Recommended reading for Lib Dem councillors and local campaigners from the last seven days:
There’s been some discussion recently about how the party moves on from the recent local election results.
Rob Hayward has given his analysis on the Liberal Democrat performance in the council elections on Conservative Home, which gives you an idea of the take of someone in another party.
However, as part of the internal discussion, Bill Le Breton has written about how he thinks community politics can reform the coalition’s prospects. ALDC members can download a PDF of the original “The Theory and Practice of Community Politics” and you can browse some of the the other early ALDC and ALC publications in the file library on our website.
In the last week, the Liberal Democrats also appointed their three senior campaign posts as part of the restructuring announced previously.
For the elections anoraks out there, we bring the exciting news that the House of Commons Library has produced their annual report on the local elections, including a host of interesting statistics. Similar briefings are available to download for the elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Alternative Vote referendum.
In local government news:
The controversial restructuring and outsourcing of services at Suffolk County Council has run in to trouble.
Local Government Chronicle writes about the number of councils interested in issuing bonds to raise money for local investment and pay off debts.
Suggestions that the government might offer financial incentives for councils to re-introduce weekly bin collections (or to stop the move to fortnightly) have met with mixed reviews.
Finally, we finish this weeks’ Read All About It! with the sad news of the sudden death of Deputy Director of Campaigns for Scotland Andrew Reeves. It seems timely to include a link to this ‘Meet the Bloggers’ post about him from Lib Dem Voice from just a month ago.