It’s Friday, so here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the past week on Liberal Democrat Voice:
5 most-read stories on LDV this week
1. The Independent View: Labour and Lib Dems must show a willingness to work together (39 comments) by Will Straw
2. Six Lib Dem MPs rebel on Coalition’s Academies Bill (10 comments) by Stephen Tall
3. Opinion: Lib Dems should abstain or campaign for “No” on AV referendum (65 comments) by Fred Carver
4. Nick Clegg meets … Showing the Lib Dem fight against the Tories is alive and well (45 comments) by Stephen Tall
5. Hughes attacks Labour’s “naked opportunism” in opposing vote reform bill (70 comments) by The Voice
5 active LDV Members’ Forum threads
Warning!
Not standing against Tories?
How are the otherside feeling
Liberal Youth on local executives
New Members pack – ideas needed
5 from the LDV archive
1. Labour: choose the next Prime Minister for £12 by the Founding Editor, November 2006
2. Vince Cable: Silver Power, the force that could save us by The Voice, July 2009
3. How to blog successfully as a councillor by Mary Reid, November 2009
4. London Mayor candidate selection process starts by Jonathan Davies, August 2007
5. Voice Podcasts: Alex speaks to Nick Clegg by Alex Foster, September 2006. Nick talks about First Past the Post and about taking on roles under unpredictable circumstances.
5 top reader search returns to get to LDV
(excluding Liberal Democrat Voice or its variants)
1. christina speight (-)
2. george mackie mp (n/c)
3. forgemasters (-)
4. lib dem blogs (-)
5. david ward (-)
5 recent Lib Dem tweets
>> @meralhece How many times does BBC need to have the defintion of Coalition Govt explained? NO Party won; why can’t implement all Lib Dem policies
>> @jamesgraham I really want David Heath to spot ex-PM Brown from the despatch box and to spontaneously exclaim “Gordon’s alive!”
>> @leechalmers I keep on thinking that if I just have one more piece of sexy technology, one more organization app, I won’t have to work anymore.
>> @jamesgraham GUARDIAN READING LIBERALS KILL ANDY BURNHAM’S GORGEOUS EYELASHES #labourbingo http://dev.artesea.co.uk/labour-o-matic/
>> @LibDemPress Welcome to the nearly 700 new members that joined @libdems in July. That’s a net increase of more than 4,000 since the election!
If you are a Lib Dem who tweets, and would like to be added to Ryan’s Lib Dem Tweets aggregator, drop him an email at [email protected]
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Knaptoft: The very heart of England
We do have a two-tier policing system but it is not what our homegrown racists think it is.
From Norman settlement to a civic square
Tom Arms
Ruth Bright
Tom Bailey
Alex Macfie
5 Comments
Surprised not to see any comment about these allegations in a BBC documentary last night:
But tonight’s programme suggests that Clegg may have bluffed Cameron into offering the Lib Dems a referendum on a change to the voting system as part of the coalition talks.
Rumours have frequently circulated in Tory circles that Clegg, in highly pressurised coalition talks after the election, managed to outmanoeuvre the Tory party leader by intimating he had been offered more by Labour in parallel post-election talks than was actually the case.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/29/nick-clegg-changed-mind-cuts
To say nothing of all the stuff in the same article about Clegg admitting to having changed his mind about the timing of public spending cuts before the election, but not having told the electorate until after the polls had closed because “we were all … reacting to very, very fast-moving economic events.”
Nothing to do with fearing that he might lose votes if he was honest, of course. (That’s assuming he’s being honest with us now.)
Just to make it crystal clear that Clegg either is lying now, or was lying during the election campaign (or both), here’s a Reuters report of what he said about the timing of cuts just two days before the election:
The LibDems agree that cuts should be delayed. But Clegg denied this indicated political support for Labour and made clear his disagreement with Conservative policy.
“Us siding with Labour? It’s siding with common sense,” he said. “My eight-year-old (son) ought to be able to work this out — you shouldn’t start slamming on the brakes when the economy is barely growing.
“If you do that you create more joblessness, you create heavier costs on the state, the deficit goes up even further and the pain with dealing with it is even greater. So it is completely irrational.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLNE64300V20100504
DAVID CAMERON’S BLOG IGNORES LIB DEM CONTRIBUTION _ WORRYING
We’ve hit the ground running
David Cameron, Friday, July 30th, 2010 .
Parliament has risen, summer is here and this coalition government is nearly at the three month mark. It’s a good time to take stock of what we’ve done so far and where we’re going. Eleven weeks in and I believe we’ve made a good start.
We said we’d take the tough decisions needed to rescue our economy and we’ve been doing that. We’ve scrapped Labour’s jobs tax, completed an in-year spending review to save £6 billion of waste and presented an emergency Budget that will balance the books within five years.
We promised radical reform of our public services and we’re delivering, with a big expansion of the academy programme in our schools and unprecedented reform of the NHS – £1 billion of bureaucracy cut, pointless targets scrapped, whole tiers of bureaucracy abolished and real power for GPs and patients.
We campaigned relentlessly on pushing power out from the centre and we’re making it happen. Eric Pickles’ department has been busy dismantling the architecture of top-down control, scrapping Regional Assemblies, Regional Strategies and the bureaucracy of RDAs.
We said we’d do the right thing by our troops and we’ve been doing that too. We have established a National Security Council, made sure we have a clear strategy on Afghanistan and doubled the Operational Allowance for our Forces.
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it does show our intent to hit the ground running as a great reforming government. And just as we’ve started, so we’ll go on – taking the tough decisions on our economy, radically re-thinking our public services, pushing power out to people and doing all we can to restore Britain’s standing in the world.
But however frenetic the coming months and years will be, however busy life in government is, I will never forget how we got here – through your hard work and your tireless campaigning.
Thank you for your continuing support – and have a great summer.
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“whole tiers of bureaucracy abolished and real power for GPs and patients.”
Whoa! Hold on a minute there, Mr Cameron. “Equity & Excellence” is only a white paper, with another to come at the end of the year, and 16 separate consultations, the first of which is completed in September. None of this is law yet, but you are talking as if it has already happened! What does this say about your attitude to Parliament, David? Isn’t there just a possibility that the likes of Tim Farron and Tony Greaves might prevail, and Parliament doesn’t agree to your proposals to semi-privatise the NHS? You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, methinks.
Dismissing public servants as “bureaucrats” is is the typical behaviour of an arrogant public school bully.
“and have a great summer.”
Is Dave going to go up into the sky and sweep the clouds away? Now, that might be worth a vote or two…