Previously, on Lib Dem Voice…

MP Lynne Featherstone penned us an article on the brittleness of British politics; Alisdair Murray fed back on how joint Lib/Lab meetings went at both our conference and theirs; Jeremy Hargreaves let us know about the Lib Dem Hospital Governor’s Network; Tom Papworth shared his views about tax; and Rob Blackie had a plea about the proposed Leadership Academy.

Editor at Large Stephen Tall was pleased that 187 of you dropped by with your views on the state of things at present - and we covered your views extensively in a series of posts you can find by clicking on this category link.

A big issue for Lib Dems this week has been the fall out from the robo-calling we did shortly after Clegg’s speech last week. Hywel Morgan thought we shouldn’t do it. Then the Guardian joined in.  Then so too did the Information Commissioner. Unsurprisingly, our readers had a lot to say on the issue, both in public and in our members only forum.

Our most commented item is, as often the case, the open thread on Question Time; and some of the biggest hits of the week have been to this story about Lembit and a threeway and happy news from by-election victories. And last but not least, Mark Pack pointed us at the pointlessness of uniform swing calculations, which brought out the psephology geeks in force. 

Find out more in next week’s gripping instalment of weekly catchup…

We wrote some 80 posts covering conference last week - if for some reason you missed some of them, here’s a handy cut-out-and-keep reference to the best of blogging at LDV.

Before conference even began we had a major debate, with hundreds of comments, about Making it Happen

• Danny Alexander was pro.
• Paul Holmes was anti

• Liveblogged, here and on Channel 4’s website
• Video coverage
• Link to full text
• Media coverage

There, an entire conference posting with not one mention of hashtag taxonomy.

After a brief hiatus, Weekly Catchup returns.

Guest writers brought us:

• Alex Folkes on Votes at 16
• John Dixon on Political Correctness
• Staffers at Reform urged us to seize the educational reform agenda.

Loads of comments on:

• Our new poll on Road Pricing
• Charge of the Lib Dem Brigade by Paul Reynolds
• Trouble for the Tories in Henley by Mark Pack

The regulars brought you:

• Nick Clegg on education, from Alix
• The Voice team as a whole brought you our first campaign - on Database Britain
• and Mark Pack brought news of a fluffy toy with bank account issues.

And of course, there’s the news from Henley:

• Elephants interviewing parliamentary candidates
• A question of Alan Duncan’s policy
• Neil Fawcett outlining some of our key themes for the by-election

A short guide to the best of Lib Dem Voice

In the final full week of campaigning for the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, we featured heaps of stories about the goings-on. There’s trouble for the Tories, consideration about whether it’s better for Labour to win or lose - given the calibre of their leaflets, they deserve to lose.

Away from the campaign coalface, Tim Leunig reviewed a Clegg speech on Lib Dem plans for the city; Laurence Boyce recounted an interview with the man himself - and large numbers weighed in in the comments.

Jake Holland brought us new information about the Lib Dem group in the Lords - and how they’re working harder to tell us what they’re up to.

We also covered David Howarth’s campaign for fixed term parliaments and of course the ongoing fall out of the 10p tax ferrago.

Tune in next week, etc,

Our belated guide to the highlights here at LDV. Read this if you don’t read anything else this summer:

Our guest contributors included

• Alexis Rowell, exhorting us to eat less meat
• Neale Upstone’s review of our performance
• Martin Turner’s consideration of Apathy in the UK

You, our readers, weighed in with dozens of comments about

• Linda Jack’s article about child poverty
• Our new poll about the next general election
• Of course - our Question Time open thread

There was also lots and lots of by-election news from Crewe and Nantwich (polling this week! Go there if you possibly can!) and slightly less news from Henley.

Our weekly guide to the good on Lib Dem Voice

This week, two important appeals for your input:

• Our competition for the last LDV mug
• Tell Alix your election results as they happen

The highest number of comments this week were recorded on

• Should a dangerously incompetent anaesthetist become a councillor?
• Our weekly date with Question Time - London Mayor special (also available in Rainbow Edition on Something for the Weekend)
• Ming for Speaker?

Guest contributors brought us

• Shifting the unequal state
• (… yes… just the one guest contributor last week. Why don’t you write us an article?)

Saga of the week

• Police investigate Conservative campaign in Swansea
• Police make more arrests in Slough
• Conservative arrested over proxy vote application
• Dial S for Scandal

Don’t miss

• Will Howells’s Something for the Weekend
• Jeremy Browne’s Parliamentary Gem
  

And finally…

• The Sam Seaborn Award for Geography goes to William Hague. Bet Mark Pack knows which of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan has the nukes and which has the sheep.

A hurried, late weekly catchup this week:

Lots of comments on:

• Our poll on whether deaf families should be able to select deaf babies
• Allegations of Clegg’s student Tory past
• The Green/Brown debate

We covered the ongoing London Mayoral debate with

• More debate on second preferences
• Further news of innovation from Lib Dem Brian Paddick
• and news that our online strategy is working

Guest writers this week included

• Mike Smithson’s scorn for the poor Beeb coverage of local elections
• Elizabeth Truss and Lucy Parsons discussing the unequal state
• Darrell Goodliffe with an interesting contrast between Battlestar Galactica and the Liberal Democrats.

Our regulars brought us info on

• Why not to trust women with passwords
• Bad news for Tory fundraisers
• The resignation that later transpired not to be one

Finally, don’t miss our latest competition to predict election results a week tomorrow.

Welcome to our once-a-week post pointing you to the best of posts from last week.

The London Mayoral election keep us busy in the comments this week. We changed our poll to ask who, if anyone, LDV readers would back for their second preference. Hot debate ensued there, as well as in the follow-up to a post from Peter David who let us know who he’d be backing and why it grated. We reported on the Newsnight mayoral hustings - and told you about the three Youtubers who put up Boris’s evasion. We also brought you Paddick’s latest party election broadcast and showed you his new website.

We celebrated the anniversary of Asquith’s becoming Prime Minister. We shared bizarre poll results showing Lib Dems loved Thatcher. We highlighted how low paid soldiers would suffer from Brown’s tax reorganisation.

Guest writers this week included Chris Black, with lessons for us all about running a website. Darrell Goodliffe wondered who exactly was sabotaging the 2008 Olympics.  Susan Gaszczak brought us a story about development agencies you may have heard about on Radio 4 last month.

We refused to consider re-opening the leadership election. Finally, we were amazed to find the Daily Mail writing about Cilla Black and Evan Harris… and siding with Evan.

Weekly Catchup is your guide to what was hot on Lib Dem Voice last week.

Twitter news first: we heard that Brian Paddick was holding an interview by Twitter, and that Lynne Featherstone could have sent the first tweet from the chamber of the House of Commons. An appeal for poster sites also seemed to work well.

We celebrated April Fools Day twice with a Boyce special and news of info found on photocopier.

Opposition news: the Tories selection process for their Euro candidates stank and they’re not doing as well online as they like to think; and we were all amazed to discover that Labour MPs didn’t like the Labour budget or that a Labour Minister didn’t like the Labour booze tax laws.

The other big stories were that Clegg interview, covered here and here; and that PMQ’s gaffe-cum-brilliant strategy which we covered here after being prompted by Iain Dale and here the morning after.

The major sources of debate amongst our readers Pulpit Politics, again, and our current poll on the embryology bill. At this stage, I can’t guarantee our combatants are adding greatly to the sum of human knowledge.

Finally, it’s not too late tell us what you think about Conference policy debate.

Join us next Monday for the next instalment of Catchup.

Weekly Catchup brings you the best of Lib Dem Voice in one easy-to-digest capsule.

Three pages-worth of posts to choose from this week in the new, shiny, upgraded management interface which you ordinary users don’t get to see.

Guest writers this week were considering Nick Clegg’s first 100 days. We heard from Mary Reid, Paul Walter, Linda Jack and Martin Land. Darrell Goodliffe wrote about pulpit politics and boycotting China, and came close to overtaking Laurence Boyce as one of our more prolific contributors. And Jonathan Calder gave us the third in his regular series of exposés of the other parties’ blogging efforts.

The posts this week that attracted most comment were How Green are the Conservatives? (not very), Harry Hayfield writing about electoral reform, and news about the new name for our youth wing. We also generated much heat debating various Tory councillors’ proposals for sterilizing and euthanising the less fortunate in society.

We heard about the party’s new “Hold them to account” campaign here, and we responded robustly to Clegg’s calls for expenses to be published here.  Lynne Featherstone was amazed we noticed her on Twitter, and called for bloggers and campaigners to work in a new and different way.  Her call was heard by Andy Mayer and we hope more bloggers will respond next week.

And the week came to an end with quite a good-natured, policy based spat between the Green and Lib Dem mayoral campaign camps. Bloggers woke up to an email from the Greens saying that Lib Dem Brian Paddick was in fact not a Lib Dem. We covered that here in an opinion piece from Peter David which generated a lot of comment, including debating points from a Green London Assembly-member. I don’t think many people have changed their position, but at least we’re still on speaking terms.

Welcome to Bank Holiday Catchup - reading Lib Dem Voice so you don’t have to.

A quieter week than many, but we still had time for all the usual, and much much more.  Guest contributors included fast-becoming-regular Darrell Goodliffe marking the anniversary of the war in Iraq; Linda Jack talked to us about taxes; Martin Land looked at the polls and Bernard Aris gave a welcome perspective on the Gurkha medal campaign.

All your regular contributors were represented too: Stephen brought us Obama; Richard brought us Paddick; Alix suggested a Liberal rapid response unit to tackle the gathering forces of illiberalism; I brought you important Twitter news. And Mark crunched the numbers on e-parliamentarians, kept us posted on by-elections, and brought us Vince again.

Comments were high again this week, as Laurence Boyce took a controversial stance in the thread on a child DNA database and er, Laurence Boyce continued to take a controversial stance on faith schools.

We also talked a fair bit about voting fraud, the embryo bill, and Cameron’s brush with the law.

Enjoy your bank holiday!

Our weekly round-up of all that’s good on Lib Dem Voice.

We kicked off our week here with a thoughtful piece from Joe Otten about faith schools - and the F word on Voice is a red rag to several of our regular bulls. The piece has had a discussion continuing with over 120 comments to date.

Slightly fewer comments ensued on equally thoughtful pieces about the budget, rebellions, and what turned out to be a restatement of existing policy when Clegg considered taking an axe to nearly a quarter of all MPs. Look out for the comment from Paul (Lord) Tyler.

Susan Kramer chimed in on the day the Queen opened Terminal 5 with her views on Heathrow. The Elephant asked if you’d like to interview Nick Clegg. Fallout from Spink spilled over to LDV.

Finally, our last podcast of the conference season introduced a request from the Federal Conference Ctte for feedback on Liverpool as a conference venue. There are a few more days to respond if you have views about going to Liverpool for an Autumn conference that you have not yet expressed.

Your handy weekly guide to all that’s good on LDV.

Well, what a week. Europe dominated the early part of the week. We had inconsistent Tories, inconsistency from IWantAReferendum, inconsistency from the Lib Dem parliamentary party, (well, 13 of them) - but at least the sure and certain knowledge that Britain is behind us. Not that you’d necessarily know that from our comments this week. And of course, the Tories were more split than we were, but that somehow didn’t seem to make it into the media much. And contrary to what you might have read elsewhere, Susan Kramer didn’t storm out of a meeting.

Then Friday dawned bright and breezy, and record numbers of Liberal Democrats headed west to party conference in beautiful Liverpool. We were there with our tape recorder, video recorder and trusty ole keyboards. In amongst the dozens of conference entries, it’s hard to find particular favourites, not least because I wrote large chunks of it, but I enjoyed the FCC meeting write-up, the thirty minute recording of the CGB Blog awards, Vince Cable’s speech and Joe Otten’s thoughtful contribution about legal aid.

A special mention, too, for award winning blogger Alix Mortimer who made her début on LDV this week with a series of conference diaries. They’re comprehensive, entertaining - but not short. If you have a spare half hour this week, sit yourself down with a cup of tea and read through parts one, two, three and four. I think - hope! - a further instalment is due this week.

On a sadder note, Tony Greaves resurrected an old thread with the news of the death of Claire Brooks shortly before conference. Claire had stuck in David Spender’s mind:

The other abiding memory was the civic reception where Claire Brooks discovered that the waitresses were being paid less than the waiters and tried to make a speech about it. When the authorities turned off the microphone she sat down in the middle of the dance floor, rapidly joined by every YL present.

Comments this week were well dispersed across the huge number of posts, but our weekly date with Dimbleby and Question Time netted more than 70 comments, partly due to a barnstorming performance from Baroness Williams of Crosby, partly due to our own Stephen Tall popping up on News 24, and partly due to a deeply strange diversion on whether Hitler was Catholic.

We welcomed a wide range of contributors to LDV this week: Chief Exec Baron Rennard of Wavertree reflected on 20 years of Lib Dems, Martin Veart brought news from the Scottish Lib Dem conference in Aviemore, and Andy Strange asked what is the point of the Party President. Incidentally, the constitutional amendment to abolish Simon Hughes decouple the presidency from the chair of the Federal Exec failed to clear the 2/3rds majority hurdle.

And finally, my second special mention this week goes to Will Howell’s Something for the Weekend, which is consistently ace, and all the more so this weekend thanks to a surprising find when you search Youtube for Gladstone.

Catchup brings you best of Lib Dem Voice in a helpful package first thing on a Monday morning.  You can read it by clicking on the link at the top of the page or get a feed of it here.

It’s been a tougher week to choose than normal, with more posts than either of the previous two weeks.  MP Andrew Stunnell talked about his campaign to provide more housing ahead of his conference motion. Mike Smithson no longer believe the Lib Dems are worth a punt - but only because he loves us so much. Elizabeth Truss and Laura Kounine dropped by to tell us about the Academy programme. And just this weekend Tim Leunig continued the education theme with views on the pupil premium and Martin Veart told us why he joined the party.

The Lib Dem walk-out in Parliament this Tuesday also caused a stir, and dozens of you, our readers, commented in the resultant threads - the newsflash, the post-hoc justification from Ed Davey MP and the poll on whether what they did was right (our survey says… yes).

Comments also flowed on our weekly debate about Question Time, and the thorny question about whether we should all go to the pub on Friday (I think we should, and I will be posting a little more about it later)

By the time catchup comes back to you next Monday, Spring conference will have been and gone. Lib Dem Voice has exciting plans to be your guide through the weekend, so do check back and join us for the debate.

If you were reading last week, you’ll have seen we’ve decided to make life easier for our readers with a once-weekly post of all of the previous week’s highlights. For the best of LDV,  just click the “Catchup” category.

Guest writers this week included Lib Dem Shadow Defence Minister Nick Harvey MP writing about our overstretched armed forces, and Sunny Hindal took the opportunity of our Independent View slot to write a piece about the website Liberal Conspiracy. The man so popular Jonathan Calder founded a cult in his honour, Vince Cable MP, also found time this week to write about his thoughts on the non-dom issue.

Something for the Weekend, penned by the Voice’s own Will Howells from the fair shores of Llandudno, updated us on the happenings at the party’s Welsh conference, for which we can only say diolch before we run out of Welsh.  The position of LDV’s Welsh Correspondent is still up for grabs - if you’re interested.

Comments have been lower this week than previously but posts that have caught our readers’ attentions have included a piece on young people and town centres from London LDYS chair Benjamin Mathis and a speech from leader Nick Clegg about supermarkets under the atrocious pun “trolleygarchs”

The Campaign for Gender Balance announced their shortlist for three categories of excellence amongst women bloggers.  One of the awards is voted on by you, the blogreading public, so don’t miss your chance to influence the outcome.

And finally, it’s been a busy week in the contest for London Mayor again.  Ken’s been playing political tricks, Boris is making an impression on Youtube and Brian is outrunning both of them - one way or another.

Lib Dem Voice is always looking for new contributors on a regular basis or maybe as a one off on an issue you want to talk about.  We are currently also looking for people to contribute to our conference coverage, so if you are intending to come to Liverpool and would like to write for us, please drop me a line at

A regular criticism of Lib Dem Voice - and the blog format in general - is that on fast moving days, readers can miss the good stuff. For that reason, we’re introducing a short, snappy Monday-morning round-up of last week’s top posts.

We kicked last week off with an extract from the Dictionary of Liberal Thought about Community Politics.

Two of our MPs penned articles for site: Lynne Featherstone on the dilemma of the placebo and Steve Webb promoting the party’s campaigning effort on climate change. We heard from Duncan Brack, chair of the Federal Conference Committee about conference in Liverpool early next month.

The highest numbers of comments were attracted by two posts about the BBC’s Question Time - the first with findings about political balance on the programme and the second our weekly open thread to discuss the programme as it happen, and to dissect it afterwards. You - our readers - also kept posts from previous weeks alive, including Clegg: I’m an economic liberal.

Our coverage of the London mayoral election gave us news about Ken’s staff, a sneak preview of the next London-wide leaflet, advance warning of an in-depth interview with Brian Paddick, and the insider story of Boris’s campaign launch.

In our “Op-Eds” category, Richard Wilson wrote about CCTV, Kerry Hutchinson made a pitch for the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine, and just yesterday, Marilyn Mason asked the killer question, how liberal are liberals supposed to be?

Remember - it’s your Lib Dem Voice. If you don’t like our balance of coverage, you can always write an article for us yourself. That’s a handy tip also for those of you who sometimes find yourselves writing comments that span to hundreds of words - sometimes it might serve the debate better if you penned us an article instead!