Mark Pack

Yesterday I covered the news that Liberal Democrat Lord Lester is going to table a bill to reform libel law. He’s now released details of what approach the bill will take: Introduce a statutory defence of responsible publication on a matter of public interest; Clarify the defences of justification and fair comment, renamed as ’truth’ and ‘honest opinion’; Respond to [...] »

Regular readers of  my posts about online politics will know my scepticism of the extent to which online fundraising can work in the UK on the same scale as it does in the US (e.g. because there’s a different attitude towards supporting causes by giving money rather than time in the US and because in [...] »

I've commented before on how the rise of social media has given unhappy newspaper readers far more ability to express their views and gain a head of steam than was the case previously. There's been another example of this in the last few days over on the Daily Telegraph. The brief summary: Cristina Odone writes piece attacking [...] »

The ramming through of the Digital Economy Bill during Parliament’s ‘wash-up’ period has got the most attention, online at least. However there is another measure that was forced through, and this one without even a proper vote, which should have people up in arms. A change to Section 106 of the Postal Services Act 2000 might [...] »

Changes in position and score are since March’s figures, and the same caveats apply as before to these numbers from TweetLevel (i.e. Twitter isn’t the only thing in the world, and this isn’t the only way of measuring people’s influence on / use of Twitter). New this month to Twitter are Evan Harris, Nick Harvey and [...] »

Excellent to see Evan Harris, the MP for Oxford West & Abingdon, become the latest Liberal Democrat MP on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DrEvanHarris I've also added him to my list of all Liberal Democrat MPs on Twitter, which lets you follow them all in one place: http://twitter.com/#/list/markpack/libdem-mps  »

From the BBC: MPs have backed a series of reforms aimed at beefing up the ability of backbenchers to create new laws and hold the government to account. Proposals backed include a creating a backbench committee to set a timetable for Commons business. A bid by the Labour and Tory front benches to restrict the committee to setting [...] »

The debates and disputes around the Liberal Democrats’ Bournemouth conference give a taste of what is likely to be a tricky process of drawing up the party’s manifesto for the next general election. Formally, there is a three part process to that manifesto: the manifesto working group chaired by Danny Alexander will present work to the [...] »