Mark Pack

Welcome to a series where old posts are revived for a second outing for reasons such as their subject has become topical again, they have aged well but were first posted when the site’s readership was only a tenth or less of what it is currently or they got published and the site crashed, hiding [...] »

The press notice from the Electoral Reform Society says: Katie Ghose has served for 5 years as Director of the British Institute of Human Rights, a national charity with a mission to bring rights to life for everyone in the UK. A public affairs specialist and barrister with a background in human rights law and [...] »

Earlier this month I highlighted how election posters in Australia, and other countries, feature close up head shots of candidates in a way that is almost completely unknown in the UK. Large head and shoulders photographs did, however, previously feature heavily in our election literature – on leaflets if not posters. For decades many leaflets [...] »

No, I didn’t think so either. Which makes the case of the Yes2AV.org domain name a little curious. Check the official records and you find that it is registered to Matthew Elliott, not the Australian cricketer but the man from the Taxpayers’ Alliance who is going to head up the “no” campaign for the AV [...] »

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott is clearly not put off by coalition from his pursuit of Tory donors and their tax statuses. Today it is Jon Wood, whose tax affairs have been in the papers with Lord Oakeshott saying, “Now is the time to take... »

Personally, I find it a bit fiddly navigating to the Liverpool conference paperwork on the main party website, so I've uploaded the two main booklets to Scribd for my own convenience. In case you find them useful too, here they are: Lib Dem Autumn 2010 Conference - Agenda Book Lib Dem Autumn 2010 Conference - Directory Book [...] »

On 3rd September I'm heading over to Chingford and Woodford Green Liberal Democrats to lead the discussion at a pizza and politics event about what's coming up at the party's Liverpool conference. The event is for Lib Dem members and starts at 7:30pm. It costs £6, for which you get pizza and the chance to [...] »

Using the official information on which MP is attending which fringe meeting, this is how the autumn 2010 conference league table looks: 15 Vince Cable 14 Sarah Teather 13 Paul Burstow Andrew Stunell 12 Simon Hughes 11 Norman Baker 10 Tim Farron 9 Jeremy Browne Steve Webb 8 Chris Huhne 7 Ed Davey Lynne Featherstone [...] »

According to the official election results, Wolverhampton South West saw more votes cast than there had been ballot papers issued. At the count there were 40,160 votes totalled up in the general election in May. However, the official records show that only 40,094 ballot papers should have been in the count, 66 less than the [...] »

Labour-run Brent Council has hit the local and regional news for its decision to pay for 27 senior staff and Labour councillors to spend the weekend at a luxury country hotel – where they planned budget cuts. The council is quite right that it is good management practice for senior teams every now and again [...] »