Monthly Archives: September 2009

Tweets on 2009-09-21

  • Today's factoid re gender and transport interest: in 2008, more girls went to Thomas the Tank Engine shows than boys. #
  • @jochristiesmith guided bus – a little bit like the Paris Metro… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_bus I wanna know more re tramtrains! in reply to jochristiesmith #
  • Processing sound files. Admiring @markpack 's ability to speak in stereo with the tracks out of synch. #
  • Clegg: we will be a larger and more diverse parliamentary party after the General Election. #
  • Last remaining, outrageously pricey sarnie from snack bar. Coronation chicken. #
  • @miketd you can use Organizr to do a batch all at once if that helps? #
  • @LloydieJL back in LDV office – see DM #
  • Hmmm, weasel words, Burger King: "contributes towards one of your #5aday." So not even a whole 1? #
  • The onslaught of spam followers of @libdemvoice continues. Hundreds more in last hours. #
  • Goodness me, the conf bar is heaving ce soir. I'm refusing to pay £4/pint for shoddy beer. #
  • Failing to follow my own advice on sensible shoes and eating too late. #
  • How bizarre. Rowdies in street singing "Gwlad, Gwlad!" from Welsh national anthem. #
  • Still, Land of my Fathers makes a nice change of #earworm from The Russian national anthem. #
  • @hannahvictorius you might be able ve get audiobook for free from http://www.librivox.org, save your money for something else? #
  • Spending a frustrating few minutes trying to work out how you now wrangle @rtm #
  • @chrisplol Paul Rowen was at the tram fringe. #
  • Wow – US panellist in crime debate says elected police officials rare – and a populist disaster where it happens. #
  • Hall chocka for Dr Vince Cable. #ldconf #

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#ldconf podcast – Clegg Q&A

Just over an hour ago, our fearless leader Nick Clegg left the stage to tumultuous applause following a frank Q&A with delegates.

Below is the audio recording made by our intrepid reporter by sitting in the audience with a MP3 recorder. And with access to a loaned MacBook, I’ve been able to process the sound much more quickly.

If you hear whispering and shuffling in the recording it’s because a group of media delegates were chattering to each other all through the recording. How nice, then, that one of them subsequently pronounced positively on Clegg’s performance. (At least, I think it was him, but his twitter account has no mugshot)

#ldconf podcast: Campaigning after Rennard


After a day of Linux updates on an incredibly elderly IBM Thinkpad, we can now finally bring you the audio recording of last night’s highly successful fringe meeting with Mark Pack, James Graham, Neil Fawcett and Lynne Featherstone MP.

And most unusually for fringe meetings in general, and definitely a first for an LDV fringe – our meeting got written up in the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

Tweets on 2009-09-20

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Tweets on 2009-09-19

  • @ianvisits I had a fair amount of fun in Paris when I was single. #
  • Finally setting off for Bournemouth, hours later than planned. At least it's daylight this year! #
  • Pulling in at Chieveley Cathedral of Despair for two human necessities, one of which is coffee. #
  • Weather forecast reminds me I've packed no waterproofs. And also no beard trimmer, so will be looking scruffy at #ldconf #
  • @lloydiejl I never go to the rally. Plus usually watch leaders speech somewhere I can mock 🙂 #
  • Me 'n my uke are checking in to Room 101. Srsly! #
  • OMG OMG didn't pack phone charger! #
  • Phoning home. A little baffled as to how a person can break a wooden spoon whilst making risotto. #
  • RT @lordbonkers: When the Beatles played Tenbury Wells http://bit.ly/186qIC For @alexfoster #
  • Joining the throng waiting scant minutes to get into #ldconf. #
  • Rats. Turning on ubuntu laptop for first time in a year and unable to remember username and password. #

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Official conference twitter feed

Just a quick reminder that there will be an official conference twitter feed, available here: www.twitter.com/LibDemConf. Conference staffers and stewards will be updating the account with information as it happens at conference – who’s speaking, when sessions start, and how Conference votes.

If you’re using twitter at conference yourself, don’t forget to liberally sprinkle your updates with the hashtag #ldconf – this will help other people find the messages you send.

And if you want to see those messages for yourself, whether or not you’re a signed up twitter user – click here.

Finally, there’s also Ryan Cullen’s Liberal Tweets service, which brings together the thoughts of nearly a hundred Lib Dems on twitter – whether or not they’re talking about conference.

Tweets on 2009-09-18

  • Contemplating escaping Ctte Room. I could jump out of window? #
  • Hmmm. The small groups bit was actually really much more interesting than I feared. #
  • Still yawning very hard thobut. Must stay awake for teenage pregnancy! #
  • @BeauBodOr not sure Mole45 is the official Swinton Lib Dem site… in reply to BeauBodOr #
  • Leominster in the Telegraph for entirely the wrong reasons. What a confusing story. http://tr.im/z0ir #
  • Finally catching up with @miketd's hour on the plinth. So sad my day didn't let me watch at the time. http://tr.im/z0tM #
  • Finally catching up with @miketd's hour on the plinth. So sad my day didn't let me watch at the time. http://tr.im/z0tM #oneandother #
  • Aha! 25mins into Mike's plinth mix, there's a song I actually know! 🙂 http://tr.im/z0tM #oneandother #
  • Why's everyone turned into little Caspar the friendly ghosts?! #
  • @chriskeating my guess for rhyddidcanalog – rithid canalog. Canalog means central, as in Caerdydd canalog #
  • By my quick reckoning, there were over 90 mentions of #ldconf in the last day. It's gonna be tough to keep up when conf actually starts! #
  • Hmmm. There appear to be kitten tooth marks in my phone charger cable. #
  • Joint Committee on / Strategic Planning, Transport / No syllables left. #Haiku #
  • Where in Nottingham is a good place to go for an all day breakfast? #

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Tweets on 2009-09-17

  • Heh. Listening to #bbcr4 Excess Baggage podcast from March where they forgot to stop the tape and there are further edits later on. #
  • RT @miketd: Here's a brief summary of what I'll be doing on the plinth tomorrow, and how you can take part: http://is.gd/3kWPB #oneandother #
  • Google Mobile for some reason thinks I'm in Finland. Finnish for Privacy Policy seems to be "Sekretess". #
  • @thurtinkle @braincoffee tis not me on't Plinth but @miketd #
  • @jonxyz we were pretty much reciting that verbatim on Shell over weekend. #
  • @paul_cornell isn't it a surplice? All the best to Caroline. #
  • Just been to see Julie & Julia. Not at all like Victor / Victoria, but loved it to bits quand meme. #
  • I've a feeling someone's going to be doing Julia Child impressions for almost as long as I'm going to be peppering my tweets with mots f … #
  • Not for the first time, pondering what injury I could get that would make leaflethog impossible but not otherwise interfere with life. #
  • @lordbonkers My phone doesn't know the present participle of "to leaflet" and mangles it; love your vision of the Yorkshire leafleting pigs #

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#ldconf 101 – absolute top tip

Here’s my absolute, most important top tip for people attending conference – pack sensible shoes. I cannot emphasise this enough. You will be spending much of your time on your feet, and you will be schlepping wearily from venue to venue. Bits of Bournemouth are hilly, so you will also be trekking up a small cliff to switch from conference hall to fringe meetings. If you just pack strappy shoes, or dress shoes, or the ones that look good with your suit but are murder on your toeses, you will spend the week in agony. Pack comfy trainers. Include the footwear you choose for leafleting. You feet will thank you for it.

The second most important tip for people who haven’t been to conference before – there’s a special event just for people like you! Here are the details:

New to conference?
Unsure what Federal Conference is all about? Anyone unfamiliar with conference is invited to come to this session aimed at helping you to get the most out of your first – and subsequent! – visits.
Location: Old Harry’s, Marriott Highcliff
Time: 21.45 – 22.30
Date: Saturday 19th September

I went along one of the sessions for new people at Conference in 2006 – and you can still hear the resulting vox pop interview podcast.

Elsewhere in our #ldconf 101 series:

Daily View 2×2: 17 September 2009

Good morning. Today we remember the deaths of Hildegard von Bingen, and, centuries later, Laura Ashley; and today’s birthday girl is Tessa Jowell.

Two big stories

A surprising number of newspapers seem to be leading with a story about how soon, we will all have the right to register with any GP we choose. I struggle to see why that’s made so many front pages.

Instead, my picks are the Independent’s story about racism in the US, with President Carter weighing in on opposition to President Obama’s current policy platform:

After lurking near the surface of political discourse in America for months, awkward questions about race and bigotry burst into the open yesterday after Jimmy Carter forthrightly suggested that “an overwhelming portion” of the more violent opposition to President Barack Obama and his policies has to do with the colour of his skin.

Meanwhile closer to home, the Telegraph is finding new ways to use numbers to scare us:

In his 2000 Budget, Mr Brown described money spent on debt and welfare as “the costs of failure” and lauded Labour’s record in reducing those payments. He said: “Our promise was to reduce the costs of failure – the bills for unemployment and debt interest – in order to reallocate money to the key public services.” Now, Mr Brown’s own figures reveal how those costs are set to grow dramatically. Already the largest single item in the budget, by 2013/14 spending on social security will dwarf every other item of Government expenditure.

2 must read blog posts

Mary Reid writes about the party’s new policies for women:

Back in 1917 the ‘perfect’ woman was 5ft 4in and nearly 10stone. 100 years later, and girls aspire to be very tall and very, very thin.

And whilst much of the post is about the airbrushing proposals, there’s also a handy summary of some of the other aspects of the policy too.

Secondly, Mike at The Atomium Blog has some scathing words on tax credits:

But seriously, if you were asked to come up with a way of doing this, could you have ever designed a more clumsy, inefficient or convoluted system than the one which the Labour government, under Gordon Brown as chancellor, managed to create?