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I found quite a few I either didn’t know about or had forgotten, such as the ending of animal testing for household products. (Kudos to you if you can genuinely say at this point, “But I knew all about that”!)

So starting Wednesday, each day one of these will be posted up on the Facebook page for the newsletter. Do go visit and click “Like” if you would like to have the daily item pop up in your newsfeed on Facebook.

And for the treat I am working on? All will be revealed in March…

If you missed out at the time, you can now read what got all their attention here - including my favourite scenes of political canvassing from the TV screen.

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(The polling being talked about in the interview was published this morning in the latest edition of my monthly email newsletter, which you can read here and sign up for future editions here.)

What I said came up again in the later interview with Nick Clegg, which Caron Lindsay has blogged about here.

Last week The Times ran this piece from me as part of a trio, also featuring Mehdi Hasan and Tim Montgomerie:

This year has certainly not been short of Harold Macmillan’s “events, dear boy, events”.  Political and economic turmoil disrupted even the usually quiet periods deep in August and the final shopping days before Christmas.

Yet at the end of the year the political rollercoaster has left all three main parties in remarkably similar situations to those in which they found themselves at the start of the year. Politically, it has been a year of treading water.

Labour still has a leader with low personal ratings and party support levels far short of what other oppositions achieved during similarly tough economic times. The Conservatives continue to show resilient levels of popularity – better than many previous governments but still far short of showing that David Cameron can win a majority. As for the Liberal Democrats, despite a slow rise during the year, the party’s poll ratings are still low, yet more Liberal Democrat policies have been implemented in the last year than in the previous 50.

The problem the Liberal Democrats face with securing political credit for that is two-fold. First, many of the policies whilst individually popular – such as Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone’s move to end the scourge of rogue private wheel clampers or Ed Davey’s success in modernising the Post Office – are a rather disparate collection of liberal victories scattered government. They do not add up to a convincing and clear picture of what Liberal Democrats have achieved in government.

The danger is that the party ends up making many changes to government, improving what is being done, but, as with a speechwriter, the good work is not noticed by the public as it is behind the scenes.

The second problem is that much of what Liberal Democrats have achieved in government is blocking more extreme Tory proposals, such as tax cuts for the richest. These successes are necessarily intangible and harder to sell.

Nick Clegg has started to flesh out a clearer overall message for the party which brings the different positive threads together. The Budget will provide the big showcase test for that: can the Liberal Democrats ensure the Budget is not just one of austerity but also one of fairness? Even without big giveaways our taxes can be made fairer in ways a solo Conservative government would not wish. Get that right and 2012 won’t be a matter of simply treading water.

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UPDATE: You can now read newsletter #15 here.

That has meant many peers were well used to having direct access to ministers, and moreover being in a strong position to extract some concessions. As a result, many peers can point to numerous changes they have achieved to legislation.

By comparison, Liberal Democrat MPs, despite having the democratic mandate, have usually had very little power as votes in the Commons have been a foregone conclusion.

But since the party has gone into coalition, the balance of Parliament influence amongst the party’s peers and MPs have reversed. Rather than being the key swing vote, Liberal Democrat peers are now but part of an overall coalition government majority.

In the Commons, many Liberal Democrat MPs are now in government. It is not even a matter of it being easier to get to talk to a minister, they are the minister.

Moreover, helped by the primacy of the Commons, revolts by Liberal Democrat MPs which could cost the government its majority are now no longer the neglected, poor relative of revolts by Liberal Democrat peers - but the patterns of rebellions have, so far, received relatively little attention.

That is why over at my day job, MHP Communications, we’ve put together this infographic looking at the Liberal Democrat rebels:

The most rebellious and the least? Andrew George 28; David Laws 0.

With fixed-term Parliaments meaning David Cameron can no longer call a snap general election, the way Liberal Democrat MPs vote in the Commons is becoming one of the key features of the public policymaking landscape.

The party is well used to its peers often being the key swing vote in the Upper House, but with coalution it is now often the threat of rebellion by its MPs that is the key swing factor in government decisions. But who is rebelling and how often?

Here is an infographic, based on data from the good folk at www.revolts.co.uk, to answer just those questions:

By all means reproduce the infographic elsewhere. We just ask that you do so in full, including the credits at the bottom, and with a link back to http://www.mhpc.com/blog/liberal-democrat-mps-revolts.

Are the Lib Dems really pro-European?…

Lib Dem attitudes towards Europe reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s The man who was Thursday. In this novel, the members of an anarchist cell are one-by-one revealed to be undercover policemen. In a similar way, Lib Dem activists, often portrayed in the media as starry-eyed pro-Europeans, are more often than not undercover Eurosceptics. Time and again I let slip in conversation to a Lib Dem colleague that I don’t quite share the party’s zeal for the European project only to be told that neither do they.

Genuine Euro-enthusiasts seem to me relatively thin on the ground in the Lib Dems.

The last Liberal Democrat Voice survey of party members to ask about Europe found:

The Lib Dems are traditionally identified as the most pro-European of all the parties, so it’s interesting to see the different views among our sample of party members here. Although the single most popular answer (with 48%) is the most pro-integration response, not many fewer (37%) believe that the UK’s position within the EU should remain the status quo, with no further push towards ever closer union. In total, 14% believe the UK is already in too deep, though full withdrawal is advocated by just 2% of Lib Dem members.

There are two ways of looking at the figures. On the one hand, a massive 85% of party members back the UK’s membership of the European Union. On the other hand, however, a bare majority of the party membership, 51%, believes the UK should resist any moves towards closer ties.

What’s your view on where opinions rest in the Liberal Democrats?

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