Tag Archives: chris nicholson

LibLink: The Lib Dem political plan for the next year

Writing over on the Huffington Post, Lib Dem Voice’s Mark Pack has been taking a look at the party’s plan for the next year:

The plan of senior Liberal Democrats is to focus heavily on delivering and communicating the four priorities from the front page of the party’s 2010 manifesto:

  • “fair taxes – that put money back in your pocket
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 6 Comments

Chris Nicholson resigns as CentreForum chief executive, appointed Ed Davey’s new special advisor

When Chris Huhne resigned as energy and climate change secretary last month, he didn’t just create a vacancy in the cabinet — his departure also triggered some musical chairs elsewhere.

The same day Ed Davey was appointed Chris Huhne’s sucessor, Duncan Brack and Joel Kenrick departed as Chris’s special advisors. You can read Duncan’s take on his time in the job here, Liblink: Duncan Brack on how to get green policies implemented in Government.

These two vacancies have now been filled by Katie …

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , and | Leave a comment

Opinion: A note to my successor (Part1)

Liam Byrne famously left a handover note to his successor as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, saying “There’s no money left – good luck!” I was reminded of this as, after a very enjoyable 21 months as Chief Executive of CentreForum, I start on Monday as one of Ed Davey’s Special Advisers at DECC. I suppose the think tank equivalent would be “There are no ideas left – good luck!”

In fact that is far from being the case. One of the joys of running a think tank is that there is never a shortage of ideas to be …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 30 Comments

LibLink: Redressing the balance between the generations

Chris Nicholson, Director of CentreForum, has posted his take on the Budget on Total Politics.  He concludes:

It is often said that the best Budgets are usually those that get the immediate negative headlines. While the press has focused on the alleged “unfairness” of the Budget, history is likely to be rather kinder in suggesting that the budget has been much fairer than it at first sight appeared.

You can read the reasons for his optimism here.

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 1 Comment

Daily View 2×2: 4 March 2010

Good morning and welcome to Thursday’s Daily View.

There’s a huge chunk of exciting things that happened today in history, so it’s an auspicious day to welcome a baby Cullen. Our technical editor Ryan has been tweeting progress, and as I write this there’s a lot of pushing going on. Best wishes from all at LDV to the Cullen family – I’m sure LDV Towers will soon get used to night feeds. I’m dusting off my copy of Gina Ford as I type.

Male swans from Matthew Bourne's Swan LakeSo, today in history: the US Congress met for the first time in 1789. In 1790, France was divvied into départements. In 1797, John Adams succeeded George Washington, the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times. Chicago was founded in 1837; Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake premiered in Moscow in 1877 and in 1882, East London saw Britain’s first electric trams. The first Daimler car was unveiled and in 1933, the first woman joined the US Cabinet.

March 4th birthdays include Vivaldi, in 1678, Sir Patrick Moore, and Nottingham novellist Alan Sillitoe (I was at the meeting of Nottingham City Council that made him an honorary freeman of the city, incidentally)

2 Big Stories

Evil Gays update

Civil partnerships – gay marriages – could soon be registered in places of worship – something currently expressly banned by statute, which is particularly unfair on those faiths which don’t have a problem with gay relationships, including Quakers and Reform Judaism. The Times has one version of the information; the Telegraph on the other hand manages to paint a far more bleak version of the havoc that could be wrought by litigious homos.

Meanwhile, David Cameron has averred that his party’s tax breaks, maternity and paternity rights planned for married couples will also be available to their civilly partnershipped brethren. Not quite sure how this tallies with last month’s pronouncement that would be no new gay rights under the Tories.

Posted in Daily View | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and | 2 Comments

Two converts to Twitter’s political benefits

Yesterday was London Region’s autumn conference, during which I heard from two recent converts to Twitter.

First, Keith House – leader of Eastleigh Council and probably the person with the best record of election results at both local and national level year in, year out in any council run by the Liberal Democrats.* Perhaps understandably given his record of electoral success, he hasn’t been chomping at the bit to innovate online  – but even Keith has now seen the benefits Twitter can bring and joined himself.

Keith highlighted how much greater the role of the internet would be at the next …

Posted in Online politics | Also tagged , , , and | 1 Comment
Advert



Recent Comments

  • Mark Frankel
    I agree. I don't think we should be opposing Labour's measures just for the sake of it. It makes us look shallow and opportunistic and probably doesn't do us mu...
  • Peter Watson
    @Paul Barker "This article says everything I have been thinking over the last Year." I completely agree! I've only recently started revisiting this site, havi...
  • Roland
    Hi David, I’m not disagreeing with Marks statement of what has gone before, but I am disagreeing with his unstated but implicit suggestion that this could ...
  • nigel hunter
    Reform seem to be aiming for the future re young men who seem to not have a lot in society.They have a clear aim. The young are the future and the party should...
  • David Raw
    Ben Wood makes a very persuasive case and Mohammed Amin is incorrect to state that most private schools are charities. The actual split is nearer to 50/50. ...