Weekend up North
Mar. 5th, 2007 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
djm4_ljThis weekend, I was not, unlike many people, in Blackpool. I was in Harrogate, with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lizw, at the Liberal Democrats' Spring Conference. Highlights of the weekend included:
* Chris Huhne. Just about everything he said was interesting, intelligent and radical. The upside of his not winning the leadership contest is that he's had more time to devote to reforming our economic strategy.
* Standing on stage at the Glee Club singing On Ilkla Moor baht'at with a crowd of fellow Yorkshire folk. We (who were doing it all from memory) were very confused when the rest of the Glee Club sang the extra verse that was in their songsheets, which has apparently been added later.
* Lembit Öpik. Not only is he a fellow lover of canal boats, but he played the harmonica at the Glee Club.
* The 'We Can Cut Crime' video, which had a (presumably unintentionally) hilarious section with the Watford County Council leader talking about her anti-crime policies. These policies included an 'innovative "three strikes"' policy (I think that 'innovative' policy may have been done before somewhere) and may indeed have worked well, but the interview was undermined by the bizarre decision to have two workers cleaning graffiti from the walls behind it. It's not just that it made what was being said difficult to hear, but more the fact that utterly failing to clean any graffiti off the building at all. And their futile efforts were more fascinating to watch than the dull (if worthy) interview happening in front of them. It was like something out of Monty Python.
* WiFi failing on the train home, which gave me time to try out Garage Band. Wow! That's a lot of fun, isn't it?
* Excellent Thai food at The Thai Elephant.
* The extremely lovely butch-looking woman in a suit with short dark hair who I kept spotting all weekend. Never spoke to her - would probably have gibbered incoherently had I got the chance anyway - and all I know is that she's Cornish, as she sang Trelawney at the Glee Club.
* Nicol Stephen's attack on the SNP's policy on cutting crime. Not because it was any good; it wasn't. But because he claimed not to be able to find out what their policy on cutting crime was, which is such a hilariously stupid claim. It tooklizw (literally) two minutes to find out, and when we looked at it, it was ... very suspiciously like the Liberal Democrat policy on cutting crime. Hmmm.
* Ming's speech, which did the job. I'm not a huge fan of political speeches in general - I find they've a tendency to simplify complex issues in a way that makes me twitch. By not trying to cover too much ground in his, I thought Ming broadly avoided this problem, and I liked that he clearly articulated what Lib Dem policy was, as much as he attacked many of the policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
* Being involved in the discussions on our health policy.
I'm definitely thinking of going back, not just to the Spring Conference in Liverpool next year, but to the Autumn one in Brighton in November.
lizw, at the Liberal Democrats' Spring Conference. Highlights of the weekend included:* Chris Huhne. Just about everything he said was interesting, intelligent and radical. The upside of his not winning the leadership contest is that he's had more time to devote to reforming our economic strategy.
* Standing on stage at the Glee Club singing On Ilkla Moor baht'at with a crowd of fellow Yorkshire folk. We (who were doing it all from memory) were very confused when the rest of the Glee Club sang the extra verse that was in their songsheets, which has apparently been added later.
* Lembit Öpik. Not only is he a fellow lover of canal boats, but he played the harmonica at the Glee Club.
* The 'We Can Cut Crime' video, which had a (presumably unintentionally) hilarious section with the Watford County Council leader talking about her anti-crime policies. These policies included an 'innovative "three strikes"' policy (I think that 'innovative' policy may have been done before somewhere) and may indeed have worked well, but the interview was undermined by the bizarre decision to have two workers cleaning graffiti from the walls behind it. It's not just that it made what was being said difficult to hear, but more the fact that utterly failing to clean any graffiti off the building at all. And their futile efforts were more fascinating to watch than the dull (if worthy) interview happening in front of them. It was like something out of Monty Python.
* WiFi failing on the train home, which gave me time to try out Garage Band. Wow! That's a lot of fun, isn't it?
* Excellent Thai food at The Thai Elephant.
* The extremely lovely butch-looking woman in a suit with short dark hair who I kept spotting all weekend. Never spoke to her - would probably have gibbered incoherently had I got the chance anyway - and all I know is that she's Cornish, as she sang Trelawney at the Glee Club.
* Nicol Stephen's attack on the SNP's policy on cutting crime. Not because it was any good; it wasn't. But because he claimed not to be able to find out what their policy on cutting crime was, which is such a hilariously stupid claim. It took
lizw (literally) two minutes to find out, and when we looked at it, it was ... very suspiciously like the Liberal Democrat policy on cutting crime. Hmmm.* Ming's speech, which did the job. I'm not a huge fan of political speeches in general - I find they've a tendency to simplify complex issues in a way that makes me twitch. By not trying to cover too much ground in his, I thought Ming broadly avoided this problem, and I liked that he clearly articulated what Lib Dem policy was, as much as he attacked many of the policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
* Being involved in the discussions on our health policy.
I'm definitely thinking of going back, not just to the Spring Conference in Liverpool next year, but to the Autumn one in Brighton in November.
