Tag Archives: daily telegraph

Half a defence of Paul Staines (aka @guidofawkes)

My Voice colleague Iain Roberts has already blogged about this afternoon’s big political news that William Hague’s special advisor Christopher Myers has quit his post following allegations — vehemently denied by both — that they might be having an affair.

Iain writes: “We at Lib Dem Voice wish both the Hagues and Christopher Myers well,” and I agree 100%. However, there are two further points I’d make.

The questions were fair enough…

Paul Staines blogged about the issue on 24th August, using the Freedom of Information Act to ask three questions inquiring as to the suitability of Mr Myers acting …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 34 Comments

Clegg backs graduate tax in Telegraph interview

Credit where credit is due, today’s Telegraph interview with Nick Clegg covers a range of substantive policy issues and gives the Deputy Prime Minister the space to give nuanced answers where the question requires them.

The biggest story is Clegg’s clear steer on a graduate tax as the way to square financial demands with the party’s dislike of tuition fees:

While David Willetts, the universities minister, said this week that it was for Lord Browne’s ongoing study to recommend increased tuition fees or a tax, Mr Clegg comes down firmly for the latter. “ children are very intimidated by levels of

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , , , and | 3 Comments

Council website spending put under scrutiny

Today’s Telegraph has a piece looking at the large sums being spent by many councils on new or revamped websites.

In itself, an expensive website is not necessarily a poor use of funds as good, popular sites often also save costs (e.g. by reducing the number of phonecalls the council has to handle). As a result, Medway Council – one of those picked out in the article – may have a good case for spending £250,000 in revamping its site given that the last major revamp was in 2003. In the last seven years the internet has changed significantly as have …

Posted in Local government, News and Online politics | Also tagged and | 4 Comments

Is the problem that people don’t want to pay for news or don’t want to pay for newspapers?

Each round of newspaper circulation figures makes grim reading for anyone trying to balance the books at a newspaper. Month after month circulation is dropping away across the board. The usual explanation is that newspapers are suffering because so much free news is now available online, and there is certainly a large degree of truth in that.

However, there are two important caveats to that. First, the massive lack of trust in journalists, who are regularly rated one of the least trusted professions in the UK. As I wrote last year on this topic,

Isn’t a major reason that people increasingly turn

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 14 Comments

Worth a second outing: Does the Daily Telegraph know its up from its down?

Welcome to a series where old posts are revived for a second outing for reasons such as their subject has become topical again, they have aged well but were first posted when the site’s readership was only a tenth or less of what it is currently or they got published and the site crashed, hiding the finest words of wisdom behind an incomprehensible error message. Today’s has been updated with the latest hemline flip-flop.

Daily Telegraph, 12 December 2008: “Recession pulls hemlines down“.

Daily Telegraph, 6 March 2009: “Hemlines rise during economic downturns”.

Daily Telegraph, 9 July 2010: “It’s happening again. Hemlines are …

Posted in News | Also tagged | 6 Comments

LibLink: Nick Clegg & David Cameron – We’ll transform Britain by giving power away

The Pirme Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, have jointly authored an article in today’s Telegraph setting out their hopes for the coming Parliament. Dealing with the deficit is vital, they say – but the real mission of the Coalition is to give people control over their lives.

On dealing with the deficit:

… for both of us, sorting out the public finances is a responsibility, not a passion. We didn’t come into politics just to balance the books. We are both ambitious for Britain: we want to change our country for the better. We want to

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , and | 12 Comments

Former Labour MP sues Sunday Telegraph over expenses story

The Press Gazette reports:

Former Labour backbench MP Frank Cook has filed a libel writ against the Sunday Telegraph over a front-page story from May 2009 about his expenses.

He is demanding damages of up to £50,000 from publishers Telegraph Media Group over a front page story and two inside pieces in May 2009 in the Sunday Telegraph.

The stories, which he claims were defamatory, were headed “MP claimed £5 for church collection” and “I’m sorry church claim was unfair.”

Cook, who represents Stockton North, is also suing over a comment headed: “Now it is the people’s turn to be heard.”

He says the articles

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 3 Comments

LibLink: Mark Pack – Why do we demand such high standards of politicians?

Over at The Independent, Lib Dem Voice Co-Editor Mark Pack takes a look at the Telegraph’s pursuit of David Laws and Danny Alexander.

On David, Mark notes:

… for me, the dividing line between reprimand and resignation in matters of personal financial affairs should be whether or not you have personally gained from a breach of the rules. … in this ironic situation where a politician gets into trouble for claiming less money than he could have done, I regret that he has decided to resign.

And on Danny, he writes:

It’s an odd form of morality to criticise someone for paying no

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , and | 22 Comments

Capital Gains Tax: an outrageous list of advice

In a shocking list of advice being given out about capital gains tax, MPs were told:

“Don’t forget to claim expenses”

“Become a butterfly and flit between homes”

“Exploit personal allowances and minimise rates” and more.

The advice urges people to make use of “a range of little-known tax breaks” and quotes a tax advisor saying, “It is possible to reduce a tax bill of a few hundred thousand pounds to virtually zero”.

Oh wait. Hang on. That’s a list of advice that was written for the public and not just MPs, wasn’t it? And the list was written by the Daily Telegraph. Ooops.

Hat-tip:

Posted in News | 7 Comments

Danny Alexander & the Telegraph: not paying something that’s not due is not a story

So here are the facts as we know them (and see his statement that Helen blogged):

  • In 1999 – 2006 he and his wife owned one property (in London)
  • In 2005 he became an MP
  • In 2006 he bought a house in his constituency. That house has been designated his main home for Parliamentary expense purposes.
  • In 2007 they sold their property in London and bought another one. They haven’t paid capital gains tax on the sale.

Capital Gains Tax rules says that you don’t have to pay Capital Gains Tax when you sell  your main home. If that was all they said then …

Posted in News | Also tagged | 116 Comments

Danny Alexander issues a statement on his Capital Gains Tax affairs

Danny Alexander has made a statement, following an article in the Telegraph on Sunday night, which reported that he had avoided paying Capital Gains Tax on a south London property in 2007:

My wife and I bought our property in Elspeth Road in 1999, we sold it and moved to the current property in June 2007.

Until the spring of 2006 this was the only property we owned. I had rented a place in Aviemore until then, we subsequently bought a place there and moved into it.

I have always listed London as my second home on the basis set out in

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 97 Comments

Trying to find a bright spot among the depression of David Laws’ downfall

Well that was a depressing 24 hours, depressing in so many different ways.

I don’t think I’d describe David Laws’s forced resignation as either right, or wrong: it was quite simply inevitable. There was no way he personally, nor the coalition politically, could withstand the clamour for his head. Eventually he would have been dragged down by the explosion of self-righteousness that the right-wing press and Labour tribalists have let rip over the past two days. I find that depressing.

It is one of the ironies of coalition government that, as it brings together two different, competing parties – two parties …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 75 Comments

Exclusive poll: newspaper hostility makes voters more likely to back Lib Dems

A poll carried out exclusively for Lib Dem Voice shows that opposition from the Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Telegraph to the Liberal Democrats actually makes people more likely to vote for the party.

Asked the impact on their voting intention of those papers opposing Nick Clegg becoming Prime Minister, 15% said it made them more likely to vote Liberal Democrat and only 4% said it made them less likely, making for a net +11% saying they are more likely to vote Liberal Democrat.

Of the rest, 19% would vote Liberal Democrat regardless, 35% would not vote Liberal Democrat anyway and …

Posted in Polls | Also tagged , , , , and | 15 Comments

Dear Ian Cowie…

Dear Ian,

I’m a bit confused by your article about hung Parliaments in the Telegraph, where you wrote:

The last time a British election failed to produce a decisive result, in February, 1974, the FTSE All Share Index – a broad measure of the stock market – fell nearly 15pc in a month and ended the year more than 50pc below where it began.

The piece even has a graph starting in January 1974 and going through to late 1974.

Why does this leave me confused? Well, I’m sure on most financial matters you know far more than me. But even I know …

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 13 Comments

Torygraph smears Clegg: is this the best the rightwing press can do?

Tomorrow’s Daily Torygraph has the absolutely D-E-V-A-S-T-A-T-I-N-G story that before Nick Clegg became Lib Dem leader he received donations from donors which he declared in the MPs’ register of interests in order to pay a researcher on his staff. Shock, horror etc.

The story is here. It shows that three Lib Dem donors, Ian Wright, Neil Sherlock and Michael Young – all of them registered Lib Dem donors – paid £250 each per month directly into Nick’s personal bank account. The figures were contained in personal bank statements submitted by Nick to the House of Commons. It was officially declared …

Posted in General Election and Op-eds | Also tagged and | 46 Comments

Opinion: Attack YouGov if you want to – but at least say who you are

Last week’s Daily Telegraph article attacking YouGov’s polling raises some disturbing issues about the quality of political debate as we fast approach the general election.

Firstly, the article’s authors seem to have no understanding about how polls should be conducted. They complain that the raw data in one large aggregated survey “were…‘weighted’ using an undisclosed YouGov formula which reduced the lead to sex per cent .” But all reputable pollsters know that their sample will not usually be representative of the population, for example by having too few women or too many Guardian

Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Also tagged , , and | 4 Comments

An email to the editor of the Daily Telegraph

I’m rather puzzled by the story that your paper has run questioning the use of weighting in YouGov’s polls (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7546322/YouGov-pollster-gives-Labour-an-unfair-advantage.html).

Indeed, the piece takes such a suspicious attitude towards weighting that it puts the word in inverted commas and talks about YouGov having “admitted” that it uses weightings.

My puzzlement is quite simple.

Every single political opinion poll published by The Telegraph during your time as editor has also involved weighting.

If it’s such a questionable act, why hasn’t your newspaper shopped itself first? And will you be abandoning your own practice of publishing weighted figures?

Yours,

Mark

Note: I do think there are some reasonable

Posted in Polls | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments

Lib Dem Voice: reporting the news six months ahead of the Telegraph

Back in July last year I blogged about the changes in electoral registration rules which would see people being giving the option to supply additional information, namely their National Insurance number, date of birth and signature, during this year’s electoral registration cycle. That’s part of the phased move to individual registration and gathering this extra information will be the basis for future extra security checks when people vote in person.

But wait, what’s this that the Telegraph “revealed” over the weekend? Ah, that’d be, “Britons to be asked for NI number, date of birth and signature to get right …

Posted in Election law | Also tagged | 1 Comment

Daily View 2×2: 3 December 2009

Good morning and welcome to Daily View. With just 28 days until the end of a year, what an ideal time to hear Delia on Woman’s Hour and prepare for Christmas – whatever your gender.

Today is the anniversary both of Elvis’s ’68 Comeback Special and the awful Indian Bhopal disaster where, in 1984, a chemical leak killed thousands and injured hundreds of thousands. The Guardian has a photo series.

Today we also sing happy birthday to Eamonn Holmes and remember International Day of Disabled Persons.

2 Big Stories

Gays won’t go to heaven, says cardinal

Over in the Telegraph is the latest skirmish in the battle between Catholics and homosexuals.

“Transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven and it is not me who says this, but Saint Paul,” said Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, 76. In remarks which outraged gay rights groups, he claimed that people were not born gay, but chose to embrace homosexuality of their own free will.

Posted in Daily View | Also tagged , , , , , , , , and | 3 Comments

The most influential Liberal Democrats: 25-1

Today’s Daily Telegraph completes the paper’s list of the top 50 most influential Liberal Democrats, counting down from 25 to 1.

The list includes new entries by Richard Allan, Lord Oakeshott, Party President Baroness Scott and new Chief Executive Chris Fox.

In the top two spots, Vince Cable and Nick Clegg have swapped places, with Vince this year’s number one.

What do you think of the list? Is anyone missing? Were there any surprises in the list for you?

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 1 Comment

The most influential Liberal Democrats: 50-26

The Daily Telegraph is publishing its list of the top 50 most influential Liberal Democrats, starting today with numbers 50-26.

Congratulations are due to Mark Pack, of the LDV parish, for his appearance at No. 42, happily sandwiched between Watford Mayor Dorothy Thornhill (43) and Blog of the Year winner Jo Swinson (41):

42 (-6) Mark Pack

Former head of innovations, LibDem HQ

Mark Pack is a key player in the Lib Dem blogosphere and one of the main contributers to the successful Liberal Democrat Voice blog, on which he plays the part of attack dog, with a constant stream of blogposts

Posted in News | Also tagged | 2 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 9 June 2009

2 Big Stories

From the Guardian, Gordon Brown’s great escape:

A chastened Gordon Brown yesterday promised his backbench critics that he would learn from his mistakes, as he survived Labour’s worst national election results since 1918 and some of the most personal attacks ever mounted on his governing style.

At a private inquest staged only hours after the party came third in the European parliamentary elections, with less than 16% of the vote, a rebel attempt to call for a secret ballot on his leadership was seen off by party loyalists.

Speaking to a packed meeting of Labour MPs and peers,

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Nine months on, Daily Telegraph catches up on our Glenda Jackson story

Today’s Telegraph story about Labour MP Glenda Jackson and how she repaid £8,000 in expenses that had gone on Labour Party campaigning may seem vaguely familiar to readers of The Voice.

That’s because, ahem, I broke the story back at the start of September, following which a complaint went in that resulted in her having to make the repayment, as reported later that month.

Hat tip: Liberal Vision, though their “breaking news” headline is perhaps a little over-keen 🙂

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 1 Comment

Vince Cable rejects Telegraph speculation of deal with Labour

Both yesterday and today the Telegraph has reported that Gordon Brown is thinking of asking Liberal Democrats, including Vince Cable, to join the government in a major post-European elections reshuffle. Vince’s response when asked about the story on TV this morning was very robust and clear:

“I’m part of the Liberal Democrat team. We’re fighting to maximise our number of votes and seats in upcoming election,” he said.

“I’ve no interest whatever in being co-opted by a Labour government that has become, quite frankly, discredited”.

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 2 Comments

Jo Swinson’s expenses: why you should write an email today

I’ve been very gratified by the entirely positive feedback my articles about the Daily Telegraph and Jo Swinson yesterday have received.  This is entirely in keeping with the broadly sympathetic reaction Jo has received on both the blogosphere and on Twitter.

That the story has had such a positive backlash is of course a good thing.  The trouble with such stories however is that they often grow in the retelling.  I’ve already cited how the BBC and Guardian have contributed to this.  What if a candidate opposing Jo in the general election campaign were to base a dirty tricks campaign …

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 3 Comments

This is what happens when journalists lower their standards #mpsexpenses

A week ago, I wrote an article attacking the Telegraph’s coverage of the MPs’ expenses row under the deliberately provocative headline, What has the Telegraph done for the reputation of journalism? Amidst all the outrageous abuses by MPs that the newspaper has reported, I said, it’s also been guilty of some shoddy reporting, giving equal prominence to stories which simply do not stand up to scrutiny, and deliberately omitting facts which do not fit with its headline allegations.

The main point of the article, though, was to challenge how the rest of the news media was responding to the …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 20 Comments

Bring back Nads!

It’s been quite a week for Nadine Dorries, the eccentric Tory Cornerstoner MP for Mid-Bedfordshire. Yesterday she earned copious media coverage for her suggestion that MPs are on ‘suicide watch’ for their Parliamentary colleagues amidst the “unbearable” Westminster atmosphere sparked by the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses allegations.

But when reading her blog, it wasn’t that part which most caught my attention – it was this part:

… this country has never had a Prime Minister with the political courage to stand up to the British media, and award MPs the pay rise proposed year after year, by the Senior Salary Review

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 1 Comment

Dawn Butler’s whirlpool bath

When blogging earlier today about how Labour MP Dawn Butler was one of those who blocked reforms to MPs’ expenses last year it crosseed my mind to make a satirical comment. Good thing I didn’t try really, as it would have been topped straight away by the latest Daily Telegraph revelation – that she claimed for a Jacuzi-style bath on expenses.

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 10 Comments

What has the Telegraph done for the reputation of journalism?

If there’s an advantage that comes from not being either a current MP, nor an aspirant MP, it is at least that I can ask a question like this without being lynched by the baying mob.

And I’m not going to delve in here to the issue of ‘cheque-book journalism’ – everyone will have their own views about when it’s justified and when not. My personal view is that, though the issue of MPs’ expenses is very clearly in the public interest, for the Telegraph to have paid a source some £100,000 for seemingly stolen information which includes personal and …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 33 Comments

The Telegraph: descending into gutter reportage

Two more Lib Dem MPs’ expense details are now in the public domain, bringing the total to ten.

Nick Harvey

Has a £30 subscription to Sky Sports at his second home. Pay attention, football fans, Sky Sports =/= necessary to perform the duties of an MP. Not a huge sum, but still. 2/5

Alan Reid

Now, at the time of writing Alan Reid’s page isn’t linked from the Telegraph’s main Lib Dem Expenses feed page, and to be honest I wonder if that’s because they’re bloody ashamed of it. They ought

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
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