Tag Archives: featured

Mark Pack

Televised party leader debates: get your worms at the ready

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th December 2009 - 11:50 am

The “worm” is an instant poll tracker which wriggles across people’s TV screens, showing the net negative or positive reaction of a small group of the public to what is happening on screen. Running a worm across a politician’s speech or a debate between politicians has become a not uncommon feature of political coverage across many democracies.

The worm has even occasionally surfaced in the UK – so will it surface again for our TV party leader debates at the general election? And will worms offer a chance for Channel 4 to repeat an Australian trick and put one over the other channels who have excluded it from the debates?

Known in the US as dial groups (because a group of people is each given a dial to twist towards positive or negative), worms have often been the cause of controversy there. Joe Klein in Politics Lost recounts how badly they got the 2000 Bush-Gore debates wrong:

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Stephen Tall

‘A lot less disagreement’ between Lib Dems and Tories, says David Cameron. Excellent news!

By Stephen Tall | Mon 28th December 2009 - 11:52 am

And verily did David Cameron spake forth unto the multitude of political journalists desperate for Bank Holiday copy, and lo he did utter his New Year platitude:

Let’s be honest that whether you’re Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, you’re motivated by pretty much the same progressive aims: a country that is safer, fairer, greener and where opportunity is more equal. It’s how to achieve these aims that we disagree about – and indeed between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats there is a lot less disagreement than there used to be.

How wonderful!

Mr Cameron is, we understand, preparing this …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 17 Comments
Stephen Tall

NEW POLL: will the TV debates make any difference to the Lib Dems?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 26th December 2009 - 6:37 pm

We now know the UK will see its first ever televised debates between the leaders of the three major UK-wide parties in the run-up to the 2010 general election. The consenus is there have been two winners: Sky News, which, with brilliant audacity, put the issue front and centre, and by so doing ensured that (i) the debates will happen, and (ii) it muscled in on the act, instead of being excluded by the BBC and ITV. (There’s a lesson there for Channel 4, which had been comprehensively outmanoeuvred).

The second winner, according to the commentariat, is Nick Clegg. Here’s Andrew …

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Posted in Voice polls | Also tagged , , , and | 12 Comments
Keith Halstead

Voting started in Britain’s best MP campaign

By Keith Halstead | Wed 23rd December 2009 - 1:20 pm

You may remember that back at the beginning of December we launched our ‘Best MP’ campaign to highlight the fact that not all MPs should be tarred with the same brush as the ‘expenses cheats.’

We asked users of our website – Yoosk –  to send in their nominations for Best MP and to send us the questions they would like to put to the nominees. All eight nominated MPs agreed to answer and you can compare what they said on our website now and cast your vote in our Poll, which will be ‘live’ until the 31st December.

Here is a sample of how we edited the answers together to make them easier to compare.  This question came from ‘artichelper’ and received most votes from our users:

‘What do you believe is the best change in policy that you, yourself played a significant role in making that change happen?’ And you can view a compilation of the answers below.

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Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged , , , , and | 1 Comment
Robert Sharp

Libel law needs major reform

By Robert Sharp | Tue 22nd December 2009 - 1:25 pm

The clamour for a change to our pernicious libel laws grows louder every day.  In November, Index on Censorship and English PEN published Free Speech is Not For Sale, a report into the state of libel in England & Wales, and the bizarre phenomenon of libel tourism.  Impressed by this report, Jack Straw announced the creation of a working group to deliver reform.  Lib Dem peer Lord Lester announced on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme he will begin drafting a libel bill, and MPs have begun to sign EDM 423 (tabled by Dr …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged , and | 7 Comments
Danny Alexander MP

Danny Alexander writes … Campaigning on Our Manifesto

By Danny Alexander MP | Tue 22nd December 2009 - 11:50 am

On Friday, Nick emailed all members to outline our position on the abolition of tuition fees. It was great to see our position, agreed by both the Federal Policy Committee and the Parliamentary Party, broadly welcomed on LDV and elsewhere.

Saddling students with huge debts as they leave universities, particularly at a time when many are failing to find jobs through no fault of their own, is clearly wrong. And the prospect of such debts putting talented young people off going to university is equally wrong. That is why our plan to scrap tuition fees over 6 years from the election will be one of a very small number of core commitments in our manifesto.

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Posted in General Election and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 9 Comments
Mark Thompson

Opinion on Nick’s second anniversary: Mark Thompson – The next few months the biggest test of Clegg’s career

By Mark Thompson | Mon 21st December 2009 - 6:30 pm

Last week saw the second anniversary of Nick Clegg’s leadership of the Liberal Democrats. LDV marked the occasion by inviting three Lib Dem bloggers to assess Nick’s contribution to date, and to look ahead to what the future might hold. You can read Neil Stockley’s post here, and Iain Roberts’ here. Today is Mark Thomspon’s turn …

The first thing I would say is that had I have been a member in 2007 I would have voted for Chris Huhne. I think his politics are closer to my own personally and I felt he had the higher profile. …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
Fiona Hall MEP

D-Day -1: Confusion in Copenhagen

By Fiona Hall MEP | Sat 19th December 2009 - 12:30 pm

This is the third article for LDV by Fiona Hall, Lib Dem leader of the European Liberal Democrats, giving her account of the Copenhagen climate change summit. You can read Part I here, and Part II here.

What a mess.

After yesterday afternoon’s impasse on an international agreement, President Obama took matters into his own hands, struck a deal with China, India, Brazil and South Africa – and promptly left the country. It’s leadership of a sort – but, sadly, in the wrong direction.

The rest of the world has been offered a watered-down Accord which – as it …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Also tagged and | 4 Comments
Alix Mortimer

Why blog?

By Alix Mortimer | Sat 19th December 2009 - 9:20 am

Welcome to the final part of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s been appearing each Saturday in the run-up to Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today we’re finishing where we started, with reasons to blog. Alix Mortimer is at the keyboard…

Why blog?

The whys and wherefores of political blogging generate a lot of heat. Amble around the internet a little, and you’ll find denunciations of blogging as a …

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

So, why can’t you call yourself an MP?

By Mark Pack | Thu 17th December 2009 - 10:26 am

The rules against people calling themselves an MP usually get a flurry of publicity in the run-up to a general election. Indeed, it’s part of the pre-election “Will it be an internet election this time?” tradition to have a story about how “MPs who use face disaster because they’ve called themselves an MP”.

This time round it’s been Twitter, with the story that MPs who have chosen a Twitter username containing “MP” will run into problems as they officially stop being MPs when Parliament is dissolved for a general election. So if they tweet during the campaign as if …

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Posted in Election law | Also tagged and | 5 Comments
Baroness Ros Scott

Ros Scott writes… Party President’s report to members, November ‘09

By Baroness Ros Scott | Tue 15th December 2009 - 10:30 am

The two months since the party’s last Federal Executive have, as usual, been pretty busy. In that period I have visited local parties in Aldershot, Altrincham & Sale, Winchester, Islington, Sutton, Wycombe, Amersham & Chesham, Swindon, Gloucester, Stroud, Cheltenham, East Dunbartonshire, Glasgow North, Edinburgh Pentlands, North & Leith, West, Ochil, and Consett. I have also attended the North West and West Midlands Regional Conferences.

The two meetings of the party’s Chief Officers Group which I have attended are reported separately to FE, but I wish to highlight the work done to develop the business plan and budget which were …

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

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Sun 13th December 2009 - 4:50 pm

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

Just go to our email sign up page to start getting these emails. You can also sign up for a special once-a-week email, bringing …

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Jennie Rigg

If a gobby barmaid from Yorkshire can do it, anyone can

By Jennie Rigg | Sat 12th December 2009 - 1:57 pm

Welcome to part ten of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Jennie Rigg.

So you’ve read all the foregoing articles, and you’re still doubtful as to whether this blogging thing is for you? This is where I come in. I am by no means a typical Lib Dem Blogger, as you …

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

Book review: British Electoral Facts

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th December 2009 - 11:50 am

For decades, FWS Craig was the doyen of British electoral statistics. His reference works were widely used and often contained facts and figures that he had created from original sources. Yet today he is almost completely unknown.

The reason? He died just before the internet took off. His hard work was locked away in reference volumes either sat on the shelves in libraries beyond the reach of an internet connection or available to purchase – at eye-wateringly expensive prices.

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Posted in Books | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Book review: Total Politics Guide to the 2010 General Election

By Stephen Tall | Tue 8th December 2009 - 12:20 pm

One of the first publications from Iain Dale’s new Biteback publishing imprint dedicated to political books, The Total Politics Guide to the 2010 General Election (Eds, Greg Callus and Iain Dale) weighs in at just under 300 pages divided into two (unequal) sections: the first is a series of 14 articles examining different aspects of the coming election; the second non-half comprises over 200 pages of regional and constuency profiles. As you might guess, this is a for-geeks-only book. But, then, if you’re reading this review that label probably applies.

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Posted in Books and General Election | Also tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem Bloggers Christmas stocking fillers … Part I

By Stephen Tall | Sun 6th December 2009 - 2:00 pm

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.

Jennie Rigg

1) The Very Sexy …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 5 Comments
Charlotte Gore

Why bloggers should tweet

By Charlotte Gore | Sat 5th December 2009 - 8:55 am

Welcome to part nine of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Charlotte Gore.

So you’ve picked your blogging platform, created your blog-roll, found your niche and worked out your style – you’re blogging! But is it enough to rely on libdemblogs.co.uk to bring you new readers and win you new friends?

Sadly not. At least, not since the rise of Twitter. Oh no, you’re thinking. Not Twitter! Oh yes, Twitter. If you want to make the most of your blog, you’re going to want to join the “Twitterati” too.

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Why David Cameron was right to claim for chocolate bars on expenses

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd December 2009 - 4:41 pm

Given my love of chocolate, today’s Daily Mirror front page at first made me happy. Four big colour photos of bars of chocolate! And David Cameron in an expenses scandal!

But once I read the story, it quickly became clear David Cameron has done nothing wrong.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Cameron: more Hague than Blair? How the Tory leader has lost sight of his strategy

By Stephen Tall | Wed 2nd December 2009 - 11:20 pm

That’s the question the Indy’s Steve Richards asks in a persuasively argued column today:

David Cameron’s leadership of his party is often compared with Tony Blair’s during the period up to the 1997 election. … The comparison is one of the most misleading in British politics. … for the election leading a party that proposes tax cuts for the well-off and married couples, massive spending cuts whether or not Britain is out of recession, withdrawal from the social chapter and a renegotiation of the Lisbon Treaty. … The trajectory of Cameron’s leadership is much closer to another former leader. He might have tried to learn from the New Labour guidebooks on how to win elections, but inadvertently he has followed more closely the course adopted by one of his own recent predecessors. …

Both Hague and Cameron are outstanding parliamentary performers, witty and quick to exploit the weaknesses of political opponents. Both are calm under fire. Both started to shift their positions when they appointed press secretaries to advise them on the media. Amanda Platell urged Hague to adopt more right-wing and populist policies. Andy Coulson has sometimes advised Cameron to do the same on issues such as immigration, crime and tax cuts.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 26 Comments
Mary Reid

How to blog successfully as a councillor

By Mary Reid | Sat 28th November 2009 - 8:55 am

Welcome to part eight of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Kingston councillor Mary Reid.

Young woman, blogging by windowYou probably already know that 7% of Liberal Democrat councillors have a website/blog, compared with 2% of Tory …

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Mark Pack

Follow the yellow brick road? The Liberal Democrats’ general election campaign

By Mark Pack | Wed 25th November 2009 - 10:20 am

Guide to 2010 election book coverHere is my chapter from the Total Politics Guide to the 2010 General Election, looking at the prospects for the Liberal Democrats:

The 1997 general election turned out to be a once in a generation opportunity for many local Liberal Democrat campaign teams to gain a Parliamentary seat from the Conservatives. At the tail end of a by then deeply unpopular Conservative Government, the election saw unprecedented numbers of seats falling to the party. A few seats that were not quite gained from the Conservatives in 1997 did subsequently fall in 2001 and 2005, but it was the 1997 election with the Conservatives in government that was the main opportunity. Nearly every campaign that missed then did not subsequently win.

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Posted in Books and General Election | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Tavish Scott on devolution, Donald Trump, liberalism and more

By Mark Pack | Mon 23rd November 2009 - 8:08 pm

At the weekend, the Scottish Liberal Democrats leader Tavish Scott gave an interview to a group of Lib Dem bloggers meeting at the party HQ in Clifton Terrace for an ‘unconference’.

Devolution and independence referendum

I kicked off with one of the main issues in the news at the moment: should there be  a referendum on Scottish independence, and hence should the Liberal Democrats be supporting one?

Tavish was scathing about the idea of a referendum, calling it an SNP trick which the party shouldn’t go along with. His argument was that there is one pro-independence party and there is a vote coming …

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Posted in Blogger Interviews and Scotland | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

How to build-up the size of your blog’s readership

By Mark Pack | Sat 21st November 2009 - 8:50 am

Young woman, blogging by windowWelcome to part seven of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of The Voice’s Mark Pack to talk about building up your audience.

There are many reasons for blogging and, depending on your own …

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Lynne Featherstone

The majority of voters are female, so does it matter that the majority of MPs are men?

By Lynne Featherstone | Tue 17th November 2009 - 11:20 am

Women now have the vote on the same terms as men. With the majority of the electorate female – and indeed the majority of actual voters at the last general election female too – what’s there left to worry about, one might ask?

Well – with only around one in five MPs female, there’s a big difference between what goes in to the electoral system (majority: female) and what comes out (overwhelming majority: male).

So what I want to address in this piece head on why I believe this matters.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 20 Comments
Stephen Tall

NEW POLL: Who do you least want to be Prime Minister in a year’s time: Gordo or Dave?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 16th November 2009 - 9:00 pm

Oooh, here’s a nasty ‘forced choice’ question to thrust upon LDV’s readers … let’s assume for a moment that, by some quirk of electoral fate, the Lib Dems do not storm to victory at the next general election, and Nick Clegg is not asked by Her Maj to form the next government. A far-fetched scenario, I know, but go with me on this. If those were the circumstances, who would you rather have as Prime Minister: Gordon Brown or David Cameron?

And, yes, those are your only two choices in this poll. We’re not giving you an easy ‘neither of …

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Posted in Op-eds and Voice polls | Also tagged and | 55 Comments
Alex Foster

Context is king – link for victory

By Alex Foster | Sat 14th November 2009 - 8:50 am

Welcome to part six of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Alex Foster.

When writing for a blog, perhaps the default view I have of my reader is someone who is familiar with my entire body of work, someone who started at the first thing I wrote, and read it through in …

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

How do the messages on the main political party websites compare?

By Mark Pack | Fri 13th November 2009 - 10:20 am

Comparing the popularity of different words in the latest stories from the the Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Labour Party websites reveals striking differences in the messages being put out by each party online.

Reproduced below are three word clouds, where the bigger a word is the more often it appeared on that party’s latest website stories. The word clouds were generated yesterday (Thursday) based on the then state of each of the three websites.

First, let’s look at the Conservative Party:

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged and | 13 Comments
Paul Walter

How to handle comments

By Paul Walter | Sat 7th November 2009 - 8:50 am

Welcome to part five of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Paul Walter, who looks at the question of how to handle comments which appear on your blog.

There are a number of approaches on handling comments. It’s a question of finding a method which you are comfortable with.

It’s probably best, at …

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged | 4 Comments

Introducing the all-new LibDems.org.uk website

By David Loxton | Wed 4th November 2009 - 1:33 pm

If you’ve visited the Liberal Democrat party website in the last 24 hours, you’ll have noticed quite a dramatic change. Here, David Loxton, the party’s director of marketing, fundraising and members’ services explains the thinking behind the new site, and previews some of the other exciting new changes emerging within the party’s web strategy.

The new Liberal Democrat web strategy has been launched with a redesigned libdems.org.uk as its first stage. The new version is much more focused on setting out what the Liberal Democrats stand for, who we are and what visitors to the site can do to …

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Posted in Online politics and Op-eds | Also tagged | 39 Comments
Helen Duffett

Edinburgh, brace yourself: the first Lib Dem Bloggers’ Unconference

By Helen Duffett | Tue 3rd November 2009 - 5:34 pm

Just under three weeks to go now – but there’s still time to register for the feast of blogging talent and advice that is the Lib Dem Bloggers’ Unconference.

I’m pleased to announce that Tavish Scott, Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, has agreed to give a Bloggers’ Interview around lunchtime.

Also joining us: Jo Swinson MP, John Barrett MP, Mike Crockart (newly-selected PPC for Edinburgh West), leading Scottish bloggers, Andrew Reeves (prolific blogger and Deputy Director of Campaigns for Scotland) as well as Lib Dem Blogfather Jonathan Calder and members of the Lib Dem Voice team.

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Posted in Blogger Interviews and Events | Also tagged , , , , , , , and | 2 Comments
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