A star studded evening last night in the Metropole as the great, the good and the fluffy and the stuffed attended the Lib Dem Blogger of the Year award. A presentation from self-styled blogging queen Lynne Featherstone (a title that was hot disputed amongst those present, not least Iain Dale.) A number of entertaining and post-watershed jokes from the lovely Alex Wilcock and a serious moment from our sponser Centre Forum. (Alex’s speech is here.)
Mark Pack made the interesting point that it was largely bloggers that pushed Chris Huhne so far in his leadership bid, and as a direct consequence, we could thank bloggers for the fact that the green agenda is so far up the Lib Dem’s priority list this September.
I think it goes wider than that, because a further result of the green agenda being promoted so strongly by us is that that other parties have noticed that there is a growing public interest in environmentalism. The Tories have jumped on board and have started even to talk about environmental taxation, which is a way away from traditional tax-cut conservatism.
So from blogs promoting one of the Lib Dem leadership candidates we can draw a direct link to an emerging, cross-party consensus on the environment. What a result!
Other fab things about the evening – the free booze, and when that ran out, we could pinch some of real-ale in barrels in the room next door, brewed by the people the bloggers will be visiting on Tuesday.
There was also a chance to meet Iain Dale, who I rather liked. It was noticeable that the large numbers of members of the press made a beeline for him past many of the rest of us. My interview with him should show up on libdemvoice.org in the fullness of time; and his interview with me (and with award winning blogger Stephen Tall and net guru Rob Fenwick) is already here. Note to self: try and avoid giggling when drunk. And other note to self: the pros doing the voice recording during the evening didn’t have particularly complicated kit – a good-looking mic and a mini-disc recorder. But they did take the time to find somewhere reasonably free from background noise.
My phone seems broken, so I can’t get the “Elephant in the Room” photo off it.
Delighted to see, on passing through St Pancras, that so much progress has been made on the channel tunnel rail link project. In 2007, St Pancras will become the Eurostar terminus, which means that there have been works and improvements in the station for years now. Midland Mainline passengers for stations to Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield have in the mean time been moved onto a rather spiffing interim platform 200 yards down (up?) the line.
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