Archive for the independent
A letter to The Independent, unpublished
Dear Sir, Amol Rajan writes that the public wouldn’t forgive David Cameron calling a snap election. More to the point, the law no longer allows him to call a snap general election. Parliament passed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in 2011. Yours etc.
The Royal Family, freedom of information and the rest of the story
At the weekend The Independent ran a piece very critical of the Liberal Democrats in government: The Royal Family is to be granted absolute protection from public scrutiny in a controversial legal reform designed to draw a veil of secrecy over the affairs of the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William. Letters, emails and documents [...]
My letter in today’s Independent
Steve Richards (Opinion, 28 October), writing about the forthcoming AV referendum, remarks that “voters are self-interested” but omits the most powerful point of self-interest – which is that it is in all our interests if the voting system requires candidates to work hard and to face the fear of defeat. The current electoral system performs [...]
My letter in today's Independent
Sean O’Grady and others have focused in on how much money may or may not be saved in the government’s cull of quangoes. It’s an interesting question for sure, but misses the reason many people have long wanted to cut the number of quangos. Since the 1970s, many have rightly warned how the transfer of [...]
Electoral reform and Charles Kennedy
Today’s Independent has a quote from me about Nick Clegg’s interview for The Westminster Hour about, amongst other topics, electoral reform: Party members will understand the underlying point Nick Clegg was making – that this isn’t a single-issue coalition. However, I suspect many will be disappointed at quite how keenly he talked down the importance [...]
Do the polls matter?
Today’s Independent runs quotes from Sandra Gidley, Lembit Opik, Bob Russell and myself alongside their latest poll report. Here’s the full length (i.e. 3 sentence rather than 2 sentence) version of what I said to them: Politics isn’t about winning elections, it’s about implementing policy – and Liberal Democrat ministers are getting to do that [...]
Why do we demand such high standards of politicians?
The Independent ran this piece from my yesterday: There was no need for The Telegraph to run a snatched doorstep photo of David Laws’s partner – but it is standard fare for political coverage across the media After years when ministers were far too reluctant to resign, clinging on to their jobs regardless of criticism, [...]
Rod Liddle? The Independent would be better off with Paul Staines
What puzzles me most about the rumours that Rod Liddle is being seriously considered as the next editor of The Independent is that he is part of the traditional media’s past, not its future. He does opinionated, personal rants which feed many readers preconceptions. Insults are thrown around. Facts are scattered over arguments to dress [...]
Media to start getting marked for quality of opinion poll reporting
The quality of traditional media coverage of political opinion polling has been a common cause of complaints amongst political bloggers. The most obvious problem is when an opinion poll from one polling company is compared not with the previous poll from that company but against an older one because the intervening one happened to have [...]
