Conference: Observations and Reflections

Now that I'm back in London on the tube and the buzz of conference is dying down in my head it's probably time to do a reflection post. first up was the location, sure the Imperial Hotel looks lovely, a grand place indeed, and yet it surrounded by a war zone of a dying town full up mostly of dodgy pubs and lap dancing clubs. You can see why they wanted a casino here. That injection of adrenaline into a town akin to an overdosed ketamine junkie would, might, could give it hope of a life greater than numerous shops selling skimpy underwear for 99p. When you look at the Imperial the question you cannot help but ask is, 'if I was spending over a hundred quid a night for a holiday hotel would I really want to come here?'

The next observation would have to be the presence of so many full time politicos in one place. You can bet your last casino chip that this is probably true of Labour conference too. Delegates who do nothing but politics are precisely one of the reasons why so many people today are suspicious of politicians. Seeing so many young men - for the young women were sparse - dressed in ill-fitting suits acting like stuck-up prats (accept when you talked to many of them one-on-one) was and is what my wife and others believe the stereotype of Tories are. Normal people, you could say, don't go to conference, and I can't deny that it was mildly uncomfortable (at first) to walk around the Imperial Hotel wearing jeans, trainers, a t-shirt and a green bomber jacket. You receive the odd look of suspicion and then eventually disappear because you're not considered important enough.

The lack of your importance does change instantly though when you are introduced to someone, especially the young ones, and they learn that as well as you being literally dizzy you're also the capitalized Dizzy. All of a sudden you have their attention. Is it fear? Is it respect? Or is it just kudos? I don't know the answer. The sheer frivolous shallowness of it all is rather amusing though. The best of them though are the ones who are down to earth and treat you with normality, and they do exist if you dig deep enough. Paul Bristow and the Hammersmith bunch are all exceptionally pleasant who lack the airs and graces of superiority that many of the others have. The Young Britons Foundation too are like the Hammersmith crowd, all good eggs as one might say, and of course the bloggers I mentioned earlier too.

The content of conference too was an experience. the fringe, rather than the main hall really is the place to be. The argument and debate there is superb and whilst I didn't attend nearly as much as I would have liked, what I did go to was by no means second rate. Then there was Cameron's speech which was simply brilliant for me. Delivered well, from crib notes rather than an autocue to distinguish him from Brown, full of substance unless you're in the opposite party in which case it was not, and thoroughly conservative. To stand up and say that we have to understand the failure of a Government with essentially good intentions before we can fix it, is a strategy for Government that takes change, and measured control of change as its starting point. As an engineer I cannot fault the mechanistic approach being advocated because I know it works.

My last reflection on conference is this. I will go again and this time I will experiment just on one day with a suit and see just how strong the shallowness of appearance really is with the young turks who are constantly looking for the next vehicle that will carry them upwards. There was also a word for the week which was "sound", but it always had to be said in a deliberately postmodern and ironic way.