Mark Pack

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 [...] »

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 [...] »

Labour-run Knowsley Council is continuing to pump money in to the Labour Party’s coffers by exhibiting at the party’s conference. The council pays to appear only at the Labour Party’s conferences, ignoring other parties, and is continuing to do so even now that Labour is no longer in government. Back in January 2007 Liberal Democrat [...] »

Adam Bienkov has the remarkable story of how Mayor of London Boris Johnson managed to up the costs of the annual ‘State of London’ debate despite cutting back its scope, moving it from an external venue to City Hall and having fewer people attend. One extra detail I’d add to what Adam has covered: looking [...] »

The UK music industry’s revenues declined by less than 1% in the last year, a smaller drop than in previous years and a change that looks particular good given the economy overall was in sharp recession at the same time. These figures are likely to reinforce the views of critics of the Digital Economy Act [...] »

From Nick Barlow on Twitter: Just heard a rumour that Charles Kennedy will defect to Labour as soon as they find the WMDs in Iraq.  »

Credit where credit is due, today’s Telegraph interview with Nick Clegg covers a range of substantive policy issues and gives the Deputy Prime Minister the space to give nuanced answers where the question requires them. The biggest story is Clegg’s clear steer on a graduate tax as the way to square financial demands with the [...] »

So says Nick Clegg in an interview for Radio 4′s Westminster Hour. His underlying point is a good one – the coalition isn’t a single-issue coalition which is about AV and nothing else. And, as James Graham points out, the Electoral Reform Society isn’t a sort of glorified from of the Liberal Democrats either. However, [...] »

Just over 100 days into coalition, it’s becoming clearer how the Parliamentary Party (in the Commons) is shaping up and where dissent is likely to come from in future. As I’ve argued previously, overall the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party has been remarkably united over the last few years. (Even the ousting of Charles Kennedy was [...] »

Pah, who needs the Alternative Vote when you can go for the Venetian electoral system, as explained by The New Yorker: Whenever the time came to elect a new doge of Venice, an official went to pray in St. Mark’s Basilica, grabbed the first boy he could find in the piazza, and took him back [...] »