Last Saturday (21st Jan) I attended the annual South of Scotland Lib Dem conference in Penicuik, Midlothian. The YMCA building we used looked nice on the outside but the room we were given had lime green lower walls and windows around 1/3rd. With the weather being sunny showers it made the light difficult to take photos as you can see from the photo album. I should point out its difficult to get decent pictures of people while they speak, some can come out as less then flattering. I haven’t uploaded those ones but on receipt of the right “donation”….
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| Jim Hume MSP |
The conference started out with a speech by Jim Hume MSP which was mainly a review of the past year, standard from Jim, and covered the current situation over plans for a single police force and how the targets agreed by parliament on the numbers of homeless are about to be broken by lack of commitment by the current Scottish Executive since 2007. In fact this was the key issue Jim wanted to highlight: there are 156,000 families on housing waiting lists, socially rented new build houses were down last year by 15% and the SNP Scottish Executive have cut their pre-election pledge from 30,000 to 5,000 new socially rented houses.
Unfortunately, Jim also mentioned the words “independence” and “referendum”, both words I’ve personally have had enough of.
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| Willie Rennie MSP |
Next up was party leader Willie Rennie MSP, he also spent time talking constitutional stuff but covered how Lib Dems can and are make a distinctive difference and how we must put a positive message across regarding achievements.
There was a Q&A with Jim, Willie, Michael Moore MP and Councillor Les Thacker. Majority of questions were, regrattably on “independence” and “referendum”.
After an excellent lunch the afternoon started with a briefing from Adam Stachura on campaigning for the forthcoming local elections.
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| Cllr Catriona Bhatia |
Finally we moved on to a presentation from Councillor Catriona Bhatia on the proposed manifesto for the Scottish Borders council area. As this was a draft, looking for comments and hopefully giving ideas to other areas in the South I won’t include specifics.
Now the disco lights. At this even Jim borrows sound and lighting equipment. This includes disco lights that would normally change colour in time to the music. There was, of course, no music, just applause. I did notice that the system responded to hand claps. So as each speaker finished and got a round of applause the lights changed. The louder and more faster the applause the faster the disco lights changed colour. The winner, on this basis, and with a slight bias on my part, was Catriona.
Why? she was the only one not to mention “independence” or “referendum” and talked about real issues of concern to real people and not issues of concern to the geeks and nerds of political parties.
If Scottish Lib Dem Conference Committee adopted this idea the award for best speech at conference can be determined this way.
Let’s use disco lights to determine best speech
Last Saturday (21st Jan) I attended the annual South of Scotland Lib Dem conference in Penicuik, Midlothian. The YMCA building we used looked nice on the outside but the room we were given had lime green lower walls and windows around 1/3rd. With the weather being sunny showers it made the light difficult to take photos as you can see from the photo album. I should point out its difficult to get decent pictures of people while they speak, some can come out as less then flattering. I haven’t uploaded those ones but on receipt of the right “donation”….
The conference started out with a speech by Jim Hume MSP which was mainly a review of the past year, standard from Jim, and covered the current situation over plans for a single police force and how the targets agreed by parliament on the numbers of homeless are about to be broken by lack of commitment by the current Scottish Executive since 2007. In fact this was the key issue Jim wanted to highlight: there are 156,000 families on housing waiting lists, socially rented new build houses were down last year by 15% and the SNP Scottish Executive have cut their pre-election pledge from 30,000 to 5,000 new socially rented houses.
Unfortunately, Jim also mentioned the words “independence” and “referendum”, both words I’ve personally have had enough of.
Next up was party leader Willie Rennie MSP, he also spent time talking constitutional stuff but covered how Lib Dems can and are make a distinctive difference and how we must put a positive message across regarding achievements.
There was a Q&A with Jim, Willie, Michael Moore MP and Councillor Les Thacker. Majority of questions were, regrattably on “independence” and “referendum”.
After an excellent lunch the afternoon started with a briefing from Adam Stachura on campaigning for the forthcoming local elections.
Finally we moved on to a presentation from Councillor Catriona Bhatia on the proposed manifesto for the Scottish Borders council area. As this was a draft, looking for comments and hopefully giving ideas to other areas in the South I won’t include specifics.
Now the disco lights. At this even Jim borrows sound and lighting equipment. This includes disco lights that would normally change colour in time to the music. There was, of course, no music, just applause. I did notice that the system responded to hand claps. So as each speaker finished and got a round of applause the lights changed. The louder and more faster the applause the faster the disco lights changed colour. The winner, on this basis, and with a slight bias on my part, was Catriona.
Why? she was the only one not to mention “independence” or “referendum” and talked about real issues of concern to real people and not issues of concern to the geeks and nerds of political parties.
If Scottish Lib Dem Conference Committee adopted this idea the award for best speech at conference can be determined this way.