Published on Tuesday, 30th June, 2009 .
Published on Monday, 29th June, 2009 .
Published on Sunday, 28th June, 2009 .
Published on Saturday, 27th June, 2009 .
Published on Friday, 26th June, 2009 .
Published on Thursday, 25th June, 2009 .
Published on Thursday, 25th June, 2009 .
This is the fourth and final instalment of podcasts recorded at the Sheffield Local Solutions 2009 conference organised by ALDC. You can hear the earlier instalments here: Clegg and Scott; Scriven on Sheffield; Carbon Reduction Commitment.
In the final session of the day, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Julia Goldsworthy MP joined Cllr Paul Scriven, the leader of Sheffield Council, to reflect on the day and discuss current state of play for local government.
Both talk about the Sustainable Communities Act, its potential and their disappointment in Labour’s implementation of it so far; of Labour’s crazy ideas for local government in the future, including an eye watering 18 pages of legislation on what to do with petitions – issued, ironically, by a body that cannot be petitioned.
Apologies that this session began before I realised it, so the sound starts rather abruptly at the beginning, and we miss the introduction and Julia’s first few words.
You can listen to the sound file right here on the web, or you can download it for use with your MP3 player. Why not listen to the conference next time you’re out delivering leaflets? If you use iTunes you can search the podcast directory for Lib Dem Voice; for other podcast software, you can use this RSS feed of LDV’s audio content.
ALDC’s next major event is Kickstart, their annual autumn training weekend for groups of campaigners facing Council elections the following Spring. As Kath Pinnock pointed out at the end of the session, all of the county council campaign teams who attended last year’s Kickstart went on to make gains this year.
Published on Thursday, 25th June, 2009 .
How fitting that while Ricky Gervais and Phil Jupitus share a birthday with Michel Tremblay, a Canadian writer I studied as part of my degree, the US should be celebrating National Catfish Day.
Two big stories
Another climbdown for Brown as the Government backs off plans to bolster MPs’ pensions. Just hours after Clegg took Brown to task at PMQs for being wrong about Gurkhas, wrong about expenses and the Iraq enquiry. Now he’s admitted to being wrong about MPs’ pensions too. A planned increase had been accepted by all parties in March but the government now says it will accept a Lib Dem plan to freeze the amount from public funds. The proposal would have seen MPs’ own contributions rise by £60 a month, but the Lib Dems said taxpayers would have paid £750,000 more than last year.
And a curious story from the Guardian: Tory plans for emergency cuts cabinet – one of those headlines you have to look at backwards for a few minutes to work out the sense. Is it a Tory, planning for an emergency, deciding to cut cabinet? Ah, no, as we read the story, it is about an emergency cuts cabinet the Tories are planning. Scant seconds after wresting the reins of power from the disgraced Labour party, it seems the Tories would be careering the sleigh into the Forest of Slash and Burn, at least as far as the Guardian is concerned. So is this a real story? the scant attribution makes one wonder, but it is too detailed to be more Labour spin, so presumably Tories must have been briefing journalists at some point. And there’s the small matter of Dave winning an election first before George ever gets any opportunity to haul cabinet ministers over the coals for their spending plans.
2 must read blog posts
Stop the world, Andrew Reeves wants to get off. Or at least stop the madness that is 4 year olds having their own mobile phone. Fair enough, say I.
And the newly co-opted Cllr Lady Mark is getting to grips with his new representative role by looking into the vexed question of bus stops in Creeting St Peter. For the uninitiated, Lady Mark’s title is a protest at inequity: he’s married to Baroness Ros Scott, the fair president of this good party. Whilst female spouses of male peers get the courtesy title “lady”, male spouses of female peers and civil partners of peers do not have the courtesy extended to them.
Published on Wednesday, 24th June, 2009 .
Published on Wednesday, 24th June, 2009 .
The third of our instalments from ALDC’s local government conference Local Solutions takes the Government’s energy policy for local authorities as its topic.
You can still hear the first two instalments: Nick Clegg and Ros Scott, and Paul Scriven on Sheffield.
Today’s instalment is an excellent presentation from Mo Baines, from the Association for Public Service Excellence, talking about how councils will shortly be required to monitor closely just how much energy they are using and reduce it year on year.
You can listen to the sound file right here on the web, or you can download it for use with your MP3 player. Why not listen to the conference next time you’re out delivering leaflets? If you use iTunes you can search the podcast directory for Lib Dem Voice; for other podcast software, you can use this RSS feed of LDV’s audio content.
Our final instalment tomorrow is the final session of the conference with Julia Goldsworthy MP and Cllr Paul Scriven.
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