From The Press:
YORK is to host the Liberal Democrats’ Spring Conference next year.
The three-day conference, to be held at York Barbican Centre in March, is expected to attract more than 1,000 delegates.
The Novotel Hotel will also be the party conference headquarters for the duration of the event.
Nick Clegg is quoted as saying:
I’m delighted that the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference will be held in York for the first time next year.
We’re helping to create new jobs all around the country and York is not only a beautiful city, but it’s also a great place to do business. I’m sure all our delegates will enjoy a great conference and a great stay in York.
This is, admittedly, excellent news. York is gorgeous, accessible and only a couple of hours away for me. There is nothing not to love about the decision.
Except…is an article in a newspaper the best way for party members to find out where their Conference is going to be? Our party website is at the time of writing still silent on the details.
To be fair, it’s consistent with what’s happened before. We found out we were going to Glasgow from the Scotsman but maybe we need to be a little bit better about observing these little courtesies and letting our members hear things first. What do you think?
As Erlend points out in the comments below, the party website has now been updated, within minutes of this post being written. It reveals the date of Conference, too – 7-9 March 2014.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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11 Comments
I actually found out about it yesterday evening from a friend seeing a tweet by the Labour Leader of York Council.
The party website has a date and place now.
It’d be nice if FCC were a little more transparent and accountable, but that’s true of most party committees.
I’d still like to know why we let Labour and the Tories monopolise Manchester as a conference destination; it’s a great city for conferences, good transport links, a range of price options for accommodation, and good real ale pubs just round the corner from the Manchester Exhibition Centre!
I actually have a lot of sympathy with FCC on this (I did do 2 years as a very minor player on it). You can’t actually announce who you are negotiating with. All the hotels etc would get taken up by bloc provisional bookings. I suspect the council leader did jump the gu but he is reputed not to be the brightest spark in Labours fuse box.
Erlend is right in terms of negotiation. Dave is right in terms of Manchester, and I have never understood why we’ve been 11 years out of that great city (and yes I’ll keep on asking); though of course the Social Liberal Forum is holding its annual Conference there!
But, Gareth, couldn’t there be an email to members half an hour or so before it appears in the press? OF course nobody expects FCC to give a blow by blow account of every negotiation, but surely a heads up when the contract is signed is not too much to ask.
The Party naturally wanted members to be the first to know… So it’s very frustrating when newspapers, etc, break embargoes!
Caron, I think the press was covering this before FCC members were informed! (Which may be a different way of saying what Helen said)
“We’re helping to create new jobs all around the country and York is not only a beautiful city, but it’s also a great place to do business.”
Er, does speaking in routine advertorial befit the leader of a proud political party?
This was amazingly frustrating. We have been attempting to sort out the accomodation side with the local tourist board before it was announced. That would ensure that the hotels were not blocked book by commercial accomodation agencies who would then resell to members at greatly inflated prcies. The discussions included that there would be no announcement until that was sorted out so we could tell members, let them have details of the dedicated accomodation website etc. The embargo was broken which meant that we were not ready to go.
Andrew
Dave / Gareth – we would all like to go to Manchester unfortunately despite repeated attempts to go there they seem unwilling to engage sensibly with us. We will keep on trying.
We are having the Local Government conference in Manchester this Friday & Saturday 🙂