Simon Hughes urges Lib Dem members to sign petition calling for tax cuts for lowest paid

Simon Hughes has sent out an e-mail to Liberal Democrat members asking them to sign thi petition, started by Liberal Democrat activist Tracy Connell, calling for the Government to raise the tax threshold faster along the lines suggested by the Liberal Democrats.

It says:

Please sign this to persuade George Osborne to fast track the Lib Dem policy to increase the income tax threshold to £10,000 in the next budget, and hence take thousands more people out of tax and put £700 back in people's pockets.There are measures that can be taken to pay for this including the clamp down on tax avoidance and a mansion tax.Please support this and help the Lib Dems to help the lowest paid and middle income workers in this country.

Last year I had a major strop about another Simon e-mail sent in the wake of the disastrous Holyrood election and less than positive local election results in England which began "it's a good month to be a Liberal Democrat."

Since then, he's redeemed himself many times. He apologised incredibly sincerely at the time and, anyway, it's simply not possible to stay angry with Simon for long.

It's been very clear that lessons have been learned in internal party communications in the last while. There are clear signs that it's possible to get people talking in plain English as opposed to Bubble Speak. I think Mark Pack is being a bit hard when he criticises Simon's e-mail.  When I read posts or blogs, I always read them to the end before clicking on links. My head would be fried if I did anything else. Then I go back and click on the links I choose. On this one, I didn't sign the petition because I'd signed it already and I'd seen the relevant website, but if I hadn't, I'd have done it. The fact that signatures have more than doubled in 24 hours are encouraging. I'm hoping that as members share that e-mail, these numbers will continue to rise. We need 100,000 signatures to get this debated in Parliament and we're a long way short of that.

I did, however, smile with approval when I saw that the e-mail also included encouragement for people to sign up for Conference with the relevant link. It's really important that we advertise these events at every opportunity.

So, if you clicked on the first link in this e-mail, you will not have read this, but if you've persevered this far, you might like to sign the petition and encourage everyone you know to do the same.

Liberal Democrat MPs must ensure Murdoch BSkyB bid is delayed

I wrote yesterday about my initial reaction to the phone hacking scandal. I now want to turn my attention to the future of News International's plans to take over B Sky B which looked likely to go ahead from Conservative Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt with few assurances from the Murdoch empire that it would get rid of Sky News. This raises long standing concerns about the closeness of

Our Vince Cable would no doubt have referred the takeover to the Competition Commission. In principle this was absolutely the right thing to do. And that was before the revelations of the past week.

It is so stark staringly obvious that there's no way this takeover should go ahead until we see the conclusions of the judge led inquiry into the phone hacking. On that, Ed Miliband is right, despite his party having spent most of the last 20 years licking the boots of Murdoch and his representatives on earth. He intends to bring a motion to the House of Commons on the matter.

The Liberal Democrats have, as Danny Alexander said on BBC Breakfast this morning, a long track record of not cow-towing to Murdoch or any other media baron. I would expect all of my party's MPs to support such a motion. The signals the party is sending out are quite strong on that. Danny is being quite sensible in not giving Miliband a blank cheque and giving away our support before we actually see the wording of the motion. On the other hand, I don't want to see us use some legalistic excuse for not backing it. Surely the law on such matters can't possibly stop the Government putting a delay in the process when there is evidence that widespread criminal activity has been taking place within the company wanting to take the broadcaster over. And that case is helped by the BBC's report that News International have been covering up evidence of wrongdoing for 4 years.  If News International knew in 2007 that the phone hacking scandal was more widespread than they admitted, and they didn't hand that over to the police, isn't that perverting the course of justice, or something?

It may not come to a Commons vote, though. I am certain that our MPs will be putting a strong case for delay within the Government, hoping to change things behind closed doors. It would  be good if ministers themselves could delay the takeover by an appropriate means.

Of course, if News International had any decency, it would simply withdraw the bid. We have, however, seen that that virtue is in fairly short supply in the Wapping area. I find the smiley photocalls with Murdoch saying Rebekah Brooks is his priority,with the flame haired one helping photographers who've fallen over utterly nauseating.

Let's imagine, though, that by whatever means, the Government or Parliament blocks the bid.  Are News International really going to have the nerve to challenge it in the courts? And, if so, what would the public feel about that? Would they really want to continue buying his products in the numbers that they did?

I'm pleased that our MPs have been as robust as I would expect them to be in all of this - first of all it's down to Nick Clegg that we have a judge led enquiry. I suspect that if it had been left to David Cameron, the Downing Street cat would have been put in charge.

Then Simon Hughes wrote to Ofcom questioning whether News International is a fit and proper organisation to run a broadcaster. Of course, if Ofcom say no, then where does that leave Sky, given that NI own 40% of them already. It encourages me that Simon's letter has been published in full not just by Simon, but on Nick Clegg's website.

An interview in today's Independent with Nick Clegg shows his determination on the issue:

On the 6.52am train from London St Pancras last Friday, Mr Clegg speaks with passion: "You have politicians falling to their knees ingratiating themselves with media moguls. You have too many vested interests tied up with each other. You have a culture of arrogance and impunity"

He was quick out of the traps last week, pressing Mr Cameron successfully for the public inquiry covering the police and the press to be headed by a judge. Mr Clegg believes the crisis offers an opportunity to clean up Britain's "rotten establishment". To reflect liberal values, of course. "The anger people feel is almost palpable. The question is how we harness that sense of outrage to build something better for the future."

While Nick's claim that "the pillars of the British establishment are tumbling one after the other" might yet be premature, it's clear to me that our party has been on the right side of the argument on MPs' expenses, the banks, the press and police when these institutions have been rocked by scandal. While people are becoming more aware of the abuses of power and the ways vested interests work together to protect themselves, we're not yet in a position to make wholesale permanent change.

It's clear that the role of the Liberal Democrats is going to be crucial in determining the progress of the News International takeover. For me, it's inconceivable that we could take a course of action which would lead to it proceeding while the investigation takes place.

In the longer term, I agree wholeheartedly with what Cicero's Songs says - that the Murdoch empire should be severely dealt with if the enquiry or police investigation shows criminal wrongdoing.

In which I rant at Simon Hughes.

Dear Simon

I had an e-mail from you tonight.

When I see your name come up in my inbox, I expect that what I'm going to read is going to make me feel all good and comforted. Tim Farron gave us all a kick up the arse on Lib Dem Voice the other day and I thought this was you comforting us. You and him are a pretty good double act. He's the zingy curry, laden with chillies, which invigorates us. You are the mashed potato that makes us feel content.

Yes, I needed Tim's boot on my posterior, but I also needed you to say something to say that you got how I was feeling.  You see, I'm being pretty brave, but I still feel all heartbroken inside after the election. Some of my favourite people in the whole world, the hardest working, devoted, committed public servants you'd ever wish to find, lost their seats. And it wasn't their fault. Some of them were even prepared to accept their defeat if it meant that no child would ever have to spend the night in a detention centre again.

We all still feel a little bit raw. Or maybe even a lot raw.

So why, Simon, why in the name of the word that rhymes with duck, have you sent out an e-mail that starts with the words "It's been a great month for Liberal Democrats"? It doesn't matter what the rest of it says. For many of us the red mist will have descended by the time we scanned the word Democrats.

You are not normally this crass and insensitive, but you have made a mistake with this. I am so disappointed. It's like someone served me a plate of mashed potatoes that was laced with capers and vinegar.

Maybe this was written by somebody who's so far inside the bubble that they need to be reintroduced to the outside world, to mix with the people they are writing to.

Sorry to be so negative, but I had to get that off my chest.

And, although you don't deserve it, I'll publish the rest of it at the bottom of this so people can see the good environmental stuff we've put in place in government.

If you'd started by saying "I know we're all feeling a bit raw at the moment. It's been a tough few weeks, but we'll fight back, we'll get there in the end. We understand." or words to that effect, it would have been a lot better.

Please can you learn from this one. And please can you grab onto the ankles of those who are so far inside that cosy bubble of government that they've forgotten what life is like on earth for those of us who have to pick up the pieces.

Ok, rant over - but don't do anything so crass again.

Caron

Oh, and PS, could you please make sure that somebody sends members in Scotland an e-mail which mentions the fact that we have a lovely new leader and how pleased you are that he's there.  Thank you.

 And here is the rest of Simon's e-mail. I can't bring nyself to put in the first line - but I think you'd have got the drift of what it was about.

• Two weeks ago, Chris Huhne, as Energy and Climate Change Secretary, led for the government when his Department's Energy Bill received its second reading in the House of Commons. This creates the framework for the Green Deal, a comprehensive programme of energy efficiency improvements for housing and office buildings, cutting both energy bills and emissions. Householders and business will be able to see up to £10,000 invested in insulation, at no up-front cost, paying back the investment through the lower energy bills they will enjoy as a result.

• Last week, Chris Huhne announced the government’s ‘carbon budget’ for the mid-2020s, setting a legal requirement for a 50 per cent reduction (from 1990) by 2025. This creates the certainty businesses need to put in place long-term investments in the expanding low-carbon industries – renewable electricity, electric cars, home insulation. This is the most ambitious legally binding carbon budget set by any government anywhere; and by putting the UK at the forefront of the international debate, we will be able to push the EU and the international community towards further emissions cuts world-wide.

• And this week, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, and Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, revealed details of the Green Investment Bank, the world’s first green development bank. Up and running from April 2012, this will use an initial £3 billion of public money to lever an additional £15 billion in private investment towards the low-carbon opportunities that are opening up – particularly in offshore wind and energy efficiency.

I was this party’s first environment spokesman over twenty years ago. It makes me proud to see what so many of us campaigned for all those years ago being made a reality now we’re in government. This is a key part of what we Liberal Democrats bring to the coalition, and none of this would have happened without us. As Nick said yesterday, ‘the LibDems have long been the greenest of the main three parties - the difference now is that it is not just a green party but a green party of government’.


 


Simon Hughes MP


Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons and President of the Green Liberal Democrats


Update: I hear from Tim Farron via Twitter that this post has made it onto the Guardian's Daily Blog. So, if you've come from there, welcome. Please feel free to browse around. It's not all about politics here - if you like Doctor Who, or Formula One or trashy tv dancing shows, or all manner of random stuff, you'll maybe find something else to amuse you.

Alistair Carmichael and Simon Hughes become Privy Councillors

Well, the age of romance is not dead. I woke up this morning to find a CD with all my favourite disco sounds on it, courtesy of my husband, and when I came in this evening from taking Anna to choir, I discovered that he had scavenged a copy of the Times for me so that I could read the letter from the Liberal Democrat councillors.

Not only that, though. After a prompt from the man himself on Facebook, I found this. Our Alistair Carmichael and Simon Hughes have been sworn in as Privy Councillors. That's a role I think they'll have for life. Well, Wikipedia says so, anyway. The Privy Council is one of the most ancient parts of our governmental tradition, being "that part of Her Majesty's Government which advises on the exercise of prerogative powers and certain functions assigned to The Queen and the Council by Act of Parliament".


I guess that means that Alistair and Simon, along with the rest of our ministers, will have a say in whether Prince William is allowed to marry Kate Middleton. I certainly remember Charles and Diana's marriage getting consent 30 years ago. Not, to be honest, that I think it's any of their business, but there you go.


Here, for posterity, is the announcement in full from the online Court Circular.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE: Mr. Simon McDonald was received in audience by The Queen and kissed hands upon his appointment as Her Majesty's Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany.His Holiness Ilia II, Patriarch of All Georgia, was received by The Queen.The Bishop of London was present.The Queen held a Council at 5.30 p.m..There were present: the Rt. Hon. Nicholas Clegg MP (Lord President), the Rt. Hon. Michael Moore MP (Secretary of State for Scotland) and the Rt. Hon. Christopher Grayling MP (Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions).The Rt. Hon. Alistair Carmichael MP, the Rt. Hon. David Lidinton MP, the Rt. Hon. Andrew Robathan MP and the Rt. Hon. Hugo Swire MP were sworn in as members of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.The Lord Bonomy and the Rt. Hon. Simon Hughes MP made affirmation as members of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.Miss Judith Simpson was in attendance as Clerk of the Council.The Rt. Hon. Nicholas Clegg MP had an audience of Her Majesty before the Council.The Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP (Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury) had an audience of The Queen this evening.

Congratulations to Alistair and Simon. I hope the Queen knows how lucky she is to have them, and I hope the people in the office know to amend Simon's notification of the meetings so that he thinks they're 2 hours earlier than they actually are.

Pity the Court Circular doesn't come with pictures. I want to see if Alistair had to carry his ceremonial wand, or if Nick Clegg had to wear his ceremonial costume. Actually, maybe they can fight for more openness and transparency in the way this body works. The Queen's very own Awkward Squad. Love it.

Why is Simon Hughes' new appointment only for six months?

I'm really pleased to see that Simon Hughes has been given the job of making sure that young people aren't being put off from going into higher education after the tuition fees decision. It's been shocking to see the nursery for Labour wannabes, the National Union of Students, try to write off the hopes of a generation by implying that no poor person will be able to afford to go to university, when actually graduates on the lowest incomes will pay less under this scheme than they will under the NUS proposals.

Linda Jack, who has been one of fiercest party critics of the Coalition in general and the tuition fees policy in particular, and who works with young people has welcomed Simon's appointment and explained why it's vital.

My only real query is why is this only for six months? Surely that role is going to be needed for much longer. For this year, kids are filling in their UCAS forms now for 2011 entry and he should be continuing his tour of schools into the Autumn term this year as the 2012 students will be the first to go in under the new system.

I am particularly comforted that one of Simon's main jobs will be finding a more effective replacement for Education Maintenance Allowance. The issue with it is how kids who currently leave at 16 can be encouraged to stay on at school. The current EMA goes mainly to kids who would have stayed on anyway.

So, as I said, it's fabulous that this unpaid role has been created, and I think Simon is the ideal guy for it, but why only six months? It just doesn't seem long enough.

Some snippets from the Budget Debate

I don't want you to think that I've spent the last week glued to the Budget debate in the House of Commons, but I thought I'd share with you another couple of moments from the proceedings from the bits I have seen and some other speeches I've read about in Hansard.

Firstly, I have to say that it gave me the proper creeps when Iain Duncan Smith referred to Simon Hughes as "my honourable friend" yesterday afternoon. We may be in coalition with the Tories but that does not mean I have to like them. IDS is, I'm sure, a very nice man, but he has a very narrow view of life which I feel compromises his judgement on social justice issues. Mind you, even he was yesterday agreeing to requests for things like racial impact assessments from the opposition on the effects of the cuts in Housing Benefit. Look at this exchange between him and Simon Hughes:

Simon:

Will he ensure that over the next few weeks, when we consult on the future of the welfare state, all the relevant charities, agencies and local councils, which are very knowledgeable about such things, are fully involved so that the outcome is informed by the facts and not by prejudice?

Mr Duncan Smith:

I give my hon. Friend absolute confirmation that we shall consult widely. As he knows, we are planning to reform the benefit system so that it no longer acts as a major disincentive for people to go back to work.

That sounds way more accommodating than the Labour Government with their "you'll take what you're given" approach we've become accustomed to after 13 years.

Some of IDS's ideas are awful and I've already written about my concerns about them. It's a subject I expect to have to return to many times in coming months.

I wasn't particularly impressed by Labour MP Mary Creagh's intervention on the limiting of the Sure Start Maternity grant even though I actually agree with her and think there needs to be greater flexibility. She said:

I can tell him that if someone has a child who is two, they cannot expect a baby to travel in the same pushchair. I can tell him that if someone has a child of six of seven, they have already given away the pushchair by the time the next baby comes along, because that is how families organise themselves

I bought very little new for Anna, who is my first and only born although to be fair we could have afforded it. I just didn't see the point of having new when there were perfectly usable things available to me. I saved my money for when she started to need things like shoes every 3 months. I borrowed my friend's pram and then used the pushchair that I had bought for my niece 7 years earlier. It was with us until the Winter of 2002 when some not very nice people decided to steal all the wine that was in our garage and took the pushchair presumably to wheel it away in. If circumstances had been different, I'd have happily used it for another baby. Her cot was second hand (which I'm glad about because she hardly ever went in it), although the mattress was new. As to the issue of a 2 year old not being able to travel in the same pushchair, that's very true, but I'd say in my experience most people don't buy double buggies because they are such a nightmare to manoeuvre - they get a little board which straps to the buggy for the toddler to stand on or the toddler walks, or the baby gets carried in a sling and the toddler goes in the pushchair. My way of doing things doesn't and won't suit everybody which is why I think there has to be more flexibility to suit people's circumstances rather than a straight abolition.

In terms of Liberal Democrat interventions in the debate, I have to turn to two of my favourite MPs - Malcolm Bruce and Vince Cable.

Malcolm was robust in his support of the Budget. He looked back to a time when he was our Treasury spokesman:

I had the honour of being my party's Treasury spokesman between 1995 and 2000. During the 1997 election, the Liberal Democrat manifesto included an aspiration to raise the threshold at which people started to pay income tax to £10,000. That was only an aspiration because, try as we might, we were unable to find the resources at that time to pay for it. However, when the Labour Government were elected in 1997, the first thing that they did was to introduce the most generous capital gains tax relief that the richest people in this country had ever enjoyed-Mrs Thatcher never contemplated it!

One of my greatest issues with the Budget is the introduction of a medical assessment for DLA. Malcolm, who knows more about it than I do as he has a daughter who gets it has a different perspective that's worth us listening to:

I declare an interest, as I have a grown-up deaf daughter who receives disability living allowance, so I certainly welcome the simplification of the process for applying for that abstruse allowance. It is not means-tested-people do not have to prove that they need the money; in fact, that is not a valid reason at all for qualifying for it-as individuals have just to prove how disabled they are to enable someone to make a judgment. That is difficult, and it goes against the grain for disabled people, who want to show how able they are, in spite of their disability. A simple medical test, if it is applied objectively and fairly, would work, and I hope that someone like my daughter, who can prove that she is profoundly deaf, would automatically qualify, as would others with a similar category of disability.

I think that the words which are critical to that are the ones I've put in bold. I do hope that the DWP will not use the flawed system of medical assessment that Labour introduced for Employment and Support Allowance as a model as it appears to be skewed towards marking people as fit for work and has deemed, for example, that Cancer sufferers undergoing treatment should also be working at the same time.

Malcolm also outlined how much better this budget is as a Coalition measure rather than one introduced by one party alone:

There is much in the Budget of which to be proud, and I make it clear to right hon. and hon. Friends in the Conservative party that it is not a Conservative Budget or a Liberal Democrat Budget, but a coalition Budget. I would argue that it draws on the best on both parties. Those parties command the support of the majority of the British people, and the Budget's approach will deliver benefits to the majority of the British people. I said in the election campaign, when I became aware of the seriousness of the financial situation facing the country, that the position would be much better after the election if cuts that had to be made were implemented by more than one party, as they would be forced to engage with each other and find a balance that would be more acceptable than measures adopted by one party running for a sectional interest that did not have the same strength of appeal. I honestly believe that the coalition has found a dynamic that has delivered something that is greater than the sum of its parts: a Budget that is genuinely progressive.

And finally, here is the Almighty Vince. I would be much happier if he were Chancellor than Osborne, but he's not so I have to live with it. Read his whole speech because it's worth it. He talked about the time 30 years ago when he was an adviser to the Government when the IMF came to call:

Since the questions are coming from Labour Members, let me now give the other reason why I feel strongly about the need to act decisively in the way in which the Chancellor acted yesterday. Thirty years ago, as an adviser, I occupied the office that I now occupy as a Minister. It was the end of a Labour Government who had chosen to ignore the build-up to a major financial crisis. As some people will remember, the painful measures-the taxes, welfare cuts and spending cuts-were not taken by choice. They were imposed from outside by the International Monetary Fund. Because I was there at the tail-end of that Government, I saw the consequences, not the least of which were the massive divisions that opened up. People in the Government such as Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins and my boss, John Smith, believed that the Government had to be responsible, but there were a lot of others-I sense a growing echo of this feeling on the Opposition Back Benches today-who said, "We don't need to do anything, we can fight the gnomes of Zurich and drive them underground, we can ignore the rest of the world and we do not need to act." It was a disastrous alternative strategy, and the Labour party is in great danger of returning to that territory.

That is why I have come to the same position as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We come from different political traditions; I do not try to hide that. As it happens, my role models as Chancellor of the Exchequer include Sir Stafford Cripps and Roy Jenkins, because they understood the need for sound public finance and they combined tough action on budgets with fairness.

And this is what he had to say on VAT - and the regressiveness of the Council Tax under Labour:

The Government did look at the possibility of raising capital gains tax further. They did serious analysis and the conclusion was that it would not raise any more revenue. That was the problem. It certainly would not have raised anything remotely like £10 billion. That is why we cannot evade this issue.

Let me turn to the central concern about value added tax, which is expressed on both sides of the House: the worry about regressiveness. I checked back on what independent analysts were saying about value added tax and its income distribution effects. It is worth looking at the work of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which has conducted a distributional analysis based on expenditure. It came to the conclusion-this is its word, not mine-that value added tax was fairly "progressive" because of the exemptions that are given for zero rating, as food, children's clothing and other essentials are key items in the expenditure patterns of poorer people. [Interruption.] The top 10% of the population pay three times as much in value added tax as the bottom 10%. [Interruption.]

Opposition Members are expressing righteous indignation about what they regard as regressive measures. Let me tell them which is the most regressive tax: it is council tax. Do they remember what happened to council tax under the Labour Government? On average, it went up 70%. Taking into account rebates, for the poorest 10% of the population it rose by 93%. It is the most regressive tax of all, yet they lecture us in this sanctimonious way about regressive taxation. They have no basis for doing that.

I can see the logic in what he's saying, but I still don't like it when so many of the uber-wealthy are being comparatively lightly taxed.

I think that in general the speeches I saw from the Government side were much more rational than the bile that came from the opposition benches. The Budget is now passed and there is more pain in the specifics of the spending cuts still to come, but I wanted to preserve what were for me the most important arguments made in the debate. I'm not convinced by all the answers given, but let's give it a chance. This Government also seems to be prepared to listen to rational, evidence based argument so we'll see if measures can be adjusted in the future.

Simon Hughes is new Lib Dems Deputy Leader.

If the deputy leadership contest ends up between Tim Farron and Simon Hughes, my head says Tim, who has huge amounts of dynamism and energy and my heart says Simon, who is where I'm at politically. I kind of feel that my heart is owed.

Or so I wrote 2 weeks ago.

Thank you, MPs, for electing Simon as Deputy Leader tonight. His main strength is his ability to inspire. His main weakness is his abiity to organise. The Deputy Leader role has all of the former and none of the latter. He will be utterly brilliant at it. I'm on a kind of food metaphor binge tonight so Simon really is your ultimate comfort food, perfectly seasoned mashed potato, or gooey chocolate pudding, or toad in the hole with onion gravy with loads of madeira in it. He'll be great for getting us through the "bumps and scrapes" of the coalition that Nick described. When I'm locked in that cupboard with the gin bottle, it'll be Simon who encourages me out and gets me phone canvassing or delivering leaflets again.

Here are his coments tonight on his election:

“It is an honour and a privilege for me to follow Vince Cable as the new Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats. This is not a responsibility I will ever take lightly.

“I will fight every day for the principles which underpin our party: fairness, freedom, openness, equality, stewardship of our environment and standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

“I will work tirelessly with Nick Clegg and all other Liberal Democrats to help liberal democracy blossom and flourish throughout the land.”

.

That's our Simon, showing exactly why I campaigned for him for leader and president. Good luck to him in his new role.

Jo Swinson decides not to stand for Deputy Leadership

Well, there are more disappointing things than not having an iPad. However much I want one, it's the worst name for a product in the history of time.

Jo Swinson's tweet that she wasn't standing for Deputy Leader made me very sad. She would have been completely awesome. She has a high media profile having done brilliant things with her campaign for excess packaging and the Real Women campaign and she has literally thousands of young followers on Twitter and Facebook. She doesn't have to be deputy leader to go on inspiring and encouraging though. Had it been up to Twitter and the blogosphere I suspect she'd have won the contest by a country mile.

I shall have to console myself with the bottle of Moet et Chandon champagne I won at the school pamper night.

If the deputy leadership contest ends up between Tim Farron and Simon Hughes, my head says Tim, who has huge amounts of dynamism and energy and my heart says Simon, who is where I'm at politically. I kind of feel that my heart is owed.

The Fabulousness of General Election Night

Any political activist will wax lyrical about the various joys of Election Night. Nothing beats being with the friends and colleagues you've been slogging your guts out with as the results come in overnight. The excitement of victory, the disappointemnt of defeat, all enhanced by the surreality of total exhaustion.

Most activists at an election count, which starts at 10pm when the polls closed, will have been up delivering leaflets at the crack of dawn. They will have been on the go all day, stopping only briefly for refreshment. Despite every part of their body aching, the adrenaline keeps them going until the polls close and then through the count. If they're not at the count, they are generally congregating in some place consuming alcohol and watching Dimbleby and others fill in time before the first results come in after midnight.

Now it appears that more and more Councils are going to move towards counting on the day after the election and Liberal Democrat Voice reports on a Tory inspired campaign to Save General Election Night, reported on Liberal Democrat Voice.

The wonderful, wise and usually but not always right Dr Pack thinks that keeping the counts on a Thursday night is a good idea because:

"The drama of election night is one of the rare occasions when a mass public audience gets interested in the details of politics and hears news and information at more than nano-soundbite length."

As not much else happens overnight, the election results get more and better media coverage than they do during the day, when there are more interruptions from other stories.

Switching counts to Friday risks having the immediate news dominated by exit polls – i.e. largely about the UK-wide picture, whilst squeezing out the stories about the huge variations taking place all round the country. (A more partisan point is that it also means reports are likely to be pretty much all about the Labour/Conservative battle as the overall Lib Dem share of the vote in exit polls – unless very dramatic – is likely only to be a very rough indictator of the party’s performance in terms of seats. Saying “… and we don’t know about the Lib Dems” is likely to pale very quickly.)

Particularly in the internet age, speculation and wild gossip quickly fills a news vacuum. Better to be providing hard information sooner rather than later.

Quick counts provide more security against problems with ballot boxes being tampered with or lost. Serious allegations of this only happen rarely, but it is certainly not unknown."

Most normal people I know spend the late-night-results-coming in bit tucked up in their beds and find out what's happened in the morning before they go out for the day, but what would be so wrong about them finding out when they come in at tea time? If they're really interested, there are enough sources of information as to what's going on and if they like they can watch the drama unfold while they're awake.

Dr Pack also knows as well as I do that Simon Hughes has been wrongly predicted by one or other election programme to have lost his seat in every election since 1983, so it's wrong to suggest that somehow the late night programme is a guardian against wild rumours spreading.

He also mentions the security issue if the counts are delayed. In a Euro election, we manage to keep our ballot boxes secure for 3 days before the Count, but for this proposal, we are talking about 12-16 hours. I hope as well that we'll be moving to some sort of fair voting system within the next few years and then I think it would be better if the counts were held during the day, particularly if they are manual.

While I love the drama of Election Night, and I do agree that there's nothing quite like it, and it would be really hard to get to sleep not knowing whether all our hard work had paid off, I'm not so motivated to fight for it and I certainly won't be signing up to any Tory driven knee jerk reaction campaign on the issue. To a certain extent I see it as our responsibility to try to engage the public during the campaign so that they feel they have an interest in the outcome. If they're genuinely on tenterhooks about the result, it won't really matter when they are announced because they'll make a point of finding out what's happened.

There are plenty sensible reasons why the counts should take place on the day after an election, too. It just makes it easier and cheaper for Councils to organise.

I suppose what really cured me of my love of overnight counts was a couple of hours spent in a layby on the A92, a few miles south of Glenrothes, in the middle of the night in the freezing pouring rain, when I broke down on the way back from the by-election count last November.

I suppose one reason that Dr Pack didn't mention as a good reason to have the count overnight is that it enables the new Goverment to start doing things on the Friday after they were elected. Remember how Labour hit the ground running by announcing that they were giving control of interest rates to the Bank of England? If they leave the results until late Friday, there will be no point in announcing much before the Monday news cycles. Is that such a bad thing, though?

Moving the counts to the Friday would be the end of an era. I'm not convinced that it would be such a bad thing, though.

Heat Magazine TV editor praises Simon Hughes on Twitter

Much as I love Simon Hughes, I can't quite see him featuring in Heat magazine at any point in the future, not even as Torso of the Week. Barack Obama is, I think, the only politician to have been given that honour!

We all know how hard Simon works on behalf of his constituents so it was good to see this praise on Twitter from Heat magazine tv and reviews editor Boyd Hilton:

"MP Simon Hughes on the bus now chatting to his constituents. Officially a Good Bloke. He gets my vote
about 2 hours ago from Tweetie"

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More Tabloid Hypocrisy.....

So, not surprisingly, the Sun adopted a censorious and outraged tone over the Prince Harry incident.

That's right, the Sun was going all politically correct on us. This is, of course, the same paper that publishes semi naked pictures of women every day, but we'll let that disrespect of half the world's population pass just for a minute.

It amazes me that the editors either don't notice or don't care about the blatant hypocrisy of, on one page printing all this finger wagging stuff at Prince Harry and a few pages further on making a great song and dance about David Walliams' holiday activities..

The paper seems to feel that because David had a night out with Dale Winton and Louis Walsh in Miami, it can make whatever innuendo it likes about his private life.

I'm reminded that they also took a swipe at our own Simon Hughes with an article riddled with misconceptions and innuendo simply because he'd opened a public toilet in his constituency. The joke of this was that this story was published in 2006 just around the time of the leadership election, yet the toilet in question was actually opened 12 years earlier.

The paper has not been above a bit of racist scaremongering itself in the past - warning us all about "migrant crooks" - their words, not mine.

Which group of people will our friendly tabloid be bashing next week?

And, as for David Walliams, I just hope he's having a lovely and relaxing holiday so he can come back and write us some more Little Britain USA.

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