Tag Archives: Mark Pack

Stephen Tall

Evidence based, Left Foot Forward? Not if you’re ignoring the actual evidence

By Stephen Tall | Mon 15th March 2010 - 5:55 pm

The Labour-supporting Left Foot Forward blog prides itself on being evidence-based. But not, it seems, when the evidence doesn’t support the conclusion they’ve already written.

That seems to be the only explanation for their slanted weekend posting that Lib Dem tax policy “fails the fairness test”, which appears to rest on two points: 1) that people who don’t pay tax won’t benefit from tax-cuts, and 2) ignoring completely the redistributive wealth tax rises that Vince Cable and the Lib Dems are proposing.

Perhaps the authors, Tim Horton and Howard Reed, hoped nobody would notice the sleight-of-hand; or at least that it …

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NewsHound

Stephen Tall and Mark Pack on the launch of ‘How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP?’ website

By NewsHound | Sat 13th March 2010 - 9:25 am

To co-incide with the launch yesterday by Lib Dem Voice of our new ‘How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP?’ website – http://rank.libdemvoice.org – two articles apeared in the media …

Meanwhile Stephen Tall penned an article for The Guardian’s Comment Is …

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Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 22 February 2010

By Stephen Tall | Mon 22nd February 2010 - 9:45 am

Happy Monday morning everyone. Just 213 years ago today saw the Last Invasion of Britain: look away now if you don’t want to know the result. We beat the French. The 22nd February is also the birthday of three of this country’s greatest entertainers: Kenneth Williams (1926), Bruce Forsyth (1928) and Terry Eagleton (1943).

But enough of such tarrying, and on with the main event …

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

…

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

First-Past-The-Post: the ‘safe seats’ system that breeds lazy, corrupt MPs

By Stephen Tall | Thu 14th January 2010 - 10:20 am

Calls for the First-Past-The-Post voting system to be abolished in the UK were given a real kick-start last year after it became clear – thanks to the work of Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson – that it was MPs with large majorities who were more likely to be implicated in cheating the expenses system.

It’s obvious if you think about it: if you were given life tenure in a safe seat where the Labour/Tory majorities are weighed not counted, how concerned would you be with the irksome business of being transparent and accountable? To put it bluntly – as …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 21 Comments
Iain Roberts

Indy bigs up Mark Pack but exposes Twitter’s weakness

By Iain Roberts | Mon 11th January 2010 - 1:30 pm

The Independent today asks “Could the next election finally provide a reason for the microblogging service?”

There are many reasons for Twitter, some better than others, but if today’s Independent article is anything to go by, the General Election won’t be one of them.

“It’s Twitter that will make this election unique.”, the Indy proclaims, before going on to show why that claim is almost certainly not true.

The paper lists the political twitterati, a mixture – it turns out – of established figures doing a bit of tweeting and political bloggers.

Most excitingly for us at Lib Dem Voice, our …

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Posted in Online politics and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 10 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink … Mark Pack on Labour’s SnowStorm Plot

By NewsHound | Wed 6th January 2010 - 10:54 pm

LDV’s co-editor Mark Pack was one of three bloggers asked by Channel 4 News for their take on today’s extraordinary bid by two former cabinet ministers to unseat the Prime Minister. You can watch Mark’s minute-long clip here. Here’s a quick excerpt as a taster:

Today’s events have all the makings of a fantastic political farce because if you were to launch a coup against the prime minister now is just about the worst time to do it.

“I guess it’s just desperation because Labour know that under Gordon Brown they are facing a very heavy election defeat and they

…

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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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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem Voice has a new co-editor

By Stephen Tall | Wed 21st October 2009 - 9:30 am

A parish notice on behalf of the LDV team …

I am delighted to announce that Mark Pack is joining me as Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, effective immediately. Mark was a founding member of LDV, alongside Rob Fenwick, back in August 2006. His first post was entitled, Ming Campbell movie online. Ah, those were the days.

Over the past three years Mark has made a huge contribution to making this site the success it is, helping build LDV’s monthly readership to over 30,000 unique visitors, and ranked as one of the top 5 blogs in the UK.

I first asked Mark …

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Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 19 October 2009

By Stephen Tall | Mon 19th October 2009 - 9:35 am

2 Big Stories


Labour’s Hain threatens BBC with legal action over BNP invitation

Labour’s Welsh secretary Peter Hain makes a bid for the media spotlight today by arguing that the BBC could face legal action over this Thursday’s edition of Question Time, due to feature an appearance by BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP:

… in his letter , Mr Hain … said the decision should be reconsidered in light of a legal case about ethnic restrictions on the BNP’s membership rules. The party has agreed to amend its constitution after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission sought an injunction, claiming the BNP was breaking the Race Relations Act by restricting membership to “indigenous Caucasian” people.

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Lynne Featherstone

Opinion: Where is the British Obama?

By Lynne Featherstone | Sun 27th September 2009 - 10:20 am

Earlier this month Lynne Featherstone gave the Heather Larkin Annual Lecture in Yate:

I am really pleased to be here tonight – yes it is a long trek here and back but worth it to pay tribute to Steve Webb. Steve is a great MP, a great campaigner, a great innovator on the internet – and a great intellectual force. The fact that we often agree on policy may have something to do with that!

But one of the highlights of Parliament is listening to thoughtful and powerful speeches from which you learn and which help shape your own views. Steve’s speeches …

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Posted in LDVUSA and Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem shadow cabinet media tarts, #ldconf special

By Stephen Tall | Fri 25th September 2009 - 3:45 pm

Donning the hat of his day-job, LDV’s Dr Mark Pack has been busy number-crunching to discover which of the Lib Dem shadow cabinet attracted most media coverage, in print and online. (Of course, column inches is no guarantee that the coverage will have been altogether positive).

Here’s the top 10:

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Alex Foster

#ldconf podcast: Beyond Twitter

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.

Posted in Conference and Podcasts | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

#ldconf podcast: The BOTY recording

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.

jgraham

But it was a striking evening for a number of reasons, as we hope the …

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Posted in Conference and Podcasts | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and | 3 Comments
Helen Duffett

The most influential Liberal Democrats: 50-26

By Helen Duffett | Mon 21st September 2009 - 10:23 am

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

…

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Alex Foster

#ldconf podcast: Campaigning after Rennard

By Alex Foster | Sun 20th September 2009 - 4:15 pm


After a day of Linux updates on an incredibly elderly IBM Thinkpad, we can now finally bring you the audio recording of last night’s highly successful fringe meeting with Mark Pack, James Graham, Neil Fawcett and Lynne Featherstone MP.

And most unusually for fringe meetings in general, and definitely a first for an LDV fringe – our meeting got written up in the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

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Alex Foster

LDV’s Conference fringe events #ldconf

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:

…

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Stephen Tall

LDV Weekend Meme: your favourite blog-posts

By Stephen Tall | Sat 8th August 2009 - 10:30 am

The Lib Dem blog awards are with us again – and one of the categories is ‘Best posting on a Liberal Democrat blog (since 1st September 2008)’. This is actually my favourite award for the simple reason that it recognises writing talent, pure and simple. By which I don’t mean that the prose has to be worthy of a Booker nomination; rather that the article has to attract, engage and provoke readers – elevate our thinking, if you like.

All of which musing prompted me to ask my LDV colleagues – and myself – to self-nominate the favourite articles we’ve posted here on the site. Here’s what we said:

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Posted in LDV meme | Also tagged , , , , and | 11 Comments
Mark Thompson

Twitter and the rise of new media

By Mark Thompson | Sat 20th June 2009 - 1:55 pm

Something fascinating happened yesterday. I was browsing through one of the internet forums I regularly visit when I noticed someone posting that people should go to the Daily Mail poll page on their website and vote yes to the poll that asks “Should gypsies jump the queue on the NHS?” in order to mess with them.

When I got to the page and duly voted “Yes” I was astonished to see that the poll was at 93% Yes and 7% No. The forum I refer to has nowhere near enough people to make a dent in the thousands who vote in …

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Posted in News and Online politics | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , and | 8 Comments
Helen Duffett

Which party’s winning on the web?

By Helen Duffett | Fri 19th June 2009 - 9:20 am

PR Week has a piece comparing the online strategies of the UK’s three main political parties. With a nod or two towards Obama’s use of social media, the article presents a report card on each party, compiled by their panel of experts.

Each party is examined on its approach, key players, leader and the involvement of MPs and grassroots.

The Conservatives are found to have “attracted the most plaudits so far,” while Labour’s “command and control mentality” is said to be hampering their efforts.

The verdict on the Liberal Democrats is that our “overall understanding of social media is impressive” but that …

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged , , , , , and | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 11 June 2009

By Alex Foster | Thu 11th June 2009 - 8:05 am

Ah, another day, another daily view. Suddenly in the blink of an eye, polling day is a whole week behind us. Lives are being lived, new councillors swearing the oath of office and new groups working out how to work with each other in future.

Two big stories

And unlike m’colleague Alix who could trumpet an end to expenses stories, sadly today they’re back with a vengeance, as the Telegraph digs into Shahid Malik.

But never fear – “the recession has ended” ! The Independent is so confident of its analysis that it feels the need to put …

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Helen Duffett

Daily View 2×2: 9 June 2009

By Helen Duffett | Tue 9th June 2009 - 8:22 am

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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‘A flop’? Jury Team responds to Mark Pack

By Morus | Wed 8th April 2009 - 3:20 pm

May I first of all begin by thanking Lib Dem Voice readers for indulging us, and to the editors for letting me write a response to Mark Pack’s post, Jury Team: so far, it’s a flop.

You won’t be surprised that I disagree with some of Mark’s points – the idea that all of our media coverage was friendly, and this strange accusation that we were ‘going out of our way to solicit anonymous donations’. Neither are true – our press officer did well to get as much coverage as possible, but that didn’t stop the knives coming out.

Similarly, …

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Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged | 14 Comments
Stephen Tall

Mark Pack to leave Lib Dems for new appointment

By Stephen Tall | Thu 26th March 2009 - 2:01 pm

I’m sure LDV readers would like to join with me in congratulating Mark Pack on his new job – he will be leaving the Lib Dems, where he is the party’s head of innovations, this June to take up an appointment as associate director of Mandate Communications, where he will be developing their online PR. The announcement was made today by the Lib Dems’ director of campaigns, Hilary Stephenson:

Mark joined the Lib Dem staff in 2000 – in his own words he has been with us ‘for the entire century!’ He started off working on London elections, then moving on

…

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Posted in Site news | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV, ConHome and DraperList go head-to-head (ish)

By Stephen Tall | Thu 19th February 2009 - 6:15 pm

LDV’s Mark Pack will be speaking alongside ConservativeHome‘s Jonathan Isaby and LabourList‘s Derek Draper on 24th March at an event organised by the Hansard Society entitled, The Online Campaign – solution or smokescreen? Details below and at the Society’s website.

Tuesday 24 March, 10am, House of Commons, Westminster.

The use of online strategies is becoming increasingly important, encouraging grass-roots activism and enabling mass mobilisation. But there is no guarantee that the cooption of online strategies will guarantee electoral success or promote healthy dialogue between politicians and citizens.This eDemocracy event will gather the leading thinkers on this subject to discuss

…

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Alex Foster

Dr Pack gets third degree

By Alex Foster | Thu 15th January 2009 - 3:12 pm

I don’t mean he’s now even better qualified to run Lib Dem Voice, I mean the Voice’s own Mark Pack been answering some tough questions from Sunny Hundal at the Liberal Conspiracy.

Amongst the questions are these:

  • No doubt you get accused of being a party mouthpiece all the time, since you actually work for the party. How would you counter that accusation?
  • Isn’t focusing only on Libdem news unlikely to attract new members?
  • Do you think Libdembloggers aren’t cohesive enough? Do they not talk to each other enough?

You can read the full interview here – and maybe even answer the questions …

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