I wanted to take the opportunity on a Wednesday to make some small and varied points/announcements that I feel will be of interest. My announcement for this week is about the:
Autumn Conference
The Agenda for the autumn conference launched online today. HO staff should be thanked for the hard work they have done to get this ready. The Agenda and the Directory can be found at https://www.libdems.org.uk/autumn_conference_2018
To help promote the autumn conference there is a Local Party Conference Challenge
Challenge Criteria:– Between the dates of 1 August and 31 August FCC would like to challenge all local parties to register and attend the Autumn Conference – any registration counts (weekend, full member, and first-timer).
To the local party who registers the most attendees (measured by the percentage of their local party membership), they will receive a small reception hosted on the British Airways Eye360 with Vince Cable in attendance.
Take the Challenge
* Cllr. Tahir Maher is a member of the LDV editorial team
3 Comments
Will the FCC be taking into account distance? Otherwise perhaps gives Bournemouth a bit of an unfair advantage
Oliver Craven, it would be *Brighton* that would have the most “unfair advantage”!
🙂
But yes, distance should be taken into account, or local parties are not exactly competing equally.
There has been a fair amount of discussion on LDV lately about making the party more attractive to the public, more open and welcoming to those who share our values. Can I be controversial and suggest that conference might be part of the problem here.
First of all (and it’s been said before), not everybody can get time away from work to attend. For many the cost is prohibitive and for others, even if they’ve got the cash they can’t justify the expenditure if it means forgoing a family holiday (for instance). And yet if you don’t go to conference you have no say in a whole range of issues from policy to who sits on various committees. You’re a second class member.
Now I know that many people love going to conference, but In this age of the Internet, isn’t this a rather odd way of conducting our business ? By all means let’s have get togethers where we chew the cud, but let’s rethink our democratic decision making so that the maximum number can take part. The clues in the name….Liberal DEMOCRATS.