. It is very clear that this is a two horse race. Labour and Tory voters will have to think about who they want in Parliament to represent them. Do they want the independent minded, popular Charles or an SNP MP who will have to sign up to do exactly what his political masters tell them without criticism.

The situation in West Aberdeenshire is, in this poll, more complex with support apparently split between Liberal Democrat and Conservative. However that rather flies in the face of the Conservative retreat from this constituency. You would think that they would have some reason for making that decision. The Tories know that they can’t win. I suspect that Bob Smith will be making sure that everyone knows there is simply no point in voting Tory and he will pick up enough of their vote to hang on.

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The Voice

Open Doors: The Sequel – All four versions of the second Lib Dem PPB of 2015

By The Voice | Published Wed 4th March 2015 - 7:20 pm

We brought you the first in the Open Doors series of broadcasts at the end of January. Here is the second in which Willie Rennie’s scarf tying doesn’t improve, Kirsty Williams speaks Welsh and there are lots of good reasons to vote Liberal Democrat with much more policy detail.

Feedback about lack of appropriate accents has clearly been listened to and they have slotted in different comments from each person to each version so you really do have to watch them all.

England

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Newspuppy

Well, I’d never have guessed THAT about Ming Campbell

By Newspuppy | Published Wed 4th March 2015 - 2:50 pm

Those Buzzfeed UK politics people noticed this today. A definite contender for unfortunate headline of the week.

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The Voice

Labour apologises for making false claims about Tory candidate in Brent Council by-election

By The Voice | Published Wed 4th March 2015 - 11:15 am

Labour Party logoVoters in Kenton ward in Brent go to the polls tomorrow in a by-election. In May last year, the Conservatives took all three seats with Labour being some 14% behind them.

The Times (£) reports that Labour have been forced to withdraw a leaflet which claimed that the Conservative candidate wasn’t even voting Tory any more. The leaflet contained an image of a feedback form to a Labour leaflet from someone with the same name as the Tory candidate who said they had voted Tory in 2010 and wouldn’t be doing so this time because he didn’t like the Tory policy on immigration.

The original leaflet, which Mr Maurice claimed was sent out at the same time as postal votes, said:

“Even the Conservative candidate for the Kenton by-election has said he will not be voting Conservative.”

The Tory candidate deployed a handwriting expert to prove that the form had not been written by him and has threatened to sue the Labour party. He also alerted the police and his team warned that a close loss in Thursday’s council by-election could lead to a re-election.

In a statement, the Labour candidate Vincent Lo said he was “deeply sorry to Mr Maurice for any harm he has suffered as a result of our mistake”.

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Karen Wilkinson

Opinion: Parents want a say on school attendance policy

By Karen Wilkinson | Published Mon 2nd March 2015 - 4:00 pm

I’ve written previously (here and here)about school attendance policy. Following the hand in of a 127,000 strong petition to the Department for Education (DfE) in October 2013, Craig Langman and I co-founded the independent campaign group “Parents Want A Say” (PWAS). Craig’s petition called for the reversal of the term time absence regulations and has now grown organically to over 220,000. The group is chaired by John Hemming MP, obtained an extremely well attended Westminster Hall debate in February 2014 and is supported by Liberty, such is the extreme nature of some decisions being made by schools under the new rule. We enjoy significant support in the media due to the feedback from audiences.

The DfE continues to misinterpret the statistical evidence base for the policy, as in Nicky Morgan’s misleading statement last weekend. Professor Stephen Gorard of Durham University confirms this. The attendance and attainment debate is far more complex than Nicky Morgan apparently believes and Heads and parents are deeply concerned at this simplistic approach.

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Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #413

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 1st March 2015 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our413th 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 (22-28 February 2015), together with a hand-picked quintet, 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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Caron Lindsay

What does the Twitter “sarcasm detector” tell us?

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sat 28th February 2015 - 12:55 pm

They Say sarcasm detectorJohn Rentoul told us in yesterday’s Independent that he had found a tool which analysed what was being said about party leaders on Twitter, taking into account whether the comment was sarcastic or not.

I spoke to Karo Moilanen at the company about how “sentiment analysis” works. He told me the algorithm detects positive and negative sentiments associated with the leaders, and can even recognise a double negative as a positive, for example, “kill bacteria”.

What about sarcasm, I asked, thinking about how Twitter works. “We have a rudimentary sarcasm detector,” he said. “There are patterns which tend to correlate with sarcasm.” But how accurate is it? “Sarcasm is hard for people to detect. Human accuracy can be as low as 40 per cent.”

TheySay “trains” its computer programme by feeding it texts that humans have marked as being sarcastic. “Algorithms can hence learn that sarcasm tends to involve cases in which someone likes something negative,” said Moilanen, “or conflicting or abrupt changes of sentiment between strongly positive and negative words and phrases.” He said that computer algorithms can detect sarcasm between 55 and 95 per cent of the time, depending on the study, with an average of 77 per cent.

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NewsHound

Danny Alexander: if we allow the Tories to govern by themselves, it frightens me

By NewsHound | Published Tue 24th February 2015 - 2:13 pm

Buzzfeed joins Danny Alexander on the campaign trail in what he admits will be a close fight with the SNP to hang on to his seat.

But he insists his local record – “I think I’m the only MP in the country who gets attacked by his opponents for delivering too much to his constituency” – and tactical voting against the nationalists will get him over the finishing line. His campaign team are desperately trying to convince Labour and Tory supporters who don’t want another independence referendum to lend Alexander their vote. “I remain confident that I can win this constituency,” he says.

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Caron Lindsay

Guardian’s coverage of Liberal Democrat General Election campaign accentuates the negative

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 18th February 2015 - 11:45 am

So what does the Guardian do to cheer itself up when a poll has shown Labour support is falling? Ah yes, they just write about how rubbish life is for the Liberal Democrats. Words like perilous, doom and resigned are peppered through the piece. I’m not suggesting that our prospects are the best they’ve ever been, but so much of what’s written about us is not so much “glass half empty” but “no liquid anywhere near the glass.”

I’d like to think that when Patrick Wintour and Nick Watt were doing their research for this, they were shown the vibrant Team 2015 operation, the busy and spirited things going on across the country in our key seats and that they just chose not to write about it because it doesn’t fit in with the pessimistic narrative. There are many things about the party’s campaigning that it can take a huge amount of pride in. There are bright and talented people in HQ who are doing the best they can with the material available to them. Did Wintour and Watt get to talk to the Austin Rathes and Steve Jollys of this world? I hope so.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , | 54 Comments
Stephen Phillips

Opinion: Refugees are people too

By Stephen Phillips | Published Mon 16th February 2015 - 1:25 pm

I recently watched a television programme in which Ross Kemp looks at the situation in Calais, where thousands of refugees are seeking to gain access to the UK in the most dangerous manner.

I have no special knowledge of the situation there, nor from what they are fleeing – who can? But I do know that seeing the programme has made me deeply ashamed of being European. Not being a citizen of the European Union, but being a member of a large community that has not yet addressed the issue of how we can help people in such dire straits.

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Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #411

By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 15th February 2015 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 411th 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 (8-14 February, 2015), together with a hand-picked quintet, 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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Newspuppy

Could this be the classiest political fundraising auction prize ever?

By Newspuppy | Published Thu 12th February 2015 - 7:48 pm

Maybe not.

Labour Students are having a dinner tonight. Their brochure is not quite as glossy as the Tories’ one from the other day. Nor is it filled with such jet set items as a bronze statuette of Margaret Thatcher that went for £210,000.

They do, however, stand to make over 1% of the price of the statuette with this auspicious item:

It’s good that the New Statesman is looking out to protect Balls’ interests:

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Posted in News | Tagged , , | 1 Comment
Caron Lindsay

Yet again Scotland’s political leaders outclass their Westminster counterparts

By Caron Lindsay | Published Wed 11th February 2015 - 7:57 pm

Prime Minister’s Questions was even worse than usual today. Both Cameron and Miliband jumped into the gutter from the start and neither of them emerged. It was bizarre watching these people who had blocked every single attempt to reform party funding argue about each other’s paymasters. It was a matter of some considerable annoyance that Cameron kept saying how his government had done more to make sure people paid their taxes than the last one. Does anyone seriously think the Tories, left to their own devices, would have done that? Errr, no. That’s all been down to our man in the Treasury, one Danny Alexander. Cameron taking credit for our policy is bad enough. Using our success to cover his own party’s issues is worse.

It was all a bit classier in Scotland, though. Remember a couple of weeks ago how Scotland’s party leaders joked on Twitter about cancelling FMQs and drinking Pimms in Nicola Sturgeon’s office while watching Andy Murray’s semi-final in the Australian Open instead?

Well, they’ve done it again. After a journalist teased Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson about the fundraiser where a mega-rich Tory donor paid £17500 for a shoe-shopping session with Theresa May.

To cut a long story short, a shoe shopping session with all of Scotland’s political leaders is now to be auctioned to raise money for Scottish charity Cash for Kids. Buzzfeed has the story.

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , | 12 Comments
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