Tag Archives: Mark Pack

Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – The three stories that really matters – even to Britain

By Nick T | Thu 15th December 2011 - 9:56 am

Over on his work blog, the Voice’s Mark Pack has a post looking at three important stories which have been largely overshadowed by the domestic political ramifications of the prime minister’s veto.

Here’s the first issue Mark identifies:

The actual significance of the summit was the latest, most extensive and more desperate attempt to save the Euro. Judging from initial reactions by economists and the financial markets, this time a Euro summit may just have pulled it off. It has not already been written off as a failure which, compared to other summits on the same theme, already makes it more successful

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

David Cameron’s a hostage to his party and the right-wing press. Thank goodness for Nick Clegg

By Stephen Tall | Mon 12th December 2011 - 7:35 am

The shockwaves from David Cameron’s decision to reject the proposed ‘Merkozy’ EU treaty is still shaking politics. The UK stands isolated from the other 26 member states. Tory Eurosceptics and, early polls suggest, a majority of the British public think the Prime Minister has played a blinder, ‘sticking up for Britain’.

This is difficult territory for the Lib Dems. Our October survey of party members suggested a more Eurosceptical attitude than traditionally associated with the party, with 51% rejecting a move towards ever closer union.

However, there is nothing more guaranteed to put up liberals’ backs than the full-throated, …

Continue reading »
Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 42 Comments
The Voice

Pack & Tall Debate… What’s the Lib Dem economic narrative now?

By The Voice | Fri 2nd December 2011 - 8:15 am

In the week of the Chancellor’s autumn statement, LibDemVoice co-editors Mark Pack and Stephen Tall debate what it all means for the Lib Dems…

Stephen Tall: So we now all know the painful financial reality. With growth forecasts revised down by the Chancellor in his autumn statement, austerity is here to stay.

Both Lib Dems and Tories had hoped and expected that three years of painful cutbacks would be followed by a year or two of pre-election giveaways — the Lib Dems would press for a balanced mix of increased public spending …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 30 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem Bloggers’ Christmas stocking fillers… Part IV

By Stephen Tall | Wed 30th November 2011 - 5:55 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; Part II here; and Part III here. In part three, our fourth trio of bloggers – Jonathan Calder, Caron Lindsay, and Mark Pack – give us the low-down on their Xmas faves…

Jonathan Calder

It is impossible to dislike

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , and | Leave a comment
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – The Graph May Be Boring; The Political Message Isn’t

By Nick T | Sat 26th November 2011 - 1:58 pm

Over at the Huffington Post, the Voice’s Mark Pack has a post examining some interesting – and surprising – polling data, complete with a graph (don’t say Mark doesn’t spoil you).

Here’s Mark explaining what the graph shows:

It comes from polling carried out by MORI, asking the same question over the years: “How interested would you say you are in politics?” The graph shows how many people gave one of the two positive answers (“very” or “fairly”) – and so also shows how the public’s interest in politics has been pretty consistent, at a high level. (You can get the

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 5 Comments
Alex Marsh

Opinion: Will fixing the planning system improve the housing supply?

By Alex Marsh | Fri 18th November 2011 - 10:25 am

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Britain has a housing problem. There are problems of shortage and, consequently, access and affordability.

There are three principal mechanisms for dealing with significant housing shortage and indirectly reducing the affordability problems that go with it: (1) You can reduce the number of households needing to be housed; (2) You can increase the number of properties available; and (3) You can improve the utilization of the existing stock of properties.

You can try to do something on all three fronts. A couple of weeks ago LibDemVoice co-editor Mark Pack identified six …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 14 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack – Unsolved problems of individual electoral registration

By NewsHound | Thu 20th October 2011 - 10:25 am

Over on the Total Politics blog, Lib Dem Voice’s Mark Pack has been summarising the state of play with plans to move to individual electoral registration:

So far, the planned move from household to individual electoral registration in Great Britain (catching up with the changes made in Northern Ireland several years ago) has generated rather more political heat than light. But after the announcement from Nick Clegg at the last Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions that he is minded to part of the government’s plans, what is the outlook for the proposal?

Mark goes on to outline the three main issues, as you …

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law and LibLink | Also tagged | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition | Julian Huppert “it’s all a bit of a blur” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sun 25th September 2011 - 4:55 pm

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…

Here’s rising star Dr Julian Huppert, Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, flanked by Reading councillor Daisy Benson and LibDemVoice’s own Mark Pack at a conference fringe event. What do you think they might be saying or thinking?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Hugh Grant and Nick Clegg “one for the family album” Edition.

The winner, according to The Voice’s judging …

Continue reading »
Posted in Caption Comp | Also tagged , , and | 14 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack advises the party to be more like John Prescott

By NewsHound | Thu 22nd September 2011 - 9:50 am

Writing for the New Statesman, The Voice’s Mark Pack has picked an unusual role model for the Liberal Democrats:

What Prescott managed to do very successfully as a backbencher in the last years of the Labour government was both be a member of a party in power and also be consistently anti-establishment, especially in his attacks on some in the financial sector – and his mobilising of public support behind his campaigns.

For a party such as the Liberal Democrats who have such a strong tradition of anti-establishment ideology and campaigning, pulling off that combination now is all the more important. Or

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged | 2 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack – Some party rebellions are good for the leader

By NewsHound | Sun 18th September 2011 - 2:34 pm

The Voice’s Mark Pack has been guesting over at the New Statesman again, this time pointing out how there are some party rebels Nick Clegg may rather welcome:

Political pundits go on endlessly about how leaders should have “Clause 4 moments” when they pick a fight with parts of their own parties. In this case, the reluctant have handily offered themselves up in opposition to Nick Clegg and democrats, providing an easy route for the Deputy Prime Minister to garner the benefits of a Clause 4 moment without its usual pains.

You can read Mark’s post about Lib Dem conference …

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , , and | Leave a comment
Dinti Batstone

Opinion: “I don’t like them, you don’t like them… We have to have them”

By Dinti Batstone | Wed 14th September 2011 - 9:25 am

This Saturday, Conference has the opportunity to show that Liberal Democrats are genuinely committed to achieving gender balance in our own distinctively liberal and democratic way.

Conference will debate an amendment which Jo Shaw and I have put forward to Mark Pack and Paul Tyler’s Lords reform motion. Our amendment builds on the approach taken by our party in the late 1990s, when one-off zipping was used to deliver a gender-balanced cohort of Lib Dem MEPs in the first PR elections to the European Parliament.

In an ideal world we wouldn’t need these kinds of measures. But with just 12% women …

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , , , and | 14 Comments
Stephen Tall

The 7 Lib Dem MPs unaffected by the Boundary Commission proposals

By Stephen Tall | Tue 13th September 2011 - 6:20 pm

The last 24 hours’ political news has been dominated by the Boundary Commission for England’s proposals for new parliamentary constituencies — and in particular the reduction from 533 to 502 in accordance with the Coalition Agreement to reduce the size of the House of Commons.

I’m a self-confessed politics geek, so I find this stuff interesting. But I was surprised that it should be the lead news item on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning — does the public care as much as us anoraks? I doubt it.

True, some members of the public will have particular concerns about …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , and | 25 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack – How the health bill will be handled at conference

By NewsHound | Mon 12th September 2011 - 6:21 pm

Over on his work blog, The Voice’s Mark Pack has written about how the health issue is likely to be handled at party conference:

The plan for the party’s autumn conference was straight-forward: talk up the party’s achievements in getting the Health and Social Care Bill changed, have a question & answer session to let people discuss but not disrupt the revised legislation and move on to talk about other issues.

That plan has been under assault, however, from health rebels within the Liberal Democrats who do not believe the changes have gone far enough.

You can read Mark’s post here.

Posted in Conference and LibLink | Also tagged | 13 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack – The missing ingredient from Liberal Democrat conference

By NewsHound | Thu 1st September 2011 - 9:28 am

The Voice’s Mark Pack has been guesting over on the Huffington Post again, this time writing about what he thinks is missing from the Birmingham conference agenda:

There are many weighty issues on the agenda for the Liberal Democrat autumn conference in Birmingham, as well as some potentially significant debates overthe party’s medium term strategy and policy outlook. There is also, however, a curious omission: tax.

The word tax is not completely absent from the agenda, but aside from a reference in one motion calling for the party to look at its tax policy as part of a big policy review, there

…

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference and LibLink | Also tagged | 7 Comments
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – What to watch out for at Liberal Democrat conference

By Nick T | Sun 14th August 2011 - 12:54 pm

Mark Pack has been going through his conference documents and over on the MHP blog he has highlighted the bits that are likely to be most controversial and/or interesting.

Here’s just a sample of what Mark has picked out:

An early chance to catch the mood of the party will be the session on Saturday morning looking back on May’s elections and AV referendum. Unhappiness is to be expected. What to watch out for is who speaks out and where their comments are directed.

A common theme is likely to be the need for the party to present itself as distinct from the

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged | 8 Comments
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – Is it simply a question of politicians and pundits always trying to ban technologies they don’t use?

By Nick T | Sat 13th August 2011 - 12:51 pm

Over on the MHP blog, Mark Pack makes a good point about the calls from some politicians to ban or restrict the use of social networking in response to the riots.

Here’s some of what Mark has to say:

Yet from some commentators and MPs there were immediate demands to suspend, curtail or otherwise regulate social networks. This was echoed today by David Cameron who promised that the government will look into this very question.

However, the number of communication technologies in the firing line is far short of the number involved in the events. Rolling TV coverage gave the events wall-to-wall coverage.

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
The Voice

Media reform: the debates elsewhere

By The Voice | Fri 12th August 2011 - 11:54 am

As we said on Monday, Lib Dem Voice over the next few weeks is taking part in a cross-blog debate on some of the most pressing issues regarding the UK media.

Earlier this week here on The Voice Mark took a look at what the Liberal Democrats have historically said on the topic and why the flaws in Ed Miliband’s policy are no cause for rejoicing.

Elsewhere on the blogosphere, David Elstein looked at those Ed Miliband policies in detail and Dan Hind put the case for ensuring greater plurality of ownership.

Next week we will be looking …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , and | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Top 10 tweeting MPs: congratulations to Lib Dem @julianhuppert in at No. 6!

By Stephen Tall | Sun 31st July 2011 - 2:20 pm

Who are the top 10 Twitterers in the House of Commons? That’s the question the Mail on Sunday answers today, following a survey by Westminster Public Affairs.

The list looks not at number of followers, but at the volume of tweets each MP has sent out. Heading the list is Labour’s Kerry McCarthy with well over 27,000 tweets. Cambridge’s Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert — elected to Parliament just last year — comes in at number six, having sent over 10,000 tweets, and now with over 4,000 followers.

My Co-Editor Mark Pack has compiled a …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | Leave a comment
The Voice

Chris Huhne cleared over election expense claims

By The Voice | Thu 28th July 2011 - 8:44 pm

As Mark Pack reported over on his blog, for the second time allegations over Chris Huhne’s election expenses that were strongly backed by Paul Staines and Harry Cole have collapsed after the Electoral Commission investigated them:

The review concluded that one item had been under-reported by £10.15 (sic) but that otherwise the expenditure in the short and long campaign had been properly recorded and declared.

Regularly readers may recall how stridently both of them attacked people who disagreed with their claims over Huhne’s election expenses (such as in this thread, which includes Paul Staines daring anyone to bet that Chris …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments
Alex Foster

PODCAST: A forgotten liberal hero

By Alex Foster | Fri 22nd July 2011 - 1:17 pm

In June, Mark Pack addressed the Liberal History Group‘s summer meeting on the topic of Forgotten Heroes for a Governing Party.  Further details of the event can be found here.

And who was Dr Pack’s choice? You will have to listen to find out.

PS don’t check the tags

Posted in Podcasts | Also tagged and | Leave a comment
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – What you see isn’t what you get with online politics

By Nick T | Tue 19th July 2011 - 3:25 pm

Over on Huffington Post, Mark Pack has a piece looking at the way US Republican presidential hopefuls are using technology in their campaigns, and at the difficulties of judging online activities from the ‘outside’, given the often hidden nature of much of it.

Here’s an excerpt:

The old days of ‘count the features and say those with the most are the best’ are, thankfully, long gone when it comes to political Internet campaigning. As is common with many technological areas as they mature, after the initial proliferation of features and services, the real success and progress comes with technology that is hidden

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink and Online politics | Also tagged | Leave a comment
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – The secret concessions behind the 1911 Parliament Act

By Nick T | Thu 7th July 2011 - 5:53 pm

Before he departed for his blogging holiday, The Voice’s Mark Pack had an interesting piece on the Total Politics site looking at the 100-year history of the 1911 Parliament Act.

Here’s an extract from Mark’s piece:

The 1911 Act had its immediate cause in the 1909 People’s Budget from Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, which raised taxes for the richest to pay for military armaments and social works. As he put it:

“This is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness.”

The sums now seem modest – including the equivalent in today’s

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: That Ed Miliband TV interview car crash in full

By Stephen Tall | Fri 1st July 2011 - 3:55 pm

Poor Ed Miliband. The Labour leader would have been hoping public attention today would be focused on his his party’s defence of its Inverclyde stronghold — instead, everyone’s watching his car-crash TV interview in which he reformulates a soundbite repeatedly in order to insert the words ‘negotiating table’ and ‘these strikes are wrong’ into every sentence.

The result? A distinctly odd, unnatural, automated interview which fuels the ‘Awkward Ed’ media meme.

Part of me feels a little sorry for Mr Miliband. Clearly he was under the impression that only one line would be extracted from the interview; not unreasonably he was keen to ensure that it was the line which conveyed his key message rather than the news editor’s. Such is the challenge for all politicians in our ‘say it in 7 seconds’ media culture. But, as Iain Duncan Smith found to his cost as Tory leader when he nervously chuckled his way through a Radio 4 Today Programme interview, it’s these kinds of moments which stand out in the public consciousness.

Anyway, enough analysing: just sit back and enjoy.

Continue reading »
Posted in YouTube | Also tagged | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Clegg’s bailed-out banks’ shares give-away proposal triggers national debate

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th June 2011 - 3:25 pm

Nick Clegg’s very public call for the British public to be given shares in the bailed-out banks — creating 46 million shareholders and allowing collective ownership of banks — has garnered acres of coverage the past couple of days.

It’s three months since Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams first proposed the privatisation of its 83% stake in RBS and 41% in Lloyds by distributing shares to the public. Here’s what my co-editor Mark Pack said about the idea at the time:

Giving everyone shares in the banks: Stephen Williams’s proposals examined (7th March, 2011)
Stephen Williams’s plan is to give shares

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 7 Comments
Prateek Buch

Opinion: This is the Social Liberal moment

By Prateek Buch | Tue 21st June 2011 - 4:25 pm

After months of planning, and not inconsiderate last-minute scrambling, the Social Liberal Forum’s first ever conference took place at City University on Saturday; envisioned by Hackney’s Geoff Payne and put into action by the outstanding team he led, the conference (#SLFconf on Twitter) was a massive success from so many perspectives.

Firstly, there was the interest generated by having two Cabinet Ministers and the Party’s Deputy Leader speaking – Vince Cable’s speech was carried live by the BBC and Sky news was also filming throughout the day. Of course the Ministers were a significant draw, but the packed-out audience was …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , and | 7 Comments
Nick T

Where next for Lib Dem ‘muscular liberalism’?

By Nick T | Mon 20th June 2011 - 10:25 am

Over on the BBC News site, BBC political correspondent Norman Smith has written a piece looking at how the Liberal Democrats will continue to exert their influence in a more public way within the coalition after the combined effect of the AV referendum, the local election results and the success of the party’s push to re-think the NHS reforms.

As Norman says:

From the top to the bottom of the party, there is a hankering for clear yellow lines running through government policy.

However, where those lines should be drawn to best reassert the Lib Dems’ independence, is much harder to agree.

There …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

“Delivering this is going to be very difficult” – Tory peer Strathclyde’s verdict on Lords reform

By Stephen Tall | Sat 18th June 2011 - 6:10 pm

Let’s start with the good news — Lord Strathclyde, the Tory leader in the Lords is a self-styled “long-term supporter” of reform of the Upper House. Now for the bad news — he’s pessimistic that the Coalition will actualy deliver elected senators by 2015, the deadline set by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

Here’s what m’Lord Strathclyde (who inherited a seat from his grandfather at the age of 25) has to say in an interview in today’s Financial Times:

“To me the dream scenario would be . . . getting in place by the end of the next session and then going forward

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged , , , , and | 7 Comments
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – Lords reform: three tests for three party leaders

By Nick T | Sun 12th June 2011 - 8:57 am

Over on the Total Politics website, Mark Pack has a piece looking at what the coalition’s plans for reforming the House of Lords means for each of the three party leaders:

For each of them Lords reform offers both an opportunity and a threat. For David Cameron the opportunity is to push on with his mission to change the Conservative Party, modernising it in a continuing effort to shed the problems that have resulted in nearly 20 years passing since it last won an overall majority. Many in the Conservative Party, especially in the Lords, are opposed to the introduction of

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , and | 1 Comment
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – What should happen to an MP who is voted out of office?

By Nick T | Wed 1st June 2011 - 2:55 pm

Over on Left Foot Forward, The Voice’s Mark Pack has a piece highlighting the common, but outrageously undemocratic, practice of appointing defeated MPs to the House of Lords – just one of the many reasons that the second chamber needs thorough reform. And with those with a vested interest already lining up to oppose any changes, Mark makes the point that it is crucial that a grassroots group of reformers unite behind the finalised proposals, rather than making the mistake of opposing some reform because it is not total reform.

Here’s an excerpt:

I can go to a polling station, vote

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – Lib Dems Must Not Ditch Commitment To Political Reform

By Nick T | Sat 28th May 2011 - 10:25 am

Over at The Holmes Report website, Lib Dem Voice’s Mark Pack has a piece setting out how the Liberal Democrats should approach the issue of political reform in the wake of the substantial defeat for reformers in the AV referendum. Here’s an extract from Mark’s piece:

It would be a mistake for Liberal Democrats (or indeed reformers in the Conservative Party’s ranks) to conclude from the referendum result that all political reform should now be side-lined. The referendum No vote was not a vote of confidence in our political system. Politicians continue to be one of the least respected professions in

…

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Advert

Recent Comments

  • David Allen
    A clear, credible, principled strategy from the Yorkists! Makes a welcome change. Sadly, followed by twenty below-the-line posts, providing nearly twenty ve...
  • Simon McGrath
    so we get a permanant increase in costs for these subsidies based on ( alleged ) windfall profits. Its another big increase in spending -how is it to be paid ...
  • Peter Davies
    @Kira CollinsThat assumes we want to help people more with their energy bills than with all the other bills they may be struggling with. There is no reason why ...
  • Rob Heale
    Agree that we need to focus on strategy and have clearer messaging:- 1. We MUST prioritise membership recruitment in all we do, including PPB's, most leaflets...
  • Kira Collins
    Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...