Good morning, and welcome to Daily View.

Today is notable as the day before LDV’s fascinating fringe event on how to make authoritarian MPs pay at the ballot box – do join us tomorrow in Birmingham to find out how.

302 years ago today, Queen Anne was the last British monarch to withhold Royal Assent from a bill of Parliament.

In 1864, Sheffield saw a Great Flood when a dam under construction burst. The ensuing inundation wrecked a number of bridges, destroyed 800 houses and killed 270 people.

People born on March 11th include Laurence Llewellyn Bowen, Harold Wilson and Douglas Adams; and deaths include Alexander Fleming, John Wyndham and Slobodan Milošević.

2 Big Stories

Parties battle over high speed rail

Will Labour’s Y or the Conservative Reverse-S win the day? Find out in The Times

Clegg will unveil 4 demands

The Independent is trailing party leader Nick Clegg’s keynote conference speech. Will he take Stephen’s sage coalition advice?

Mr Clegg will use his party’s spring conference in Birmingham starting tomorrow to unveil “four steps to fairness” that would be his initial negotiating demands for backing a minority government led by David Cameron or Gordon Brown.

Four things, you say? Whatever could they be?

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• Stuart Bonar puts the costs of the Iraq war into perspective
• Jennie Rigg trumpets the rise and rise of the sex-positive feminist

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

One final thing – did you realise how big and scary Google is? Bonus points if you can identify the end image before the film gets to it.

Good morning and welcome to Thursday’s Daily View.

There’s a huge chunk of exciting things that happened today in history, so it’s an auspicious day to welcome a baby Cullen. Our technical editor Ryan has been tweeting progress, and as I write this there’s a lot of pushing going on. Best wishes from all at LDV to the Cullen family – I’m sure LDV Towers will soon get used to night feeds. I’m dusting off my copy of Gina Ford as I type.

So, today in history: the US Congress met for the first time in 1789. In 1790, France was divvied into départements. In 1797, John Adams succeeded George Washington, the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times. Chicago was founded in 1837; Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake premiered in Moscow in 1877 and in 1882, East London saw Britain’s first electric trams. The first Daimler car was unveiled and in 1933, the first woman joined the US Cabinet.

March 4th birthdays include Vivaldi, in 1678, Sir Patrick Moore, and Nottingham novellist Alan Sillitoe (I was at the meeting of Nottingham City Council that made him an honorary freeman of the city, incidentally)

2 Big Stories

Evil Gays update

Civil partnerships – gay marriages – could soon be registered in places of worship – something currently expressly banned by statute, which is particularly unfair on those faiths which don’t have a problem with gay relationships, including Quakers and Reform Judaism. The Times has one version of the information; the Telegraph on the other hand manages to paint a far more bleak version of the havoc that could be wrought by litigious homos.

Meanwhile, David Cameron has averred that his party’s tax breaks, maternity and paternity rights planned for married couples will also be available to their civilly partnershipped brethren. Not quite sure how this tallies with last month’s pronouncement that would be no new gay rights under the Tories.

Evil Lib Dems update

The Independent has the shocking scoop that a wealthy Liberal Democrat hoping to get elected has spent a lot of money on campaigning.

The money has been donated by Chris Nicholson, who is standing for the Liberal Democrats in Streatham, south London. Keith Hill, who is stepping down as Labour MP for Streatham at the election, told the Commons that nearly all of the money had been spent on campaigning in the constituency.

The rotter!

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• James Graham: Scientologists to proselytise at Conference
• Jonathan Calder: on the last living member of the 1945 Parliament

Michael Foot RIP

A number of Liberal Democrat bloggers wrote about the death of Michael Foot yesterday.

• Stephen Glenn
• Jeremy Rowe
• Nader Fekri
• Andrew Reeves
• Burkes Workes
• Stuart Bonar
• Jonathan Wallace

For me, perhaps the most striking thing was that he lead the Labour Party through a general election when he was 69. How times change – the press wouldn’t let Menzies Campbell do that.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

Two weeks from now, the Lib Dems’ spring conference will all be over and delegates will be back home on the ground in their constituencies.

The new location of Birmingham for our conference brings a whole host of opportunities to Lib Dem members who live in parts of the country previously untouched by conference season.

Training

The most important of these is that you do not need to be a delegate to benefit from party training and fringe sessions held away from the main venue.  The party is running a full day of  training in Birmingham on Saturday, 13th March – and these training sessions are available to all conference delegates and all party members who remember their party membership card.

Sessions include

• Election planning workshops
• Election law training
• Campaign essentials

For councillors and people interested in local government,  there are special sessions run by ALDC and the IDEA, including

• Council budgets in the age of austerity
• Managing a coalition
• Recruiting good and diverse council candidates

A full list of all the training is available on the party’s Conference website – in PDF format, clear print and plain text.

Fringe sessions

And it’s not just the training that’s available to all party members in possession of a current membership card. Many of the fringe meetings organised by special interest groups and the party’s own organisations are also governed by the same rules.

These include

• Lib Dem Education Association AGM – for teachers, governors, councillors with school or social care responsibilities
• ALDC’s Council Group of the Year award ceremony
• Social Liberal Forum’s One Society campaign
• Tax injustice and the young

A full list of fringe events is available in the Conference Directory, beginning on page 25. This too is available as a full colour PDF, a clear text PDF and as plain text. You’re looking for the events that take place in the Crowne Plaza hotel rather than the ICC.

So if you can’t afford a full registration, or the time away from your campaign, but live within easy reach of Birmingham, it’s well worth considering whether it’s worth attending just for a training session or a fringe meeting.

If you do think it’s worth your while attending just the one day of conference, there’s a final option available to you.

Attend as a day delegate

One way of getting a lot out of conference without spending a lot of money on accommodation or registration is to register as a day delegate. This is particularly relevant at Spring conference where most of conference happens on the Saturday – although there are good events happening on the Friday evening, and of course the Leader’s Speech and two policy papers being debated in the main hall on Sunday morning.

Full information on attending as a day delegate is available here, but the basics are under the “Onsite registration” heading:

On-site Registration

For those members who miss the advance registration deadline or just want to attend conference as a day visitor, on-site registration at The ICC Birmingham is also available. The registration area is located in Hall 9 off The Mall on the ground floor of The ICC.

On-site registration is a simple four-step process:

1. Complete the relevant registration form which is available in the registration area.
2. Have your party membership confirmed at the Membership Desk – please ensure you bring your membership card with you.
3. Pay any applicable charges* at the Finance Desk.
4. Last stop, collect your conference pass from the Registration Desk – no need to bring a photograph as one can be taken on-site, free of charge.

The cost is a bargain at £20 – but remember that doesn’t include any of the paperwork, which you can purchase separately or download – and as a day visitor, you won’t be able to speak or vote on conference motions, even if you are a conference rep.

See you in Birmingham!

Well, let’s see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. Then it was February 11th and time for Daily View, on this, Canadian actor Leslie Nielson’s birthday.

He shares the date with the Beast of Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, and Caribou Barbie, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Other notable occurrences today include the death of Sylvia Plath in 1963 and the début of Julia Child’s US TV show The French Chef in 1963. If you’ve never seen it before, go see Julia making omelettes.

2 Cheerful Stories

British Retail’s “irreversible downward spiral”

The Guardian has news that some British towns and cities have so many empty shops they may never recover:

Many of Britain’s towns and cities are suffering from such huge shop vacancy rates that they risk becoming ghost towns, wiping hundreds of millions of pounds off property values, a study revealed yesterday.

Cities such as Wolverhampton and Bradford, where nearly a quarter of shops lie empty, could be on an irreversible downward spiral as a result of the financial crisis. The research by the Local Data Company shows retail vacancy rates across Britain rose 2% in the past six months of last year to 12%, with some towns seeing as much as 24% of its shops lying empty.

“As much as 24%” ? What’s wrong with “Almost a quarter” ?

Oh, and NB, the photo in the story is my home city Nottingham. I’m not sure where it was taken, but it’s not really typical of the city.

Don’t care what the retirement age rises to, I’ll be dead

Good news for unemployed young people: the Independent has the glum news that many people won’t make it as far as retirement:

Plans to raise the retirement age to 68 will cause hardship for millions because three-quarters of people could be too ill to work, a Government-commissioned report warns today. […] Up to 2.5 million years of life are being lost each year in England as a result of poor people dying prematurely, the report estimated.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• Lord Avebury on Uganda

As it happens, the House of Lords was debating legislation to add two countries to the ‘white list’ of states which are supposedly safe for asylum-seekers to return to. I started my speech with a reference to the treatment of gays in certain countries, and Uganda in particular.

• Andrew Reeves’s two very different correspondents

Today has been a bizarre day, first John Prescott the former Deputy Prime Minister read my blog post about the hypocritical Tories and lobbyists, and then twittered the message around his followers.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

Coming up on LDV later today:

• What Disraeli really meant
• How can we sell STV?
• Shock result – Nick Clegg approval rating
• Social media and foreign policy.

Stay tuned!

That’s it from me today – now if you’ll excuse me, I have to drive to Scotland.

Last night, newly elected councillor Alex Folkes broke the news on his blog that he’d won the New Councillor award in the LGIU c’llr awards.

Obviously I’m very very chuffed at the news and want to thank the LGIU very much indeed.

LDV often share facilities with Cllr Folkes at conference when he’s working as a photographer – indeed much of his work is available for use, if correctly credited, at the Lib Dem Flickr group.

The criteria for the award were:

• election for the first time in June 2009
• visible positive impact on the political group and/or community
• they will have pioneered new projects, made an impact on the political groups’ vision, and/or developed initiatives that have made an immediate impact on the community.

Certainly his regular blog giving details of the issues facing Cornwall, Cornwall Council and Launceston in particular go a long way to meeting those criteria.

Congrats!

Good morning, on this misty day which in history saw three awful earthquakes – in Haicheng, Guatemala and Afghanistan.

This day is a birthday to American civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks (pictured) as well as to the American vice-president famously unable to spell “potato”, Dan Quayle.

Deaths on the 4th February include Liberace and American novelist novellist writer Patricia Highsmith, who wrote Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr Ripley, and – according to Wikipedia at least – the first lesbian novel with a happy ending.

Today is also Facebook’s 6th birthday. How many other 6 year-olds earned $300m last year, had new words entered into dictionaries, and caused moral panic?

2 Big Stories

Legg Report published

Later today, Sir Thomas Legg’s report will be published on Parliament’s website. The Guardian – MPs ordered to pay back more than £1m reports:

The former civil servant charged with probing MPs’ expenses claims will deliver his final, damning verdict on their conduct when he reveals that he has ordered 350 of them to pay back a total of more than £1m.

In a report said to be “devastating” for the reputation of parliament, Sir Thomas Legg will criticise the “culture of deference” MPs created in which they expected Commons officials to unquestioningly pay out for their claims.

Using blunt language, he will accuse MPs of a collapse in their ethics regarding the expenses system. “The whole system lost sight of the Nolan principles,” the report, to be published , will say.

The Daily Express has a rather more trenchant headline – FIDDLING MPS WILL GET AWAY WITH IT and a predictable quote from the Tax Payers’ Alliance.

Final word on this goes to Lib Dem Phil Willis MP:

We had an independent report, we asked for it to be put in place. It should have happened. Instead we’ve had these layers of different processes that have been contradictory and conflicting. We won’t win confidence back if the watchdogs are arguing with each other.

The Car In Front Is Behaving Erratically

Meanwhile, if the car in front appears to be having difficulties keeping to the rules of the road, it may not be the fault of the driver, as the Times reports.

Toyota has suspended the delivery of thousands of new cars as the crisis over defective accelerator pedals threatens to engulf the company.

The Japanese manufacturer, the biggest car company in the world, revealed last night that 180,865 vehicles in the UK might be affected.

Accelerator pedals on seven models, it said, may get stuck. It said that it would be recalling models in the coming days to fit a new part to solve the problem. The recall affects about one in nine of the 1.6 million Toyotas on British roads.

There’s never been a better time to buy an Audi.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• Nigel Griffiths calendar

No, not the big one from Pie in the Sky on a Calendar Girls-style naked photoshoot, but some rather unfortunate campaigning from an MP who has just decided to retire, not fight on.

Stephen’s Linlithgow Journal has the details.

• Electoral Reform

Sanjay Samani argues that change must include the Lords:

I personally feel that with a combination of reforming the House of Lords and the House of Commons in a co-ordinated, joined up manner, we can get the best of both worlds. Between the two Houses we can have both single constituency MPs elected by AV, multi member constituencies voted by STV and if necessary, some national or at least regional proportionality.

That is why the House of Lords must be reformed along with the House of Commons. It is incredible that after 13 years and 3 Labour Governments we still have an unelected House of Lords. Few would have believed that was possible back in 1997.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

Coming up later today:

• Good news for Alex Folkes
• Social media and politics – our series continues
• Political quiz – how is your knowledge of Scandinavian politics of the 1950s?
• How to get LDV by email
• And Chris White taking on private companies.

Cast your world-weary, battle-hardened, politico and political eyes over this disgusting filth spewing from the keyboard of swivel-eyed maniacs working through the night on behalf of some disreputable campaign to send vile messes to hard working Tory PPCs:

Can you clarify that:

You accept that climate change is caused by human activity?

Do you support the target to achieve 15% renewable energy by 2020?

Do you support the EU imposing tougher regulation to combat climate change?

Hardly the worst questions a campaigner will receive.

In my brief time working in politics both as an elected representative myself and for MEPs and MPs, I have seen some disturbing correspondence. I have seen candidates shouted down in roomsful of people who have nothing in common with my guy. I have opened scary letters from people who are plainly mentally ill, and been briefed by Special Branch on what to do with suspect packages. During the time I worked for Nick Clegg MEP, Elspeth Attwooll MEP’s office received dangerous acids disguised as cosmetic samples. And let us not forget what happened in Nigel Jones’s office in 2000.

And of course as every elected representative does, I’ve seen mountains of postcard campaigns and boilerplate letters from all sorts of different special interest groups, some of them alarmingly specific. Clearly, you have to decide if and how to respond to each different campaign, judging each on its merits. You can choose to answer. You can write a boilerplate response or find one from party colleagues. You can go the whole gamut from ignoring it to filing it carefully in a database and routinely mailing the correspondent with the latest update on the issue in question.

Posting the name and address of your correspondent on a national newspaper’s blog so that the readers think it’s time to set off a harassment campaign? Maybe not so much.

Good morning, and welcome to Daily View this morning. 24 years ago, 28 January saw the NASA Challenger disaster.

It’s the date of the death of Henry VIII and the beginning of the Diet of Worms. (If they went to that sort of effort, I hope they lost a lot of weight!)

197 years ago today saw the first publication of Pride and Prejudice and in 1958, Lego bricks were first patented. Today’s bricks still mesh with the original 1958 system.

Birthday bunny hops today go to novelist David Lodge and hobbit-actor Elijah Wood.

2 Big Stories

Boris Johnson to stand down as chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority

Over to the Guardian for today’s first story.

In direct contradiction to his manifesto, Boris Johnson has decided he doesn’t have time to be a writer, a mayor, and a Police Authority chair, and so something had to give.

Tory Troll has a bunch of handy quotes and links on the story.

Fathers to get six months paternity leave

That sounds familiar, I thought, when I read the headline.

Turns out the Labour party has borrowed one or two pages out of Lib Dem early years policy.

This is not a fact mentioned in the Telegraph reporting of same story.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• A Lanson Boy: Cornish Guardian Expose on Twitter Gang

Alex Folkes with news of a Twitter clique gaining influence on Cornwall Council – and with a staunch defence of the practical uses for Twitter for councillors. Hear hear, @alexfolkes

• Vic d’Albert: Poverty is Labour’s biggest failure

Strong words from Vic:

The trouble is [Labour] have […] thrown millions of pounds at the problem, almost scatter cushion like, without going to the fundamental issues that drive poverty and curse many born into poverty. And coupled with new labours conservative approach to personal taxation, especially in their first Blair Parliament from ‘97, they have undermined their own ambitions to deal with poverty.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

And now? Back to hunting for P60s.

Good morning and welcome to Daily View. If you submit a tax return, there are hardly any days left to get on with it.

On this day in 1908, New York City voted to ban women from smoking in public. Two years ago, Black Monday did a number on the world’s stock markets.

In birthdays, we sing a song to Commander in Chief star Geena Davis and Christian Dior, who were born today.

And in deaths, we remember George Orwell – and use him as an excuse to pimp this link – a cartoon that fears that when it comes to dystopias, it was Aldous Huxley who nailed it, rather than George Orwell.

2 Big Stories

Stop the presses!

Men are wearing shorts in the snow in New York.

Top 10 jobs

The Telegraph has a rather depressing list of top ten recession proof careers. Corporate governance, anyone?

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• Charles Masterman’s fate shows we should not be surprised the Democrats lost in Massachusetts

Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England recalls that the introduction of the NHS to the UK was not plain sailing – so why should anyone expect Obamacare to be without pitfalls?

• Reporting back from the Fabians

Like the Voice’s own Sara Bedford, James Graham attended the recent Fabian conference and gives his assessment of Vince’s performance at a session called What Not to Spend.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

And if you’ll excuse me, I have P60s to find.

Today there will be a special election in the US state of Massachusetts to elect a new Senator to represent the state after Ted Kennedy’s death last year.

And boy, are the stakes high for this one.

Nominally an extremely safe seat for the Democrats, the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley should be a shoe-in.

And yet Republican former centrefold star Scott Brown, once voted by Cosmo as America’s Sexiest Man (the link is fairly safe for work, but does contain a tastefully cropped naked man) has been closing the gap in the polls, and in some cases even taken a lead.

Of key importance in this battle is the senatorial supermajority, which we have covered on The Voice in the past. In the US senate, a party with 60 of the 100 senators – or the votes of 60 senators – can move a vote of cloture which can end a filibuster. This removes from the minority party a powerful tool to veto legislation by talking it out. This has become all the more fraught recently since Obamacare, the extremely controversial healthcare legislation currently under consideration. If the Republicans win the Massachusetts, the Democrats lose their right of veto and they could lose Obamacare.

Here’s a video for each candidate to give you a flavour of the battle.

First, President Obama is staking his political reputation to support Martha Coakley and underlining the future of Obamacare:

Youtube link

(Is it an indication of the way the campaign is going that it’s actually quite hard to find pro-Martha videos on Youtube? Many copies of her ads have been interspersed with rebuttals; and her own attack ads misspell Massachusetts – which frankly is easily done.)

And secondly an absurdly overblown video for Scott Brown drawing a dubious historical parallel with the some of the most exciting movie music I’ve heard this year.

Youtube link