This is the third in a small series of articles with what every delegate needs to know about Conference. See also our posts on how you don’t have to be a registered delegate to attend fringe and training events, and how to be a voting rep at conference even if you weren’t elected to that position at your local party’s AGM.

This is perhaps the area where I am least qualified to speak, since I have never given a speech to Conference in the eight or so years I have been attending.

But I have noticed there’s very clear and much improved advice on how to speak during the main debates, with, in particular, a whole page of the Conference Agenda dedicated to tips on how to fill in Speakers Cards to maximise your chance of being called to speak.

Page 9 of the agenda – available online here – is where it’s at.

Essentially, you can only speak if you are a registered delegate at conference, or if you have been given permission by the Conference Committee. Registering for the day is not enough. Both voting and non-voting members of conference can speak. Once you’ve passed that hurdle, you need to complete a speaker’s card, and submit it in good time. Cards are available from stewards in the auditorium and also, on Friday evening, in the foyer of the Conference hotel. You must submit it before the beginning of the morning or afternoon session in which you want to speak – and it helps the chair of the session if you hand it in earlier than that.

Finally, for some debates where there are likely to be a large number of speakers, the standing orders of Conference allow for Interventions. Page 7 of the directory sets out the rules:

There will be interventions during debates F4, F11, F18, F26, F33, F36 and F45. This procedure offers voting or non-voting representatives the opportunity to make concise (one-minute) speeches from the floor during the debate on the motion. Eligibility to make an intervention is the same as for making a speech (see speaking at conference on page 8). There are two microphones in the body of the Auditorium facing the stage. Those wishing to speak during interventions should sit in the designated seats and complete the form handed to them by the steward overseeing those seats. Three lights will be
visible on either side of the stage: the green light comes on at the start of the intervention; the amber light will show after 40 seconds; the red light will come on at the end of one minute and the intervention must stop immediately.

I apologise from the outset, but this is going to be one of those posts that not everyone understands. If you’re not technical, or if your diary is still entirely paper based, look away now.

Neil McGovern, a Cambridge City councillor, has grepped the conference directory so that you don’t have to. He’s written a program that scrapes the information about the training and fringe events (including LDV’s fringe fiesta) and plugs them into a Google Calendar.

This means that if you use GCal yourself, you can import all those events into your diary – and from there, straight into your PDA or phone.

If you don’t use Gcal, there are feeds available that work with pretty much any online diary system, including HTML and ICAL.

Here are the handy links. Good luck!

Fringe Events
RSS | iCAL | HTML
Google Calendar address.

Training Events
RSS | iCAL | HTML
Google Calendar address

Welcome to Daily View. Today is the anniversary of Black Wednesday, and bunny hops for today’s birthday boys: Henry V and Russ Abbot.

2 Big News Stories

Wor Vince has fleshed out Lib Dem policy on how to respond to the parlous state of public finance – and Michael White approves.

Number crunchers at the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, whose own estimate of the required squeeze will be published tomorrow, call his nine suggestions a “state-of-the-art shopping list”. As so often with Lib Dem ideas, it includes some which bigger parties are closing in on: trimming tax credit for better-off families, curtailing ID cards and the NHS IT system, freezing public sector pay (TUC please note) and ending £28bn worth of subsidy to public sector pensions (ditto).

Meanwhile, the US and Europe are starting to have differences on the future of climate change policy.

Europe has clashed with the US Obama administration over climate change in a potentially damaging split that comes ahead of crucial political negotiations on a new global deal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The Guardian understands that key differences have emerged between the US and Europe over the structure of a new worldwide treaty on global warming. Sources on the European side say the US approach could undermine the new treaty and weaken the world’s ability to cut carbon emissions.

Two must-read blog posts

Sara fisks Polly

Polly’s attempt to manufacture a causal link between the absence of the ISA and three horrific child murders does not stack up. The link between the ISA’s bureaucratic paedophile hunt and the incompetent failure of a council to protect a Baby Peter is simply the word ‘child’. Almost every recent case of child abuse or murder which has chilled us has been either ’strangers’ (Sarah Payne, James Bulger, Milly Dowler, Holly & Jessica) or family (Baby Peter, Victoria Climbié, Shannon Matthews). Yet despite the fact that cases of child abuse have remained fairly static over the last 30 years and all analysis points to the fact that the greatest danger to our children is in their own homes, the government decides to view over 11 million people as potential abusers and set up a huge bureaucracy to check on them.

Bernard Salmon gives a brief history of England. So brief that if I quote any of it, there’ll barely be any point in popping over to chez Salmon!

This Saturday’s trio of videos doing the rounds takes as its topic Minnesota’s new Senator, Al Franken, who eventually took his seat after a load of legal wrangles – as we covered here and here earlier in the year.

Al Franken was a controversial choice for a politician since he already had a career as a comedian and polemicist – you may be familiar with such fence-sitting, equivocating titles as Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them) and Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot

Unsurprisingly, the American right hate him.

Now, however, he is Senator – and proving to be a good one too.

Here are three videos of his exploits. The first contrasts American Republican values with the tendency of the American Republican party to invoke Christian values.

The second gives an example of Sen Franken out in the field responding to a mob over healthcare issues. There is a disturbing trend for opposing political activists to shout down any sort of debate about healthcare in the US, so it’s to his credit that he actually managed to have a discussion of sorts:

Still with us? Sorry these have been a little long for this slot; the final one is much lighter. One of Sen Al Franken’s key talents is the ability to draw a detailed map of the US from memory. There are several examples of this on YouTube, but this recent one is much sped up.

(If you’re interested – there’s a version here with his spiel)