A nimble two-step from The Guardian: 1. Polly Toynbee sends tweet encouraging all and sundry to take part in an open-access online poll being run by the BMJ. 2. The Guardian reports result of said BMJ poll. Then only thing missing, alas, is: 3. The Guardian then realises that reporting a voodoo poll which its

Early last year I briefly reported on the shocking comments about the alleged rape of a child made by one of its Glasgow councillors, William O’Rourke. The case has now finally worked its way through the system and he has been banned from holding public office: A Glasgow Labour councillor has been banned from holding

It’s a great shame that so many Liberal Democrats have reacted to the political downfall of Chris Huhne by bashing his successor. Ed Davey is an immensely capable minister and will do a wonderful job in his new position. Sadly, some have chosen this news to complain because a woman wasn’t promoted instead of a

Over the past 21 months I have had many moments when I have felt close to despair about the behaviour of our parliamentarians. Sometimes, like voting in favour of tuition fees, they can rightly point to the Coalition Agreement – endorsed overwhelmingly – as Nick Clegg observed at the time – by a North Korean

In addition to the Government’s proposals to allow councils to charge full council tax on second homes, other Liberal Democrat MPs and I have tabled an amendment to the Local Government Finance Bill to give councils the discretion to introduce a Second Home Premium. Second home owners often ask why they should be ‘punished’ in

Performance data for secondary schools was published last week, and there is an important difference between the latest figures and those that have been published in previous years. For the first time we are publishing separately the GCSE achievements of looked after children and children on free school meals at each and every school –

This week the Liberal Democrats have had a close escape. Diana Wallis’s sudden resignation as an MEP highlight flaws in the party’s rules for picking a successor. Those rules aren’t new, but many people (myself included) have not paid that much attention to them in the past. It was only the circumstances of a resignation

What do Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, the Conservatives’ Peter Bottomley and our own Jenny Willott have in common? They’ve all signed up to this Early Day Motion tabled by Liberal Democrat MP for Ceredigion, Mark Williams. Mark’s motion welcomes a recent report* highlighting that job-sharing can stem the ‘female brain drain’ by enabling more women to

A new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), headed by a foreword by Lord Peter Mandleson, takes an in-depth look at the positive and negative impacts of the increased internationalisation of trade – what they characterise as the Third Wave of Globalisation. IPPR’s Will Straw and Alex Glennie set out how the modern increase in

Nick Clegg’s tax cut speech dominated the political headlines yesterday — you can watch a 4-minute snippet below: (Available on the BBC website here.) Here’s what my LibDemVoice colleagues had to say about Nick’s call for lower taxes: Clegg’s call for income tax cuts for the low paid is welcome, but will the Tories back