After the silly season...

[HStorm]

...comes the conference season.

The Lib-Dems have kicked things off for the big guns as usual, conferring on Labour's old conference stomping ground of Blackpool (I can't help feeling there's a message in that for us all), starting with a large-scale debate over a policy of equal pay audits for businesses.

Considering this has been an election year, the build-up to the conference season has been breathtaking in its low-key-ness. This is perhaps a reflection on the fact that the outcome of the General Election wasn't really very favourable to anyone involved i.e. Labour won but with a heavily-reduced majority, the Tories narrowed the gap but were seriously thinking about winning outright, the Lib-Dems made a bit of ground but were thinking in terms of becoming the new official Opposition, while most of the other parties regressed.

Is it perhaps a fitting reflection on this non-event of an election year that the new Conference season has sneaked up on us almost unseen? Is it also a reflection on the growing inertia and shallowness of the current political scene that even the BBC, which usually gets puzzlingly overexcited about the Conference season, has scarcely got into second gear this time around?

[modeski]

I think perhaps it is a reflection of the fact that the election has been and gone, that your post was the first thing I've seen this year to mention the conferences.


I do love conference season though, it's a chance to see politicians get into peacock mode. All strut, no substance. An amusing hobby is to make note of all the promises made, then refer back to them in a year to see how many have been flatly contradicted or mysteriously spirited away.



That image was from the BBC's Politics '97 site, which is still up. www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/

[HStorm]

modeski said:

I do love conference season though, it's a chance to see politicians get into peacock mode. All strut, no substance.

Er, and how often do we get to see them in any other mode?

[modeski]

hstorm said:

modeski said:

I do love conference season though, it's a chance to see politicians get into peacock mode. All strut, no substance.

Er, and how often do we get to see them in any other mode?

Heh, the man has a point. I suppose what I meant was that their posturing was more flagrant and unabashed around this time. Sort of like at an office Christmas party - let it all hang out.