By Caron Lindsay
| Tue 30th December 2014 - 10:54 am
The members of the LDV team are in a relaxed state at the moment, replete with the joys, food and drink of the season.
Some of us have been showing off our best Christmas fashion and I thought you’d like to have a look over your morning coffee.
We’ll start with the tasteful. Mary Reid’s wonderful green coat. I bumped into her at LDHQ the other week and I can promise that it feels amazingly soft. I don’t really care that much about clothes, but I like this coat.
I guess Joe Otten’s new funky Christmas shirt could be described as tasteful, too. It’s kind of like the duvet I had as a teenager.
I’ve been talking on the Pod Delusion again this week, this time about some of the processes involved in standing for election to your local council. It’s more complicated than some people realise, and my process piece explains some of the intricacies.
Earlier in the month I talked about how the “little and often” rule is a good approach for candidates and those elected to public office when using the internet to keep in touch with voters. There have been two good recent examples of blog posts from Liberal Democrat councillors that illustrate the different roles blog posts can play in that.
First, Ealing Councillor Gary Malcolm and his short, simple summary of a residents’ association AGM. That sort of quick but very local information often has a ready audience, because even diligent readers of local newspapers rarely get that much information about what is happening day to day with local services.
Second, there is a post from The Voice’s own Alex Foster, who is also a councillor in Nottingham. His post, So What’s Going on at Broad Marsh?, takes a story which has been in the local news but provides the context and explanations which the local media very rarely have the time or space for. Yet for a big issue such as the fate of the centre of a town, again there is very often a ready audience for that sort of background and extended information.
Sometimes a blog post that is nearly all just a long list of village names can be extremely effective, as Paul Walter demonstrated.
Gary Hunt has been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of Leicester…
… and former Liberal Democrat candidate Vincent McKee, who has been at the centre of allegations of fraud, has been required to repay £1,000 according to the Coventry Telegraph.
Long-time contributing editor to Lib Dem Voice, Alex Foster, is cooking up a storm on this week’s Come Dine With Me, the hit Channel 4 gourmet gameshow. And tonight, Tuesday, at 5pm is when viewers will be able to view his cooking episode, which is trailed thusly:
In Nottingham, local councillor Alex Foster hopes to impress with a fancy French menu and a spot of bell ringing. Sadly, Brian likens Alex’s starter to cat food, Janice tells him to tidy up his house, and Barry compares the cornichons to intimate body parts.
All of us at Lib Dem Voice join in wishing our colleague, Alex Foster, the very best on his wedding day. May it be everything you both want, and more, Alex.
Alex is one of the founding members of the Voice collective: you can read his first post on his love-hate relationship with Lib Dem conferences (from September 2006) here; and all his other posts for the Voice here.
And if you want to be uplifted while shedding a tear, can I recommend the post he published this week over …
A new group of Facebook is picking up numbers and making itself known. It is called ‘We Want the Gay Blood Ban Debate’ and its speedy growth is impressive for a specifically Lib Dem campaign. It’s a campaign to try and force a debate at conference about the restrictions on who is fit to give blood.
Many people are not aware of the fact gay men can’t give blood. I am from personal experience. The week after the local nurse talked to my sixth form, a group of a dozen or more of us went to give blood together. For …
I would only question Mark’s use of the word ‘now’: for a long time it’s been hard to discern the Tories’ strategy beyond their assumption that it was their turn to become the next Labservative government.
We’ve seen yet another example of that today, with the mixed messages sent out by the Tories. On the one hand, they say they will ‘focus on the positive’. Yet which advert do they release in order to back up that claim? This one, …
Opportunities not taken is particularly interesting, as it highlights areas for improvement. It says that councillors and officers tend to face cultural, rather than technical barriers to using social media. Some councils still lack a clear social media policy for councillors or officers, either in a personal or professional capacity. Many councils routinely block access to social networking sites on their computers. The guide suggests ways for councillors to hold their councils to account over their social media approach.
The site also features a video of Lib Dem Councillor for Redlands (and 2009 LDV Blog of the Year shortlistee for her use of social media) Daisy Benson explaining why she uses social media:
If you could choose up to three items for your Christmas stocking, what would they be? That was the question LDV posed to a group of Lib Dem bloggers. And over the next two days we’ll reveal what they told us, with all their choices added to the Amazon carousel widget featured on our home-page, referral fees from which will help support Lib Dem Voice: so get clicking and ordering. In part one, four bloggers – Jennie Rigg, Millennium Elephant, Mark Pack and Alex Foster – give us the low-down on their Xmas faves.
By Alex Foster
| Wed 9th September 2009 - 10:00 am
Lib Dem Voice at Conference
As ever the LDV team will be providing as full coverage as we can from the conference, including reportage, podcasts and as much as possible to make conference accessible and participatory for those not able to join us in Bournemouth.
We will also be hosting four fringe events, all of which will be recorded and podcast as mini-radio shows here on LDV. The rooms are booked and topics selected, and we can now give you full information on our confirmed speakers. The details are as follows:
The Lib Dem blog awards are with us again – and one of the categories is ‘Best posting on a Liberal Democrat blog (since 1st September 2008)’. This is actually my favourite award for the simple reason that it recognises writing talent, pure and simple. By which I don’t mean that the prose has to be worthy of a Booker nomination; rather that the article has to attract, engage and provoke readers – elevate our thinking, if you like.
All of which musing prompted me to ask my LDV colleagues – and myself – to self-nominate the favourite articles we’ve posted here on the site. Here’s what we said:
I read Alex Foster’s ‘Enough is Enough’ article on LDV, condemning the Labour Government for its shortcomings on civil liberties, with interest. But, as one who reached voting age under the first Thatcher Government, I can’t help thinking that, whatever the failings of Labour, the Tories would have been a darn sight worse.
It is true that some Tories may appear to have ‘discovered’ liberty in the last year or two. But I suspect this is merely a marketing reaction to the slow (but fairly steady) growth of the Liberal Democrats since the 1980s. The Tory Party showed precious little …
Suzanne Fletcher probably too late for this to be seen - but good speech!...
Mary Fulton I wish you every success with the concert. It is a tragedy that around 8 million Ukrainians have left their country due to the war and these people need support...
Mick Taylor @Martin. You don’t beat extremists by pandering to them but by challenging their arguments and putting forward our alternative. Your approach gives them crede...
Simon R There are certainly some issues with HS2 connectivity, but I don't think it's fair to describe Birmingham Curzon Street as unconnected: It's literally right nex...
Steve Trêvethan In. basic socio-economic terms, there are but two groups of people in our society. One is the borrowers and the other the lenders. Neoliberalism/Austerity pres...
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Suzanne Fletcher 
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