A group of 44 academics is lobbying the Advertising Standards Authority to change the rules on ads featuring airbrushed models, following the publication of a research paper which says that such ads encourage eating disorders and self-harm.
The paper was organised by the Liberal Democrats as part of their Real Women campaign, which calls for a ban on airbrushed advertising images aimed at children, and for ads aimed at adults to carry a disclaimer.
At our 2001 party conference I donned a shocking pink t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “I am not a token woman” and spoke in opposition to all-women shortlists.
Eight years on, I am still opposed to the use of single gender shortlists, but I wonder if I was then taking aim at the wrong target.
Research done by the party in advance of Nick Clegg’s recent appearance before the Speaker’s Conference showed, as I argued back in 2001, no evidence that our party discriminates against women in candidate selections.
Far from it: analysis of 237 selections shows that two thirds of the time where a woman is on the shortlist, a woman is selected.
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.
Jo Swinson MP has called for less talk and more action from the Conservative Party on proposals for public involvement in making laws.
Speaking at the Conservative Conference this week, William Hague announced his plans for a ‘Public Reading Stage’ for proposed legislation. The idea is that this would enable the public to become involved in the process of making laws by using an online system to make comments and spot potential problems. And it’s all a part of the Tory “Google Government” idea that I’ve covered for the Voice in a review of Cameron’s speech to the LGA …
By Alex Foster
| Thu 24th September 2009 - 10:07 am
Below, you will find our final fringe event at conference, Beyond Twitter. MP Jo Swinson joined LDV regular Mark Pack and MySociety’s Richard Pope to debate the future of public online engagement with politics.
We still have one more fringe event in the cans ready for sound processing, but I won’t be able to bring that to you just yet.
By Alex Foster
| Mon 21st September 2009 - 7:45 pm
Whilst the LDV team is out tonight enjoying, in our various abstemious ways, the Liberal Drinks event at Bournemouth’s Goat and Tricycle tonight, we thought we’d bring you the tape of last night’s BOTY ceremony.
Sadly the audio version can not to justice to the range of visual feasts the evening provided. Stephen’s milliner will be most disappointed; the ice sculptors know their art is fleeting; and we have really only just rounded up all the flamingoes.
But it was a striking evening for a number of reasons, as we hope the …
By Helen Duffett
| Sun 20th September 2009 - 10:41 pm
What’s loosely termed the awards “ceremony” for the 2009 Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year Awards has just drawn to a glittering close. As the last firework fades in Bournemouth’s night sky, I’m delighted to announce the winners:
Separate vote (on name blank employment): lines overwhelmingly retained
Motion as a whole: passed overwhelmingly
Lynne Featherstone (summating on the motion): concentrates on name-blank employment and on air-brushing. Draws parallel with exam marking where names are removed in order to stop some forms of bias and highlights evidence from Department of Work and Pensions of the impact that name-blanking can have. On air-brushing – it’s about tackling conformity and not accepting the values of global industries. It’s about making the operation …
It’s been a big task, and a fun one, to distil so many excellent examples of Lib Dem blogging and e-campaigning into lists of the five best.
Congratulations if you’ve been shortlisted, but if you haven’t: remember that the shortlists are based on the judges’ subjective opinions. The awards are intended to be a fun way to celebrate the talent in the Lib Dem blogosphere, whilst introducing you to some blogs you might not have read before.
First, a reminder that the winner of the Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog category will be decided by a public vote here on Liberal Democrat Voice, so please have a read of the nominated blogs and then head on over to the sidebar to cast your vote.
Next, a plug for the awards ceremony itself. If you’re coming to party conference in Bournemouth, do head along to Old Harry’s Bar in the Marriott Highcliff Hotel from 9.45pm on Sunday 20th September.
Now, without further ado, here are the shortlists: (Drumroll, please)
By Alex Foster
| Wed 9th September 2009 - 10:00 am
Lib Dem Voice at Conference
As ever the LDV team will be providing as full coverage as we can from the conference, including reportage, podcasts and as much as possible to make conference accessible and participatory for those not able to join us in Bournemouth.
We will also be hosting four fringe events, all of which will be recorded and podcast as mini-radio shows here on LDV. The rooms are booked and topics selected, and we can now give you full information on our confirmed speakers. The details are as follows:
Just a quick reminder that all the main documents relating to Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth – now less than fortnight away – are now available directly from the party’s website.
These include the main hall agenda, the policy papers to be debated and fringe and training guides.
It’s also worth noting and commending that the information is available in a variety of formats, from the printed books, the PDFs of those, and also simply as plain text – which is good and accessible for those with disabilities and also very handy for PDAs, phones …
Are you spending half your August Bank Holiday Monday stuck in a traffic jam? Well, just think of it as extra vacation. Lib Dem research has revealed that the average British commuter spends the equivalent of 23 working days per year travelling to and from work; a Londoners’ average yearly commute is 1,370 miles.
Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson, who is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics, comments:
Commuting is often an incredibly frustrating experience, whether you are on a crowded train platform staring at your watch, crammed on to a bus or tube train or stuck in a traffic jam. Even moderate commutes make people less happy – something the Government’s own research shows.
The Lib Dem MP for Dunbartonshire East has submitted herself to a gruelling grilling at the hands of the readers of the Independent.
Among the questions – such taxing ones “that thing you just did, isn’t it a huge waste of time?” – “no”; “don’t you think you were too young to be an MP?” – “no”; and “who’s your bestest friend in all the Lib Dems?” – I will leave you to visit the story yourself to see the thrilling answer.
Amongst the questions there are some better thought out ones and some interesting answers, so it’s well worth five …
Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman is standing in for Gordon Brown over the summer and has chosen this time to air her views on women and political leadership. Yesterday she told the Sunday Times:
“Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it’s a thoroughly bad thing to have a men-only leadership. In a country where women regard themselves as equal, they are not prepared to see men just running the show themselves. I think a balanced team of men and women makes better decisions.”
Jo Swinson MP, the Liberal Democrat women’s spokesperson (and former Chair …
“Real Women,” a new policy paper from the Liberal Democrats’ women’s policy group, has proposed a set of measures to protect women and girls from body image pressure and to encourage healthier lifestyles.
These include:
· Children to be protected from body image pressure by banning airbrushing in advertising aimed at under 16s
· Adverts aimed at adults to indicate clearly the extent to which they have been airbrushed or digitally enhanced
· Cosmetic surgery advertisements to give surgery success rates
· Modules on body image, health and well-being, and media literacy to be taught in schools
· Schools to include greater …
Good news from Section 10 of the minutes of a recent meeting of the Commons Administration Committee: slowly, cautiously the House of Commons is moving towards allowing Parliamentary footage to be put up on YouTube.
Credit to Jo Swinson, who has been campaigning steadily on the issue and kept it going through the slow wheels of Parliamentary decision-making.
The Committee considered a paper from the Director of Broadcasting (Tim Jeffes), about the use of parliamentary footage on searchable websites. As agreed by the Committee at a previous meeting, he had agreed with PARBUL a
Nick Clegg received hundreds of questions yesterday during his “Ask Clegg” event with Reuters. It was an online version of the Lib Dem leader’s Town Hall meetings, where members of the public were invited to ask Nick any question they liked.
That’s the finding of the Hansard Society research paper MPs on Facebook:
while over half (51%) of Liberal Democrat MPs have a presence on Facebook, the figures for Labour and the Conservatives are 15% and 9%, respectively. … On a per-party basis, Liberal Democrats MPs appeared more likely to see Facebook as a communications tool (69%) but were the least likely to have personal or inactive pages. Conservative MPs were as likely to have a campaigning page as a personal one (24%) but were still most likely to be using Facebook as a communications tool (41%). Labour were the party
Well, on Monday evening, as billed here, I had the chance to put these points direct to the Daily Telegraph’s assistant editor, Andrew Pierce, at a debate posing the question, A triumph for journalism? (You can watch the debate online here – worth watching in full, but the section focusing on Jo starts about 29 minutes in).
This years World Environment Day should provide the perfect launching pad for the Liberal Democrat’s vision for a sustainable and environmentally sound future. For a party like the Liberal Democrats who profess that there is a green thread running through all of its policies. World Environment Day 2009 and its theme of Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change should be used as a medium through which worldwide awareness of the environment should be stimulated and political attention should be re-focused on the issue of the environment.
Climate Change is the great challenge facing the whole of the humankind. People need leadership to guide them into a sustainable future. Human nature often means that people focus on the short term and disregard what sacrifices need to be made for the long term. For instance people who in principal are all for conservation and support the fight against Climate Change, when faced with every day decisions such as the use of plastic bags and recycling choose the easiest and most convenient option. We need to make and enforce those hard decisions for them.
The Liberal Democrat Party has been at the forefront of the fight against Climate Change with Nick Clegg proposing the Green road out of recession in December.
That put forward such initiatives as a five year programme to insulate every school and hospital, funding insulation and energy efficiency for a million homes, with a £1,000 subsidy for a million more and building 40,000 extra zero-carbon social houses
Question Time returns to its previous time slot of 2240 this evening, and the BBC website tells us the panel will be:
Europe Minister Caroline Flint, Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Jo Swinson, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and French businessman Pierre-Yves Gerbeau.
In the last week before the European elections, the programme is billed as a Euro special from London. If the politicos can avoid being booed off stage merely for being politicos, there are loads of interesting ways the debate can go. Caroline vs Caroline; Greens vs Lib Dems on who has …
A further correction to our graphic surveying the expenses of certain MPs: In the category Cheapest claims, we stated without qualification that cosmetics were included in receipts submitted by Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire (23 May, page 6). Jo Swinson has denied claiming for these makeup items, telling the Telegraph, which originally reproduced one of her receipts, that the cosmetics appeared on a Boots receipt for other items she was claiming.
Much of today’s coverage is summed up perfectly by the Independent’s headline Brown v Cameron v Clegg, under which all three leaders set out their visions for the rebuilding of Britain’s broken politics. They are due to take party in cross-party talks according to the Guardian, talks to be led by that famed bastion of reform, Jack Straw. Perhaps that’s who Nick Clegg was thinking of when he said (to the Times): “There are prominent people in government who recognise that the game’s up.” Our friends in the Lords are
A current Lords parliamentary inquiry is allowing YouTube submissions from members of the public. The inquiry is on the topic of how people engage with the work of the House of Lords and Parliament more generally.
One such member of the public who has shared her views is, erm, Jo Swinson, in an excellent short video that addresses many of their questions.
You can see the video for yourself here on the Parliamentary YouTube channel, along with many other interesting shorts, including information about the clock that chimes Big Ben.
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 …
Welcome to the Sunday outing for The Voice’s new daily post series highlighting two big stories from the media and two “must read” blog posts from Liberal Democrats. As it’s a Sunday, there’s also a bonus extra supplement. If you spot anything for future posts, do let us know on [email protected]
2 Big Stories
MPs’ expenses
Heading into its third week, the MPs’ expense story shows no sign of abating. The latest scalp is that of Andrew MacKay, again. The story has been running for so long that not only was he one of its first victims (losing his Conservative Party job) but …
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 …
Jo Swinson and Sir Alan Beith have both found themselves dragged into the latest set of allegations to be circulating – for the record, and avoidance of doubt, looking at the newspaper reports it doesn’t seem either of them have any reason not to be able to look their constituents in the eyes.
Sir Alan Beith
The Telegraph’s story about Sir Alan relates to a rented flat in London he shares with his wife, former fellow Lib Dem MP (now a Lib Dem peer) Baroness (Diana) Maddock. You can read the story here. I assume the Telegraph is publishing now …
Peter Davies Another group for whom this does not work are those in all-electric homes including many poor tenants in blocks of flats. Their overall bills may well be high b...
Tom Bailey “according to Mark Pack’s website, party membership dropped by a third over the course of the Con – Lib Dem Coalition. “
Did anyone ask those lost memb...
Ruth Bright During the unrest in 2011 Simon Hughes made a powerful statement telling rioters to go home. It came from a place of profound respect for, and understanding of,...
John Reed This is such a disappointing announcement.
We must push to have the present system for pricing all electricity based on the cost of the most expensive, usual...
Peter Hirst I would add caring to bold and relevant. Getting a sympathetic ear at the end of a telephone help line is as important as an extra pound in your pay slip. Under...
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Brexit and summer holidays
The pine martens of Shropshire
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Peter Davies 
Tom Bailey 
Ruth Bright 
John Reed 
Peter Hirst 