When I was 17 years old, even if I’d had the nerve to ask a middle aged male politician about sex education, they’d probably have mumbled an excuse, blushed and scurried off into the distance.
So, my hero of the week is 17 year old Yas, who phoned into Call Clegg today and asked Nick if he couldn’t do something about updating the guidance on sex education. She said that the material they were being taught was so old that it came on VHS videos. Yas is working on the Telegraph’s campaign for better sex education and has started a …
‘Nick Clegg effect helps LBC to record 1m listeners’ noted The Guardian last week — yes, the Lib Dem leader’s risky decision last January to host a weekly radio phone-in has proved a hit with the public. (“Imagine if we could do it with a politician who was popular,” side-swiped Nick’s co-host Nick Ferrari.) In this week’s letter Nick offers a behind-the-scenes video glimpse of the show…
I hope you’re having an enjoyable summer so far and getting some time to relax, enjoy the sunshine and enjoy time with family and friends.
This week I was back on LBC for my regular radio phone in show ‘Call Clegg’. I really enjoy doing it, and like the many town hall meetings I also do, it’s a great way to speak directly to the public.
Jim from Tunbridge Wells, a public sector worker was none too impressed with the idea of MPs getting a whacking pay rise. Nick agrees:
We’re trying to keep everybody together if you like and I just don’t think it helps at all in doing that by taking one very, very small but very prominent part of the public, people on the public sector payroll, MPs, and say, look you’re going to be treated completely differently to nurses, doctors, fireman, firewomen, everybody working in the public sector. I really do think if we’re going to have an approach towards the public
It’s never the major issues of the day that make the headlines from the Call Clegg show. This week, despite robust questioning on Egypt, immigration, it was all about that incident in Sainsburys where a member of staff refused to serve a customer while they were talking on their phone.
So, has he ever spoken on the phone while in a queue?
Firstly, yes I have spoken on the phone in the queue. I kind of like to think that I probably wouldn’t do that if I was right at the top, at the sort of the front of the check in
Nick Clegg has taken a mostly unjustified pasting in the media over the past couple of days for his answer to the question:
If you had been in the restaurant eating close by to Nigella and Saatchi when he disturbingly put her hands around her neck, what would your reaction had been?
Stephen Tall was right to say yesterday that his response was a bit ill thought out and incoherent. I preferred to think of it as him taking the pony to get to the point rather than the helicopter, something that he does quite a bit. Nick did get there in the end and made it clear that if he saw someone being violent to their partner, he hoped he’d intervene to protect the weaker person.
Nobody could be justified in thinking for a second that Nick would ever condone domestic violence. Yes, Yvette Cooper, that would be you I’m talking about. Dr Sarah Wollaston MP was as bad.
There’s another dimension to this, though, that I’ve become aware of today: Nick’s wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez and Nigella are friends. They knew each other before they did a video for The Stylist way back in 2011. Nigella had taken over the site as editor for that issue and she and Miriam cooked croquetas together. There’s even a You Tube video.
Stephen Tall has just written a post on Nick Clegg’s LBC comments about Charles Saatchi grabbing Nigella Lawson’s throat while they were having dinner, an incident for which Saatchi accepted a Police caution.
Nick Clegg has now issued a statement clarifying his remarks:
I completely condemn all forms of domestic violence.
As I said on the radio, my instinct would always be to try and protect the weaker person, to try and protect the person who otherwise would be hurt.
But I was asked a very specific question about how I would have reacted to a specific incident which I did not see.
But to be honest I think what this is about is what about those kids who aren’t lucky enough to have, I don’t know, families or parents who can help or can try and help them, who just don’t have the contacts, who don’t have the support they need to live out their dreams….
…I actually do think there are so many young children today …
Today’s Call Clegg was quite extraordinary. We know that there’s been a big push by some of the more authoritarian figures in the country to try to build a case for the so called Snoopers’ Charter over the past few days. It was obvious Nick was going to be asked about it. The caller, Vince (no, not that one) from Kingston was very supportive of Nick’s position. What happened next was that Nick Ferrari played recorded messages from former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair and the Secretary …
Another week, another Question Time with no Liberal Democrat on the panel. Tonight’s episode, from London, will feature Conservative health minister Anna Soubry, former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson, the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hassan, Downton Abbey author Julian Fellowes and UKIP’s Diane James.
This is the second week running that there hasn’t been a Liberal Democrat on the panel. The reason it’s serious is because ever since last week’s horrific murder in Woolwich, there has been a clamour of voices in the media, one of the loudest being Alan Johnson’s, saying …
Our reports from this week’s Call Clegg have concentrated on Nick’s unequivocal announcement that the so called Snoopers’ Charter, which would have obliged companies to store details of websites visited and social media contacts, will not be enacted while the Liberal Democrats are in Government. However, that only took up a small part of his half hour session. Here are some of the other highlights:
Abu Qatada
Nick was asked several times about the idea that Britain should temporarily pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights. While he did not explicitly rule the idea out, I do not think …
Julian Huppert has already joyfully welcomed Nick Clegg’s decision to veto Tory plans on web snooping. However, I thought I’d give you the chance to hear Nick Clegg’s words from Call Clegg this morning. I certainly wasn’t expecting such an unequivocal statement. He has given himself no wiggle room at all. This is what he said:
What people have dubbed the snoopers’ charter, I just have to be clear with you, that’s not going to happen. In other words, the idea that the Government will pass a law which means there would be a record kept of every website you visit,
Nick Clegg sounded very cheery as he introduced his weekly LBC phone-in today. Maybe it’s the thought of two weeks away from the rough and tumble of Parliament, or waking up to a basketful of chocolate eggs on Sunday, but he certainly seemed in good form.
I have a long held obsession that if politicians concentrated their minds and sorted out housing, we’d all be a lot happier. It’s one of the things people care most about, unsurprisingly. Imagine how you’d feel if the roof over your head was threatened. Imagine the uncertainty, being forced to rely on the homelessness provision …
An interesting couple of snippets from an interview with Nick Ferrari – Nick Clegg’s interlocutor on LBC’s weekly ‘Call Clegg’ phone-in – in this week’s Media Guardian. First, that all three party leaders were approached with the idea, and only Nick bit. And here’s Nick on why he agreed:
On his way out of the studio a few weeks ago, I asked Clegg the same question. “I enjoy it. There’s something spontaneous and authentic about it, which is good in a political world which is in many ways becoming increasingly pasteurised by too much spin and pre-preparation.”
By Caron Lindsay
| Wed 27th February 2013 - 12:46 pm
We might not have blamed Nick Clegg if he’d stayed under the duvet with a detective novel rather than turn up for his weekly Call Clegg session on LBC. Our leader is not one to duck out of things, though, and deserves respect for not hiding away and allowing himself to be quizzed on live radio. Clearly he was going to be asked about the allegations surrounding Lord Rennard (which the peer strenuously denies) and what he had done about them.
For the first time he acknowledged that although the main reason for the former Chief Executive’s resignation was health, this …
This week and next, Call Clegg, Nick Clegg’s weekly phone-in is happening on Wednesday rather than Thursday. Today’s questions ranged from a new EU directive on e-cigarettes which Nick had never heard of to special needs to fair tax to the problems of the NHS in London. Today, a few of the questions were so long that it didn’t flow as well as usual. However, when Nick got the chance, he really chatted properly with people as if there weren’t millions of people listening.
Mansion Tax
The first question was from a man who bought his house in fashionable St John’s Wood …
I wondered if the Tories might try and turn up the heat on Nick on today’s LBC Call Clegg now that the starting gun has been fired for the Eastleigh by-election just 3 weeks from today.
I wasn’t expecting the unmistakeable tones of “Boris from Islington” telling Nick to get ministers out of their cars and onto bikes, and get some investment into infrastructure.
Sadly, the London Mayor (for it was he) didn’t quite have the guts to actually talk to Nick live. He’d pre-recorded his question. Nick lobbed the ball firmly back into Boris’ gob by asking him if he were …
Nick Clegg’s fourth half hour phone-in this morning was the first I had actually managed to listen to all the way through. It takes some guts for a senior member of the Government to take unvetted calls from members of the public every week. In just 30 minutes, he answered questions on subjects like youth unemployment, the threatened Lewisham hospital, childcare, stay at home parents, David Ward’s comments and HS2 and its role in providing prosperity for the whole country.
One man was very angry about the comments made by David Ward for which he apologised and was subsequently censured by …
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 10th January 2013 - 11:45 am
Today was the day History Was Made. At least if you believe LBC Radio’s self-publicity. To be slightly more precise, Nick Clegg took part in the first of his weekly Call Clegg phone-ins on LBC Radio, putting his job on the line (geddit?!) for 30 minutes.
Alex Macfie The US fashion for "majority-minority" (I think I got it the right way round there) districting needs to be seen in the context of a system where districting is...
Alex Macfie @Matt (Bristol): had the Brexit referendum been run under an electoral college system (perhaps based on constituencies), then Leave would have won by a landslid...
Matt (Bristol) I would say, we do need to acknowledge the Electoral College precedent in UK democratic discussions, as its an attempt to find a consensus view that attempts to...
Matt (Bristol) I think we can acknowledge the feet of clay and obvious flaws of many western democracies - including or own - without rushing to silly words like 'condemn'.
...
Peter Martin Speaking as a neutral, I would say Lib Dems have now made as much progress as could reasonably be expected against the Tories. Lib Dems did well in July because...
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