I’m almost surprised by my persistence – three days in a row? What is becoming of me?…
2 big stories
Michael Gove deferring to experts? Has the apocalypse actually turned up? As a front man aiming to reassure the public with facts, he might not be your first choice, but he does have a tough hand to play. After all, it turns out that the Johnson administration turned down offers of ventilators, failed to secure the chemicals necessary to produce tests and gave up opportunities to take part in joint purchasing programmes with the European Union and its neighbours. Indeed, things are …
Our Lynne Featherstone was the Minister who instigated same sex marriage in England.
She welcomed the news on Twitter.
It was always going to have to happen after sex marriage meant our laws became discriminatory. At last – the wrong will be righted! https://t.co/HWQK6AuoY3
Lynne has always acknowledged the support of Theresa May, who, as Home Secretary, gave her Bill crucial backing. However, the Tories would never allow Lynne to introduce mixed sex civil partnerships. Even now they haven’t done it entirely voluntarily. They were forced to either scrap civil partnerships for same sex couples or introduce them for everyone.
It was therefore sad that the Prime Minister didn’t acknowledge Lynne’s role.
She is v careful to say sponsor – and she did back me. Be nice if she mentioned it though https://t.co/lnvld6ETAx
LGBT+ Lib Dems chair Jennie Rigg welcomed the move and said that this was just one of the things that needs to happen to achieve proper partnership equality. I did love the very on message inclusion of “demand better.”
There is only so much excitement Liberal Democrats can take. The prospect of a new Doctor and a new Leader in the same week is testing us to the limit. I suppose it’s just as well we had a General Election campaign to build our stamina. We should perhaps also be grateful to our MPs for sparing us the extra adrenaline rush of a contest. Just to get this out of the way, I know that there have actually been 14 Doctors, if you count John Hurt, the “War Doctor”, but the BBC aren’t going to screw up decades of merchandising by mucking about with the numbering.
There is something about the quirky, socially awkward time lord, traversing time and space, saving entire races from themselves over and over again that appeals to Liberal Democrats. So many of us would have been waiting for the announcement this afternoon. And so it came:
It didn’t take long for a photo of a very New Romantic Tim Farron and his two band-mates to appear on the internet. Within hours of Jonathan Calder revealing the name of our leadership hopeful’s band this morning, he was sent a photo, from around about 1987, of a teenage Tim Farron in his band, Fred the Girl, previously known as The Voyeurs until they realised what exactly that meant.
I have spent many fruitless hours trawling You Tube to see if I could find some footage. I suspect if it’s there, it’s unlisted so nobody will be able …
A couple of weeks ago, we brought you the news that Cambridge MP Julian Huppert had made the shortlist for Parliamentary Beard of the Year, a competition organised by The Beard Liberation Front. That’s an organisation that has always struck me as weird. If you liberate a beard, aren’t you left with a clean shaven face? Oh well, never mind.
Today it was announced that our Julian has won with 46% of the vote with Jeremy Corbyn coming in second place and another Liberal Democrat MP, John Thurso, coming third.
And he celebrated in style, inventing the hashtag of the year in the process.
As we’re untangling the tinsel and dusting off our baubles in LDV Towers, we’re inviting our team and some of our friends to suggest some ideas for Christmas presents which we hope will inspire you.
Today it’s the turn of Yorkshire’s Jennie Rigg who has two suggestions.
Lego LotR has got to be a winner, right? We have Shelob dangling from the curtain rail in our living room and we’re all Lib Dems, and Lib Dems like building things, whether that’s winning election teams or miniature battle sets (and seriously, the number of
When Nick Clegg came to answer questions from the Party’s Federal Executive recently, he was in the middle of G8 talks. It seemed surreal that he was squeezing us in between the President of Mexico and IMF head Christine Lagarde.
The Telegraph tells us that our leader dined in even more illustrious company last night.
Fresh from the Rolling Stones’ amazing performance at Glastonbury, and ahead of this weekend’s Hyde Park concerts, Mick Jagger had dinner with Nick at a posh West London Italian restaurant.
If it had been Paul McCartney, my jealousy would have known no bounds. I’ve always …
The first edition of the new Liberal Democrat party magazine, Ad Lib, went out to all party members earlier this month. Future copies will only go to paying subscribers, so what to make of the first edition’s efforts to make people part with their cash for future editions?
Judging its contents I think requires bearing three main factors in mind: it’s a monthly publication, it’s one that is printed on paper and it’s probably not aimed at you.
I was wondering how I could amuse readers on my own blog yesterday and I came up with this amazing idea of going back and finding out what I was writing about around this time in previous years. It was only later that I realised that Helen Duffett does this for Liberal Democrat Voice every Friday in the Friday Five . I hope she doesn’t mind me borrowing her idea and adding in a little extra spot.
What was good about my post yesterday is that a few other Liberal Democrat bloggers got in on the act and I spent …
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 26th November 2011 - 4:45 pm
What presents are you looking forward to giving or receiving this year? That’s the question LDV posed to a group of Lib Dem bloggers. All this week we’re revealing what they told us, with link-throughs to Amazon for your shopping convenience (and ‘cos the referral fees help support LibDemVoice: so get clicking and ordering). Part I is available here, and Part II here. In part three, our third trio of bloggers – Paul Walter, Jennie Rigg, and Richard Flowers – give us the low-down on their Xmas faves…
Wondering what to get people for Christmas presents? Here’s a selection of what various Liberal Democrat bloggers suggest:
Jonathan Calder recommends Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music by Rob Young: “Anyone with an interest in folk music will find this book engrossing. Young traces the rise of the genre from Cecil Sharp and other Edwardian song collectors like Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth, through the post-war radialism of Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker, to its electronic heyday in the hands of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. He finds the visionary spirit living on in unlikely artists such as …
Love your coalition partner all the time in public: that was the clear line taken by Nick Clegg, reinforced by other senior party figures and not challenged directly in any high profile way during conference (save for one question during the Nick Clegg Q&A). And yet… whether or not the party should let its strong debates with the Conservatives within the coalition show a little more in public was …
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 21st September 2010 - 12:00 pm
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of the early race for the party presidency, the London mayoral selection, Trident, and the Labour leadership. Over 400 party members have responded, and we’ll be publishing the full results of our survey in the next couple of days.
A fortnight ago, in a surprise announcement, Baroness (Ros) Scott said she would not seek a second term as Lib Dem party president, the only party post other than the Leader directly elected by Lib Dem members. Ever since there has been much speculation about …
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 16th September 2010 - 9:20 am
It’s less than a week since Baroness (Ros) Scott announced she would not be standing for a second term as President of the Lib Dems, the only post directly elected by all party members other than that of Leader.
But with nominations closing in less than a fortnight — and 200 nominations to be secured from conference representatives of at least 20 local parties — those looking to contest the position are going to be scrambling to get their supporter networks up and running.
I’ve heard from one in-the-know source that Jason Zadrozny, a district and county councillor in …
It’s budget day, and with the General Election just six weeks away, the big question is whether Darling will pull something out of the hat to make us all feel happier (in the short term, at least) or whether – as he’s suggested so far – it’ll be steady as she goes.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
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.
Those lovely people at Wikio have emailed The Voice with their list^ of the top blogs in the UK in June 2009.
(Lib Dem blogger Jennie Rigg has already published the list of top 30 politics blogs: below is the full list for all blogs, though there’s considerable overlap between the two owing to the dominance of politics blogs in Wikio’s weightings.)
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 13th September 2009 - 10:05 am
Welcome to the Sunday edition of LDV’s Daily View. And as Mark Pack of this e-parish is (apparently) forraging for chocolate in Bristol, it falls to me to bring you today’s supplement with extra multimedia entertainment.
2 Big Stories
NSPCC and Nick criticise new Government regulations for parent helpers
Ministers are under intense pressure to scale back plans for a “big brother” child protection database which will force millions of parents to undergo paedophile and criminal checks. In a major blow for the Government, Britain’s largest children’s charity, the NSPCC, criticised the regulations for parent helpers which it said threatened “perfectly safe and normal activities” and risked alienating the public.
The paper also quotes Nick Clegg’s condemnation of Labour’s proposals:
This scheme is wildly over the top. How are we supposed to create a country fit for our children if we regard every adult looking after children as a potential threat?”
Independent broadcasters will be allowed to take payments for displaying commercial products during shows. The change is intended to bring in extra funds for commercial broadcasters. Experts believe it could raise up to £100m a year.
There are currently strict rules against product placement and this ban would remain in place on BBC shows. Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw is expected to announce a three-month consultation on the changes in a speech to the Royal Television Society next week.
The move will not apply to the BBC, and children’s programmes will remain product-placement free. A long-overdue acceptance of commercial reality? Or a retrogade intrusion into public broadcasting space?
After about an hour or so of having my knuckles scraped by ridiculously snappy letterboxes, and falling over on uneven paths, and generally feeling pretty battered and bruised and grumpy, I got to a house where a skinhead with no shirt on and a BNP tattoo set his dog on me. … I suspect that this is a big part of the reason political parties are haemorrhaging membership. The expectation that people risk their own personal safety for nothing on a regular basis is not a rewarding experience for the activist.
… the whole point of blogging is that it is interactive, or it is nothing. If most committee members don’t blog, don’t engage with the blogosphere, in short, have lives, and do not respond immediately, or even at all, will they be criticised? You bet they will and, like I did, would probably withdraw back into their collective shells.
Sunday Bonus track
You may have noticed a chap called Derren on the telly this week attracting a lot of attention. Here’s a reminder of him at his best:
It’s quiet in LDV Towers this afternoon as all the responsible editors have day job responsibilties.
We can always tell when we’re not talking about something our readers want to have their say on, because you kindly have your say on it anyway on whatever was the top post.
And today’s topic is clearly Call Me Dave’s speech on parliamentary reform, in which he sets out a series of Lib Dem policy proposals and pretends they’re new. There’s no zealot like a recently converted zealot, but hang on a minute, Dave? Power to the people? Small government? All of that is Liberalism 101, the first chapter from An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Liberalism. We’ve long held it dear, and we simply don’t believe you when we hear it from your lips.
As Lynne Featherstone said earlier today on her blog
There is stuff that Cameron’s said which I agree with – as you would expect given that many of the ‘ideas’ he puts forward in today’s Guardian are long-standing Liberal Democrat policies! Fixed-term parliaments, reducing of the power of the executive, cutting the number of MPs, devolving power to councils and empowering individuals. Transparency and accountability – definitely. Shame Cameron has had to be dragged kicking and screaming on these. But – to be fair – at least he is going out there.
Katharine Pindar It was good to see our Leader put a question about youth mobility in Europe in PMQs yesterday, and to read of further questions usefully raised by two of our wo...
Jack Nicholls Mick - I agree. I don't want us to be anything like reform; my social-civic liberalism extends to almost not believing in borders. I think we can take them on e...
Nick Baird Netanyahu's aim must surely be to goad the US into attacking Iran on it's behalf, and some of the recent rhetoric from our own Government has me wondering if we...
Mary Fulton As a former member of the Liberal Democrats - I won’t rejoin as a result of how I felt when the Liberal Democrats agreed to back the Tories in government in 2...
Nonconformistradical "You don’t get rid of reform by becoming more like them as the Tories are doing."
You said it!...
The first edition of the new Liberal Democrat party magazine, Ad Lib, went out to all party members earlier this month. Future copies will only go to 
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Katharine Pindar 
Jack Nicholls 
Nick Baird 
Mary Fulton 
Nonconformistradical 