Archive for News
Opinion: Are you a man?
Are you a man? Have you been or might you be on a fringe meeting panel at Liberal Democrat conference? If the answer to both is yes, I’d like your help… At the Spring conference just gone in Brighton, I nearly ended up being a speaker on an all-male panel – and one taking place [...]
How Ofsted outperforms the Department for Education in the email stakes
Yesterday I blogged about how only a third of emailed newsletters and circulars sent out by the Department for Education to schools and teachers are read by the recipients. I also mentioned that you could choose who to blame for the low readership rate: Who is to blame for this? If nothing else I suspect [...]
Two-thirds of email newsletters sent to teachers and schools by the Department for Education are not read
Only a third of emailed newsletters and circulars sent out by the Department for Education to schools and teachers are read by the recipients according to new figures I have secured following a Freedom of Information request to the Department. In 2012 the Department sent out 148,182 such emails, with their systems recording 33,158 of [...]
What Google reveals about the current state of play in Eastleigh
The search results thrown up by Google often provide a neat little insight into what angles of a story are dominating coverage and people’s attention. The angles that get the most prominent coverage and the most interaction and responses are the ones that rise to the top of the search results. So what do they [...]
Maria Hutchings, Eastleigh Conservative candidate, plays hide and seek with the media
One of my favourite moments from the 1997 general election campaign came when I was stood on a street corner in Harrogate, talking to a report about the challenge from Lib Dem candidate Phil Willis, who was trying to take the seat from the Conservatives. Suddenly, the journalist looked over my shoulder, muttered ‘excuse me’ [...]
+++ Neck and neck: first Eastleigh constituency poll
1st Eastleigh poll puts Con + LDs within margin of error: C34 LD31 Lab 19 UKIP 13 (Ashcroft poll) — Mark Pack (@markpack) February 7, 2013 That 3 point gap is within the margin of error on the poll, and so it is, as they say in the US about such results, a statistical dead-heat. [...]
New university data shows everyone was wrong about tuition fees
May I introduce you to my latest graph? It’s based on the new data just published about university applications in England and compares the application rate for university places from the most deprived parts of the country with those from the least deprived. As you might expect, the least deprived areas see a higher university [...]
Government shifts to back full range of medical care for rape victims in armed conflict
Welcome news from the House of Lords last week, where Lib Dem peer and government spokesperson for International Development, Lindsay Northover, for the first time said the British government believes that girls and women raped in armed conflict are protected under international humanitarian law, even when domestic law in the country in question says something [...]
Danny Alexander fronts… a Liberal Democrat policy
Danny Alexander sometimes attracts a bit of criticism from party members for the number of times he’s done media appearances where he’s ended up spending much of the time defending Coalition policies which are predominantly Conservative. So good to see him out in the TV studios this morning fronting up a policy that the Liberal [...]
