Details arrive at the Voice of a launch of our General Election housing policy:

The Liberal Democrats today set out plans to bring a quarter of a million empty homes back into use, making homes available for people who need them and creating 65,000 jobs.

There are over 760,000 empty properties across England which are no longer used as homes but can be brought back into use with some investment. People who own these homes will get a grant or a cheap loan to renovate them so they can be used: grants if the home is for social housing, loans for private use.

The plans form part of the economic stimulus package outlined as a core principle of the Liberal Democrat election manifesto. In the first year of the new Parliament, the party would redirect over £3.6bn of spending to create jobs and build up Britain’s infrastructure. In the following years this money will be redirected to other Lib Dem spending priorities and reducing the structural deficit.

This is excellent news, and win-win-win-win territory. Homeless families win – increasing the housing stock makes it easier to find a home. Owners of empty properties win because it helps them turn a burden into an asset. It’s good for the environment because restoring existing properties is more carbon-efficient than building new homes from scratch, and because it can help councils resist green-belt development and new land take for housing. Providing more housing in existing communities also helps with transport and infrastructure planning. Local authorities win because occupied homes pay council tax, whilst empty ones often don’t. And it’s a win for employment and jobs since getting 750,000 homes up to standard is going to take a lot of employees to do.

And as well as all those wins, it’s a good thing for all those of us living in streets with empty homes that make our streets look deserted. And if, like me, you’re living in a semi-detached house with no neighbour, it would be good news for my heating bill not to have a cold empty house leaching my heat by conduction through the party wall!

Perhaps we could go a little further? Currently there is no statutory responsibility for councils to tackle empty homes in their areas and for many, this is not a priority. Where they exist, Empty Homes Officers can often have a huge workload and have to concentrate their efforts into the worst, most dangerous properties in their areas, whilst the more easily relettable ones lie empty. And the longer they’re empty the harder it will eventually be to bring them back into use.

Existing powers such as Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMOs) are unwieldy and seldom used. They have numerous failings as this piece by Peter Black from Freedom Central explains. And even when councils are minded to use them, they are an expensive tool which must be funded from existing resources. Manchester councillor Iain Donaldson has called for greater central funding to be available to help use EDMO legislation more widely.

One final useful link: if there’s an empty home in your street, you can report it using Shelter’s ReportEmptyHomes.com website. It will take details from you about where the home is and pass them onto your local authority. If your council is on the ball, they can respond with what they are doing about that property to bring it back into use.

Good morning afternoon and welcome to Daily View on a largely uneventful day in history. 152 years ago today, Napoleon III wasn’t assassinated. It’s the day Martin Niemöller was born, the author of the words about Holocaust victims, “First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist so I did not speak out.”

Today Richard Briers, Faye Dunaway and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are celebrating birthdays, and we remember Lewis Carroll’s death.

2 Big Stories

Haiti victim search

All the papers lead today with news of the continuing search for survivors amongst the debris following the massive earthquake in Haiti.

Times: Race against time for Haiti earthquake aid
Telegraph: Race to save thousands of lives
Daily Mail: Haiti razed to the ground: Horrifying new pictures reveal extent of earthquake destruction
Guardian: International teams join Haiti rescue operation

Ten years of Popbitch

The Indy reports how a cult internet newsletter changed gossip magazines forever.

In the site’s early years, the Beckhams were quinteIn the site’s early years, the Beckhams were quintessential Popbitch fodder. Known to the mailout’s recipients as “Derek” (David was introduced as “Derek” at an event in the US in 2003 and the name stuck) and “Skeletor”, Posh and Becks produced some of the site’s most famous – and notorious – scoops. In 2002, Popbitch was the first to report that Victoria was pregnant with the couple’s second son, Romeo. It published allegations of David’s infidelity 18 months before the tabloids. And a regular Popbitch poster broke the news of the footballer’s move from Manchester to Madrid more than four months before the mainstream press had the 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:

• Cameron = Data

James Graham is trying to get proper credit for his suggestion last week that David Cameron’s new airbrushed pictures look a little like Data from Star Trek

• Threat of benefit cuts to cancer patients unacceptable

Ming Campbell comments on a dubious policy that needs reform.

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.

The calendar and the clock are marching ever on, and whilst it might feel like you’ve barely blinked since Christmas, important deadlines in the Conference office are fast approaching.

LDV have booked a big room for a conference fringe event on the Friday night and we have until the 15th to decide how much information to put in the conference pack about the Exciting Secret Project our boffins and wonks are collaborating on late into the night. We’re of course stuck between a pillar and post – will the event be so massively oversubscribed we might need to remove walls, like our Obama event a year ago – or will there be only a handful of people as the Rally massively overruns and takes all our punters, as at our “Campaigning after Rennard” last September.

But talking about the fringe venue booking deadline is a little self indulgent when the vast majority of conference-goers won’t be organising fringe events.  Two rather more important deadlines are also fast approaching.

Motion and registration deadlines

An email from Conference office gives all the information you need:

To submit a motion for spring conference, a motions submission form is available online, which explains who can submit motions – the main routes are by local parties and by any ten elected reps. Simply download and submit your motion for the Federal Conference Committee to consider by 12 noon on 13 January 2010.

For further details on how you can take part in conference, visit our new Democracy in Action web page for information on voting, speaking and submitting motions and questions at conference. The site also includes a useful guide on how to write a better motion.

Don’t forget: There are still great savings to be made before 17.30 on 20 January 2010 if you have not yet registered for spring conference 2010. Visit www.libdems.org.uk/spring_conference for more information and to register.

Information for journalists

If you’re on the party’s press release list you will have seen recently that the deadline for free press accreditation is also coming up soon. If you want to register for free as a journo, you need to get this form (PDF) completed before the 1st February. You don’t get too much for your free pass – you’ll have to pay extra if you want access to a desk, a chair and two power sockets.

It’s snowing. It’s cold. Much of Britain is housebound.

Here are some top tips to keep your constituency campaigning in the snow.

1. Telephone canvass!
2. Get your photos for next year’s Christmas card now!
3. Use time trapped indoors to review your plans.  Have you ordered your ink, sourced your suppliers and got a name next to every action point?
4. How’s that to-do list looking?
5. Are you practicing Inbox Zero?  What better time to start!
6. How snowy are your neighbours’ roofs?  If some houses in your street / ward / constituency have the snow and ice melting faster than others, then it’s a clear indication they don’t have enough loft insulation.  So go look up what grants are available in your area, and go let people know.
7. How’s your data?  If you haven’t frozen your EARS to send it to Pampisford Road, here are some questions for you: are all your email addresses in it? Including your members? Have you got the most recent postal voter list from the Council?  Are January’s register updates processed?
8. How’s your e-campaigning? Is your website up to date?
9. Sort out an events programme for next year.  Some events – Pizza and Politics, Hot Potato evening, wine tasting, Liberal Drinks – take next to no organising. But having a regular programme of events is a steady source of social capital amongst your members and is an easy step for new interested people. Next time someone approaches you for more information about your local party you can say “come and join us at our next Liberal Drinks!”  So now, in the snow, phone round the pub-goers and the members who have less tidying to do before they can have guests, and set up a programme.  And once you have…
10. …prepare a members’ newsletter!  Here’s a handy insert if your newsletter needs a little padding.

An email arrives from the editor of YourThurrock.com pointing us to a YouTube interview they’ve done with local PPC Carys Davies.

You can see the interview here, as well as register to leave comments.

Thurrock, if you didn’t already know, is in Essex. Gotta love a place whose Wikipedia History section begins “Mammoths once grazed in the Thurrock area[citation needed].” Is it the WP equivalent of “First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came…” ?

At the end of January, the LDV team will be meeting to discuss how we cover the general election. As a site launched in 2006, we’ve not been through a general election before so it will be new ground for us all. If you have views about what you’d like to hear, let us know in the comments here. More videos like this, as and when we’re told about them? Or not?

Good morning and welcome to Daily View on 7th January. Waking up to a cold frosty reception this morning are Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Labour ministers and fellow East Midlanders Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt – and, well, pretty much the rest of us as temperatures are set to stay below freezing for most of the country for most of the day.

The 7th January in history saw a trio of firsts: Galileo Galilei first observed the largest moon of Jupiter; the first use of the modern Italian flag; and the first transatlantic telephone call.

A trio of Nicks have birthdays today: Nicholson Baker, the American novelist; Nicolas Cage, the tax defaulting American actor – and our own Nick Clegg MP, who is 43 today!

And in misogyny news: today is Distaff Day, when traditionally, women, who’d had a break from household work over Christmas, began their domestic tasks again.

2 Big Stories

Today we have one nice story and a load of links poking fun at the Labour party.

Lord Mandelson plans street parties for Queen’s diamond jubilee

Mind you, even this story in the Telegraph, ostensibly about something else entirely, can’t help but speculate on Gordon’s much-demanded departure. Here’s the Lib Dem relevant paragraphs:

Lord McNally, for the Liberal Democrats, had to cough to get himself heard, for Lord Mandelson had risen too soon. This faux pas prompted Lord McNally to say, “That’s a bad start to the year,” before demanding street parties and mugs to celebrate the jubilee.

A lesser performer would have been thrown by the embarrassment of forgetting the genial Lord McNally, but Lord Mandelson recovered without apparent effort, declaring himself strongly in favour of street parties and mugs.

Yay, street parties and mugs! Woo!

Labour Party News

And nearly all newspaper front pages are drawing parallels between the weather and the Labour Party. Here’s a brief roundup:

The Sun: -10…and that’s just the temperature inside Downing Street
Independent: The Winter revolt
The Times: Brown weathers storm

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:

• Is the North East a Colony of London?

Maureen muses on mis-management of our regions:

I had an interesting conversation this evening with someone who’d been part of the Respond project some years ago in Stockton. An Australian who had been part of some of the work had commented that a large part of the problem in the North East of England was that it was ruled as a colony from London. She saw many of the same attitudes in that relationship as she had experienced in Australia/England relationships years before.

• Which bit to grit?

That is the question; whether tis nobler to grit the principle bus routes and A and B roads, or take arms against a sea of pavements and disgruntled residents and sleep, perchance… yeah, you get the picture. Steve Middleton takes on Salford’s decisions.

I’m going to suggest something outrageous. The council did not need to grit.

Woah, steady on there, Steve!

OK, I warned you. Actually, it’s true. They could have plowed the snow on the “primary routes”, rather than gritted. This would have cleared the snow and the resulting heavy traffic would have kept the roads clear, thus, the grit could have been used on streets and pavements.

I imagine a number of councils will be reviewing their gritting arrangements in the near future.

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 of the many interesting and challenging jobs I am tasked with as a member of the exec of Nottingham Lib Dems is to produce a members newsletter five times a year. We have a big events programme built up of lots of easy-to-organise events, and so much of the content is taken up with the details and information about those.

But a recent training event with staff from Members Services at Lib Dem HQ set me thinking about what better could be in our members newsletter. Thinking back to how and why I joined the Lib Dems it was principally on political issues. Gay rights. Europe. Student finance. But none of these things ever gets a mention in our newsletter, and only rarely are our events issue-driven.

So I resolved to improve our local newsletter this year with more information about party thinking on key events. And yet… I’m no policy wonk. Where will I find all that information? Where might there be a ready source of information about key issues facing Lib Dems? Then I remembered “Our place to talk!” a handy little website you may have heard of, called Lib Dem Voice!

I’m a big fan of doing as little work as possible, and it strikes me we can meet several valuable objectives with one handy little newsletter. First, we can reach out to new readers for LDV amongst the Lib Dem membership. Second, we can help local parties around the country include a little more policy and links to the wider party in their members’ newsletters. Third, and best of all, since I’m artworking stuff for Nottingham, there’s no reason I can’t share that with a grateful nation.

And so today, I bring you a two-sided A4 sheet you can print out and distribute to your own members if you are producing a newsletter in the next month or so. You can download the PDF right here, right now.

Good morning on New Year’s Eve 2009 as we here at LDV Towers celebrate the passing of the year and indeed the decade. There’ll be fizz spilled on the Night Desk for sure, and I’m cooking beef wellington canapés and a chocolate/chestnut torte.

But what, I hear you ask over the hubub, happened on this day in history? Well, did you know that until the 1750s, the new year actually began on Lady Day (no, not her) in March? And in fact that’s why the tax year is still based around that time of year?

New Year’s Eve is the day on which, in 1951, the Marshall Plan ended (did you know the UK got more money out of it than any other nation? It didn’t help we still had the vestiges of empire to spend it in). In 1960, the farthing ceased to be legal tender; and in 1998, the value of the Euro was first establised.

Birthdays include Ben Kinglsey, Donna Summer, Val Kilmer and Alex Salmond – together at last!

Don’t forget Lib Dem Voice is still seeking your nominations for Liberal Voice 2009.

And one more thing – today there will be a Blue Moon – the second full moon within one calendar month. This won’t happen again until full moons either side of the London Olympics, in August 2012

But, finally, what of the newspapers and blogposts? Read more, after this:

NYE Bonus

And it’s over to the Telegraph, where David Cameron’s New Year message has not found favour with Simon Heffer:

David Cameron opened the batting on Monday with his New Year message, at a time when most of us simply wished to get on with Boxing Day in peace. It was a ludicrous document – ludicrous in its content and the pomposity of its self-regard – which you will forgive my not repeating here. Masochists will find it on the Conservatives’ website, complete with video. Two features of it stood out. The first was a lecture detailing some (but not all) of the attributes of contemporary politics and politicians that we find so distasteful. These included the adversarial nature of our democracy and the inability of those who participate in it to admit error. Since it already defied credibility that Mr Cameron was going to reject such behaviour for his own part and on behalf of his colleagues, I was not sure whether I was relieved or disappointed when he not only said he was guilty of such things, but would no doubt do them again. As messages of hope go, it was not of the first rank.

Read the rest here.

2 Big Stories

Russia plans to stop asteroid crashing to Earth

In news bound to please Lembit, the Russians are looking into plans to save humanity from the rapacious asteroid with a 1 in 125,000 chance of hitting the planet.

Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia’s space agency, said it would assess the difficulties of knocking the asteroid Apophis out of harm’s way. The 885-foot-wide asteroid was first discovered in 2004. Astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37, but have since lowered their estimate.

New Year partygoers told to keep a cool head as temperatures dip below zero

Wrap up warm, y’all.

Police chiefs, who will be trying to ensure the safety of huge crowds seeing in the new year in town and city centres, urged revellers to wrap up warm, but to keep a cool head. People should plan their route home before they start drinking, and be prepared for sleet and snow, they said.

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 comfortable place: what a waste!

Rob Parsons reports on recycling in Lewes:

In this part of Sussex we face a waste crisis. LibDem controlled Lewes District Council would like to recycle more of its waste than it does. But it’s not allowed to.

• Caron Lindsay: Labour undermines Royal Mail by using its competitors

Caron reports on parliamentary answers to questions of postage:

The Government claims to care about Royal Mail’s future, yet Liberal Democrats have learned, through answers to Parliamentary Questions, that no fewer than eight Government Departments use its competitors. Three of these departments, Culture, Media and Sport, Communities and the Foreign Office don’t use Royal Mail at all, while the other five, Children, Schools and Families; Health; Justice; Transport; and Work and Pensions use other services for part of its mail.

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, these mushroom duxelles won’t make themselves.

As a paid up member of the liberal élite that’s ruining our country, I do like to pop over to Daily Mail Island every now and again to see what’s exercising the minds of Britain’s tablerati.

This week had two eye-poppingly awful pieces that I just had to pick up on.

Firstly, Leo McKinstry’s sensitive, and thought provoking piece deftly picking at the complex moral issues surrounding the execution in China of Akmal Shaikh: HEROIN TRAFFICKERS DESERVE TO DIE.

No, wait, sensitive and thought provoking it is not. For a line-by-line demolition of the mountains of crud streaming forth from the piece, I leave you with a fisking by Sara Scarlett at Liberal Vision: Should we execute Kate Moss?

A civilised society also knows that the Law isn’t a science, it is an art and can get it badly, badly wrong. A civilised society does not risk executing innocent people either. And as for “maintain morality,” well, I think drug taking is a moral act. If it does not violate another individuals sovereignty and is the partake of consenting adults then the use of my tax pennies being used to stop it is immoral, quite frankly.

(The Daily Mail is, of course, a big fan of China. Just see this story praising the speed of construction of a new high speed train system. Massive transport projects must be so much easier when you don’t have to worry about the rights of those displaced by infrastructure or those employed to do the work. The Chinese road-builder principle – you can build roads quickly with the minimum of equipment if you throw enough labour at the problem)

Secondly, Liz Jones. If you’ve not encountered the woman before, as I hadn’t until someone sent me the link, you are in for a treat. Poor Ms Jones has maxed out her credit cards and was turned away from her usual boutique hotel in Shepherds Bush, meaning that she suffered the unimaginable indignity of not having her Prada suitcase taken by a bellboy or her BMW valet parked.

And this shocking fall from grace led Ms Jones to ponder the awfulness of homelessness in a self indulgent piece that defies any sort of sense. Ms Jones had options, you see. She could have plumped her pampered posterior back into her buffed BMW and driven herself back to her actual home. In the end, she phoned her agent who popped down and bailed her out. But those five minutes of being not-even-vaguely homeless weighed heavy on her conscious:

The wind whipped around my legs and it was suddenly very dark. I had been tossed on to life’s rubbish tip. For the first time, I felt what it must be like to be homeless, to have no money, no one to turn to. I realised that this was about the worst thing that can happen to you. Your humanity is stripped away and you become something to be moved along, stepped over, ignored.
I had reached my low spot through my own stupidity. I had spent too much money and was temporarily broke (my agent eventually turned up to bail me out). But while the plight of the homeless has gone out of fashion in recent years, it hasn’t gone away. Thousands of people still end up on the street because of mental illness, addiction, abuse or sheer bad luck.

Yes indeed, homelessness is bad. But her five minutes without a roof do not seem to have prompted Ms Jones to take any action. Just to redeem something out of this awful article, I’d like to ask you to make a donation to a homelessness charity, right now. Here are some links to national charities working in this area:

• Shelter
• Salvation Army (and listen to BBC Radio 4’s In Business about their work)
• Crisis

Drop us a note in the comments, or donate privately. But please – don’t let Liz Jones’s suffering have been in vain.

Good morning, and thank you for trudging through the snow and ice to Daily View. It’s Christmas Eve, and the staff at LDV Towers are expecting a half-day holiday if they get through all their work.

Across Europe, it’s today (rather than tomorrow) that many continental children receive their visit from Santa. Is that enough date-related trivia? Hell no! Carol Vorderman, Caroline Aherne and Barry Chuckle were all Christmas babies and are celebrating birthdays today.

Literary giants Harold Pinter and William Makepeace Thackery both died on Christmas eve, albeit 145 years apart.

And in events on Christmas eve: in 1946, the French Fourth Republic was founded; and in 1968 the crew of Apollo 8 were the first humans to escape the Earth’s gravity, and the first to broadcast the bible from space.

An eventful day! But click on to find what’s happening today.

2 Big Stories

All the papers are leading with some sort of CARMAGEDDON!

As up to 5 million motorists hit the roads to join relatives on Christmas Eve, delays, deaths and dangerous conditions loom. We’re certainly having the conversation in our household that many others across the country will all be having. Should we get into our car and drive across the country to join our family, or should we stop home and break out the emergency lentils?

The news stories seem to be advising stopping home and then conceding that most people will be making the journey anyway.

Times: Christmas travellers face icy roads and cancelled flights and trains
Daily Mail: Big freeze threat to family Christmas: As death toll hits 16, millions warned to stay off roads, jeopardising festive gatherings
Telegraph: Millions of motorists wait until Christmas Eve for last minute dash to family and friends
Guardian: Cold snap leaves record numbers of motorists stranded
And don’t miss: the Guardian’s Luton-centric photo gallery.

Church recruiting drive targets two-year-olds

The Guardian has details of an outreach programme for the Church of England to reconnect with the nation’s youth. Whether this is an outrageous indoctrination programme or a sensible connection of a volunteer resource with a needy demographic will depend on your point of view.

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:

• Duncan Stott finds a superb Youtube documentary about a lost Tube line – do watch it. How do you learn to edit video like that? How long must it have taken to shoot? And how did they film that bit of him running along the central reservation of the M1?!
• “Eco councillor” Alexis Rowell asks what planet is Mark Lynas on?

The meeting Mark was in as an adviser to the Maldives was not the UN conference – it was a conference wrecking sidebar, which may have done lasting damage to multilateral decision-making structures.

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.

Holiday Bonus

As a holiday bonus, Jonathan Calder has details of the design of the next Lib Dem election poster – and details of a new hard-line party discipline policy.