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I’m writing to the taxman

By Hywel Morgan | Published Fri 4th July 2008 - 4:44 pm

Letter sent to Liverpool tax office today:

4th July 2008
Dear Sir/Madam

I wish to bring your attention to an individual who is claiming to be self-employed who I believe may not be registered as such.

Yesterday Mr Peter Kilfoyle MP stated that “I’m technically self-employed” .

My understanding, having previously been self-employed myself, is that a person who is self-employed is required to register as such with 3 months and is liable for class 2 and class 4 NI contributions.

I would be grateful if this matter could be investigated.

Yours faithfully

Hywel Morgan
CC Mr Peter Kilfoyle MP

Posted in Parliament | 6 Comments
Will Howells

Something for the Weekend: Here is the news

By Will Howells | Published Sun 22nd June 2008 - 10:32 pm

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Something for the Weekend. Allons-y…

There’ll be bluebirds over…

Tory MEP Den Dover has been back in the news again amid claims that he bought two BMWs using parliamentary expenses. He’d already been accused of channelling public money into a company run by his wife and daughter. Fellow Conservative MEP Giles Chichester has also been accused of paying hundreds of thousands of pounds of expenses to a family business.

Most important in this, of course, is that we get more of Den Dover in the news and the chance to hear his great name over and over again.

In the news

Following on from last week’s news about top secret documents being left on a train, annoying minister Hazel Blears has had a computer containing “restricted government information” stolen from her constituency office.

A United airline flight from Salt Lake City to Denver was cancelled after the pilot was left too upset to fly by an argument about his hat.

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Posted in Something for the Weekend | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top Lib Dem media tarts: March – May 2008

By Stephen Tall | Published Tue 10th June 2008 - 6:43 pm

Which Lib Dem MPs received the most media mentions between 1st March and 31st May, 2008? To find out I trawled Lexis-Nexis’s online database of all UK national newspapers (and a huge number of regional ones), feeding in the names of each of our MPs in turn, and seeing how many returns were generated.

To qualify, the MP must have been mentioned either as a Liberal Democrat or Lib Dem. This will disadvantage those MPs who are working their regional media hard, but whose names do not appear under the party’s banners. Sorry, but them’s the rules.

Anyway, here’s the list in descending order of media mentions (with their Dec ‘07-Feb ‘08 positions in brackets):

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Posted in News | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #67

By Stephen Tall | Published Tue 3rd June 2008 - 8:08 pm

Welcome to the 67th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (25th-31st May), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

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

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

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #66

By Stephen Tall | Published Thu 29th May 2008 - 6:46 pm

Welcome to the (belated) 66th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (18th-24th May), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

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

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Lynne Featherstone

Lessons from May’s elections

By Lynne Featherstone | Published Mon 26th May 2008 - 2:13 pm

To start, three pieces of promising news: in six of the last seven annual rounds of local elections, the number of Liberal Democrat councillors has gone up. Secondly, the change in our vote in Crewe & Nantwich was pretty much the same as in Dudley West, South East Staffordshire and Wirral South – the three big Labour gains from the Conservatives in the run-up to 1997 – a general election at which we then made huge gains in the numbers of MPs we had.

Add in to that the steady but very clear improvement in our poll ratings since Nick Clegg became leader, and there’s plenty of cause for quiet optimism about our electoral prospects – provded we put in the hard work necessary.

But we shouldn’t be complacent that just any sort of hard work will deliver the right results, and there are two signs in that news that we need, in particular, to broaden our strength across the country.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , | 44 Comments

Opinion: A performance to be proud of, but not to settle for

By Neale Upstone | Published Tue 6th May 2008 - 9:03 am

A great set of local election results – but to say that we did “well” or “better than expected” is, in my view, an understatement.

On our resources, which do not include the money of (Lord) David Sainsbury (of Turville), or (Lord) Michael Ashcroft (of Tax Haven) or (Lord) Irvine Laidlaw, we’ve done fantastically. Apologies for the brackets, but I think we can say that their ‘titles’ are optional.

Can we do better? You bet!

Here in Cambridge, for example, I doubt that a single leaflet mentioned Nick Clegg’s name. I think they should have. Our local election campaigns should be …

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Posted in Local government, Op-eds | Tagged | 45 Comments
Alexis Rowell

Eat less meat!

By Alexis Rowell | Published Mon 5th May 2008 - 9:47 am

Food is something that affects us all. We all have to eat. But very few people know the extent to which oil underpins our food system, how much carbon is used in the production of food, how much water is used, and the impact the food system therefore has on climate change.

The current all-time highs in oil prices – $117 a barrel in April 2008 – is sending convulsive shudders down the food chain because every part of the system requires fossil fuel. Food prices have rocketed all over the world as oil prices have risen. Fertiliser, pumping water, ploughing, transportation, refrigeration – it all uses oil. And that’s being compounded by the current mad dash for biofuels, most of which require more fossil fuel to create than the energy derived from them, and which are taking up land that would otherwise be used for crops.

Camden Council purchases a lot of food directly (canteens, meals on wheels etc) or indirectly (schools, care homes) each year. We therefore have a huge potential for influencing supply chains. Considerable effort has already gone into improving the sustainability criteria associated with food contracts, and the all-party Camden Sustainability Task Force has had some input into this. According to one survey Camden was in the top five public authorities in Europe for sustainable purchasing. But we would like to go a step further.

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Posted in News | 24 Comments
Alex Foster

Twitter News

By Alex Foster | Published Thu 24th April 2008 - 10:15 am

Blogger Chick Yog believed that the Lib Dems are staffed by robots.

This proved not to be the case.

Although some believe our fearsome leafleting capability is due to an army of robotic leafleters, the sad truth is in most cases it’s a handful of overworked activists punching way above their weight. And so it is in LDHQ – although the output might look like it is the result of a fearsome supercomputer processing all known political information and spewing it out in dozens of helpful different feeds… in fact, it’s just Will Howells and Mark Pack, with, between them, a …

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Posted in Humour, Online politics | Tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

The bizarre Olympic budget

By Mark Pack | Published Tue 22nd April 2008 - 9:40 am

Huge project, budget goes horribly wrong. Not much of a surprise there given the track-record of many large projects in Britain, but I do love some of the details as to how the budgets for the 2012 London Olympics went wrong:

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) were criticised for omitting security, tax and contingency costs.

Security? It’s not as if you ever hear the Home Secretary worrying about security. Tax? Never heard of anyone having to pay such a thing. Contingency? Nothing ever goes wrong you know.

 

 

 

Posted in News | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

It’s not been a good few days for… (UPDATED)

By Mark Pack | Published Sun 20th April 2008 - 11:35 am

Variants on the question “Is Gordon Brown finished?” continue to dominate much political commentary, with The Guardian today running a fascinating first-hand account of what it’s like working with him:

When Gordon Brown used to hold meetings at the Treasury, coffee would be served with the milk already added. I always thought that summed up his style. Such was his eagerness to get on to business that he had no time for the 20 seconds it would take to pass round the jug and the biscuits, a ritual that broke the ice across the rest of Whitehall.

The pieces goes on to …

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Posted in News | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #60

By Stephen Tall | Published Sun 13th April 2008 - 5:33 pm

Welcome to the 60th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (6th-12th April), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

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

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Why Gordon Brown is reminding me more and more of John Major

By Mark Pack | Published Sun 13th April 2008 - 1:32 pm

Chancellor takes over as Prime Minister. Has brief burst of popularity. And then it all goes wrong. Sounds familiar?

A big problem for Gordon Brown is that he now seems firmly fixed in the media and public’s mind as someone who took over as Prime Minister, failed and is now in trouble. Once you’ve got a particular image, it’s very hard to shed, as former leaders from all political parties and testify.

But what’s particularly dangerous for Brown – and reminds me of John Major’s fate – is the way that the past is now coming back to bite him. Under both …

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Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top Lib Dem media tarts: Dec 2007 – Feb 2008

By Stephen Tall | Published Thu 10th April 2008 - 7:45 am

Which Lib Dem MPs received the most media mentions between 1st December 2007 and 29th February, 2008? To find out I trawled Lexis-Nexis’s online database of all UK national newspapers (and a huge number of regional ones), feeding in the names of each of our MPs in turn, and seeing how many returns were generated.

To qualify, the MP must have been mentioned either as a Liberal Democrat or Lib Dem. This will disadvantage those MPs who are working their regional media hard, but whose names do not appear under the party’s banners. Sorry, but them’s the rules.

Anyway, here’s the list in descending order of media mentions (with their Sept-Nov 2007 positions in brackets):

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Posted in News | 4 Comments
Will Howells

Something for the Weekend: Country House

By Will Howells | Published Sun 6th April 2008 - 6:53 pm

There’s snow outside and protesters on the streets, which must mean that it’s time for Something for the Weekend. I have a cold, so apologies for any typos.

Carrying the Something for the Weekend torch today: baggage handlers; overage drinkers; the Egg McMuffin man; taxpayers’ money; and more!

» Good Week

It’s been a good week for me. From the beginning of the new financial year, which is today, I get a small income tax cut. Thanks, Gordon. The biggest winners, though, are those earning around £35k.

It’s been a less good week for those earning under around £18,000, who will see the amount of tax they pay go up in order to fund the tax cuts of people who earn much more. See, Labour do believe in redistribution – just not in the traditional direction…

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Posted in Something for the Weekend | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

The latest threat to personal data

By Alex Foster | Published Sat 5th April 2008 - 10:02 am

A new threat is emerging to the privacy of people using the biggest three internet service providers in the country, Virgin Media (formerly NTL), BT and TalkTalk.  They have all signed up with a company called “Phorm” which monitors net use so that it can send you adverts on web pages that it thinks you will be interested in.

It’s starting to become clear that BT have been engaged in secret tests of this system as early as last year, and plans to roll it out to thousands of customers over the coming months in a larger scale trial.

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Posted in News | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

Today’s PMQs

By Alex Foster | Published Wed 2nd April 2008 - 11:14 pm

My feed reader shows me the latest Iain Dale Daley Dozen in which he points to us and asks why we didn’t cover PMQs today.

Although it may not have been our finest hour, the real reason is that Stephen, who usually covers that for us, is away, and none of the rest of us remembered until we were prompted.

For the sake of completeness, here is the full exchange between Vince Cable, covering for Nick Clegg today, and Hariet Harman, who was in the Prime Minister’s shoes.

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Posted in News, PMQs | Tagged | 7 Comments
Duncan Brack

Debating policy at federal conference: give us your views!

By Duncan Brack | Published Wed 2nd April 2008 - 7:45 am

Liberal Democrats are rightly proud of the fact that we remain the only major party to be internally democratic. Party policy can only be decided by the vote of the representatives of the party membership, after debate at the party conference.

Despite this, however, the number of policy motions submitted to conference has steadily fallen over the last ten years or so – down by about half between 1997 and 2007. This makes it more difficult for Federal Conference Committee (FCC) to select an agenda full of topics people actually want to speak about and debate. In addition, we are more …

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Posted in Conference | 11 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #58

By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 31st March 2008 - 11:14 pm

Welcome to the 58th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (23rd-30th March), together with a quintet hand-picked by Lib Dem blog readers you might otherwise have missed.

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

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

Lynne the twitterer

By Alex Foster | Published Sat 22nd March 2008 - 5:54 pm

Congratulations to Lynne Featherstone, who has become, she believes, the first British MP to use the Twitter instant messaging system, just slightly less than one year after I first suggested on my blog, and in the forums here (party members only).

Those of you unable or unwilling to read the forums will be unaware that the idea was initially dismissed out of hand by influential party bosses, before they went on to embrace it wholeheartedly.  Now the entire Innovations Department is happily twittering away.

Barely a month afterwards, the party used Twitter for a highly successful if under-used

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged , , | 21 Comments
Alex Foster

Weekly Catchup 10th – 16th March

By Alex Foster | Published Mon 17th March 2008 - 10:20 am

Our weekly round-up of all that’s good on Lib Dem Voice.

We kicked off our week here with a thoughtful piece from Joe Otten about faith schools – and the F word on Voice is a red rag to several of our regular bulls. The piece has had a discussion continuing with over 120 comments to date.

Slightly fewer comments ensued on equally thoughtful pieces about the budget, rebellions, and what turned out to be a restatement of existing policy when Clegg considered taking an axe to nearly a quarter of all MPs. Look out for the …

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Posted in A weekly catchup | Leave a comment
Will Howells

Something for the Weekend: On and on and on

By Will Howells | Published Sun 16th March 2008 - 5:43 pm

Dreary weather outside: check. Nice cup of tea and some biscuits: check. ABBA: The Definitive Collection on random shuffle: check. Then let’s rock and roll.

Loading up on the Something for the Weekend DVD player today: Norman Baker gets musical; MPs bring the pork home; flippertygibbets; a couple of bears; and more!

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Posted in Something for the Weekend | Leave a comment

Opinion: Tories changing? Not at all

By Christopher Leslie | Published Thu 13th March 2008 - 4:47 pm

I was lucky to grow up in a quiet little village. On one side the village is straddled by an air strip and Cranfield University. The Uni is postgraduate and as a result takes in a lot of foreign students – over a third of a 4,000 population. As a result in early years of school especially I met a lot of students from foreign cultures and many have grown up to be close friends. I also had the “pleasure” to grow up in a Conservative safe seat. Following corruption charges the Howard babe Nadine …

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Posted in Op-eds | 19 Comments
Mark Pack

Get an extra link for your website

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 13th March 2008 - 10:25 am

Do you display the party’s campaign buttons or Liberal Democrat TV feed on your own website or blog?

If you are displaying them, here’s your chance to advertise your site and get an extra link. We’re going to start listing on www.libdems.org.uk sites which are using the buttons and/or feed, so if they appear on your site drop an email to [email protected] with your web address and whether it is the buttons, TV feed or both that you’re displaying.

(In case you are not familiar with them, details of how to add the buttons and TV feed to your site …

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Posted in Online politics | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #55

By Stephen Tall | Published Tue 11th March 2008 - 7:45 am

Welcome to the 55th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (2nd-8th March), together with a quintet hand-picked by Lib Dem blog readers you might otherwise have missed.

Tempers flared in the Lib Dem blogosphere last week – both between bloggers, and also against the leadership following the party split over a Lisbon Treaty referendum. Fortunately, a successful conference in Liverpool has intervened, with a great speech by Nick Clegg, so perhaps there will be a return to sweetness and light in the coming days.

Anyway, without further ado, here we go in descending order of popularity:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 5 Comments
Nick Harvey

Nick Harvey introduces… Forces Focus

By Nick Harvey | Published Fri 7th March 2008 - 6:25 pm

Our 2005 Manifesto stated that one of our priorities was to look after our Armed Forces so they can look after us. At a time when our forces are committed to fighting on two fronts, as well as operations around the world, this holds just as true now as it did three years ago.

With continued operations around the world, defence remains at the top of the agenda and it is essential that the Government’s ‘duty of care’ to service personnel is fulfilled.

However, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved to be more challenging and more hostile …

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 2 Comments
Jeremy Hargreaves

Future party policies – your chance to shape them

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Published Tue 4th March 2008 - 7:45 am

One of the features which marks out the way in which we Liberal Democrats as a party make our policies is that they are decided by the members, not just by the Leader and Shadow Cabinet.

We often tend to focus on the fact that all policies have to be voted on by Conference.

But in fact there is another way in which all party members – including those who aren’t able to go to Conference – can have what is probably an even greater influence on what our policies are.

And that’s through the process by which every working …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #54

By Stephen Tall | Published Mon 3rd March 2008 - 8:26 pm

Welcome to the 54th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (24th February – 1st March), together with a quintet hand-picked by Lib Dem blog readers you might otherwise have missed.

Here we go, in descending order of popularity:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | Tagged | 18 Comments
Alex Foster

LibDemVoice at Lib Dem Conference

By Alex Foster | Published Mon 3rd March 2008 - 12:04 pm

Lib Dem Voice will be providing enhanced coverage of this Spring’s Lib Dem Conference – live from Liverpool.

Voice reporters will be at the Liverpool Arena with all the inside information from the movers and shakers on the conference floor, and up-to-the-minute coverage of the Conference fringe and exhibitions.

Lib Dem Voice has also been granted unique and privileged access to the Federal Conference Committee as they debate the inner workings of Conference.

We’ll be hoping to bring you podcast interviews and an interesting multimedia experience as and when it happens. And whether you’re attending conference in person, or watching from afar, we …

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Posted in Conference | 9 Comments
Alex Foster

Weekly Catchup 25th Feb – 2nd Mar

By Alex Foster | Published Mon 3rd March 2008 - 9:33 am

Catchup brings you best of Lib Dem Voice in a helpful package first thing on a Monday morning.  You can read it by clicking on the link at the top of the page or get a feed of it here.

It’s been a tougher week to choose than normal, with more posts than either of the previous two weeks.  MP Andrew Stunnell talked about his campaign to provide more housing ahead of his conference motion. Mike Smithson no longer believe the Lib Dems are worth a punt – but only because he loves us so much. Elizabeth …

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Posted in A weekly catchup | Leave a comment
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