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 …
Shashi Tharoor is probably not a name familiar even to readers of The Voice who follow online politics closely, but he’s one of the highest profile politicians on Twitter. The Deputy Foreign Minister of India, he has approaching half a million followers on Twitter.
He’s had some criticism for travelling in first class air travel and staying in five-star hotels, even though in both cases he says he pays for it himself.
Asked in September whether he’d consider travelling in standard (aka “cattle class”) in future, he deployed humour: “Absolutely, out of solidarity with all our holy cows.” The result? Complaints from …
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.
Yesterday was London Region’s autumn conference, during which I heard from two recent converts to Twitter.
First, Keith House – leader of Eastleigh Council and probably the person with the best record of election results at both local and national level year in, year out in any council run by the Liberal Democrats.* Perhaps understandably given his record of electoral success, he hasn’t been chomping at the bit to innovate online – but even Keith has now seen the benefits Twitter can bring and joined himself.
Keith highlighted how much greater the role of the internet would be at the next …
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 12th November 2009 - 6:10 pm
Nick Clegg’s latest ‘Meets You’ public meeting – in which he gets out of Westminster and meets real people across the UK – comes to Oxford tonight. I’m going to be live-tweeting the event over @libdemvoice – just click here to keep up with what Nick’s asked and what he says.
at Wesley Methodist Church, Oxford, waiting for Nick to speak. Couple of hundred people here.
a rather bedraggled-looking – well, it is raining – Evan Harris (MP for Oxford West) has just arrived.
Steve Goddard (candidate for Oxford East) introducing Nick, looking forward to overturning Labour’s 963 majority.
I’m deeply wounded to hear that a website referred to me as an analogue MP after I attacked the over-use of BlackBerries and iPhones during the House of Commons proceedings.
Wounded – because I could be thought a techno-geek. I build my own PCs, maintain and set up my office networks, buy books on Linux, and hold endless, sad conversations about interoperability. I am not a technophobe.
I just notice that (1) sometimes people pay more attention to the virtual world in their hand than the real world around them; (2) sometimes it’s rude to do …
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 25th October 2009 - 11:15 pm
Lib Dem blogger Matt Davies reports on a clumsy attempt by Tory PPC for St Austell & Newquay, Caroline Righton, to extract political advantage from her Lib Dem opponent, Stephen Gilbert – but, unfortunately, without trying to check her facts first.
Ms Righton accused Stephen of calling her a ‘D***h***d!!!’ on Twitter in an email to residents. Except that he didn’t. And as Matt explains, it’s hard to know how Ms Righton could have failed to realise this before broadcasting her allegation:
She might not have liked Steve highlighting their different priorities when it comes to helping local residents
Good morning readers. It’s the 22nd October and there are just 70 days left til the end of the year. Today is Derek Jacobi’s birthday, the 43rd anniversary of the first time an all-female group topped the charts in the States, and the 114th anniversary of a rather scary train-wreck at Paris’s Montparnasse station.
2 Big Stories
Postal strike poll puts blame on government as union announces action
Gordon Brown’s handling of the Royal Mail strikes comes under strong criticism from the public and Labour backbenchers today, with a new poll showing most voters believe the government should get directly involved in the dispute and force management and unions to go to the conciliation service Acas.
The reaction to Jan Moir’s article about the death of Stephen Gately has been widespread and swift. Fuelled primarily by Twitter and Facebook, complaints about homophobia flooded in on the Daily Mail, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and the firms who were unlucky enough to have their adverts appearing on the page. The headline was changed, the PCC’s website crashed, the adverts were pulled and many members of the public got a taste of how effective a simple tweet, email or phone call can be.
The big dilemma now is for the Press Complaints Commission because, although many of the messages urging people to complain to the PCC were helpfully specific about which clauses of its code should be referenced, the real issue for the PCC to decide is not in the code itself.
Very interested concerned about this #trafigura / Guardian story the @LibDems are planning to take action on this
If you’re not on Twitter – where #trafigura is now the top-trending topic – then this post from Rob Fenwick will give you the astonishing background: namely that libel law specialists Carter-Ruck have succeeded in slapping an injunction on the Guardian preventing the newspaper from reporting the following question tabled in Parliament:
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made
A report published by the University of Plymouth and Bournemouth University concludes:
Research has revealed that nearly 67% of all tweeting MPs belong to Labour ahead of 18% for the Liberal Democrats, with the Tories relegated into third place with just 12%. When you factor in the proportion of MPs that each party boasts, it is clear that the Lib Dems are leading the way when it comes to embracing the popular social media site.
And yet overall, just 51 of our 645 MPs are classed as regular Twitter users…
MPs tend to use Twitter as a means of promoting their activities in
By Alex Foster
| Tue 22nd September 2009 - 4:30 pm
We asked delegates if their constituency was ready for the General election; if Nick Clegg was right on tuition fees; how a mansion tax would go down in their area; and how they were campaigning online.
Answering our questions were Tom Holvey and Chris Wiggin, from York, Katy Gordon for Glasgow North, Alan Bullion from Tunbridge Wells / Sevenoaks and Brendan D’Cruz from St Albans.
By Alex Foster
| Sat 19th September 2009 - 8:45 am
Just a quick reminder that there will be an official conference twitter feed, available here: www.twitter.com/LibDemConf. Conference staffers and stewards will be updating the account with information as it happens at conference – who’s speaking, when sessions start, and how Conference votes.
If you’re using twitter at conference yourself, don’t forget to liberally sprinkle your updates with the hashtag #ldconf – this will help other people find the messages you send.
And if you want to see those messages for yourself, whether or not you’re a signed up twitter user – click here.
The Government should have better things to spend money on than a pointless deputy Twittercrat. The public sector as a whole should be tightening its belt during times of economic hardship, and this job would be a scandalous waste even during good economic times.
Taxpayers don’t want more Web2.0. They want an end to wasteful spending.
Neither the TPA nor the Conservative Party can see the point, instead frothing at the mouth …
Six years on from receiving a recommendation from the Electoral Commission that existing legal powers should be used to clarify how the rules regarding election imprints apply to internet campaigning, the Government has still failed to act. This is despite the Government acknowledging in its official response to the recommendation the “importance” of getting this right. But it has decided that due to it being a “fast-evolving” area doing nothing for six years is the right response.
The way the Repubicans are trying to get to grips with improving their internet presence following last year’s Presidental election defeat suggest some interesting pointers for the UK. As I’ve often written in the past, US politics is very different from British politics – and so one should be cautious at reading across lessons from one country to another. Nonetheless, the Republicans efforts to catch-up do highlight what they feel are the most important areas.
Yesterday’s CNN report on the topic highlights two facets to this: the importance of Twitter and the degree to which a successful internet presence relies on senior figures being willing to move away from traditional modes of communication.
The Metropolitan Police are trying new tactics to engage with environmental activists at next week’s Climate Camp in London.
The Met have opened a Twitter account @CO11MetPolice (named after its public order unit) which is intended “specifically to inform the Camp for Climate Action of any operational updates relating to the policing of their event starting on 26 August.”
It has been a busy time in Scotland over recent weeks and what with Holyrood in recess for a month before Westminster broke up, there have been holidays to work around, babies being born, MPs standing down and candidates being selected all over as well as an away day for all parliamentarians and campaign staff.
Archie Scott was born earlier this week, weighing 8.5lbs to the delight of Kirsten and Tavish, our sincere congratulations to them both.
Alison and Mike Moore also have recently had a baby, Ella Louise. Now, Ella Louise was born prematurely so Mike …
Welcome to the Sunday outing for The Voice’s near-daily Daily View series. As it’s a Sunday, today it comes with a special Twitter sing-along. Oh yes.
2 Big Stories
Let’s skip past the latest round of “No really, this time we mean it, we’re going to do something really very soon, honest guv” talk of Labour MPs plotting to oust Gordon Brown (see most previous Sundays for the last 18 months) and move on to, er…, a story of a beleaguered leader surrounded by resignations but promising to stay on.
Equality chief urged to quit post
Equalities and Human Rights Commission head Trevor Phillips is facing calls to step down after a fourth resignation over his leadership in eight days.
Ben Summerskill of gay rights group Stonewall is the latest commissioner to go. He said Mr Phillips was damaging the cause of equality by staying on.
Auditors have criticised the commission for spending almost £1m on re-employing staff after giving them redundancy.
Mr Phillips will not be resigning, the commission said. (BBC)
Kurdistan goes to the polls
About 2.5 million eligible voters in the Kurdish region’s three northern provinces of Irbil, Dahuk, and Sulaimaniya will elect their 111-seat parliament and next president…
Since 2005, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has maintained a secure region that has been largely free of the violence seen in other parts of Iraq. But a lack of government transparency, corruption, difficulty in delivering basic services, and political rivalries continue to plague the KRG. (CNN)
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
Neil Fawcett doesn’t beat about the bush in his view of what some people are saying about the Norwich North by-election: Bloggers talk balls about by-elections.
Meanwhile, outside politics the Tour de France nears its end, getting far less media coverage than the stunning performances of British cyclists Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish (only in his second Tour and already the winner of more stages than any other British cyclist has won in their career) deserve. So here’s Stephen’s Linlithgow Journal on Saturday’s crucial stage.
A friend sends me a link to a news story about a spat between two councillors – one being interviewed on the radio, and the other responding simultaneously – and robustly – via Twitter.
The story is here – but don’t click it if mild profanity might offend.
Like so many things, there’s the funny side of the story, which is why the link was sent, and the salutary lesson. In this case the lesson is that twitter is very informal and can sometimes encourage the use of, erm, unparliamentary language. And should you be an elected representative, swearing …
Twitter, for those who don’t know, is an online social network where people can post 140 character messages known as “tweets”. Tweets can be a cool link you found, a question to your followers, or just an idle comment about what you’re doing. Although small at 5 million users (Facebook has 60m), its annual growth stands at over 1000% (200% for Facebook). It’s pretty hot stuff.
Now, I don’t know whether any of the Twitter users who read Lib Dem Voice have checked recently, but a tweet search for “libdem” makes pretty depressing reading (Non-Twitter users can check it …
Well, the interview happened, through a combination of Twitter text, 12seconds videos and audioBoo podcasting – and the final results can be read, viewed and listened to over at the Indy’s site HERE.
Twitterers and readers of the Independent are to interview Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg on Wednesday, in a question and answer session delivered purely through Twitter. It will take place live on Wednesday July 15th at 4pm (BST).
So we’re looking for Twitterers around the world to join with us to help put questions to Mr Clegg – we are working with Tweetminster, the estimable company that focuses on UK politics and brings news and commentary together with its Twitter service (of which, more soon), and we will launch the first ever (well, so far as
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
Daisy Benson, a Liberal Democrat member of Reading Borough Council, used Facebook to encourage young people to take part in a scrutiny review of the standard of private rented housing in the area. “I used it because the issue we were looking at particularly affected students and young people and it’s a good way to reach them.”
Benson set up a Facebook group and listed the consultation questions. The group attracted more than 80 members. Among
Why is it okay to laugh at the death of celebrities? Genuine question. As news of Michael Jackson’s death swept the world last night, causing the Internet to grind to a standstill, two things about our new cyber-age stood out to me.
First, that it was a US celeb website, TMZ.com, which broke the news of Jacko’s demise, leaving traditional media, including the wire agencies and LA Times, in its reporting wake. Its maintained the frenetic and frequently intrusive coverage today. If you want to see pics of the paramedics arriving at Jacko’s house, or of his grief-stricken relatives …
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 …
Welcome to the Sunday outing for The Voice’s Daily View series. As it’s a Sunday, today it comes with a bonus complaint and the easiest quiz question of the week.
2 Big Stories
Could Alan Johnson scrap ID cards?
Gordon Brown’s weakness means there is a set of senior Cabinet members who are now unsackable. If any of them were to take it upon themselves to indulge in a very un-Brownian desire to do something dramatic and decisive, it would be extremely hard for Gordon Brown to stop them.
Step forward then possibly, perhaps, just maybe Alan Johnson. (He is, after all, one of those who hasn’t acted dramatically or decisively to get Gordon Brown ousted.) The Sunday Times reports:
ALAN JOHNSON, the home secretary, has launched an urgent review of the £6 billion identity card (ID) scheme, paving the way for a possible U-turn on one of Labour’s flagship policies.
Johnson, who was promoted in Gordon Brown’s latest cabinet reshuffle, is understood to be “sympathetic” to critics who claim identity cards will undermine civil liberties.
The home secretary told officials that he wanted a “first principles” rethink of the plan, which was launched by Tony Blair following the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and has since been championed by Brown as a way of fighting terrorism.
“Alan is more sympathetic to the civil liberties arguments than previous home secretaries,” said an insider.
The Iranian elections
Although Lebanon’s recent elections saw a decisive victory for moderates, the official results from Iran show a landslide for the hardliners. These results have been disputed, but as so often the mainstream media coverage amounts to little more than “X says the elections were rigged, Y says they weren’t”, with little evidence presented to let you make a decision about who you think is telling the truth.
Step forward the online world, where there is much detailed argument available, including this blog post which – combined with the comments posted to it – gives a good flavour of the cases for and against the election results having been rigged.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
If David Cameron believes in first past the post, he should quit his job
From Mark Reckons:
David Cameron has spent a lot of time in the last few weeks talking about how great the First Past the Post electoral system is. He will not countenance any change from this even though MPs can end up elected with often much less than 50% of the vote in their own constituency.
What I find fascinating about this is that if you follow his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion then David Cameron should not be leader of the Conservative party at all. Instead it should be David Davis … if this had been a First Past the Post election then David Davis would have been elected leader.
Twitter and politics
Euro-candidate and journalist Jonathan Fryer muses over the impact of Twitter:
Though a comparatively late convert to the practice (despite the proselytising of my friend, Stephen Fry), I’ve been finding it hugely useful in recent weeks and have noted how one can enter into dialogue with politicians of other parties as well as with journalists and bloggers of all persuasions, who are quite happy to ‘follow’ one on Twitter, but who might not wish to ask or accept to be one’s Facebook ‘friend’, in case that were seen to be some kind of endorsement.
Sunday Bonus
Don’t these US movie moguls have any respect for our heritage?
So I’m sitting in front of my laptop desperately trying to think of some new way to campaign that will complement shoving pieces of paper through letter boxes and isn’t just having yet another website.
I’m quite convinced, by the way, that only a limited percentage of even the best leaflets get read on their way to the recycling bin – and many local party websites only get visited by activists anyway.
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...
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The Joy of Six 1530
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Should Labour reconsider the Brexit red lines?
Raising a flap about letterboxes
Restrained
Chase Park fair photos
David Allen 
Simon McGrath 
Peter Davies 
Rob Heale 
Kira Collins 