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Mark Pack

An interesting new site or a Conservative front?

By Mark Pack | Published Sun 12th August 2007 - 10:51 am

Courtesy of Dizzy Thinks, I’ve just come across Political Hearsay, a new site that isn’t quite finished yet but will allow people to rate different politicians. Is it a welcome new idea, or is it an attempt to pass off Conservative propaganda as neutral information, using online voting to suck in a large audience?

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Top Tory donor abandons “arrogant” Cameron

By Mark Pack | Published Tue 7th August 2007 - 12:45 am

David Cameron’s “arrogant Old Etonian” approach has cost him the support of Tom Cowie, who until now has been one of the Conservative Party’s top donors, giving over £630,000 to the party since 2001.

Tom Cowie, president of Arriva (the bus and train company) will instead donate funds in future to the Prince’s Trust:

“The Tory party seems to be run now by Old Etonians and they don’t seem to understand how other people live. They seem to be very arrogant like I suppose Old Etonians can be.”

More details in The Guardian.

UPDATE: Barcharters Anonymous has a good round up of recent Tory …

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Jeremy Hargreaves

Help shape party policy online

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Published Mon 2nd July 2007 - 5:13 pm

One of the features of our party’s policy is the amount of consultation that goes into preparing it.

Every party member has the opportunity to feed in their views before proposals are drawn up for taking to Conference. This has always included publishing a consultation paper before every new policy paper, and consultative sessions are held at party conference and often elsewhere too.

But over the last year we’ve moved consultation into the electronic world too – so each working group now has its own site where any party member can comment or contribute.

So the two new consultative papers that the party has recently unveiled are now online: on future policy on Europe, and on Further & Higher Education. In each of these areas a working group is working towards bringing a policy paper to conference, either in spring (FE/HE), or at autumn next year (Europe).

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Posted in Conference, Online politics | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Scottish Parliament votes to axe Trident

By Stephen Tall | Published Fri 15th June 2007 - 8:34 am

Lib Dems, SNP and the Greens united at Holyrood last night united in rejecting Labour and Tory plans to replace Trident at a cost of £20 billion.

The Lib Dems successfully amended the original Green motion to state that Trident should not be replaced “at this time” to allow for the system’s use in future multilateral disarmament talks (and in line with party policy). They also pointed out that defence matters aren’t devolved, so the vote won’t make a blind bit of difference.

Lib Dem MSP Mike Rumbles argued:

We believe that the key to a safer world is to

…

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Posted in News | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

American Presidential campaigns scramble to catch up with us

By Mark Pack | Published Sat 9th June 2007 - 9:00 am

They might not be aware of it, but all the fuss in the US about candidates using RSS feeds to let people know about forthcoming events looks rather old hat from over this side of the Atlantic. It’s the sort of thing that Flock Together has been doing for really quite a long time now … do keep up at the back!

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Mark Pack

BAE, corruption and more silence from the Conservatives

By Mark Pack | Published Fri 8th June 2007 - 10:41 am

Time to dust off some of my previous blog postings about the Al Yamamah arms deal, because BAE and corruption allegations are back in the news – and once again it’s Ming Campbell and Vince Cable making all the political running, whilst the Conservatives stay silent. A touch of embarrassment over their own Saudi links by any chance?

With a bit of luck, we’ll even get another choice Tony Blair excuse as to why Labour’s changed its mind on Al Yamamah.

Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Opinion: A stench that starts at the very top

By Stephen Tall | Published Fri 8th June 2007 - 9:41 am

Yet more news, as reported in today’s Guardian, of the Labour Government’s complicity in bribes paid by BAE to a Saudi prince to secure a huge arms deal:

British investigators were ordered by the attorney-general Lord Goldsmith to conceal from international anti-bribery watchdogs the existence of payments totalling more than £1bn to a Saudi prince, the Guardian can disclose.

The money was paid into bank accounts controlled by Prince Bandar for his role in setting up BAE Systems with Britain’s biggest ever arms deal. Details of the transfers to accounts in the US were discovered by officers from the Serious Fraud

…

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Posted in News, Op-eds | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Steve Webb MP says Lib Dems will stay ‘at the centre of the political field of battle’

By the founding editor | Published Tue 15th May 2007 - 10:49 pm

Last week, Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins wrote “This lamentable party” (that’s us he’s talking about there) “cannot even master the electoral system to which it has hitched its wagon. Surely it’s time to disband.”

Today Steve Webb MP penned a reply, which you can find here. “Decision-making needs to come out of Westminster and closer to the people”, is how the Guardian sums up his piece.

Steve is, as ever, keen to get member feedback – you can respond on his blog here.

Posted in News | Comments Off on Steve Webb MP says Lib Dems will stay ‘at the centre of the political field of battle’
Mark Pack

How are the elections being run in your patch?

By Mark Pack | Published Tue 24th April 2007 - 6:43 pm

After each round of elections there are various chances for us to provide feedback to those involved in running the elections, including both the Electoral Commission and the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

If you have any examples of things being done badly (e.g. typos on ballot papers, Returning Officers refusing to provide lists of postal voters, etc) or examples of things being run really well, please let me know – either in the comments or by email to [email protected].

 

Posted in News | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

NEW SERVICE: Catch Liberal Democrat MPs in the media

By Mark Pack | Published Tue 13th February 2007 - 10:31 am

The party’s started a new service to advertise in advance major appearances in the media by Liberal Democrat MPs and other senior figures. We’ll be advertising in advance set-piece interviews, appearances on panel shows like Any Questions? and similar.

The service is being run through FlockTogether. You can subscribe to the service either by:

  1. Using this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LiberalDemocratsMediaAppearances or
  2. By email: register at FlockTogether and pick “Media appearances” as one of the categories of events you want to be emailed about. (If you are an existing FlockTogether user you can also

…

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Posted in News, Online politics | 3 Comments

Lib Dems get in to the national contact centre game

By the founding editor | Published Tue 16th January 2007 - 1:43 pm

Via Ed Maxfield comes news of the Telegraph’s coverage of the Lib Dems‘ new million-pound national call centre, being funded by a new major donor to the party.

I understand (and I’m not particularly in the loop on this, so don’t take it as gospel!) that data from this call centre will feed a new national voter-intention database being funded by a £500,000 grant from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.  I’m sure more information will be released in time (when it’s built, for example).

Posted in News | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Do you run a WordPress blog?

By Mark Pack | Published Fri 5th January 2007 - 9:00 am

If so head over to the party website to see the latest widgets we’ve made available for you – including one that allows you to easily drop in the latest party film, with your site being automatically updated when a new one comes out. Bug reports and feedback welcome.

Posted in News, Online politics | 3 Comments

Activists to help write next manifesto

By the founding editor | Published Wed 25th October 2006 - 10:03 pm

The party has announced today that Steve Webb will lead the group writing our next election manifesto.

Steve has pledged to use online consultation to engage as many activists as possible in the process,  and according to the Guardian “He hopes that as many as half of the party’s 70,000 members will help to feed in ideas.”

Steve has told the Guardian: “There was a feeling that there was a lot of good policy in our manifesto, but it didn’t tell a story about the kind of party we are and the sort of society we want.”

At …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Podcasting: Asquith got there first

By Mark Pack | Published Thu 5th October 2006 - 11:42 pm

Well, nearly … check out the audio files on the newly revamped Lib Dem History Group website, which I had a small hand in arranging:
http://www.liberalhistory.org.uk/item_list.php?item=audio_source

When we (the History Group) get the content a bit more polished, the “On this day” RSS feed could be a fun bit of fun:
http://www.liberalhistory.org.uk/on_this_day.rss

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Richard Huzzey

Thoughts on The Amazing Mrs Pritchard

By Richard Huzzey | Published Wed 4th October 2006 - 8:31 am

Last night, I watched the first episode of The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard – the BBC’s new comedy drama about a supermarket manager who becomes a non-partisan Prime Minister. I wonder if I’m the only viewer who was disappointed by it?

The basic premise – for those who didn’t see it – was that Mrs. Pritchard, after witnessing Tory and Labour candidates physically fighting outside her store, decides to stand for Parliament. Even though she knows nothing about policy problems, she thought she could do better than the male-dominated political parties, who were all the same. Her idea catches on, and lots of other apolitical women stand for parliament, along with (female) defectors from existing parties. The episode ends with her election and succession to 10 Downing Street, as her ‘Purple Alliance’ sweeps the country.

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Posted in News, Op-eds | 39 Comments
The Voice

Voice Podcast: Packing for conference? Don’t forget your sense of humour

By The Voice | Published Fri 15th September 2006 - 8:24 pm

Paul Trollope has been slaving over a hot Risograph to deliver some fliers for Lib Dem Voice – no glossy corporate stuff here – if you’d be willing to give half an hour to stand outside the conference centre and push them in to the willing hands of delegates in the last couple of days, please do contact me.

Also, I think the thread on the 50p tax rate and the Meeting the Challenge post have both been helpful ‘warm runs’ of the debate that will occur in Brighton. If the web site has informed your thinking, …

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Posted in News, Podcasts | 6 Comments
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