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Mark Pack

Book review: Talking to a brick wall by Deborah Mattinson

By Mark Pack | Published Tue 20th July 2010 - 10:20 am

Deborah Mattinson’s account of what she saw during her time as a leading pollster to the Labour Party certainly doesn’t stint in portraying her own role in what the book calls “Europe’s greatest election winning machine of the modern era”. The fact that Labour won three general elections in a row and yet the fact that, even looking no further than the same country and the same part of the century, the preceding Conservative government did one better and won four general elections in a row, does provide a warning against taking everything in the book – whether from the …

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Posted in Books | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #178

By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 19th July 2010 - 8:15 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 177th 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 (11th – 17th 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:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #177

By Stephen Tall | Published Thu 15th July 2010 - 9:55 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 176th 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 (4th – 10th 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:

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The Voice

Vince Cable’s speech on higher education funding

By The Voice | Published Thu 15th July 2010 - 6:24 pm

Vince Cable, Lib Dem secretary of state for business, innovation and skills, today delivered his much-trailed speech on higher education funding. The full text was published on the department’s website, and is reproduced below. A shorter version appears on the Lib Dems’ website here.

This is my first attempt to set out my views on the university, and wider, HE sector and my aspirations for it. The background is a very sombre and difficult one, financially. Without doubt the most serious within living memory. David Willetts and I are working together to find a way of dealing with it.

Much

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , | 12 Comments
Stephen Tall

Nick Robinson notes Lib Dems’ “important injection of democracy” into Coalition’s NHS plans

By Stephen Tall | Published Wed 14th July 2010 - 10:10 pm

Mark Pack yesterday noted Lib Dem health minister Paul Burstow’s hand at work in the NHS White Paper – it’s a theme also picked up today by the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson, who comments on his blog:

The proposals for a re-organisation of the NHS included a fundamental and little-noticed change from those contained in either the Conservative manifesto or the coalition agreement. The government now plan to give councils a major new strategic health role, examining the purchasing decisions of GPs and fitting them together with their plans for public health and social care. For the Lib

…

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

Spending Challenge website opened up to the public

By Mark Pack | Published Fri 9th July 2010 - 1:04 pm

Today the Treasury’s Spending Challenge website, which asks for ideas on how to save public money, has been opened up to the public. Last month it was launched to those who work in the public sector but now everyone is being invited to contribute.

This two-stage launch was a smart move as it helped deal with the issue of quality of submissions that often plagues such online initiatives. By first getting in views of those who work in the public service, the Spending Challenge website has managed to keep to a minimum the number of …

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Posted in News | 16 Comments
George Kendall

Opinion: Suggestions for the spending review

By George Kendall | Published Wed 7th July 2010 - 1:20 pm

This site gives people inside and outside the party a place to express their views. And what bigger subject than the cuts to be announced in this autumn’s spending review?

The coalition government have said that there will be consultation on the spending review, but many of us may want to test our thinking on a forum before writing to the government. This post is a place for us to get feedback on our ideas, and to think through the options the government faces.

It might be helpful to say some of the following:
– why your idea would save money
– …

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Posted in Op-eds | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Want to win an election? Not sure how to use the internet?

By Mark Pack | Published Tue 6th July 2010 - 11:40 am

In the early twentieth century, large public meetings and lengthy public speeches were expected of – and needed by – Parliamentary candidates fighting vigorous campaigns. A century on, candidates fighting vigorous campaigns frequently get by without organising any public meetings or giving any public speeches longer than a few minutes of opening remarks at a local organisation’s hustings.

Yet although these forms of personal, direct contact between candidate and voter have declined sharply over the last century, the opportunities for such contact via the internet have increased sharply in the last few years.

We are already at the stage where voters find …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
Mark Valladares

If English Council meets and nobody knows, did it really meet?

By Mark Valladares | Published Mon 5th July 2010 - 2:20 pm

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, but whilst most people heading for London were on their way to Pride, or Lords for the cricket, or Wimbledon for the tennis, a few dozen hardy Liberal Democrats were heading towards the St Alban’s Centre near Chancery Lane station for the first of 2010’s two meetings of English Council.

Unusually, the first item on the agenda was a speech by the Party President, Ros Scott, who talked about the challenges facing the Party in the weeks, months and years ahead, as well as some of the work being done at Federal level to address …

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Posted in Op-eds, Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

The Freedom Bill: this time the consultation is for real, but is it better?

By Mark Pack | Published Mon 5th July 2010 - 10:20 am

The Freedom Bill (previously known as the Great Repeal Bill) has been a Liberal Democrat policy for some time and now that we’re in coalition government it’s become the Your Freedom initiative – an online consultation to identify laws to repeal.

In two respects this is good news – online consultation is becoming more of a habit for government and it’s also becoming a welcome pattern to see long-standing Liberal Democrat demands move towards actual implementation by government.

But in one respect I think the Your Freedom site does not address a key issue as well as the party did when …

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Posted in Online politics, Op-eds | Tagged , , | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (June ’10)

By Stephen Tall | Published Thu 1st July 2010 - 8:45 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 49,916 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in June.

Though that’s way down on our May 2010 figure of c.136,000, that was an exceptional month – with a general election plus the formation of the new coalition government. In fact, compared with June 2009, Lib Dem Voice’s readership is up by one-third.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 July 2009 – 30 June 2010) to 582,154, over 80% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 322,654.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

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Helen Duffett

Nick Clegg launches “Your Freedom”

By Helen Duffett | Published Thu 1st July 2010 - 6:13 pm

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Posted in News | Tagged , | 23 Comments
Mark Pack

Opening up data: the experience with election data

By Mark Pack | Published Wed 30th June 2010 - 2:20 pm

A review has just been published into the ‘Open Election Data’ project, which was an attempt to make local election results available from councils in a format which would allow others to collate, republish, analyse or otherwise use the data. (At the moment the data is often put online in very inaccessible and inconsistent ways – e.g. one council might have election results in a pdf, another in a graphic file, another as text on the page and so on.)

The list of lessons learnt from the project casts a wider light on why the public sector so often seems …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Preparing for the AV referendum: get asking

By Mark Pack | Published Tue 29th June 2010 - 10:20 am

With an AV referendum coming (most likely in the spring), there is plenty that local parties can already be doing to help win the referendum. I’ve already talked about the importance of fielding more local election candidates, so today’s post is about starting to ask questions of the public.

It’s never too early to start gathering voting intention data, even if you don’t yet know the exact candidate line-up, and likewise it’s never too early to start gathering referendum voting intentions, even if we don’t yet know the exact question.

When it comes to electoral reform, opinion polls show us …

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Posted in News | Tagged , | 27 Comments
Ryan Cullen

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Ryan Cullen | Published Sat 26th June 2010 - 9:41 pm

Eight blogs have recently joined my Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

30 things every would-be politician should do this summer

By Mark Pack | Published Tue 22nd June 2010 - 10:20 am

Inspired by Journalism Grads: 30 Things You Should Do This Summer and prompted by Stephen Tall, last summer I ran a list of 30 suggestions for would-be politicians, particularly those new to public office or seeking it in the next few years. As it went down well, here it is back for a new summer and a new Parliament, with a new lick of paint, a few updates along the way and my thanks to those who commented last year:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

Preparing for the AV referendum: standing more local election candidates

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 17th June 2010 - 9:50 am

The connection between standing local election candidates and the AV referendum may not seem obvious at first, so imagine this scenario…

It’s quite likely that the referendum will be held on the same day as local elections, such as the May 2011 local elections.

The arguments over electoral reform will attract to the ballot box some people who don’t usually vote in local elections. If the pro-AV campaign goes well (and it starts with a lead) many of those people will be well disposed towards Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

And what will they find when they get handed another …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , | 4 Comments
Linda Jack

“Ignore us at your peril!” – Linda Jack reports back on the Lib Dems’ first post-coalition Federal Policy Committee

By Linda Jack | Published Tue 15th June 2010 - 10:20 am

The Lib Dems’ Federal Policy Committee (FPC) operates under the Chatham House Rule: you can repeat what was said, but not who said it. But often what happens at FPC goes completely unreported.

In some cases this is understandable, people throwing their toys out of the pram isn’t something we really want to report (oh not that often, honest!), and sometimes it is just because we are discussing issues (such as the manifesto) that we quite rightly want to keep under wraps until it is launched.

But someone (who of course will remain nameless) made the point at last week’s …

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Posted in Op-eds, Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 26 Comments
Mark Pack

Is one of these more dangerous than the other?

By Mark Pack | Published Mon 14th June 2010 - 1:50 pm

To the untrained eye, it may appear that one of these creatures is rather more dangerous than the other and therefore that it may make sense to have rules about keeping one of them which shouldn’t apply to the other:

Tiger and tortoise

However, to the keenly trained eye of a Cornwall County Council officer, it’s a different matter. For, as Alex Folkes reports,

Cornwall Council is forcing a woman who runs a rescue centre for pet tortoises to apply for a zoo licence if she wants to

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 9 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Richard Grayson – Lib Dems must dare to be different over prisoners’ voting rights

By NewsHound | Published Thu 10th June 2010 - 10:10 pm

Over at The Guardian, Richard Grayson, a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate and former director of policy for the party, argues that the Council of Europe ruling against the UK ban on prisoners voting offers the Lib Dems a chance to seize the initiative. Here’s an excerpt:

While Liberal Democrats have consistently made it clear that they understand the need to punish crimes (despite the way the party has been characterised as “soft on crime” by both Labour and the Conservatives), the party is generally most interested in stopping crime in the first place. One way to do that is to transform

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , , | 41 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Published Mon 7th June 2010 - 2:20 pm

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 convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

Just go to our email sign up page to start getting these emails. You can also sign up for a special once-a-week email, bringing …

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Posted in Site news | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #172

By Stephen Tall | Published Sun 6th June 2010 - 7:30 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 172nd 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 (30th May – 5th June, 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:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

LDV doesn’t do statporn, but if we did (May ’10)

By Stephen Tall | Published Tue 1st June 2010 - 4:30 pm

… We’d say a big thank you to the 136,557 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in May.

That’s over 20% higher compared to our April 2010 figure of c.112,000, and we are up some 227% on the equivalent figure for May ’09. Anyone would think there had just been a general election. In fact, the site passed 100,000 unique visitors by 14 May … which suggests traffic has stabilised since at c.2,500 absolute uniques a day.

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 June 2009 – 31 May 2010) to 503,653, over 87% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 268,359.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

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Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 17 May 2010 (with bonus ‘Prophet Steel’ video)

By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 17th May 2010 - 7:45 am

Happy Monday morning, everyone, and welcome to the first full week of Lib Dem / Conservative coalition government. Let’s get down to the news …

One Big Story

Lib Dem members give overwhelming thumbs-up to coalition government agreement

The Daily Telegraph has a fair-minded report proving that extraordinary things really can happen in the new politics (and in stark contrast to the snarkiness of the Grauniad):

… members voted “over-whelmingly” in support of the deal with no more than a dozen of the 2,000 delegates opposing the deal in a show of hands at the gathering in Birmingham. Speaking after the vote, Mr Clegg said: “It is a big step. There are lots of unknowns, there will be bumps and scrapes along the way”. He said the party’s special conference had taken a “very, very important decision” to approve the coalition “which is utterly new in modern British political history”. .. It is understood the while 100 members had quit the party since the deal was signed – a further 400 had joined.

The conference even earned plaudits from an unlikely source: ConservativeHome.com offered three cheers for the Lib Dems’ commitment to party democracy:

I take my hat off to the Liberal Democrats for the attempt to involve party members – the people who work so hard without expectation of office – in the decision to form a Coalition with the Conservatives. On a number of occasions Clegg met his MPs and party officers in a bid to hear their views and explain what he was doing. Today’s ratification of the deal will help bind the party into the fascinating Cameron-Clegg experiment. What a contrast with the Conservative Party where there has been next to no consultation of the party membership. Coming on top of Team Cameron’s various attempts to dilute Tory members’ role in membership selection it is all very disappointing.

Here’s how the BBC reported the day:

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Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments
Mark Clark

Opinion: Social media enhances our campaigns

By Mark Clark | Published Sat 15th May 2010 - 10:52 am

In one sense I’m disappointed the election is over.

Returning from my own self imposed wilderness at the dismalness of the political scene to the local fold in New Forest East has been a revelation to me to see how social media networks can re energise the election process, and importantly how it has engaged more of our local membership helpers during campaigns – and not just the under 35s. The more active are definitely the silver surfers who have taken to the new technology like a duck to water. So much so, that a regular evening briefing session …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

Liberal Democrat policies in Government

By Alex Foster | Published Wed 12th May 2010 - 5:46 pm

Chris Fox, the Lib Dem Chief Exec, has circulated this helpful summary of which of our policies are included in the agreement. It’s slightly easier to wade through than the full text, which we brought you earlier.

A Fair Start for Children

  • Introduce a Pupil Premium to give all children a fair start.

Fairer taxes and Economic Reform

  • A substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011 with a longer term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective
  • Reform of the banking system, ensuring a flow of lending to

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Text of the Conservative / Lib Dem agreement

By Mark Pack | Published Wed 12th May 2010 - 3:21 pm

This document sets out agreements reached between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on a range of issues. These are the issues that needed to be resolved between us in order for us to work together as a strong and stable government. It will be followed in due course by a final Coalition Agreement, covering the full range of policy and including foreign, defence and domestic policy issues not covered in this document.

1. Deficit Reduction

The parties agree that deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain. We have therefore agreed that there …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 38 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dems in 1st or 2nd place in almost 300 seats across UK

By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 10th May 2010 - 10:45 am

One of the least known facts about the last parliament, and which deserved to be more widely publicised, was that the Lib Dems were either in first or second place in 250 constituencies across the UK – which made the media’s tired and almost exclusive concentration on Labour and the Tories for most of the last five years all the more irritating.

Well, for all the disappointment of last Thursday’s election results, the party has by one measure at least made a big stride forward, as Anthony Wells’ UK Polling Report makes clear:

The notional 2005 figures had the Lib Dems

…

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Posted in General Election, News | Tagged | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #168

By Stephen Tall | Published Sun 9th May 2010 - 9:45 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 168th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (2nd – 8th May, 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can now 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 | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

Pollwatch Day 30 #GE2010 – Lib Dems at 26-29%, neck-and-neck with Labour, in final polls (UPDATED)

By Stephen Tall | Published Wed 5th May 2010 - 11:50 pm

Okay, well this is it – the final polls of the campaign are published tonight. Here’s what’s in so far:

    YouGov in The Sun … CON 35%(nc), LAB 28%(-2), LIB DEM 28%(+4)
    Opinium in the Express … CON 35%(+2), LAB 27%(-1), LIB DEM 26%(-1)
    TNS BMRB … CON 33%(-1), LAB 27%(nc), LIB DEM 29%(-1)
    Populus in The Times … CON 37%(+1), LAB 28%(+1), LIB DEM 27%(-1)
    Angus Reid for PoliticalBetting.com … CON 36%(+1), LAB 24%(+1), LIB DEM 29%(nc)
    Harris in the Daily Mail … CON 35%(-1), LAB 29%(+3), LIB DEM 27%(-1)
    ICM in the Guardian … CON 36%(+3), LAB 28%(nc), LIB DEM 26%(-2)
    ComRes for the Indy/ITV …

…

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Posted in General Election, Polls | 15 Comments
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