Mark Pack

More problems with the general election administration have come to light in Wolverhampton South West, with the news that one of the marked registers has gone missing. An investigation is already taking place into a mismatch between the number of ballot papers counted and the number issued, with more having been recorded as counted than were officially issued. »

The lovely phrase “spray on evidence” was coined in the late 1990s in frustration at the attitude towards evidence shown by many in the Labour government. Though officially the government was determinedly set on a course of evidence-based policy, many of those involved in policy making felt that evidence was being applied as a bit [...] »

So starts today's write up in the Financial Times of the latest Liberal Democrat Voice survey of party members. It's a reflection of the media's current deep interest in talks of splits or absence thereof that the FT should have given a long page 2 column to the story no less. Full details of this [...] »

Last August, the then Labour government commissioned a KPMG report into the future of NHS Direct (along with some other related NHS services). The report has been submitted to the current government, though not published. So if Labour MPs and members were saying how the government must publish the KPMG report right away to see [...] »

I was pleased to see the news this morning that Bjorn Lomborg’s views on climate change have shifted, particularly as his scepticism has often been rather thoughtful. In particularly, he opened up an important debating by pointing out that money spent on stopping global warming needs to be judged against not only global warming’s likelihood [...] »

The latest edition of Total Politics includes a feature piece about Sharon Bowles, Liberal Democrat MEP and chair of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee: The Lib Dem MEP is a hugely powerful and yet virtually unknown British politician. She has had far more impact on our legislation than your average Westminster politician… [...] »

Contradictory news from Facebook about the state of Lembit Opik’s campaign to become the Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor. The number of fans of his campaign page is now up to 178. However, although his campaign says the page is “the main point of contact for those involved in the campaign to win the [...] »

Interesting figures from the Met Police: Tamil Ceasefire protests – estimated total policing cost of £12.8m G20 Summit – estimated total policing cost of £7.4m Notting Hill Carnival – estimated total policing cost of £6.6m Summer Climate Camp – estimated total policing cost of £2.3m Some of those seem pretty good value for money such [...] »

On the Tuesday lunchtime of the Liberal Democrat autumn conference I'm chairing a discussion organised by Cancer Research UK and the Royal College of General Practitioners on the theme of "Time is of the essence: diagnosing cancer earlier". More details are over on the PubAffairs website here. As I blogged previously on the following day, [...] »

The Twitter hashtag that's emerged as the one for people to use when tweeting about Liberal Democrat conferences is #ldconf. If you are following an event live, following a hashtag can be a great way of getting an extra feel for what people are thinking and doing. It's a bit like the difference between watching [...] »