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.

As I walked up to the ATM, the sun was shining and the sea was much less stormy than it has been.

Fortunately, for the first time, my hotel is just around the corner from the conference centre. It’s one of those modern remote hotels where you barely see another person. When I call the virtual reception, the phone is answered by an AI bot. She calls me “love” and finally says that she will hand me over to the human reception itself. As she waits for an answer she says to me “I’m just trying to put you through, poppet”.

“Poppet”? Methinks they need to tweak their parameters in the AI bot receptionist.

I get another music influx at the fringe called “Madchesterism – putting music at the heart of devolution”. This discussion contains lots of ideas to invigorate the music industry – for example, the importance of installing the right sound proofing in new venue buildings and encouraging professional musicians to go into schools to share their experience.

I asked a question about community radio, bearing in mind that I spend most of my days as a volunteer producing community radio programmes and we have many local musicians coming in to play and talk about their music. I am very pleased to say that the panel were very enthusiastic about community radio.

I went for a salted caramel and banana ice cream and a walk along the promenade.

Then something very bizarre happened.

I noticed a very tall gentleman, with a very long microphone and a camera person in tow, striding around the front of the conference centre trying to get someone to talk to him. He wasn’t having much luck, so I went up and offered to talk with him. The questions started quite predictably but then took a rather right-wing turn. He was particularly trying to get me to say something about the Post Office scandal. Then things went a bit crazy as he treated me to a riddle which he had written. There followed several minutes of me painfully trying to solve the riddle. The whole thing was as mad as a box of frogs but a pleasant enough chat. I just don’t know what value the discussion might have for an audience.

To the Q&A with Ed and the excellent Carolyn Quinn.

Ed said ‘Europe, Canada and Greenland have stood up to Donald Trump and won.’

There was an interesting discussion on the pensioners triple lock, which resulted in a straw poll of the hall which was just about carried in favour of continuing it.

Ed loved talking about Birmingham. ‘We lead the coalition running the largest local government entity in Western Europe because Roger Harmer with his 12 councillors had the courage to step forward and run the council when others didn’t have the guts to do it.’

On PR: ‘This party has campaigned for a hundred years for fair votes and proportional representation and we ain’t stopping now.’

On social care Ed was reasonably optimistic. He said that Andy Burnham wants a social care bill before parliament next summer. And he said it is vital to involve carers.

Ed wants to take the profit out of water.

Ed’s stunts, or “visuals” came up. The possibility of a sky dive emerged. Apparently one of our female councillors is a full-in sky diver and has offered to help. A straw poll of the audience showed us overwhelmingly in favour of Ed’s stunts/visuals.

In the strategy debate President Josh Babarinde opened with a superb barnstorming speech. During Linda Jack’s excellent speech – she said the temptation was to do nothing and this was put up on the text board with the phrase ”The Temptations”. I do like a bit of Motown.

I was amazed to be called to speak and managed to carry off the whole thing without embarrassment (above).

To the fringe meeting called “What has the ECHR done for us?” hosted by Liberty and superbly chaired by Lord Mike German. This included a very brave father, Craig, talking out his harrowing fight to win proper benefit payments for his son, Cameron. He eventually won his case at the Supreme Court. Basically, without the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights he would have not won and would have been at the mercy of an uncaring government.

Our home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson said that we need to be ready for an almighty fight on the ECHR and that we need to give real life examples of how it has helped the likes of Craig and his son Cameron, the Hillsborough victims/relatives, Rochdale grooming gang victims etc.

After that I felt that I had done my bit for liberal democracy for one day so I adjourned for a wonderful donner kebab, salad and chips washed down by a PunkAF at the Bright Helm.

* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.