My Time Person of the Year campaign is gaining traction but I need your help!!

A Tunisian street vendor, Muhammad Al Bouazizi, has now been nominated on the Longlist for Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2011. Please click on this link and vote Yes for Muhammad, who is currently running 12th in the world.

This is an important step in our campaign to have Muhammad Al Bouazizi named as Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2011, given to the person the editorial team at Time deems to have been the most influential person on world events in the past year. Muhammad committed an act of self immolation on Dec 17th, and died in early January. His act of protest led directly to the overthrow of the government in Tunisia, and all the other events in the Middle East - Egypt, Libya, Yemen et al - can be directly and unequivocally linked to his act of protest. Yet there is a fear that other rather less worthy individuals will get the award, thanks to their higher media profile.

Various notable individuals such as Jonathan Freedland and Christina Patterson have been kind enough to RT information about the campaign (even Michael Winner has sent me a good luck message!) and it seems we do have some traction.

Other ways in which you can help include:

1. Writing to Richard Stengal, Managing Editor of Time, by clicking here. A simple sentence saying 'Make Mohammad Al Bouazizi Person of the Year 2011' will be fine.

2. Sign our petition by clicking here

3. Visit our Facebook Page by clicking here. Please write a comment and tick the 'like' box.

4. Visit our website for more information,

BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THINK YOU CAN DO IS VOTE YES FOR BOUAZIZI AT THIS SITE BY CLICKING HERE.

Thank You

Would you buy a used car from David Cameron?

Johann Hari gave Ed Miliband some suggestions the other day about to make himself more electable – and this included the advice that he should use more everyday language.

I have observed the opposite factor in David Cameron. He brilliantly understands how to use everyday words and phrases that ‘de-Etonise’ our Prime Minister very well.

We saw it the other day in Prime Ministers questions. While showing that Ed Balls had got to him was probably a tactical mistake, his criticism was couched using common language and phrases that chime with anyone that uses them. Consider the phrases ‘I wish the shadow chancellor would occasionally shut up’ and ‘the most annoying man in British politics’. Simple everyday language.

You see this over and over again. On the introduction of the no-fly-zone in Libya, Cameron didn’t say the motion was passed with judicious or propitious timing. He said it had been done in the ‘nick of time’.

Even when he gets it wrong, he gets it right – such as in this now notorious interview on Absolute Radio.

All this is very deliberate. It is to make him seem more in tune with the common man, more everyday, more one-of-us. It’s more than a tad cynical, but it’s very clever.

So next time you hear some everyday language from David Cameron, be on your toes. He’s probably trying to sell you something.

We didn't say we were Charlie Sheen. We said we were Mother Teresa

There has been an interesting debate over at Lib Dem Voice as to the reason why we languish in the polls compared to our coalition partners (see the ‘comments’ section). The argument seems to be that that we poll badly currently as we are blamed for the cuts and age of austerity – whereas cuts and attacks on public services are just what you expect the Tories to do, so they don’t lose ‘credit’ from the electorate. They are, after all, the ‘nasty party’.

I think this is nonsense.

The reason we languish in the polls compared to the Tories, when we are just a junior member of the coalition, is because before the election we – quite rightly – set ourselves against a higher moral standard. As demonstrated ably by the video below.



However, the danger with this is, that having set the benchmark by which you wish everyone to be judged, you have to live up to the expectation you have established.

This is hard enough to do when you pick just one or two areas. Look at the trouble Labour had when it said it was going to pursue ‘an ethical foreign policy’. Or John Major had when he took the moral high ground with ‘back to basics’.

When you set everything you do on this higher plane, it only takes one slip up and you will be deemed to have failed. We effectively have had two – tuition fees, and a general (if mistaken) belief that we’ve acquiesced to the Tories cuts programme. And we remain unforgiven.

That’s why we languish in the polls. We had further to fall from the moral high ground. And we are yet to bounce.

Best Political April Fools?

At least I hope they are.

1. Lib Dem Voice to be renamed Lib Dem Home..

2. Arise. Lord Schwarzenegger

3. Red Flag Street parties for Labour's Royal Wedding

4. Iain Dale is back blogging...

5. UK UnCut launches Political Party.

Enjoy!

David Willetts: an apology. But not to him...

Tory politicians. You can’t take your eyes off them for a minute.

I talked up David Willetts yesterday for his radical ideas about improving social mobility in higher education, by allowing pupils with lower grades from poorer performing schools to usurp pupils with better grades – but loads of advantages to getting them (generally because they are at private schools).

Maybe someone told him that he was being praised in the Lib Dem blogosphere and it spooked him.

Because he’s now gone all True Blue and Old Tory and blamed the travails of the world and in particular the failure in social mobility on…feminism.

Unbelievable.

So I take it all back. And I'm sorry.

He is, as Sue Perkins just put it, a complete Jeremy Hunt.

Plus my stats have shot up as loyal readers flock to find out why I think he's not talking complete nonsense. Thanks a lot Willetts

Normal service is now resumed.

PS Here's why he's wrong...

Ah. People keep asking me for something like this. Now I've found one.

How AV Works and why you should do it



And here's one from the alternative direction - what's wrong with FPTP..



If you're seeing this on Lib Dem Blogs, it will appear meaningless as the video doesn't show on the sampler - so best click for a proper look...

And here's a very funny video about us which has nothing to do with AV but makes you laugh at what the world actually thinks of us...

EXCLUSIVE! New evidence suggests Nick Clegg is, apparently, very popular amongst Lib Dems...

We’re a quarter of the way through the year and so I thought I’d list the most popular posts on the blog this year.

And I write one post in three months – just the one – defending Nick and it gets more readers than anything else. It would seem we’re still quite keen on our glorious leader, no matter what the media in general or the comments section on Lib Dem Voice would have you believe.

Anyway, here we go…

1. Nick Clegg bashing by the press is getting ludicrous now (24 Feb)

The Tories turn the NHS on its head. The Guardian illustrates the news with a picture of Nick. For goodness sake….

2. Help me persuade Time Magazine to make a Tunisian Street vendor their Person of the Year 2011 (14 Feb)

Thank you to everyone who has visited the site, signed the petition etc – but do keep visiting.

3. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this…(4 March)

My take on the Barnsley result. No, it’s not about football

4. It’s not the unpopularity; it’s the fingers-in-the-air-la-la-la-not-listening that’s getting to me…(11 March)

We’re going to change nobodies mind until we at least get them to listen again.

5. Someone threw an egg at my house; is this a political rite of passage? (15 March)

A frisson of excitement as I open the front room curtains.

6. Armando Iannucci’s message to us feels like ‘unforgiven’. (14 March)

He asked the question. We gave him the answer he wanted. It wasn’t enough.

7. This is the Conservatives tuition fee moment (18 Feb)

Except it wasn’t. Still, you all enjoyed reading it.

8. If there’s one thing we should be angry about, it’s this. (18 March)

The disgrace of what is happening around Brian Haw.

9. It would seem the NHS debate has our MP’s between a rock and a hard place. (17 March)

A call to (very supportively) keep the pressure on….

10. Why doesn’t Google analytics go up to 10?

I thought they were a digital company…

Finally, huge thanks to Olly Grender for #ff me and my blog today. Already several new followers. No pressure there then…