A piece in the Bournemouth Echo underlines just how important party conferences are to the resort’s economy – and just how huge an event conference is, even for the smallest of the three main parties:

It is estimated the event could boost the resort economy by £6.5 million, as delegates spend money in hotels, bars, restaurants and shops.

“That’s really working on the basis of about 6,000 delegates staying for an average of four nights,” said Peter Gunn, director of the BIC and Pavilion.

A few seconds with a calculator and those figures suggests delegates will be spending an average of £270 a night for the privilege of participating in Lib Dem training, networking, policymaking and carousing.

And the piece goes on to mourn the lack of any of the larger parties in town next year:

The Lib Dems are the only major party to visit Bournemouth this year, and none of the main parties are due in town in 2011.

But Labour confirmed in the summer that it would be returning in 2013, taking over the BIC and the Pavilion after a six-year break.

BIC bosses expect to hear in the autumn whether the Conservatives and Lib Dems will be returning soon.

Our next conference after Bournemouth will be Birmingham in March 2010 – and they’re so keen to welcome us to town they’ve prepared a special website, www.libdemsinbirmingham2010.com . At least, according to the Conference Directory, anyhow – it doesn’t appear the website is quite ready for use, just yet.

Thereafter, it’s Liverpool for the Autumn conference. No word yet as to whether they’ve forked out a tenner for a .com

Dates for your diary

Conference Timetable 2010

Spring Conference: Friday 12th – Sunday 14th March 2010, Birmingham

Drafting advice deadline (motions): Monday 4th January 2010
Motions deadline: Wednesday 13th January 2010
Drafting advice deadline (amendments, emergency motions): Tuesday 23rd February 2010
Deadline for amendments to motions, emergency motions, topical issues, questions to reports: Tuesday 9th March 2010

Autumn Conference: Saturday 18th – Wednesday 22nd September 2010, Liverpool

Drafting advice deadline (motions): Wednesday 16th June 2010
Motions deadline: Wednesday 30th June 2010
Drafting advice deadline (amendments, emergency motions): Tuesday 24th August 2010
Deadline for amendments to motions, emergency motions, topical issues, questions to reports: Tuesday 7th September 2010

There’s shortly to be a mayoral by-election in Bedford following the August death of the incumbent mayor and blogger Frank Branston.

Local Lib Dems are the first to name their candidate as Cllr Dave Hodgson, familiar to many attendees of party training as the membership recruitment and retention expert, spreading best practice to local parties up and down the country.

LocalGov.co.uk reports:

Cllr Dave Hodgson is leader of the Bedford Liberal Democrats group, and was appointed to Bedford BC’s cabinet as member for partnerships and IT by the late mayor.

He expressed his delight at being selected to stand, adding that he was committed to the borough.

‘We face enormous challenges such as the decaying town centre, regeneration of the bus station area and the need for a quality transport system,’ Cllr Hodgson added.

‘It will require each and every one of us to work together, if we are to succeed and bring about the changes that the borough so desperately needs.’

Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, Ed Davey, MP, has backed Cllr Hodgson for the role after the pair discussed key issues and priorities for the by-election campaign.

‘The Liberal Democrats go into this by-election in a strong position after coming first in the recent council elections,’ Mr Davey said.

The by-election is expected to take place on 15 October.

The Lib Dems are the largest party on Bedford Borough Unitary Council with 13 seats to 9 Conservatives, 7 Labour and 7 Independents. And as yet, it’s unknown who else will contest the election. Will another wealthy newspaper magnate throw his hat into the ring? Only time will tell.

Mayoral by-elections are vanishingly rare in the UK as only a few boroughs and towns are run by elected mayors, and so far, few of them have died or resigned. My brief research, however, indicates that this is at least the second – the first having been on North Tyneside in 2003, where the incumbent resigned following a scandal.

Mayoral elections are expensive at the best of times – one of my first party experiences was as a very green agent to a very experienced candidate in the first Mansfield mayoral elections. One of the key debates there was whether the party could possibly afford to be represented in the booklet prepared by the local authority with details of all candidates. Contesting the race in Bedford will not come cheap – the campaign will cover a population equal to some three constituencies by my reckoning. So I’m sure the local party will welcome your donations – find details for their local party officers here. Don’t forget to include your name and address to help them fulfil their PPERA obligations – and if you’re being really generous, it might help to include your electoral number.

One final aspect to explore: in 2007 when the mayoralty was last contested, the ballots were counted electronically. IT and business blogger Dynamoo was not impressed at the conduct of the count.

Conference these days includes slots that are left blank when the agenda is published, and that can be filled later by topics that become evident at a later date.

The deadline for – well pretty much everything, actually, including emergency motions, amendments, appeals, questions and so on – was yesterday.

LDV is aware of two emergency motions that have been doing the rounds asking for support. Firstly there’s one insisting that social services remain accountable to local people through local councils. A government paper launched on the 14th July suggested the creation of a national care body to take some of the responsibility.

Secondly, as this trade press article details, Gareth Epps and Greg Mulholland MP are promoting a motion to take steps to even the balance between landlords and pubcos – a topic we’ve written about before on LDV – here, here and here.

Gareth Epps surveyed landlords in Reading:

Epps’ survey shows three-quarters of licensees, mainly tied, have an annual income below £15,000 a year and half think they won’t be running a pub in five years’ time. He said: “While increased taxation by the Labour Government, cut price supermarket booze and the smoking ban haven’t helped, it’s the pubcos that twist the knife.”

So far, then so far as we know, there are two slots for emergency motions, and two motions we are aware of. It’s rarely that simple however. The Conference Committee will have the full list of motions submitted, and has to judge each on its merits: is it really an emergency topic? is it the sort of motion Conference ought to consider (there are drafting guidelines, for example). If there are more motions than slots, it goes to a ballot of conference reps – full details are in the Conference Agenda.

This is the second in a short series of top tips for conference-goers. Our first, yesterday, told you that you don’t have to register as a delegate to attend fringe and training events at conference.

Today’s tip is for those planning to attend conference, who are not voting members of conference.

Many local parties have not elected as many conference representatives as they are entitled to. Even those local parties that have both a full complement of reps and reserve reps may find themselves in the situation that not all of their representatives are able to make it to conference.

This is where you come in – you can offer to attend as a substitute member. Your local party exec will need to approve this first, and you will need to bring with you a signed letter from your local party chair or secretary indicating that they have agreed to you serving as a substitute voting representative. Once at conference, you can swap the letter for a voting rep badge.

The full rules for this are available in the Conference Agenda, available for download here, and they say:

Voting status and voting / non-voting photo passes

You will only be able to register as a voting representative if the Party’s Membership Department:

1 has already received written notification from the Returning Officer of your local party that you have been elected as a voting representative*; or

2 has already received written notification from the Returning Officer of your local party that you are a substitute elected by your local party Executive after a voting representative has informed them that s/he is unable to attend*; or

3 receives at the Membership Desk at conference (in the Windsor Lobby on the ground floor of the BIC) written notification from the Returning Officer of your local party that you have been elected as a voting representative or as a substitute.

* For a voting photo pass to be sent out before conference this information must have been received by 7th August 2009. Otherwise you will be sent a non-voting photo pass.

If you have received a non-voting photo pass and believe you are a voting representative, you need to get an officer of your local party to inform Membership Services (see below) in writing of the elected representatives of your local party. Your voting status cannot be changed over the phone.

If you have received a non-voting photo pass but are attending conference as a substitute voting representative, you need to get an officer of your local party to write to Membership Services with the name, address and membership number of the representative you are substituting for, as well as your own full details, before 12.00 on Friday 11th September, and bring a copy of this letter to the Membership Desk at conference.

You may then collect the appropriate pass from the Membership Desk in the Windsor Lobby on the ground floor of the BIC.

Write to: Membership Services, 4 Cowley Street, London, SW1P 3NB or email <!–
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//–>membership – membership.hat.libdems.org.uk.spam.com (this is spam bot hidden email address, replace .hat. with @ and remove .spam.com for the real one).

Lib Dem Voice at Conference

As ever the LDV team will be providing as full coverage as we can from the conference, including reportage, podcasts and as much as possible to make conference accessible and participatory for those not able to join us in Bournemouth.

We will also be hosting four fringe events, all of which will be recorded and podcast as mini-radio shows here on LDV. The rooms are booked and topics selected, and we can now give you full information on our confirmed speakers. The details are as follows:

• Campaigning after Rennard
  Saturday 19th September, 8pm Premier Inn, Bournemouth, Connect 2
  Our panel looks at the ramifications for the party of Lord Rennard’s departure. How will we campaign in the future?
  Speakers: Chair: Mark Pack, Lynne Featherstone MP, James Graham, Neil Fawcett
• Blog of the Year Awards, 2009
  Sunday 20th September, 10pm Marriott Highcliffe, Old Harry’s Bar
  Lib Dem Voice Editor at Large Stephen Tall is your compère for this bejewelled event now well established in the party calendar.
• Liberal Drinks
  We will once again be having an informal night drinking beer at a pub one night of Federal Conference. We will be returning to the Goat and Tricycle – and this year, we’ve even warned the bar staff to expect us! It’ll be the Monday evening of conference from 7.30pm
• Beyond Twitter – e-engagement in local and national politics
  Wednesday 23rd September, 1pm Marriott Highcliffe, Shaftesbury Suite
  How can people in politics at both a local and national level engage meaningfully with the people they represent?
  Speakers: Chair: Alex Foster, Jo Swinson MP, Mark Pack, MySociety’s Richard Pope

If you’d like a taster of LDV fringes, the recording of our excellent meeting “Learning the Lessons from the Obama Campaign” is still available.

In addition, LDV’s editor Stephen Tall will be joining a panel of four – alongside Vince, Shirley and Charles Clarke – for the IPPR’s fringe event, The end of politics as we know it?, on Tuesday 22nd September at 1pm. Full event details here.

UPDATE: Mark Pack has let me know that he is speaking at the Public Services Trust fringe on public data on Tuesday 19 September, 18:15 – 19:30, BIC, Bournemouth:
Surveillance State or Empowered Citizens: who controls data in Public Services?

Good morning – what an auspicious date today, eh? 9/9/9. Today would be a good day to start War and Peace, because it’s Leo Tolstoy’s birthday. It’s also the anniversary of the admission of California to the union of United States in 1850.

2 big stories

An end to recession

The Guardian and the Telegraph both lead with a declaration of an end of recession. So that’s OK then. From the Telegraph:

The National Institute for Economic and Social Research, one of the foremost independent economic forecasters, estimated that Britain had seen economic growth in the three months to August.

Its announcement coincided with figures showing that the manufacturing sector was enjoying its strongest growth for 18 months, that consumer confidence was recovering and that the jobs market was improving for the first time in almost a year and a half. The stock market has bounced back, with shares in London hitting their highest level of the year yesterday. Estate agents reported that house sales and inquiries were up by more than 50 per cent in August on the same month last year.

New tax on air travel

The Times runs with the story that the Committee on Climate Change – another of those quangos, I wonder who wants to scrap this one? – has advised the Government that a much steeper air travel tax is needed to offset the damage of growing air travel.

Tens of billions of pounds will have to be raised through flight taxes to compensate developing countries for the damage air travel does to the environment, according to the Government’s advisory body on climate change.

Ticket prices should rise steadily over time to deter air travel and ensure that carbon dioxide emissions from aviation fall back to 2005 levels, the Committee on Climate Change says. It believes that airlines should be forced to share the burden of meeting Britain’s commitment to an 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050.

2 must read blog posts

Stuart Bonar tells Cameron he’s a long way to go

David Cameron has a problem. In a keynote speech today he spelt out today a simple message – that public spending needs to be cut and it needs to be cut now. And he set out some really specific savings, totalling £120 million.

His problem is that this year alone the Government estimates that it will need to borrow £175 billion (billion, not million). The £120m he’s identified would help pay back 0.07 per cent of what the Government will borrow this year alone. So, £120,000,000 saved, £174,880,000,000 to go.

Rob Blackie: ten email tips

Tip #1 – keep it really short.

I think I’ll wrap it up there, then.

David Cameron is talking this lunchtime, the news tells us, of his plans to reform Parliament by removing subsidised meals and shaving 5% off the pay of ministers.

Danny Alexander MP, Chief of Staff to the Leader of the Liberal Democrats is a) unimpressed and b) unfamiliar with the concept of run-on sentences:

There is a good argument to be made for cutting the cost of politics, the Liberal Democrats have proposed reducing the number of MPs by 150, but if the Conservatives seriously hope to convince people they are fit to govern it is time they stopped dodging the tough questions.

The Liberal Democrats have proposed not renewing Trident, David Cameron wants to increase the price of salads. While it’s nice to finally have some concrete proposals from the Conservatives, at this rate it would take them several centuries to balance the books.

David Cameron claims to want to cut spending but refuses to tell anyone how he hopes to achieve it. The Conservatives need to stop insulting our intelligence and set out what they really believe.

While we’re on the topic, let us not forget a post by Will Howells, formally of this parish, but writing on his own blog in January. He lines up the ducks to show that David Cameron’s proposal is significantly less ambitious than Tory policy under Michael Howard in 2004. And yet still less ambitious than the Lib Dem policy which would remove two-and-a-half more MPs from the books than the Conservatives.