Archive for polly toynbee
How the Guardian makes the news, then reports the news
A nimble two-step from The Guardian: 1. Polly Toynbee sends tweet encouraging all and sundry to take part in an open-access online poll being run by the BMJ. 2. The Guardian reports result of said BMJ poll. Then only thing missing, alas, is: 3. The Guardian then realises that reporting a voodoo poll which its [...]
Dear Polly Toynbee…
Dear Polly, I’m really puzzled by one of the sentences in your piece in today’s Guardian, Executive pay soars while the young poor face freefall. Where is Labour?. In it you write: “Half of further education colleges report a drop in applications from 16- to 19-year-olds”. However, as your Guardian colleague Jessica Shepherd wrote when [...]
The ideological background to coalition
Richard Grayson (former head of policy for the party and one of the leading lights behind the Social Liberal Forum) has written a thoughtful pamphlet for Compass about the different strains of thought within the Liberal Democrats and what they mean for coalition government. The subtlety of some of Richard’s views mean you have to [...]
Did you know that two-thirds of people don’t pay income tax?
No, I didn’t either. But that’s what Polly Toynbee says: … it does nothing for the 62% of adults who earn too little to pay tax. Oh hang on, what’s this Lord Bonkers is saying? It’s not that 62 per cent of people don’t pay tax, it’s that 62 per cent do pay tax. How out of touch [...]
Any Questions: it’s not just BBC Question Time that’s the problem
We’ve covered before the habit of BBC Question Time of dropping a Liberal Democrat from the panel (three times in four weeks most recently) and also of loading up the panel with a far from politically balanced set of non-Parliamentarians.
But it’s not only Question Time where that’s a problem. BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? has [...]
Conference round-up: the last 24 hours
Here are the three main lines promoted by the party from conference to the media in the last 24 hours:
Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference unveils plans to increase the pay of Britain’s lowest-earning troops by £6,000, improve the condition of forces’ housing, and ensure proper medical provision for all personnel. The proposals, which would mean that no [...]
Nick Clegg’s blogger interviews
This morning a group of 10 bloggers interviewed Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. The questions ranged over a wide area and here are a few selected highlights:
MPs’ expenses: Nick eloquently made the link between safe seats and good behaviour by MPs: “if you want to keep MPs honest, don’t give them safe seats for life [...]
Polly Toynbee: vote Liberal Democrat
Things are indeed achanging in the Guardian Media Group. Sunday say The Observer unequivocally urge its readers to vote Liberal Democrat for the first time. And now Polly Toynbee is urging a vote for the Liberal Democrats in the European elections and in many local elections too:
Throw out bad councils, and vote for Lib Dems [...]
