November updates from the Howard League…

…I do actually get monthly updates from the Howard League for Penal Reform after I signed up to them at Conference; however, everything in this month’s email is both fascinating and important, and there is a LOT of stuff there, so rather than just picking out a bit at random (or wasting valuable Obama-watching energy in writing [...]

Things from the Manchester Oxfam minutes

Kept meaning to put this up – this is from the event at the Town Hall on the 16th October, where all the knitters who contributed to the blanket met up for a launch event to celebrate their hard work. There was also a film documenting the process of creating the blanket which (lest ye [...]

*Another* Yorkster in the Guardian!

More trawling of the Guardian website turns up a video about conference by David Levene, featuring the Chair of my University Labour Club, David Levene. Yatta!

Grace in the Guardian…sort of.

One benefit of hanging around in the press area for most of Conference was that the photographers took pictures of us when they had nothing better to do.
Will retrospectively update my missing Conference days soon!

Someone call an underminers’ strike

Apparently David Miliband was ‘overheard’ by a reporter telling an aide that he deliberately held back on his ‘6 out of 10′ speech to avoid a Heseltine moment.
Isn’t David Miliband clever enough to notice when there’s a reporter behind him?
Wouldn’t his aide already have known about this tactic?
Forget the speech; surely Miliband’s follow-up performance deserves [...]

:(

Just realised I accidentally missed the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group reception that John Grogan invited me to. John is probably my favourite MP and I’ve completely failed to catch up with him properly at this conference…am slightly distraught.

Fletcher-Hackwood & Friends at Conference, Day #2

We all woke up bright and early on a beautiful day to be left-wing. The sun was shining, the coffee was amaretto-flavoured, and JK Rowling had donated a million pounds to the Labour Party.
At Manchester Central it turned out I was being seconded to steward the press room instead of doing disability support. The press [...]

Fletcher-Hackwood and Friends at Conference, Day 1

NB: retrospectively posted to try and make things less confusing. Yeah, I know I said I’d blog every day, but I’ve been sleepy in the evenings.
So, today was the beginning of Conference! …well, actually it wasn’t, but it was the first day I’d taken off work for conference-related reasons, the first day I got to [...]