Author Archives: Paul Walter

My last day before I disappear on five buses. I had a run along the promenade and noticed a police operation. I take my hat off to the police. We should remember that they spend an awful lot of time and care following up “concerns for safety”. Often they are like emergency social workers. Full marks to them.

Hove Plinth is a thing. At the moment it has a beautiful sculpture called “Flight of the Langoustine” on it (pictured).

While having breakfast I watched the debate on A Liberal Vision for primary health care.

Somehow I managed to drag myself into the main hall for the early doors “Making music matter” motion. Jennie Rigg neatly summarised the whole thing saying that copyright law is not being enforced so that LLMs (Large Language Models) copy existing music and it is churned out as “AI slop”. She added that AI2 should be used to support musicians but instead it is being used to rip off composers and musicians.

I then went to my go-to quiet spot to write a speech. I have an idea for the strategy debate later. Mind you, it’s been ten years since I made a speech to conference.

A big shout-out to the conference information desk team. They do a great job. I am normally contactless in my payments but I had a need for a crisp fiver. Knowing the whereabouts of the nearest ATM is a bit Olde Worlde but the team managed to find the info for me.

One of the highlights of Brighton is that it’s got a great running track. You just poodle out to the promenade – chunter westwards for (in my case) 2.5 k and then turn round and go back. Job done. The sloshing about of the sea and wind also gives quite an invigorating awakening at 7 o’clock in the morning.

After an instant porridge for breakfast, I was in the main auditorium to hear Gideon Amos MP make an excellent speech in the debate on the Mortality of Children living in temporary accommodation.

Here’s an astonishing fact to stop you in your tracks. Since 2019, 104 children have died with temporary accommodation as a contributing factor to their death. What an absolutely shameful statistic. In the fifth largest economy in the world we cannot find the wherewithal to properly house our families, with 176,000 children living in temporary accommodation in England and Wales – routinely for over two years in many cases.

Thanks to the wonder of Traveline.info and an ingenious chain of five buses, I travelled to Brighton (and will travel back) free on my senior bus pass (Thank you – I know, it’s so hard to imagine that I am entitled to one) and saved, I’m told, 55500g of CO2, compared to driving.

In the process I learnt some valuable lessons in extreme bussing:

1. Always have “fall back” buses scheduled a little later, in case you miss your connection.
2. Never look at your phone when waiting for a bus. …Because you may look up just as your bus is passing at an astonishing rate of knots. (I know, what a pain – but look on the bright side, I enjoyed an excellent coffee waiting for the next bus).

Emergency motion – for my sins, I once got an emergency motion (on the situation in Fiji, since you ask) onto the ballot at a Bournemouth conference. Baroness Ludford was very sympathetic to it. It wasn’t chosen in the ballot but it gave me an appreciation of the work and energy involved into putting forward an emergency motion to conference. So, well done to the Young Liberals for getting “A Liberal Future for Under 18s” into the hall for debate. The Tories are proposing an outright ban on social media for under 16s following the ban in Australia (the home of compulsory voting). The answer to any such ban is three letters: VPN. It takes away a lifeline for teenagers discovering their identity, throwing the baby out with the bath water. This motion sensibly proposed a film style age rating system.

Arriving in York, I was reminded of what a wonderful city this is. To watch the beautiful Ouse meandering amidst some wonderful old buildings, is enough to raise anyone’s spirits.

On Friday evening, at the historic Mason’s Arms, it was great to see old friends and enjoy marvellous food.

Today, I did a tour of the exhibition hall and bought my customary LGBT+ badge, signed up for Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform and supported Liberal Democrat Friends of Hong Kong.