Baby P: Stay Circumspect
There seems little need to add further moral commentary to this case; it has been expressed by others already. The case is tragic, but if we are to prevent it from happening again, we must resist the urge to let our natural instincts and passion rule our heads.
If anyone reading this has, or is contemplating, violating the injunction on revealing the names of those involved in the case, I urge you not to. The injunction exists because the accused are to be tried on other charges. Widespread publication of their identities would be so prejudicial as to likely result in their acquittal. If you believe that they deserve more than fourteen years in prison, the best thing to do is protect their anonymity.
There is also the danger of letting hindsight form an absolute vision which we seek to impose retrospectively on all decisions made. We must remember that what appears obvious now, may not have done so at the time of the events in question. Those involved were fallible people, inside a system constrained by competing demands and limited resources. People who now seem prescient or absolutely correct, may at the time have appeared to be very wrong. A courtroom is a vastly different environment to that of the social worker and police officer. Our judgements should therefore be tempered by this understanding.
Likewise we have to accept the grim fact that deaths such as these can never be fully eliminated. The perverse imagination and ingenuity of the killer is always one step ahead of that of those who would seek to protect us. Man’s ability to deceive is limitless, and may outpace our ability to discern the truth in a constrained environment. Murders are inevitable, and to entertain the idea that they are not would be to invite injustices elsewhere and build systems based on a hubris that would lead to ignorance. That is not to say that we should not try to improve the system, but we must do so aware of our limitations.
Those who cry that the council in question has blood on its hands, or seek an easy target to blame, though understandable, should acknowledge that Baby P died not because of their actions, but in spite of them. That is not a justification for people to remain in office, or to do nothing, but a reminder that those who might have been able to save the child did what they believed was in its best interests. Blame may lie with nobody but those convicted.
There have also been problems raised with the narrative the mainstream media are promoting in this case that warrant further scrutiny. I recommend you read Unity’s piece over at Ministry of Truth on the matter before assuming that the account is set in stone.
Nonetheless there appear to be severe shortcomings. This is, after all, the same council that had Victoria Climbié under its supervision. However, we ought to be under no illusion that the history of parental infanticide started there and continued here with nothing in-between or outside Haringey. These murders are all too familiar; what made this one notable was its location and the level of brutality involved.
The figure of sixty visits should also be regarded with some suspicion. These do not mean sixty in-depth examinations or inspections by social workers. Once again, I refer you to Unity’s piece:
of the much quoted sixty occasions that the family had contact with health and social care workers in the 8 months from December 2006 up until the child’s death in August 2007, only 18 of those contacts were actually with social workers, a little less than half the number of contacts with health staff (37, including three visits to the family home), and the family (minus the boyfriend one assumes) were also seen five times at home by staff from the Family Welfare Association, which is now called ‘Family Action’ and there were another eight occasions that the child’s mother took her son to see health professionals including the two occasions on which the child’s injuries raised suspicions of abuse.
Any set of reforms will involve trade-offs. Although some are questioning the effectiveness of a decision-making model that involves all agencies, the alternative has problems of its own. Bringing all the agencies together can cause a diffusion of responsibility. But keeping them separate in the decision-making process can prevent one agency from receiving vital information from another. Anyone who has been involved in dealing with multi-service operations will be aware of the difficulties inherent in such a situation. A balance needs to be struck between the models, and safeguards made to minimise the risks associated with whichever is favoured. For every child that might have been saved were it not for a multidisciplinary model, there may be one that was saved precisely because of it. We should not be so quick to dismiss it.
These systems evolve over time and, while flawed, are of an immense complexity and difficulty that lend themselves to no glib or easy solutions. Radical overhaul can be as bad a solution as the problem it purports to fix. Though there appear to be serious failures in the system, solutions should be sought with a full awareness of their imperfections and pitfalls. Reforms will likely be piecemeal and incomplete. This simply reflects the reality of our inhabiting an imperfect world. It may be neither satisfying nor cathartic, but it is the best that can be done.
Sphere: Related ContentBureaucratic Oversupply
According to Jacqui Smith, people simply cannot wait to get ID cards.
In a speech to the Social Market Foundation Ms Smith said cards would be issued on a voluntary basis to young people from 2010 and for everyone else from 2012.
She added: “But I believe there is a demand, now, for cards - and as I go round the country I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don’t want to wait that long.
Notwithstanding that forming government policy on the basis of anecdotes is patently absurd, who are these people? Is she really suggesting that students want to spend £90 on a redundant piece of plastic when in some universities their loans don’t even cover accommodation charges? Are young people really going to be that keen to lobby the government for a card that will stop them from lying about their age in pubs? Who on earth, in the current economic climate, wants to shell out the cost of the weekly shopping for a small family to buy a piece of plastic when a driving license is a perfectly useful and cheaper alternative?
Who is going to be asking that the government spend millions of pounds on the scheme, when we don’t even have enough money to pay for cancer treatment drugs?
It would be wrong to accuse one of the holders of the Great Offices of State of lying. It would be unparliamentary, nihilistic and far more corrosive to our political culture than ministerial deceit. We know there is a demand for these cards, but perhaps she ought to be a little more honest about who it is who is making the demands.
We know that these cards are unnecessary. Passports and driving licences are perfectly capable of proving one’s identity in all normal walks of life. In all others, the ability to forge the national ID card will mean that firms and the government will soon revert to the previous system of multiple proofs of ID. So who regularly approaches the Home Secretary and asks for ID cards like a small child, claiming that they can’t wait three years?
If you’ve watched Yes Minister!, the answer ought to be obvious. Whenever the Home Secretary travels round the country she is going to be doing so with an entourage of civil servants and special advisers. The only people who are going to benefit from a national identity database and card are the civil servants themselves, provided with yet another white elephant to make their budgets look more impressive, and yet another grandiose scheme to try and regulate and categorise the infinite complexities of human existence. The endless problems these systems will create will give them fun for many years to come. If Ms. Smith is not lying or being unrepresentative, then the best guess is that it is her civil servants who are nagging her for the database.
If you think this is fantasy, then please visit Dizzy’s blog, where he has caught a civil servant has feeding the government arguments in favour of an equivalent database for children. Ask yourself this: if the government are the ones who came up with the policy, why do they need to ask the civil service what the arguments in favour of it are? Are the ministers really making government policy, or are they just marching to the tune of the mandarins, mindlessly promoting their latest white elephant?
Sir Humphrey would be proud.
Sphere: Related ContentRomani ite Domum
Councils ban ‘elitist’ and ‘discriminatory’ Latin phrases.
I won’t repeat the article ad nauseam, though I might at points use a reductio ad absurdum to emphasise what ought really to be a prima facie case. Many of you who read this ought to be familiar with my sesquipedalean style and fondness for lofty language that stirs the soul in lieu of satisfying the busybody with too much time on their hands.
I am not against efforts to help people understand official language per se, but in this instance the councils have gone entirely the wrong way about things. That the average reading age is twelve years old is not something to be indulged. The argument that immigrants might not get the difference between e.g. and “egg” is ultimately rather stupid as well: all that such behaviour by officialdom does is provide an unrealistically low standard for people to aspire to linguistically, and works to push people down rather than holding them up to the common linguistic standard necessary for effective communication. English is a language that cannot be artificially separated from its latin roots. Look no further than their attempts to remove the word “via” - infused into the english language and a perfectly acceptable english word, albeit one with Latin roots.
Terms such as “bona fide, eg (exempli gratia), prima facie, ad lib or ad libitum, etc or et cetera, ie or id est, inter alia, NB or nota bene, per, per se, pro rata, quid pro quo, vis-a-vis, vice versa and via” exist in the English language because they have been so clear and useful that we have not needed to construct any native version. They have worked their way into our language . Many other words likewise have assimilated so easily and have ingrained themselves so much into our linguistic heritage that one would be lost without them. Councillors, after all, work for the benefit of the public. These are no longer latin words, but english ones with latin origin. Look no further than the Plain English Campaign’s website, which offers a Diploma (joint greco-roman term) in its subject. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Where will this end? The logical conclusion of this absurd crusade is that we should ban the use of words such as “Khaki” because they did not originate from the vocal chords of a native Anglo-Saxon? Do they suggest that the medical profession rename so many procedures and body parts to satisfy their petty small-minded little war against civilisation? Should the councils rename themselves because of the latin origins of that word? Perhaps we should do away with the term politics and public as they are not sufficiently anglo-saxon to satisfy the primal urges of these syntax nazis.
We have complex words and jargon because they help to distill complex ideas into elegant terms. They may not be immediately obvious, but upon any decent inspection the meaning of terms such as “unknown unknown” (one that I have found immensely useful in the International Relations part of my degree). There are problems when you get the David Brents of this world trying to use them to give the appearance of being clever, and trying to obfuscate rather than clarify. But that is not sufficient argment as to do away with their use.
All that can be said to the guilty councils ultimately is thus: stercorem pro cerebro habetis. They are promoting the regression of the english language into infancy, spurred on by stupidity, bigotry and parochialism.
Challenges are there to be met, not banned on the grounds that they’re challenging. You cannot remove the latin heritage from the english language, and to try and do so is an act of petty crass stupidity.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Abortion Debate Does Not Exist
This is the constitutionally correct move. It is a convention that the front bench should not introduce legislation on what we traditionally constitute as matters of conscience, and this has served the nation well. It should never be the prerogative of a government to introduce legislation on matters of conscience that could find any justification for the employment of the whip.
It is also the correct move for another reason: it reflects reality. The reality is that the “debate” in public life over abortion has failed to exist for some time. The last round of debate on the Bill was a noble exception to this, but in public discourse we effectively see two camps completely unable, some might say unwilling, to understand the views of the other. Each shouts its own language parallel to, rather than cognisant of, the other. They are the “two nations” of our times.
Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planet.
Nowhere is this more evident than the names of the camps: “Pro-life” and “Oro-choice”. Two entirely separate axes that work to smear the opponent. Pro-lifers are not anti-choice: they believe that the unborn child is a living thing and therefore there is no valid choice to make. It is also unfair to suggest that they are all basing their ideas on the Book of Jeremiah: the Church of Rome argues that when there is uncertainty (as there is), the benefit of the doubt ought to lie with the potentiality of life. Likewise the pro-choice camp are not anti-life, but believe that life does not begin at conception. It all ultimately centres around the fundamental question of where life begins, and a failure to address this basic first principle where people disagree renders any subsequent discussion meaningless.
Then there are those who try to work through a frighteningly complex moral issue and disagree with articles of faith of both sides. Those who may not accept that life begins at conception, but believe that abortion has undermined traditional values, or those who believe that abortion is little more than infanticide, but nonetheless support legalised abortion as more compassionate than further deaths through the backstreet clinics. Those who . They do not feel comfortable with either side, and get villified for dissenting on some of the basic articles of faith of the two camps. Theirs is a sorry lot, neither pro-life nor pro-choice, their heresies lead to villification by both sides.
As it stands however, the “debate” often feels more like two rival camps preaching to their own side and doing little more than villifying the other. It is not debate, it is enmity.
As a means of testing this principle I put out a statement on my facebook page today declaring myself to be “pro-life with some exceptions”. This is, naturally, an illogical statement: you are either pro-life or you are not. It immediately aroused the anger of many a person who would consider themselves to be “pro-choice”. With one notable exception who noticed this inherent contradiction, people launched for the jugular. It did not matter that in the subsequent discussion I had expressed support for legalised abortion, declared that a foetus is not the same as a human being, or rejected the idea that life begins at conception. It took a significant amount of time for any calm discussion to emerge having raised the red rag of the “pro-life” label. An immediate characterisation of opinion emerged that was at complete odds with any sort of case I wished to make.
In some senses this is inevitable: there will always be those who believe that life begins at conception and will be unshakeable in that belief. This is where majoritarianism proves essential: on a question of an irreconcilable clash of conscience, the opinion of the majority, within some constraints, will have to prevail. Far from being the tyranny of the majority, it is an ethical consensus. As the science changes, abortion will have to be revisited by Parliaments for ever more, and rightly so. There are those on both sides who are open to persuasion. Reactionary characterisation and a refusal to engage in a sensible and intelligent manner to what remain legitimate concerns does neither cause any good.
The problem with the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” labels are that they immediately raise straw men to the other side. They are representative of the worst of political language in that, far from providing an illuminating descriptive label, they are pejorative expressions that serve to restrict debate. Pro-lifers are not against the autonomy of women, nor do pro-choice campaigners support infanticide. Both are moral movements. The discourse however does not acknowledge these basic realities. We ought to do away with them in the name of mature discussion. It is soundbite politics at its worst.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Second Honeymoon Will End
Pundits are predicting that in the next few weeks Gordon Brown’s government will receive a further bounce in the polls and narrow the Conservative lead to single figures. The emerging theme is that the Prime Minister’s hour has come and he may stand astride the world as the heroic figure who rescued the financial system from complete collapse.
It is true that the First Lord of the Treasury has acted decisively to shore up the British banking system. The result is a natural bounce in the polls. But as Mr. Brown must now be all too painfully aware, what goes up must come down.
The current boost in Gordon Brown’s popularity is the temporary result of a crisis. Politicians whose status relies upon crises are ultimately hostages to fortune. As Churchill discovered in 1945, once the crisis is over, the electoral response tends to be “thanks, but it’s time for a change”. As the immediate crisis gives way to a lingering recession, Mr. Brown’s inability to empathise will once again come to hurt him.
In this particular instance the blow may be doubly hard. Not only will the crisis bounce come down, but people will start looking for who in the government was responsible. The popular ire will likely be directed at the man who presided over the economy for ten years, ignored the warnings and failed to act decisively much earlier.
It is very easy to appear heroic when fighting a fire, but when the former occupants of the burnt out wreck discover that you were the one who drenched it in petrol and smashed the alarms, you cannot count on their gratitude lasting.
Sphere: Related ContentOn Regulation
Predictably, members of the Labour Party have begun to use the failure of the regulatory system in preventing the collapse of the UK banking system to launch a wider attack on a Conservative deregulation agenda. Bob Piper describes himself as “shocked and amazed” that
Having spent years complaining about too much regulation, excessive red tape and bureaucracy stifling innovation, some Tories have now got the brass neck to complain that there wasn’t enough regulation!!!
The question is not a case of more or less regulation per se but of better regulation. Nobody seriously disputes that regulatory frameworks are necessary for the efficient, free and fair operation of a market. The objection is the way in which those regulations were implemented. One can have the best system of rules in the world, but if they are not supervised and implemented properly, then they are useless. The Conservative objection has been to the tripartite framework that ultimately hampered our ability to effectively regulate the finance system. Tripartition slowed down decision-making processes, restricted the flow of information to the right people at the right time, and promoted a diffusion of responsibility that created unnecessary gaps in the regulatory structure. The problem was identified over a year ago, and the government failed to do anything about it.
What this misses though is that the conservative opposition to regulation is not an argument primarily related to the financial services sphere, but to a different sort of regulation. It is an argument about the excessive and burdensome level of regulation that has permeated throughout society. The sort of asinine and petty rules that discipline firemen for using their own sleeping bags, or that a computer cannot be carried 200m without appropriate training. Leaving aside the social arguments against this arbitrary extension of state power (which the previous link addresses), the conservative economic argument is that these rules ultimately restrict the ability of businesses to operate efficiently in return for dubious benefit. I invite anyone who seriously believes that all these regulations are necessary to look through the following list of risk assessments and suppress their laughter or groans. Imposing the levels of regulation and paperwork on businesses ultimately distracts them from performing their primary functions: making money and providing jobs. In so doing they limit the growth of the economy.
Paranoid “Health and Safety” regulations are not the same thing as the rules on which the financial system operates, and it is a specious argument to suggest that they are.
Sphere: Related ContentInteresting Bedfellows
If, a week ago, I had told you that Kevin Maguire and Richard Littlejohn would agree on something, you would have dismissed me as insane.
Yet, much to my amusement and surprise, this week they managed to set aside their significant ideological differences and unite in the service of a common cause: hatred of Peter Mandelson.
Maguire argued that Mandelson is “a figure who personified a lack of trust in politicians”, and Littlejohn concurs, calling him an “odious, discredited creep”. Likewise they both agree that the appointment was a sign of weakness. The only difference between the two articles is that Maguire manages some degree of restraint, confining himself to a few unfavourable observations, while Littlejohn engages in an extended offensive offensive.
Who said these sort of people couldn’t agree with the other side?
Sphere: Related ContentOn Mandelson
An interesting news cycle and certainly an eye-catching initiative, but now that the dust of the reshuffle has settle somewhat, what are the implications of the return of the Prince of Darkness to the Cabinet?
My first impression is that this is an attempt by Brown to build a wider coalition of support within his own party. His traditional tactics of maintaining a small but loyal cadre and intimidating all who go against it has ultimately run its course. The “nomination papers” challenge and increasing openness of dissent within Labour have ultimately undermined his ability to effectively threaten his own party into compliance. Likewise the limitations of his loyalists in terms of ministerial ability has also been problematic (think Ed Balls), forcing him to look elsewhere for talent. Bringing Mandelson in and appointing John Hutton to one of the Great Offices of State demonstrates an apparent willingness to look beyond his own faction for support. Whether or not he is able to move beyond such gestures and actually start delegating responsibility for decisions is as yet unknown.
Not any more
The Tories are immensely pleased at this turn of events. CCHQ very quickly issued a press release gloating over the well-known personal differences between Mandelson and Brown. It certainly helps them press the message of a Labour party running out of ideas with a need to bring back an old and unpopular spin doctor. The message of “No Flash, Just Gordon” is now very firmly dead, and the theme of “Labour Spin” can now be milked for all that it is worth. They predict that this appointment will ultimately backfire on Brown. That his job will involve “holding the hand of business as we enter a nasty downturn” the probability of his becoming a futher focus of disaffection within Labour and having another falling out with Brown remains high.
Among the press something of a Marmite effect has occurred. While all seem to agree that is is a bold move, opinion is divided as to whether it is a prudent one. The two groups either argue that it is a brilliant appointment of an experienced New Labour man, or that it is the desperate appointment of a New Labour spin doctor who became associated with some of the worst excesses of the Blair years. A few have settled in the centre arguing that it is probably a bit of both.
This reshuffle ultimately undermines Brown’s case that in the present economic situation “this is no time for a novice”. By moving the relatively competent Mandelson and Hutton out of the EU Trade Commission and DBERR respectively, he has undermined the argument that experience is required to guide the nation through the present economic period. Although Mandelson gains Hutton’s portfolio, he nonetheless will be put on something of a back foot as he adjusts to his new office.
I cannot help but think however that the moving of Mandelson has weakened the British position in Brussels at a most inappropriate time. Just at the moment when the EU looks to try and act on the economy, we remove a competent and experienced trade commisssioner from the post. It is hard to imagine that Baroness Ashton, his successor, will be able to match his ability in these negotiations for a long time, particularly given her lack of experience in any trade-related portfolio.
One interesting side-effect of re-appointing such a well-known figure to the Cabinet is that it may depersonalise the Brown administration. By bearing the Mandelson Seal of Approval, policies may be perceived to be conceived and implemented in a more collegiate manner, and be less associated with the Prime Minister as a result. Although this could beneficial for Brown, it may also end up damaging Labour as a whole. If this depersonalisation occurs, the ineluctably Brownite policies of the government will become associated with the wider Labour Party. The argument could shift from “Brown isn’t Working” to “Labour isn’t Working” once more. That would be very dangerous indeed.
Sphere: Related ContentConference Report
Having vaguely paid off my debts to the much-absent phenomenon at conferences called sleep, I am now in something of a state to give an account of those two days.
After an inauspicious start due to a technical error with the train, I travelled up to Birmingham and got settled into my hotel. From there a brief ride to the ICC and an attempt to navigate through a sea of leaflets. Being what has now been termed a “conference virgin“, I failed to keep my wits about me and suddenly found myself burdened with tonnes of them.
I have always wondered if M.C. Escher’s work could ever be made into a reality, and, as Niall Paterson noted, the ICC has managed to come very close to achieving it. Continuing this artistic theme were a series of posters on a soviet theme. The traditional messages one would expect of such posters were instead inverted with conservative themes of the importance of civil society, personal responsibility and the rejection of the overwhelming state.
My morning was spent floating between the various stalls I had noticed in my conference guide, accumulating a modest amount of freebies. Of particular note was the stand run by Total Politics, distributing free copies of the Guide to Political Blogging 2008 (look in the back to find me listed), and the must-have UK Politics Top Trumps cards.
The internet cafe was distinctly disappointing. For a conference of thousands of representatives we had access to five computers. This was part of the reason why my intention to live blog consistently was significantly curtailed, and I can’t have been the only blogger to have felt let down. Despite the prominence of the centre-right on the blogosphere, it was a significant failure to not make our job easier and ensure regular, favourable coverage. It is distinctly inconvenient to have to drag a laptop all over the ICC, let alone find somewhere quiet to sit and write. The sight of Tim Montgomerie and Dan Hannan hunched over their laptops in a corner of the Freedom Zone was amusing, but not ideal. Something to consider in subsequent years will be the provision of blogging facilities similar to those provided to mainstream media outlets: a place to plug in your laptop and type away from the distractions of the main hall.
Following this was a lunch at the Salisbury Club. A useful opportunity to meet with friends and newcomers alike. As this was what had brought many Conservative Future types to conference, it became a vital way of working out how to plan the rest of one’s time and navigate the dizzying array of fringe and social events.
For the rest of the afternoon I managed to get into the main hall to watch Boris Johnson’s speech and the Armed Forces session. Boris was, as one would expect, on good form. He made a witty riposte to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s criticism last year, before moving on to his traditional humourous territory. The Armed Forces session had an impressive array of speakers, featuring Liam Fox, Frederick Forsyth, Simon Weston, Col. Stuart Tootal and two former Majors. The tone was distinctly angry, with Forsyth claiming that around sixty soldiers had died as a direct result of the “blithering incompetence” of a government that had failed to adequately fund a war on two fronts while “frittering billions away on trivia”. Weston and Tootal made particularly impassioned personal pleas, particularly over the issue of dedicated military hospitals and the fractured civil-military relationship in some quarters. The reception of the audience was largely one of restrained outrage: were the panel not all on the same side, a Cherie Blair moment could have ensued.
After that I went over to a meeting of senior members of CF, where I gave a speech that, while not to everyone’s taste, was nonetheless well-received. Given that it was something of a maiden speech, I may have got a little carried away with myself though. Much discussion followed adjacent to a rather heated debate, as prior to that I had been something of an unknown. Accusations of being a plant of the leadership were subsequently thrown round, which was a rather flattering idea. The rest of Sunday evening was given over to drinking in an entirely serious and non-celebratory manner. Of particular amusement was encountering Alex Hilton, author of Recess Monkey and joint owner of LabourHome, who one can only conclude had either undergone a Damascene conversion, or suffered some immense traumatic brain injury. He seemed to think that not only was he a Tory, but an investment banker as well. He gave the impression to several leading figures that he was a Tory candidate. I do hope someone’s informed his CLP.
Sunday had an early start attempting to get into a fringe event run by Tories in DC over whether a Conservative ought to vote for Obama or McCain, with representatives from both campaigns. Despite arriving reasonably early the event had already filled far beyond capacity; the US elections are by far a settled question within the party. Forced to forage for food elsewhere, I headed back to the ICC once more. This day was centred more around the Freedom Zone, an off-site fringe marathon organised by the Freedom Association. The first event I attended was a session by Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell promoting their new book The Plan, an articulation of ideas of Direct Democracy, Parliamentary Sovereignty and Euroscepticism condensed into a series of legislative instruments supposedly achievable within a single twelve-month session of Parliament. Having bought a copy and had it signed, I started to read but have yet to get beyond the diagnostic and into the prescriptive. What it has offered so far is interesting, although it gives the impression of overstating the case as a means of opening gambit.
Bumping in to Iain Dale and David Davis on my way out, your intrepid author then wandered back to the main conference area to watch George Osborne’s speech on one of the TVs. I had said earlier on my Twitter feed that he was going to have a significantly more important role than had otherwise been predicted, and in that I was correct. He struck the right tone: he made no attempt to defend the crass amorality of some in the financial services sector, and called for a return to traditional fiscal conservatism. While there has been some dissection of his proposals on freezing council taxes, particularly the issue over it being voluntary, there is nonetheless an argument that it is still achievable. By being elected on the back of such a promise a Conservative government would have a sufficient mandate and influence to be able to pressure councils into adopting such measures, appealing to popular authority over what looks to become a key proposal from the conference.
Lunch was taken at a fringe event organised by the Electoral Reform Society’s Votes at 16 campaign. This was poorly chaired: he did not even bother to hide his partiality, and despite having my hand up for almost the entirety of the event, I only got called on to speak at the very end. A little attempt to keep one’s biases to a minimum or at least acknowledge the chap with a pageful of notes who was first to raise his hand would have been enough to mollify me. Votes at 16 presented, as per usual the best argument against their own case: dogmatic, uncompromising, unsophisticated and hectoring, sticking to the usual lies about being able to fight in wars and likening themselves to the suffragettes. They were rather amusingly countered by Donal Blaney, who turned their own arguments against them. Despite these pitfalls the debate was nonetheless rigorous, and enjoyable.
After this I ended up getting collared by the Chairman of Conservative Future, Michael Rock, who decided that I was “sound” and thus thrust a business card into my hand. I then got to establish my vastly impressive leadership skills by showing an assortment of representatives the way to the Freedom Zone once more for a discussion entitled Freedom and the Internet, chaired by Iain Dale, and involving Guido Fawkes, the Devil, Nadine Dorries and Dizzy. A sensible discussion over the implications of this relatively new medium ensued, with numerous other bloggers including Mike Rouse and Tory Bear in the audience. I made a slightly rambling point about Derek Draper’s attempts at a “rapid rebuttal unit” being likely to fail (something I intend to write about at a later date), and was subsequently accused by Guido of reading Dale’s blog “500 times a day”. This of course is a completely false allegation: I only read his blog 400 times a day.
My time at conference rapidly drawing to a close I then moved over to the pub with several of the audience before getting sidetracked into a rather vigorous discussion regarding the relationship between morality and the state. I fear that my case may have been somewhat less good than I thought it was at the time. Suddenly on full alcohol-fuelled speech mode, I ended up giving an impromptu tirade on the care system, before catching up with myself and realising that this was probably not appropriate conversation given that the pub was acting as something of a safe haven from the oratory of the ICC. Moving back to the Freedom Zone once more I ended up discussing the Russia-Georgia conflict over a cup of tea and sandwiches, before moving round the room collecting as many assorted freebies as possible.
Having stashed my bag with as many freebies as possible, I did one last lap of the ICC and had a quick chat with the local CF Branch, before heading home. Thanks to a bizarre number of taxis refusing to pull over, I had to run to the station, and in a moment of pure drama (if one does not own a TV), jumped onto the train as it started moving off the platform. Doubtless in violation of some Health and Safety regulation, but “it didn’t do me any harm”.
Conference was overall a rather enjoyable experience and an excellent source of debate and centre-right ideas. While there have been some suggesting that we should get rid of them, away from the pageantry of the main hall a lot of the debate, discussion and networking that is vital to modern politics goes on, and doing away with a means of meeting people of a centre-right persuasion from all over Britain would only be bad for conservatism as a whole. Despite the rather fast pace of events affecting conference, making the slogan “Plan for Change” rather prophetic, it was nonetheless able to respond well. How it plays out in the media in the next few weeks will be very interesting indeed.
UPDATE: I have been informed by Mr. Hilton via the comments section that at no time did he actually consider himself an investment banker or give that impression, and have updated the article accordingly. I apologise for any distress this may have caused him and his political career.
Sphere: Related ContentBlogging from Conference
Now that I’m settled in Conference I’ve got a set of measures up to ensure as much coverage as possible.
First, my Twitter Feed will have the most up-to-date postings of brief observations and thoughts.
Second, I am using a service called VR+ to do a form of podcasting. I make no guarantees as to doing this, but should I do so you can find the feeds here. I will make a post if that is the case.
Finally, I will be continuing to post to this blog as and when possible. I should be able to upload photos from my BlackBerry as well as write some more detail if I get the chance to.
So far after a somewhat extended journey spent sleeping, reading the papers and listening in on BBC journalists, I have arrived and am now writing from the official party internet café. I have the morning largely to myself to get acquainted with the layout of the conference centre and go to lunch with some of the senior people in Conservative Future. Following that my schedule is now slightly out-of-date. Because of the current economic conditions several events, such as “celebrating electoral success” have been cancelled to ensure that Ben Brogan’s “Tory Hubris Watch” and other similar activities are not the dominating theme. Given that I had signed today over to official events I now have considerably more free time than I expected.
Tomorrow I intend to attend predominantly fringe events, as well as a free breakfast, focusing around themes of social justice and excessive state intrusion into the private sphere.
Sphere: Related Content
