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Helen Duffett

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Helen Duffett | Published Mon 15th August 2011 - 12:54 pm

Why not get our latest headlines by email? Hundreds of Lib Dem Voice readers already do.

Some people like regularly visiting Lib Dem Voice to see the latest stories. Others like to look out for us on Twitter or subscribe to our RSS feed and check that way. And some even read us on their Amazon Kindle.

But if you prefer email, you can sign up for our daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice. It has convenient links to click through to the full article, and a note of how many comments each post has got.

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Caron Lindsay

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

By Caron Lindsay | Published 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 , | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

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

By Stephen Tall | Published 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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Posted in Site news | Tagged | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top 10 tweeting MPs: congratulations to Lib Dem @julianhuppert in at No. 6!

By Stephen Tall | Published Sun 31st July 2011 - 2:20 pm

Who are the top 10 Twitterers in the House of Commons? That’s the question the Mail on Sunday answers today, following a survey by Westminster Public Affairs.

The list looks not at number of followers, but at the volume of tweets each MP has sent out. Heading the list is Labour’s Kerry McCarthy with well over 27,000 tweets. Cambridge’s Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert — elected to Parliament just last year — comes in at number six, having sent over 10,000 tweets, and now with over 4,000 followers.

My Co-Editor Mark Pack has compiled a …

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The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 22 July 2011

By The Voice | Published Fri 22nd July 2011 - 5:00 pm

It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

  1. LibLink | Vince Cable: I declared war on Murdoch… now everyone agrees with me (25 comments) by Helen Duffett
  2. Police and Crime Commissioners: Lib Dem candidates start here (17 comments) by Helen Duffett
  3. Opinion: David Laws takes another step on the road to redemption (26 comments) by Mark Valladares
  4. Opinion: Stephenson resignation – the bar just got lowered (22 comments) by Richard Morris
  5. Opinion: Cameron’s ten big mistakes – more please! (21 comments) by Paul Walter

5 sample LDV Members’ Forum threads

  1. What’s your favourite Murdoch smear of the Lib Dems?
  2. The next battle after Murdoch?
  3. Materials for local campaigning – your views wanted!
  4. FOI requests er… request
  5. Elected Police Commissioners

5 from the LDV archive

(22nd July, 2007-10)

  1. An Interview with the Whips Office – comfy chairs will be provided… (0 comments) by Dominic Addington, from 2010
  2. Moving to an elected second chamber – a loss of expertise, or just privilege (9 comments) by Alex Runswick, from 2010
  3. Tall photographer stopped again by police (7 comments) by Helen Duffett, from 2009
  4. CommentIsLinked@LDV… Nick Clegg: MPs’ holiday betrayal (0 comments) by The Voice, from 2009
  5. Join us on Facebook! (1 comment) by Alex Foster, from 2008

5 top reader search returns to get to LDV

(excluding Liberal Democrat Voice or its variants)

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Chris Huhne MP

Chris Huhne MP writes: Electricity market reform: keeping the lights on in the cheapest, cleanest way

By Chris Huhne MP | Published Wed 20th July 2011 - 10:42 am

Last week I unveiled the coalition government’s proposals for the most radical reform of the electricity market since privatisation in the 1980s. The plans set out in the White Paper aim to keep the UK’s lights on and consumer bills down and shift the economy away from a high-risk, high-carbon future.

With a quarter of the UK’s generating capacity shutting down over the next ten years, as old coal and nuclear power stations close, it’s clear that we have a Herculean task ahead of us. Over the next ten years, more than £110bn in investment is needed to build the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 13 Comments
Helen Duffett

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Helen Duffett | Published Fri 15th July 2011 - 12:53 pm

Why not get our latest headlines by email? Hundreds of Lib Dem Voice readers already do.

Some people like regularly visiting Lib Dem Voice to see the latest stories. Others like to look out for us on Twitter. And some like to subscribe to our RSS feed and check that way.

But if you prefer email, you can sign up for our daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice. It has convenient links to click through to the full article, and a note of how many comments each post has got.

Continue reading »
Posted in Site news | Leave a comment
Mike Tuffrey

Mike Tuffrey writes… My kinda campaign … working towards success in 2014

By Mike Tuffrey | Published Wed 13th July 2011 - 11:53 am

Ol’ blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, used to sing about “My kinda town…” Rest assured, I won’t be singing. But let me tell you about London – my town – and the kind of campaign I intend to run as our candidate to be Mayor of London.

The test of success in the 2012 campaign isn’t just the number of votes we win in the Mayor contest – it is how many Assembly members we get elected and how many councillors, councils and MEPs we get elected in 2014.

Our very best London-wide campaigning in the past – such as that led …

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Posted in London, Op-eds | Tagged , , | 4 Comments
Helen Duffett

The News of the World and giving readers what they want

By Helen Duffett | Published Sat 9th July 2011 - 5:54 pm

No, not a trailer for your super soaraway Lib Dem Voice on Sunday, but a quick quirk-alert on reader figures at our site this week.

It’s one of my jobs at Lib Dem Voice to keep an eye on the stats, including visitor numbers, popular posts, search terms and lots of other data.

These give us blogging ideas, help us to plan (and sometimes crow), and are another strand of audience feedback – alongside the comments threads, survey responses, emails and phonecalls, and of course the articles themselves that people submit.

So I thought I’d briefly share a surprising finding from …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , | 8 Comments
Richard Flowers

Opinion: Nick Clegg should call for an independent inquiry into phone hacking

By Richard Flowers | Published Wed 6th July 2011 - 9:23 am

Yesterday, Nick Clegg called the phone hacking allegations “Grotesque” and “beneath contempt”. Today, he needs to tell the Prime Minister self-regulation by News International has failed and it is time for an independent judicial inquiry.

As Liberals, our first position has to be protection of the individual from an over-mighty vested interest. It is clear that individuals within News International in particular and the wider press in general have taken the power of the free media and abused it. That needs to be stopped.

If we cannot appeal to the Prime Minister’s moral values, we can at least appeal to his …

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Posted in Op-eds | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

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

By Stephen Tall | Published Sat 2nd July 2011 - 12:05 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 39,604 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in June. This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 July 2010 – 30 June 2011) to 522,590.


The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

  1. Andrew Reeves passes away (38) by Mark Pack
  2. Response: Chair of Federal Conference Committee on increased security measures (153) by Andrew Wiseman
  3. Why Simon Kelner is wrong to defend Johann Hari (27) by Stephen Tall
  4. Opinion: Why you should be taking Lembit Opik seriously (61) by Richard Clare

…

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Posted in Site news | Tagged | 2 Comments
Caron Lindsay

What does the Inverclyde result mean for the Scottish Liberal Democrats?

By Caron Lindsay | Published Fri 1st July 2011 - 6:51 pm

As Helen Duffett reported early this morning, the Inverclyde by-election saw Labour holding on to the seat, but with a dramatically reduced majority over the SNP. This was always going to be a tight fight between those two. You would think that Labour would be the likely victor, but the SNP came within 500 votes of unseating them in May’s elections. With the SNP in majority control at Holyrood, how would they fare in this first electoral test?

Scotland has felt very different since the Holyrood elections. The political environment feels a lot darker. In the run up to the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , | 25 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: That Ed Miliband TV interview car crash in full

By Stephen Tall | Published Fri 1st July 2011 - 3:55 pm

Poor Ed Miliband. The Labour leader would have been hoping public attention today would be focused on his his party’s defence of its Inverclyde stronghold — instead, everyone’s watching his car-crash TV interview in which he reformulates a soundbite repeatedly in order to insert the words ‘negotiating table’ and ‘these strikes are wrong’ into every sentence.

The result? A distinctly odd, unnatural, automated interview which fuels the ‘Awkward Ed’ media meme.

Part of me feels a little sorry for Mr Miliband. Clearly he was under the impression that only one line would be extracted from the interview; not unreasonably he was keen to ensure that it was the line which conveyed his key message rather than the news editor’s. Such is the challenge for all politicians in our ‘say it in 7 seconds’ media culture. But, as Iain Duncan Smith found to his cost as Tory leader when he nervously chuckled his way through a Radio 4 Today Programme interview, it’s these kinds of moments which stand out in the public consciousness.

Anyway, enough analysing: just sit back and enjoy.

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Posted in YouTube | Tagged , | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

30 things every would-be politician should do this summer

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 30th June 2011 - 10:53 am

Inspired originally by Journalism Grads: 30 Things You Should Do This Summer and prompted by Stephen Tall, it’s become a summer tradition for me to run a list of 30 suggestions for would-be politicians, particularly those new to public office or seeking it in the next few years.

As ever, a new summer brings a new lick of paint for the list, with a few updates here and there and my thanks to those who commented on the previous lists:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 7 Comments
Lee Dargue

Opinion: The Social Liberal Conference was a major success

By Lee Dargue | Published Mon 20th June 2011 - 9:41 am

The SLF conference was a major success. Yes, it was “full” – David Hall-Mathews careful not to refer to the event as “sold out”. Yes, lots of people debated and tweeted like crazy on subjects ranging from NHS reforms to the history of the American fridge. But it wasn’t the numbers or amount of talking we did which was the most important. It was the fact that there is still a groundswell of progressives alive and well in the Liberal Democrats. In fact, since entering government with the Conservative party, and with a recent “win” (yet to see how it …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments
Iain Roberts

Thank you EARS, but the VAN is coming

By Iain Roberts | Published Sun 19th June 2011 - 3:20 pm

Back in March, Mark Pack reported on a momentous move in the Lib Dems: from the EARS election software to Voter Activation Network, or VAN, which is used by Democrats in the US and the Canadian Liberal Party, amongst others.

EARS has done sterling service for the party over the years. I first used the DOS version of the software in the mid-nineties, when it had already been around for a few years. Younger readers may not have encountered the joys of the paper “Shuttleworths” that were used before EARS: sheet after sheet of knock-up lists, laboriously …

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Posted in News | Tagged , | 54 Comments
Mark Pack

Chris Huhne: we need smart regulation in the energy sector

By Mark Pack | Published Sun 19th June 2011 - 1:25 pm

Yesterday Chris Huhne spoke at the Social Liberal Forum‘s conference on smart regulation for the energy sector:

It’s a pleasure to speak at the first conference of the Social Liberal Forum.

We Liberal Democrats have always prided ourselves as a party of ideas – and they’re needed more than ever now that we’re in government. Whatever your view of The Orange Book back in 2004, it did at least trigger a debate about Liberal ideology, about what it means to be a Liberal Democrat in today’s Britain. I was pleased to contribute both to The Orange Book and to its

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , | 8 Comments
The Voice

LibLink | Danny Alexander: Make no mistake: we will reform public sector pensions

By The Voice | Published Fri 17th June 2011 - 10:22 am

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander writes in the Telegraph today on public sector pensions reform, calling the Government’s offer “by far the best that is likely to be on the table for years to come”:

This debate is often polarised between two extremes. There are some trade unions who seem to believe that pensions for public service workers should not change. Then there are those equally misguided voices who seem to think that the public services should be the front-runner in a race to the bottom.

Between these two, I believe there is an indisputable case for reforming public

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , , | 53 Comments
Mark Pack

How Great Ormond Street’s Jane Collins escaped investigation last year

By Mark Pack | Published Mon 13th June 2011 - 8:32 am

Jane Collins, the Chief Executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital, is facing calls to resign after it was revealed that critical details about the hospital’s role in the death of Baby Peter were withheld from one inquiry into the tragedy and, despite the hospital’s subsequent claims, were also not supplied to the second inquiry.

However, what has been less commented on in the coverage in the last few days is the way Jane Collins escaped being investigated by the General Medical Council last year:

The chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital has escaped investigation over the Baby P scandal …

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Helen Duffett

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

By Helen Duffett | Published Sun 12th June 2011 - 4:53 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 56,674 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in May.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 June 2010 – 31 May 2011) to 531,005, 5.8% more than the equivalent figure for 2009-10 of 501,773.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

  1. Opinion: However unfair it is, Chris Huhne should step down (105 comments) by Simon McGrath
  2. Chris Huhne’s election expenses: once again, nothing to see here, move along (60 comments) by Mark Pack
  3. Black Friday for Lib Dems: it’s worse than we thought

…

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Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Published Mon 6th June 2011 - 12:54 pm

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Posted in Site news | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem donation figures in full (Q1, 2011)

By Stephen Tall | Published Tue 31st May 2011 - 8:45 am

The Electoral Commission has this past week published the latest donation and borrowing figures for the political parties, showing that the Lib Dems raised £810,029 in the first three months of this year.

(At the foot of this post is the full breakdown of cash and non-cash donations received by quarter since 2005, and annually between 2001 and 2004.)

By comparison, the party raised just £219,915 in the first quarter of 2006 (the equivalent stage of the parliamentary cycle), suggesting a far more sustainable level of fundraising success is being achieved; although the party has been hit very hard since …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 10 Comments
Helen Duffett

Collette Dunkley appointed as Liberal Democrats’ Marketing Director

By Helen Duffett | Published Thu 26th May 2011 - 1:49 pm

Collette Dunkley is to join the Liberal Democrats next week as Director of Marketing, reporting to Chief Executive Chris Fox.

Collette, who was born in Liverpool, has led marketing and communications in global organisations including General Motors and Vodafone. She has also lectured on these subjects in various universities, advised many large organisations and is an expert and commentator on increasing engagement with women.

The new Marketing Department at Cowley St will bring together internal and external communications. These will include development of our messages and the ways we deliver them, as well as collecting vital feedback. Collette will undertake an …

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Posted in News, Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , | 11 Comments

The Independent View: Where is the promised aid money being spent?

By Joanne Crouch | Published Tue 24th May 2011 - 11:52 am

In the run up to the 2011 G8 summit in Deauville, France, this May, international humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide is pushing for commitment and clarity on the agricultural aid promises pledged by G8 members  in the 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila.

Back then, the British Government alongside the other G8 countries committed $22 billion in aid to be distributed over three years as part of the L’Aquila Global Food Security Initiative. The British commitment in particular was for £1.1 billion. These numbers may appear substantial, however they pale in comparison to the $30 billion per year that the UN Food …

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Posted in Op-eds, The Independent View | Tagged , | 4 Comments
The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #221

By The Voice | Published Sun 15th May 2011 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 221st 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 May, 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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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

What you think of Lib Dem Voice’s comments policy… your chance to comment!

By Stephen Tall | Published Sat 14th May 2011 - 8:45 am

In our most recent survey of Lib Dem members signed-up our discussion forum, we asked what folk think of the comments posted by our readers on the public blog.

We’ve tried different approaches to comment moderation on Lib Dem Voice. Initially, we were uber-liberal almost laissez-faire, only moderating comments which we judged were legally risky. Then, at the start of 2010, we decided in response to feedback from readers (including from those who ‘lurk’ but rarely comment) to moderate more actively, declining to accept comments which were at all abusive, or were completely off-topic. Our aim was, and …

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Posted in LDV Members poll, Site news | 58 Comments
Matt Boyes

Independent View: Help residents recognise their councillors

By Matt Boyes | Published Thu 12th May 2011 - 10:48 am

With councillors starting new terms following the local election, now is a great opportunity to review how they communicate and get involved with people in their communities. This is actually quite a challenge. Would you be surprised to hear that over two thirds of voters are unable to identify any of their local government representatives? Worryingly, despite the hours of work and campaigning that councillors invest in their local areas, most people admit that they wouldn’t be able to pick them in a line-up. That’s what we found in our Connecting Communities Report, having surveyed over …

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Posted in The Independent View | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Published Fri 6th May 2011 - 12:25 pm

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Helen Duffett

Use the new Facebook app while campaigning this weekend #YES2AV #LibDems

By Helen Duffett | Published Sat 30th April 2011 - 9:43 am

When you’re out campaigning this weekend for the elections and Fairer Votes referendum, make sure you let your friends on Facebook and Twitter know what you’ve been up to.

Hundreds of people are already using Lib Dem Voice’s new Facebook app to do just this. It’s a great way of building up a buzz around our campaigning – and the more someone sees their friends have been campaigning, the more likely they are to join in.

You get a list of actions – select one and publish it to your …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments
Helen Duffett

Campaigners! Get the new Facebook app #YES2AV #LibDems

By Helen Duffett | Published Fri 15th April 2011 - 9:53 am

Lib Dem Voice have launched a new Facebook app to make it easy for you to let your friends on Facebook and Twitter know what campaigning you’ve been doing.

This is a great way of building up a buzz around our campaigning – and the more someone sees their friends have been campaigning, the more likely they are to join in.

You get a list of actions – select one and publish it to your newsfeed.

Some actions are of the simple “I have done” variety whilst others have the …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments
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