By Robson Brown | Published Wed 2nd December 2009 - 2:17 pm
December 5th will see the Copenhagen climate change summit get underway, for two weeks of talks that must lead to a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and perhaps something as binding and successful as the 1987 Montreal Protocol that led to the phasing out of harmful CFC and HCFC propellants.
The talks are a long time coming; 2009 is the tail-end of the deadline for agreement already set by world leaders in Bali in 2007.
Frankly, this is unacceptable, and we think it’s time for a bit of old-fashioned co-ordinated civil action to remind world leaders that actually, the people of this planet want to see radical action on a bold, even savage, scale. The time for talking is over – we need firm commitments on what will happen and how, before it’s too late. So why not join us and thousands of others this Saturday to help save the world?
By Alex Foster | Published Wed 2nd December 2009 - 11:20 am
Just two weekends ago, we helped run a moderately successful Bloggers’ Unconference in Edinburgh, the guests of the Scottish Liberal Democrats at their HQ in Clifton Terrace. The Scottish Lib Dems were generous with their facilities and their time, giving us a room for a day, feeding us, and making sure lots of interesting senior Scottish Lib Dems came to talk to us. In the end four English bloggers made the …
By Stephen Tall | Published Tue 1st December 2009 - 12:50 pm
… We’d say a big thank you to the 29,252 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in November.
This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Dec 2008 – 30 Nov 2009) to 292,073, over 40% higher than the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 205,099.
By Alex Foster | Published Mon 30th November 2009 - 3:53 pm
Yesterday saw the conclusion of ALDC‘s annual training event Kickstart, designed for councillors and campaigners who are defending and targetting council seats at next year’s local elections.
Next year is a special year indeed, because in all probability the General Election will happen on the same day as local elections. Whilst this is nothing new, the councils that are facing election this time are …
By Alex Foster | Published Mon 30th November 2009 - 11:15 am
Last Saturday at the Bloggers’ Unconference, our final interview of the day was with Jo Swinson MP – which was particularly kind of her, since she’d flown back from New York the day before, and must have been jet-lagged.
Falling at the end of the day, the discussion we had with Jo was one of the most informal of the day, but was all the better for that. Her enthusiasm for finding new ways of communicating really shone through, and she talked to us about creating the video below. In particular, she was really keen to show us her new Flip video camera, which is extremely portable and can be used by just the one person, without needing fancy lights, an off-camera microphone or an extra person working as camera operator.
Jo used her Flip to make a series of mini videos about the work she was doing at the UN, and quite simply to give some basic impressions of what visiting the UN buildings in New York are like. The buildings are iconic, but not particularly fancy. Working in the main office block is like working in any slightly old fashioned tower block. She also takes time out of her schedule to show us a moving statue rescued from the rubble of Hiroshima – on the face, undamaged and intact; on the rear, scraped raw by the heat and debris of the nuclear explosion.
If you follow LDV’s twitter feed, you may also have seen this message promoting a short audio interview with Helen Duffett asking Jo the questions.
Lots of familiar names on the 2009 Q3 list, with five/six-figure gifts coming from the following: Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (£231k), Bloomberg Tradebook Europe Limited (£25k), Mr Christopher Nicholson (£21.5k), Professor John Howson (£10k), Mrs Joan Ramsden (£10k), and Philip Young (£10k).
Fewer Parliamentarians than normal contributed this quarter – the most generous I spot-checked were:
By Stephen Tall | Published Sun 29th November 2009 - 10:50 am
Welcome to the 145th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (22nd – 28th November 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, partly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget, by the way, 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:
Guido’s story is that of all the reportable donations given to all the parties in the Electoral Commission’s third quarter, 55% of the moolah went to the Blues.
This report from Guido came hot on the heels of a couple of bits of information about Conservative fundraising efforts in Ealing, which has caused a bit of a stir in the local papers. An email arrived with a copy of a Tory letter, and a letter in the Ealing Gazette, which I reproduce below:
By Mark Pack | Published Sat 21st November 2009 - 8:50 am
Welcome to part seven of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of The Voice’s Mark Pack to talk about building up your audience.
There are many reasons for blogging and, depending on your own …
Clegg, who had called for the speech to be cancelled and the remaining Parliamentary time before an election to be used to clean-up politics, said there was nothing in the proposed legislation to help create jobs, boost bank lending and fix the UK’s “rotten” political system.
And here in full is what Nick said today in response to the government measures announced by HM The Queen:
All the pageantry in the world cannot cover up the fact that this is a fantasy Queen’s Speech from a government that has run out of road in a Parliament that has lost the people’s trust.
This Queen’s Speech won’t give people the help and jobs they need in this recession and it won’t fix our rotten politics.
After 12 long years, in which this government has passed nearly 500 different laws, along with countless thousands of statutory instruments, it is right to stop and ask the question: what is this Queen’s Speech really for?
Gordon Brown will begin a six-month election campaign this week with one of the shortest but most deliberately political programmes of recent years. … In a podcast on the Downing Street website, Mr Brown said that Britons wanted world-class public services underpinned by “guarantees not gambles”. He was referring to legislation this week that will enshrine in law the right of NHS patients to get treatment within 18 weeks or to see a cancer specialist within two weeks — or be granted
By Paul Walter | Published Sat 7th November 2009 - 8:50 am
Welcome to part five of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Paul Walter, who looks at the question of how to handle comments which appear on your blog.
There are a number of approaches on handling comments. It’s a question of finding a method which you are comfortable with.
By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 2nd November 2009 - 11:00 am
… We’d say a big thank you to the 31,331 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in October.
That’s a 10% uplift on last month’s readership, and a 38% increase on the same period a year ago, when just over 22,000 readers visited LDV.
This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Nov 2008 – 31 Oct 2009) to 312,829, almost double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 169,320.
By Mark Thompson | Published Sat 24th October 2009 - 9:00 am
Welcome to part three of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Mark Thompson (the one with the blog rather than the one with TV empire) addressing one of the problems that befalls many would be bloggers: how do you keep on coming up with ideas for new posts?
By The Voice | Published Tue 20th October 2009 - 6:20 pm
Over at The Times, the Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor Vince Cable argues that the Financial Services Authority’s review on mortgages doesn’t go far enough to prevent a return to banks’ wild excesses. Here’s an excerpt:
Some of the more aggressive banks, seeking to expand their market share, are relaxing their offerings in terms of loan-to-value ratios. Any eagerness to return to former lending practices should be a source of concern. The housing market has not adjusted, at least yet, to realistic levels. Historical trends show a cyclical pattern of boom and bust, lasting roughly 15 to 20 years, going back to
By Mark Pack | Published Tue 20th October 2009 - 12:20 pm
The debates and disputes around the Liberal Democrats’ Bournemouth conference give a taste of what is likely to be a tricky process of drawing up the party’s manifesto for the next general election.
Formally, there is a three part process to that manifesto: the manifesto working group chaired by Danny Alexander will present work to the Shadow Cabinet which will then in turn (quite possibly amended) go to the Federal Policy Committee (FPC).
How will this process work and who will the key people be in drawing up the manifesto?
By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 19th October 2009 - 9:35 am
2 Big Stories
Labour’s Hain threatens BBC with legal action over BNP invitation
Labour’s Welsh secretary Peter Hain makes a bid for the media spotlight today by arguing that the BBC could face legal action over this Thursday’s edition of Question Time, due to feature an appearance by BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP:
… in his letter , Mr Hain … said the decision should be reconsidered in light of a legal case about ethnic restrictions on the BNP’s membership rules. The party has agreed to amend its constitution after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission sought an injunction, claiming the BNP was breaking the Race Relations Act by restricting membership to “indigenous Caucasian” people.
By Mat Bowles | Published Sat 17th October 2009 - 7:20 am
Welcome to part two of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Mat Bowles, advising on the technical side of getting started with a blog.
So, you’re thinking of starting a blog of your own. You could do what most people seem to do at this stage, and go sign up directly to Google’s Blogger service and just get writing. Personally, I don’t think that’s necessarily the best idea. I’m a Lib Dem, my membership card says on the back:
No one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity
By Gareth Aubrey | Published Mon 12th October 2009 - 3:15 pm
To Wales, then, where it’s goodbye from him, and it’s au revoir from him …
And So, With Tears In Either Eye
In fairness to him, Rhodri Morgan pretty much kept to his end of the bargain in announcing that he would stand down as First Minister after the Assembly budget was agreed on December 8th (but since the promise was that he’d announce his intentions on or around September 29th, his end of the bargain wasn’t that hard to keep up). The inevitable political and journalistic encomium followed and you can’t begrudge it him; whatever his political failings, his personal popularity is unmatched in recent memory.
With the flag dropped, Larry, Moe and Curly were soon off and running to succeed him (not that they hadn’t been before, unofficially).
By Mark Pack | Published Wed 7th October 2009 - 7:56 pm
A range of popular websites, providing useful services such as information on local job vacancies and planning applications, have been closed down following the Royal Mail’s decision to crack down on the use they made of its postcode address database.
With postcodes so increasingly important to national life, it’s ridiculous that they are not public data that is, as a minimum, free to use for non-profit organisations.
By Mark Pack | Published Mon 5th October 2009 - 3:20 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 …
By Stephen Tall | Published Sat 3rd October 2009 - 10:02 pm
Welcome to the 135th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (13-19th September 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, partly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed. (And, yes, the Golden Dozen has kinda got a bit out-of-synch as a result of the party conference – #136 is here. Sorry about that.)
Don’t forget, by the way, 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:
By Stephen Tall | Published Sat 3rd October 2009 - 7:30 pm
Those lovely people at Wikio have emailed The Voice with their list^ of the top blogs in the UK in June 2009.
(Lib Dem blogger Jennie Rigg has already published the list of top 30 politics blogs: below is the full list for all blogs, though there’s considerable overlap between the two owing to the dominance of politics blogs in Wikio’s weightings.)
By Stephen Tall | Published Thu 1st October 2009 - 12:55 pm
… We’d say a big thank you to the 27,708 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in September.
This takes us back closer to our pre-summer trend readership of c.30,000 – and is up some 43% on the equivalent figure for September ’08 of 19,435.
This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Oct 2008 – 30 Sept 2009) to 306,418, almost double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 158,046.
By Stephen Tall | Published Wed 30th September 2009 - 7:10 pm
We tend not to be too poll-obsessed here at LDV – of course we look at them, as do all other politico-geeks, but viewed in isolation no one poll will tell you very much beyond what you want to read into it. Looked at over a reasonable time-span and, if there are enough polls, you can see some trends.
Here, in chronological order, are the results of the 18 polls published in September – the number is extra high this month because of the recently instituted daily YouGov tracker poll. (Note to self: we need to find a way of averaging the trackers, otherwise they will dominate and distort LDV’s (very unscientific) monthly poll average).
By Alex Foster | Published Tue 29th September 2009 - 4:37 pm
I’ll confess I am not actually listening to the Prime Minister’s speech to Labour conference, as I have far more important things to do, including biting my nails and feeding the cats.
However, a quick refresh of Twitter shows that quite a lot of my friends are. And some of them have even been a little taken in by Brown’s ID card commitment.
If Twitter is right – and I can’t be bothered to check – he said, “there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens in the next parliament”
My goodness, but you can drive a double decker bus through …
Earlier this month Lynne Featherstone gave the Heather Larkin Annual Lecture in Yate:
I am really pleased to be here tonight – yes it is a long trek here and back but worth it to pay tribute to Steve Webb. Steve is a great MP, a great campaigner, a great innovator on the internet – and a great intellectual force. The fact that we often agree on policy may have something to do with that!
But one of the highlights of Parliament is listening to thoughtful and powerful speeches from which you learn and which help shape your own views. Steve’s speeches …
David Allen Tristan,
You're right in the sense that you didn't specifically call for PFI. But you did say "if you can persuade private money to provide the funding on t...
David Garlick Touted as bringing power to people.
Power brought down from Govt sounds good but power still not reaching the lowest possible levels in our Communities....
Tristan Ward @ David Allen
"PFI won’t help stop the planet burning"
Who said anything about PFI - I didn't.
The private money that is building (not enough) house...
Joey Vimsante I think the EU and UK needs to support not for profit, social media platforms that put the interest of the public, vulnerable people, young people, and nation a...
Nick Baird With regard to client-side image scanning, the danger of mission creep are real, but I have other concerns. One is whether this is truly a practical and effecti...
Welcome to part seven of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via 
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Brechtian television: Leo McKern in Galileo (1964)
Good news on political donations?
Conference booked
Are Labour going to cross another red line?
David Allen 
David Garlick 
Tristan Ward 
Joey Vimsante 
Nick Baird 