One way we can deal with the smears on Nick Clegg

Why, you wonder, am I linking to a blatant Torygraph smear of Nick Clegg? This is the story that accounts how he received donations to cover part of salary costs in his office and registered them absolutely properly with all the relevant authorities at the time. When you read the headlines "Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem Donors and the payments into his private bank account", you are led to think that this is something murky, even if you don't read the article. It could plant an entirely false suggestion in your head about what the story was about.

I suspect that most people are wise to the fact that the Tories and their right wing media pals are pretty desperate at the moment. Nothing positive to offer the electorate, instead they want to throw lots of mud at Nick and the Lib Dems in the hope that some of it will stick. Cicero puts it beautifully here and Alix has made a vary salient comment on Stephen's excellent article over at Liberal Democrat Voice.

Ken Clarke's ridiculous suggestion that the very existence of a hung Parliament would have the IMF at our door was just laughable when you consider that up here we've had coalition or minority government in Scotland for the last 11 years. For the first 8 at least, fantastic things were delivered, like free personal care and the abolition of tuition fees, but even in the last 3, let's face it, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west and the political culture is, I think, a lot healthier than the public behaviour of some would actually have you believe.

Anyway, a very much wiser person than I has suggested that when we see these stories in the press about Nick and the Lib Dems that are clearly nonsense designed to smear us, then we should contact major big name advertisers to suggest that being associated with this sort of behaviour is damaging to their brand. During the Jan Moir affair when she innacurately denigrated Stephen Gateley the day before his funeral, angry people did this and it may have led to some ads being withdrawn.

So, let's show the newspapers that this sort of irresposnible smear is not on by hitting them in the pocket. The webpage for the article (hence my link) contains associations with Dell, Ben and Jerry's and Amex that I can see. That's good for a start. I linked through to the AMEX website and annoyingly I can't find anywhere to e-mail them. If anyone else can help with providing an e-mail contact for their public affairs people, then that would be very helpful, but in the meantime, here's their snail mail contacts.

Once you've done that, get out on the streets and start telling everyone you know to vote for the Lib Dems and get involved in your local campaign. Sign up here along with the very many others who've joined us in the past week.