Talk:Michael Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn

message: This hatchet-job of an opinion piece by Quentin Letts might be a useful source for referencing the "controversy" section, if required. DWaterson 21:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Useful article?

message: There was a dispatches programme called Nice work if you can get it It detailed the inner workings of MPs expenses and all the corruption behind it and it ultimately placed the finger on Michael Martin because he blocked the setting up of an independent body to regualte Mps expenses. Unfortunatley I have forgotten the details of this programme. Can anyone else remember these things? http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/nice+work+if+you+can+get+it/839262   Lordy Why Have You Foresaken Me (talk) 15:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Dispatches]]

message: The speaker has no official party affiliation. I've changed it to 'None (pre-speakership Labour)'  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.68.243.54 (talk) 16:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This is incorrect, he is still a Labour MP when he stands in the general election. 195.157.52.65 (talk) 12:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As I understand it he runs as "Mr Speaker seeking re-election", not "Labour Party", though he is the endorsed candidate of the relevant Constituency Labour Party. Timrollpickering (talk) 00:17, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Traditionally, I think that other parties have not put up a candidate against the incumbent Speaker at a general election: is that not right? Even so, that doesn't alter his (previous/current) party affiliation, and in any case at the last general election, although the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats did not contest Michael Martin's seat, other parties did. Ondewelle (talk) 20:36, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's correct - it's a tradition honoured by the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. The SNP (and other parties) don't acknowledge it, and stood a candidate against Martin last time. Regarding the speaker's political affiliation, by tradition the speaker will resign from their party once elected as speaker (as Martin did when he was elected). Cheers, This flag once was redpropagandadeeds 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's actually not honoured by Labour - at almost every election since 1935 when there has been a Speaker from the non-Labour benches he has faced a Labour opponent. The Liberals have also stood in the past. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The things one learns from Wikipedia! I went through the Tory Speakers since 1935, and discovered that there also used to be a loose convention that the Speaker's election would be unopposed (i.e. not the election to Parliament, but the election of the Speaker). Apparently Labour broke that convention by standing a candidate against William Morrison. (I gather this wasn't unheard of in the 19th century, but was the first time it had happened in the 20th).  Cheers, This flag once was redpropagandadeeds 13:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Party Affiliation

message: Perhaps someone would like to update this article to mention he allowed police to enter the House of Commons when MPs were away. I'm sure this will develop over the next few days. 195.157.52.65 (talk) 12:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Riding roughshod over democracy

message: what a god awful picture! He looks like a bond villain! We so need a better one. I'm no good with images, so I'll leave it for someone else to do (Aurumpotestasest (talk) 19:13, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There are some photos like this, but we can't use them because they're not freely licensed. --h2g2bob (talk) 00:29, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

text: Ha, I do think the picture is a little on the evil side. --68.193.246.47 (talk) 19:26, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

text: There is no better free image available. We can't just steal images. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 14:27, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  picture 

message: This article is totally biased. You can read who and why -without giving details at all- these MPs want him sacked.  We don't even know the Speaker's attitude to this issue.  This article is not being handled respecting NPOV protocol.  There is not a balance between appraisals and criticisms. If the editors can't follow NPOV, I think the neutrality of this article should be assessed by other members of Wikipedia project.--Merliomar (talk) 10:04, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm unsure this above rates as the most NPOV opinion about NPOV.  The article is certainly weighted towards his few years in the Speaker's chair rather than, for example, the previous decades he spent working as a politician in Glasgow, given this is a biographical entry and not an article about the May 2009 Speaker's scandal.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.129.172.165 (talk) 14:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV????  

message: I have removed reference in the article to the Queen being said to be deeply troubled, because it is indefensible on every level. The citation was a Daily Mail article which does not give its own source of a famously private audience between Queen and Prime Minister, and in any case reported the Queen as being deeply troubled with the likelihood of extremist party representation in the EU, not with the Michael Martin issue.  Neither does the citation of Nick Clegg's call for the Speaker to step down make any reference to the Queen, which had been suggested in the Wikipedia article.  Encyclopaedias are for reporting facts, not for badly representing reports of tittle-tattle.
As listed below, it is a requirement of Wikipedia that badly sourced material in biography articles on living people are to be removed immediately, hence no advance discussion.
Tsuchan (talk) 08:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Queen Deeply Troubled

message: Technically, he wasn't forced. He resigned. He could have stayed on. It would have created an almighty stink, but technically, he could have resisted calls and even ignored a proposed vote of no confidence. As such, the decision to go was his own. Cameron is quoted as saying "I think it was, in the end, the right thing for him to do because obviously he'd lost the confidence of the House of Commons" (emphasis mine) and not it was the right thing to be done to him  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.14.112.203 (talk) 03:45, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: 84.14.112.203, I was thinking the same thing. Unlike Sir Trevor, no vote was made on a no confidence motion - he wasn't "forced out" by this. But some MPs had signed a no confidence motion (if it got enough signatures, it would have been put to a vote). I've made [ this change] to reflect this. --h2g2bob (talk) 16:42, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Labour MPs said at the time that he had been forced into resigning by the confidence motion. (92.11.198.244 (talk) 11:51, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Forced from office

message: Doesn't the current lead suffer from recentism? It doesn't mention when he became speaker or anything else he is notable for, only the current scandal and resignation. I think that needs balancing. Fences and windows (talk) 22:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've edited the lead a bit, moving a long bit about the resignation into the body of the article. --h2g2bob (talk) 14:49, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Lead

message: It makes him look very evil. Hes not that bad...Saladin Bakr (talk) 18:58, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: We can't find any better, freely-licensed images. Computerjoe's talk 20:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

text: It doesn't make him look at all evil. What does an evil person look like? ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 14:28, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead pic. 

message: I suggest we move the page to Michael Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn, which would follow naming conventions on peers. Obviously, Martin is well-known without his peerage, but the article currently uses "(politician)" for disambiguation. I say the peerage would preferable as a dab. What does everyone else think? -Rrius (talk) 08:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Given the lack of opposition, I did so. -Rrius (talk) 05:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move proposal 

message: Edited to correct the reference to him as a Labour peer. He's not, and never was - he's a Crossbench peer , as former Speakers of the Commons tend to be.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Psychonomy (talk • contribs) 08:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
The result of the move request was: not moved.  No consensus that primary topic has been established. Born2cycle (talk) 23:25, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Party affiliation 

message: Is there any chance of using another photo, rather than File:Michael Martin MP.jpg? This photo is 'artistic', but the lighting makes it hard to make out even basic facial features; I wouldn't recognise him on the street based on this photo. --jftsang 22:44, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: There are no other free images available. There is no justification for taking one that doesn't belong to us given the existence of this image. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 14:29, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photo 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: *</br>Is this relevant to the BLP article? Stormy clouds (talk) 15:04, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relevancy of certain lines 

message: where did Michael Martin die? did not mention any where  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khoshhat (talk • contribs) 14:34, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Death 

message: As we have a free image what is the justification for using a non-free image ? ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 13:00, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: IMO this is not a justification to use a non-free image. We need to only use non-free images when there are no free images available and in this case there is a free image available. Copyright laws are made for a good reason and we are going beyond the boundaries here. Where do you draw the line? IMO well the other side of this free image, it isn't perfect but it does illustrate Martin. The fact that it is black-and-white is completely irrelevant, so are lots of perfectly acceptable images we use. If there were some policy rejecting black-and-white images and demanding unfree colour images instead that would be a different matter but there aren't any. About 30% of his face is obscured but as he is still recognisable this smacks of wanting to use an unfree image with no justification. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 14:24, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

text: I'll add that there is nothing in the above threads to justify using a non-free image. We can't just take images that don't belong to us just because two or three editors don't like the free image. That isn't how it works. How it works is we can use unfree images only when no free image is available. There is nothing int ehse threads to contradict this and certainly no consensus to use an unfree iamge when a free one is available. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 14:31, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Free image