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Mark Pack

Wards Corner: another u-turn from Boris Johnson

By Mark Pack | Published Fri 12th December 2008 - 3:31 pm

Wards Corner in Tottenham is the site of one of those markets, deeply rooted in the local community and highly distinctive, that add so much to its surrounding area. This gem of a market, with a strong Latin American flavour, is not that well known, and as a result the plans to demolish it haven’t got as wide regional attention as they would have for its more famous cousins around London. (You can, though. watch a BBC TV report here.)

However, that may now change with a dramatic u-turn from London Mayor Boris Johnson, dropping his previous support for opponents …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , | 5 Comments
Alix Mortimer

Tonight, 6.30pm: Tell Steve Webb what you reckon…

By Alix Mortimer | Published Mon 8th December 2008 - 9:22 am

Just a reminder that you should most definitely push aside that blurry to-do list and spend your Monday morning pondering over what to talk about with Steve Webb, the party’s energy and climate change spokesperson, here on our live Q&A session from 6.30pm tonight.

Short of ideas? Steve has a couple!:

I’m looking forward answering questions on any topic but would particularly value feedback on the following 3 questions:

– later this week, MPs will put their name into the ballot for a Private Member’s Bill;  if a Lib Dem comes out of the ballot, what Bill would

…

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Posted in News | 6 Comments
Helen Duffett

Nick Clegg: first British politician to promote hashtags?

By Helen Duffett | Published Tue 2nd December 2008 - 2:50 pm

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has emailed party members today to publicise Saturday’s National Climate Change March in London (email reproduced below).

Hashtag fans like me particularly liked the PS: Nick is encouraging participants to use the hashtag #climatemarch on Twitter and Flickr. As far as I know, Nick Clegg is the first British politician to promote the use of hashtags.

Whilst it’s a powerful thing for thousands of people to join together in one place and show their solidarity for a cause, this is a way for individuals to give their own report on events. Tweets bearing the …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , , , , | 12 Comments
Helen Duffett

Damian Green arrest: Gordon Brown “knew nothing”

By Helen Duffett | Published Sat 29th November 2008 - 7:50 am

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told Sky News that he had no prior knowledge of the arrest of Conservative MP Damian Green.

For a Government not noted for minding its own business, it is odd that the Prime Minister, Home Secretary and other ministers were all unaware of the arrest until after it had taken place.

Especially so, since we learn that Mayor of London Boris Johnson, Conservative Leader David Cameron and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin all knew that the arrest was about to happen.

Here’s the video from Sky:

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Damian Green arrested by police

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 27th November 2008 - 9:00 pm

Damian Green, the Conservative MP for Ashford and Shadow Immigration Minister, has been arrested by the police, apparently over leaks from the Home Office about immigration matters, according to Sky and other news sources. Damian Green’s London and constituency homes, along with his Westminster and constituency offices have been searched, although he has not been charged.

The investigation is into an allegation of “conspiring to cause misconduct in public office”.

UPDATE:

Here’s the Sky report on Damian Green:

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Posted in News | Tagged , | 21 Comments
James Graham

Lib Dig Pig #1

By James Graham | Published Wed 26th November 2008 - 1:55 pm

Having shouted the loudest over the summer for someone (not me, you understand) to set up something like Lib Dig, it is inevitable that Lib Dem Voice would ask me to write a round up of the weekly digs. So here is my first attempt.

For those who don’t know, Lib Dig is a “social bookmarking” tool which allows Lib Dem members to share with other members (and the world) items on the internet that they feel deserve to get wider exposure.

Each week I will highlight the best of the non-Lib Dem related interwebs out there, as voted by LibDig users (if you aren’t one, and are a Lib Dem member, sign up here: http://libdig.co.uk). The rules for inclusion here are simple: they must have been “dug” for the first time in the last seven days and they can’t be Lib Dem-related or come from a Lib Dem blog. The top rated article of each category will be listed, along with three runners up, will be listed here. And finally, for the purposes of this column, my votes will be discounted (you can see my personal LibDig feed by going here: http://libdig.co.uk/users/4/james.graham/1.html).

Without further ado, here are this week’s top digs:

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Posted in Best of Lib Dig | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

BBC Question Time: open thread and live-blog

By Stephen Tall | Published Thu 20th November 2008 - 10:20 pm

To Glasgow tonight, for a mainly-Scottish edition of the BBC’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm GMT), where the Lib Dems’ recently elected Scottish leader, Tavish Scott MSP, will appear.

Joining Tavish on the panel will be: Labour’s Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy; deputy first minister of Scotland the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon; shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Tory Philip Hammond; and Daily Mail columnist, the fragrant Melanie Phillips.

Now let me think… which of those is most likely to annoy LDV readers? Well, remember: if you’re tuning in to watch, don’t get angry, get commenting. This week we’re experimenting with a CoverItLive feed for extra thrill-packed 2.0 interactivity (from 10.30 pm).

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg: finding information on the internet

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 20th November 2008 - 4:03 pm

Questions about Nick Clegg’s various internet presences regularly come my way, so here’s a handy quick list of the key resources:

  • www.nickclegg.com – Nick Clegg’s site for his job as leader of the Liberal Democrats, including his latest stories (which you can comment on), full text of speeches and details of his forthcoming public meetings.
  • www.nickclegg.org.uk – Nick Clegg’s site for his job as MP for Sheffield Hallam.
  • Facebook page – where you can sign up as fan of Nick Clegg and follow his

…

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #91

By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 17th November 2008 - 7:10 pm

Welcome to the 91st of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (9th-15th November), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

How about starting with the most popular blog-posting, and we work our way down? Here goes…

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Staying in the loop

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 6th November 2008 - 12:15 pm

November’s edition of Total Politics carries the following piece from me about finding information on the internet. Here’s a slightly extended version of the piece:

There is no shortage of information out there, but getting what you need, when you need it can be a challenge, particularly when your inbox, mailbag, radio and TV are all thrusting new pieces of information at you all the time. There are though a few simple steps you can take to radically improve and refine the information you find on the internet.

If you want to know what is happening in the world of UK politics, Politics Home (www.politicshome.com) is a great start, as it pulls together the latest content from traditional and online news sources into one regularly-updated front page. For more specialist political news and comment, the various ‘home’ sites focusing on the main parties are a good start: conservativehome.blogs.com, www.labourhome.org and www.libdemvoice.org.

However, one of the major tricks to getting the most out of websites in the most time-efficient manner is to cut back on the amount of time you spend going round checking websites and instead make the websites come to you whenever they have something new – and there’s a special sort of software that can do this for you.

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , | 5 Comments
Alix Mortimer

Foster: swearing on TV should be toned down

By Alix Mortimer | Published Thu 6th November 2008 - 9:14 am

The Mirror are apparently running a campaign to, er. Well, it’s not clear. The opening line says it’s a campaign to “stop the swearing on the telly” and claims politicians and commentators of all stripes agree with it.

But all the quotes it provides indicate a milder ambition. Even the Tories culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt only talks about need to avoid “excessive” swearing, and a mini-essay by Lord Duss, former chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, concedes that “swearing…has its place for dramatic effect”. Our own culture spokesman Don Foster is quoted as saying:

Broadcasters

…

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Posted in News | 24 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVUSA Election Nite 2008 live-blog

By Stephen Tall | Published Tue 4th November 2008 - 10:50 pm

Well, tonight’s the night when we finally find out: has the USA elected its first black President? Or are the opinion polls wronger than they’ve been in history? Join us tonight, here on LDV, for our election-nite live-blog, and feel free to contribute your comments as we type.

Don’t forget, you can follow what’s happening when, and what to look out for, by using Lib Dem councillor Joe Taylor‘s indispensable cut-out-n-keep download’n’print guide to the American Elections here.

10.52 pm
Well, as you can see (or not) at the moment, CoverItLive seems to have fallen victim to the mass server overload that seems to be bringing down websites left, right and centre. (Not that I check the ones on the right so much). So, for now, I’m afraid for now we’re reliant on steam-powered Internet live-blogging. Sorry, and all that.

10.56 pm
PoliticsHome is feeding us first exit poll data: 62% of voters named the economy as their top issue in deciding who to vote for; Iraq and terrorism trailed with 10% and 9% respectively. This is a domestic, bread ‘n’ butter election.

11.08 pm
Exit poll – with all the caveats – from Virginia via Talking Points Memo blog: “The early exits we’re seeing out of Virginia suggest a close race with an advantage to Obama. The split of the white vote looks similar to what Jim Webb got in 2006, but with blacks making up a substantially larger percentage of the electorate.”

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Posted in LDVUSA | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Brand & Ross: there’s nothing more to see here, folks

By Stephen Tall | Published Fri 31st October 2008 - 10:01 am

For the second night running, BBC2 Newsnight’s lead item was the fall-out from Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s mis-firing jokes against Andrew Sachs. For the second morning running, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme’s lead item was the fall-out from Russell Brand blah blah blah.

I know the Beeb feels the need to self-abase itself, and star interviewers are never happier than giving their bosses a hard time on flagship current affairs shows – but this is a ridiculously disproportionate over-the-top, over-hyped, over-reaction. So while Tory and Labour MPs work out how they can jump on the BBC-should-commit-mass-hara-kiri bandwagon …

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Posted in News | 20 Comments
Helen Duffett

“People don’t have campaign headquarters anymore. They have websites now.”

By Helen Duffett | Published Wed 29th October 2008 - 11:17 am

At US website Politics Online, Anthony Man writes on how the internet has changed the way local and national campaigns are run:

“As more and more people spend more and more time online, the Internet is reshaping political campaigns in ways large and small. From the presidency to the lowest-profile local office, the Internet is permeating the way campaigns are organized. It’s changing the way candidates raise money and eroding influence of candidates, political parties and the news media.”

In this piece, Man also quotes other commentators on the effect of the internet, most notably in the current Presidential campaign:

“If you’re

…

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Posted in LDVUSA, Online politics | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #88

By Stephen Tall | Published Sun 26th October 2008 - 8:41 pm

Welcome to the all-the-eights 88th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (19th-25th October), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

How about starting with the most popular blog-posting, and we work our way down? Here goes…

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

The polls: what, and who, to believe?

By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 20th October 2008 - 7:52 pm

I’ve noted on a couple of previous occasions here on Lib Dem Voice, the sharp divergence which different polling companies’ methodologies produce in the Lib Dems’ ratings. The trouble is that very few political journalists take much notice of such details: how often have you heard sweeping statements from commentators that talk about ‘the polls’, as if they all asked the same questions in the same way, producing the same results?

The trend in recent days had appeared more than usually gloomy for the Lib Dems, with the last seven polls placing the party in the 14-18% range.

Yet …

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Posted in Polls | Tagged | 26 Comments
Alex Foster

Steve Webb’s cream cake triumph

By Alex Foster | Published Fri 17th October 2008 - 10:43 am

Steve Webb got to hold the Government to account whilst praising them for adopting Lib Dem policy yesterday in Parliament:

Commenting on Ed Miliband’s announcement that the Government will support an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050, first proposed by the Liberal Democrats, Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Steve Webb said: “I am glad the Government has finally come round to the reality that an 80% cut in emissions is needed if we are to stand any chance in the fight against climate change.”

Steve Webb went on to say:

“However, Mr Miliband appears to think he can

…

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Posted in News, Parliament | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Lembit: time for Lib Dems to stop the conspiracy against me

By Stephen Tall | Published Fri 17th October 2008 - 9:56 am

A fairly extraordinary press release has been issued by Lembit Opik – one of the three Lib Dems standing for the post of party presidency which will be decided by an all-member ballot within the next few weeks – demanding an end to an alleged “conspiracy” in the party against his candidacy.

I’ll reproduce the whole release below, but here’s the part which will cause some sharp intakes of breath:

If anyone is conspiring against me I ask them to stop … I don’t agree with conspiracies in the Liberal Democrats. That’s why I backed former leader Charles Kennedy to the end – I was appalled by the perceived internal campaign against him. That’s why I defended Ming Campbell up to his moment of resignation, in the face of a whispering campaign against him too. I still refuse to play any part in such negative campaigning.”

Quite why Lembit should feel it’s appropriate to rake over the ashes of the Kennedy and Campbell resignations in a way that paints the party in quite such an unattractive (and, in my view, misleading) light is beyond me. To do so in a campaign for a post which is, above all, about uniting the party and moving it forwards smacks of appallingly poor judgement.

Editor’s note: Lib Dem Voice has volunteered to remain neutral in internal party elections. However, such defensive statements by a candidate which serve only to feed the anti-Lib Dem narrative of much of the media is, I believe, reckless. I hope this is the last we’ll see of it from Lembit’s campaign.

The full press release is below:

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Posted in Party Presidency | Tagged , | 81 Comments
Alasdair Murray

The Independent View: the Lib/Lab relationship past, present, future

By Alasdair Murray | Published Tue 23rd September 2008 - 6:13 pm

Few in a Labour party currently riven by civil war and threatened with electoral wipe-out will be giving much thought to the relationship with the Liberal Democrats.

For their part, the Lib Dems are busy putting as much distance as possible from the government as they seek to take advantage of Labour’s current political weakness. Yet, as I argued recently in an issue of Progress magazine the very same factors currently driving them apart – Nick Clegg’s redirection of the Lib Dems and the resurgence of the Tories – may in fact end up moving them closer together in …

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments
Stephen Tall

NEW: LDV members’ post-conference survey now live

By Stephen Tall | Published Fri 19th September 2008 - 6:49 pm

If you are a registered member of the Liberal Democrat Voice forum – and any paid-up party member is welcome to join – then you now have the opportunity to make your views known on a range of issues in our special post-conference members’ survey. Topics we are asking your opinion on include:

– why you did – or didn’t attend – conference;
– whether you agreed with the conference decision to back Make it Happen’s tax-cuts;
– what you thought of the media’s reporting;
– whether the past week has strengthened or weakened Nick Clegg’s leadership; and
– who you would vote for …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Cable calls for action on short-selling of bank stocks

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 18th September 2008 - 11:25 am

During party conference, Vince Cable set out his proposals for tackling some of the causes of the current financial crisis:

Short-selling in UK bank stocks should be banned by the City watchdog to stop “aggressive” speculators “betting against the taxpayer”, Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said …

“The hedge funds are betting against the taxpayer, since they know that if a leading British bank were to collapse, the government would have no alternative but to intervene,” said Mr Cable.

The party’s Treasury team believes a ban on the short trade would halt a cycle of “fear feeding

…

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Posted in Conference, News | 8 Comments
Alex Foster

An embarrassment of riches

By Alex Foster | Published Tue 16th September 2008 - 8:34 pm

Just earlier this year at Spring Conference, we got a confused email from a member trying to follow conference who didn’t understand feeds in the internet sense, and thought Lib Dem Voice was offering live video coverage of the conf. That, regrettably, is a little beyond our budget and capabilities – although I hope you agree with me that our team in Bourmemouth is producing first rate content in a variety of interesting ways.

It wasn’t possible to follow Spring Conference from home at all. If I remember rightly, it wasn’t broadcast on BBC Parliament and there was little …

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Posted in Conference | 2 Comments
Will Howells

Chris Huhne on video

By Will Howells | Published Tue 16th September 2008 - 7:06 pm

Alix has already blogged about Chris Huhne’s speech as Shadow Home Secretary, and you can now watch it in full right here on LDV thanks to the party’s YouTube feed:

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Posted in Conference, Lib Dem TV | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

Twitter: a hit at conference

By Alex Foster | Published Sun 14th September 2008 - 6:23 pm

Oh dear – here we are again – hashtag taxonomies again, snigger, snigger.

Actually, twittering from conference is working quite well.  It’s all the more important when hotels and conference centres are charging obscene fees for access to wireless access and the useful free internet access is massively oversubscribed.

And there have been really useful uses of the system this afternoon.  I could commission Gavin Whenmen to write about a fringe because I knew he was there because he twittered about it.

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Posted in Conference | Tagged , , | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Guardian asks, ‘Are the Tories progressives now?’ A nation replies, ‘Have you gone mad?’

By Stephen Tall | Published Wed 10th September 2008 - 1:44 pm

Here are the opening sentences of today’s Guardian editorial:

There have been moments in the postwar history of Britain when people who would naturally be inclined to vote Labour have been driven to ask themselves whether the return of a Conservative government would be the worst possible outcome for the country or for the general cause of progress? For those in Britain who think of themselves as progressives, the answer has usually been an unhesitating yes. Nevertheless there is a reasonable and sober body of historical work which reaches the judgment that there have, indeed, been times when Labour has

…

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Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments
Alix Mortimer

So what does that Cities Unlimited report actually say? Chs 1-5

By Alix Mortimer | Published Wed 27th August 2008 - 3:59 pm

Reader, unlike 92% of You, and 100% of Them, I’ve read it. It’s taken a few weeks, in odd bursts of ten minutes, but I was sustained by an absurd faith that, contrary to what the newspapers would have us believe, most people do not have the attention span of a chicken in a hurricaine, and are on the whole quite reasonable really.

As a public service to the cause of Lib Demmery, I therefore intend to feed the Cities Unlimited report into your eager brain in bitesize (okay, large bitesize) chunks so that you can decide on its merits and demerits for yourself, free of the rancid rantings of the silly season press.

I will offer a summary of the report in three posts, mostly factual except where I really might burst like a bally balloon if I don’t comment. I will attempt, but do not promise, to make my commentary shorter than the actual thing. This post will summarise chapters 1-5. One note – I have left out the executive summary and I’ll return to it at the end. Alas for the authors, the executive summary may have been their undoing.

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Posted in News | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Widespread media coverage for energy policy

By Mark Pack | Published Fri 22nd August 2008 - 9:32 am

Yesterday’s energy policy push by Nick Clegg has received wide coverage in the media, including:

Daily Telegraph:

The thinking of Nick Clegg, the LibDem leader, is both fresh and dramatic. He envisages energy self-sufficiency in this country by the year 2050 and claims this can be achieved cleanly.

The LibDem plan is based on a combination of greater energy efficiency and a step-change in the provision of renewable energy from wind, wave, biomass and solar power.

This stands in sharp contrast with the energy policies of both Labour and the Conservatives which are

…

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Posted in News | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Book review: What should you be getting up to on the internet?

By Mark Pack | Published Mon 11th August 2008 - 2:55 pm

Should politicians blog? Does it matter if a local party has a website that allows comments or not? Is it a good idea for a councillor to stick a film of themselves up on YouTube? Is the local party organiser really doing something useful on Facebook?

Answering any of these questions requires more than a technical understanding of how you use the services. It requires instead an understanding of what your organisational and communication objectives are, and then how these technologies may, or may not, help you achieve them.

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s Groundswell makes this point for commercial organisations. It sets out to help organisations answer the question of whether, and if so how, they should be making use of social computing – those tools which heavily rely on interaction between people, feedback and content generated by the public such as YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace and blogs.

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Posted in Books, Online politics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment
Ryan Cullen

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #77

By Ryan Cullen | Published Sun 10th August 2008 - 9:05 pm

As Stephen is off on his hols, I’ve offered to collate the 77th of our weekly round-ups (27th July – 2nd August) of the seven most popular click-throughs from LibDemBlogs, plus another five that you might have missed.

Let’s get straight down to it, in traditional descending order:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 3 Comments
The Voice

Liberal Democrat Voice says, the party acts…

By The Voice | Published Thu 7th August 2008 - 4:10 pm

In May Liberal Democrat Voice carried a piece from Lynne Featherstone about the lessons from May’s elections, in which she laid out five challenges for the party including,

We should ensure that we have at least a modest local internet presence covering every part of the country, helping point the public at more news about the party, how to join, how to get in touch with the local team etc. With the number of existing sources of news and information about the Liberal Democrats, I am sure it can’t be beyond the wit of a clever programmer or two to be able to put together an effective mini-site system that covers our internet black holes at a minimum of cost and effort.

A few days ago the following email went out to local parties:

 We have agreed a deal to put in place a local website for every party of the country which does not have its own local Liberal Democrat website.

This deal, with Prater Raines Ltd , will mean that wherever someone lives in the country, they can find the Liberal Democrats easily on the internet and get informed and involved. It will also mean that the party’s campaign buttons and films are much more widely publicised around the internet.

Where a local party does not have a website (e.g. because it is very small and has not been able to afford one or find a suitable volunteer) this deal will ensure that there is a simple, professional looking site. It will contain relevant local contact details, as used currently on www.libdems.org.uk, along with up to date news about the party and its campaigns.The party will also provide an appropriate local web address for each of these sites that can be used in any local activity to help promote it.

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 4 Comments
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