Conservative Party Conference Diary

Day 1

Bournemouth
Fizzing with the buzz of friendly faces at every turn, swarming with police – protective bumblebees crawling round the Conference Centre honeypot. There is an oozing sense that the centre of gravity emanates from here.

Liam Fox, Co-Chairman of the Party, gave a rallying cry for *ACTION*

Boris Johnson’s talk on future Arts policy was delivered to an enthusiastic audience who were taken in particular by reference to the American model of sponsorship.

William Hague really did pave the way for his return to the political stage at his packed out event on his book William Pitt the Younger. He spoke of how William Pitt was both Prime Minister and Chancellor at the same time and suggested Blair should read the book to learn a lesson or two. The book is selling like hotcakes. He kindly agreed to have a photo taken especially for this site. He said this morning at his book-signing session: “Wow! for Boris Johnson’s new website!” He was on fantastic form.

The Liverpool European Capital of Culture stand is ringing out with The Beatles’ “All my lovin’…tomorrow I’ll miss you” live music.

The fringe circuit warmed up to a crescendo at the Hilton Hotel last night at the politicians v journalists quiz with Boris chairing in a Have I Got News for You style contest. Champagne, darkness hanging in the room, smoke-swirling atmosphere, suspect goody bag … you get them all at Conference! (photo to follow next week).

MCW

15 thoughts on “Conservative Party Conference Diary”

  1. Hmmm… conferences are always strange things, but I am sat here wondering, after watching Letwin and the Howard, give their speech I could not help thinking that maybe the Torie party has not got any new ideas – and with an election coming up is it not time that the tories put someting down on the table rather then bombuling about.

    I must say though that WH’s book on Pit The Younger is very spiffing.

    Must now go and do some work. Have a good one every one.

  2. Aw, I can’t believe that Boris got to chair a session of’Have I Got News For You’ and we will not get to see it!
    I once knew a descendant of William Pitt. She was a girl called, unfortunately, Sandy Pitt.(honestly!)

  3. Having read your Conference Diary, Melissa, I can now see where Boris gets his writing style from. Are you sure it wasn’t you who penned his cracking new novel, 72 Virgins?

  4. Mmmmm… I’m not sure about all that fizzing and buzzing and honeypots melissa. Have you been eating those ‘sweeties’ that you found in Uncle Boris’s pockets?

    Q. Why, in this day and age, does it take a *week* to get a photo up of last night’s event? We want pictures of Boris in all his glory – Hague too for that matter. [Ed: just wish I had the technology to hand … hope to make up for lost time next week]

  5. To the Young Nick: Did you deliberately insert the atrocious punctuation/ misspelling? One merely wonders…Precisely what is it that Letwin/Howard/Saatchi must to conjure up so your good self, Stephen Pollard and numerous other self-declared libertarian bloggers experience that Eureka moment? They are promising to have the state do less; I say Amen to that. I’m not of the folksy Right, you might say I’m a post-mugging liberal and a fervent anti-jihadist. Even a small c conservative such as myself sees much that is heartening in the speeches. No doubt none of my liberal friends would agree, mostly because to hold with these views renders one less than welcome at the smarter dos in the Garden Suburb; the rebuttal would be something along the lines of: oh but that is tooo simplistic… you know, the sort of thing Patten said about Lady T’s ideas. To wind up my rant:The greatest ideas are always simple and self-evident, in politics as in music or mathematics.Now I must go back to reading Vladimir Illyich.Shalom etc; TAMMUZ

  6. Unfortunately didn’t see any footage of Boris’ disscusions, but certainly sounds interesting!

    “Melissa, thanks for the comment, next year hopefully it will be the governement parties conference…”
    And maybe Boris will be our rightful leader. 😉

  7. Pictures to illustrate and break up text are an integral part of most blogs. If you’ve got net access it should be easy enough to upload a pic here & there from a digital camera.
    I’ve just got a Söny Cybershöt and can recommend it. It has all the features of a decent 35mm camera and has removable media. I’ve got a little device that reads the media cards as an extra drive in my PC so I can manage & upload the files from there the same as any other files. My model of camera was relatively inexpensive and weighs very little–but there are loads of cameras with similar features.
    In any case, a basic digital camera and a few lessons from someone who’s already in the know about these things can make anyone a credible digital photographer.

  8. haha, the preview was able to read that just fine.

    Sorry about the weird characters; that was my attempt at munging the brand name so as not to advertise anything via webspider!

  9. Just had a similar problem with the accent on the ‘e’ of touche – methinks the blog needs recoding. 😉

  10. Just an addition to what Lori said; perhaps some different size, colour, and bold text would help break thing up, too?

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