Tag Archives: bournemouth 2015 conference

Paul Walter

Tim Farron and a wonderful song

By Paul Walter | Sun 11th October 2015 - 11:50 am

This excerpt is from Tim Farron’s main speech to the Bournemouth conference:

Since May, the Government has threatened the human rights act, demonised refugees, penalised working families, abandoned green energy. You know, if ever you doubted the effectiveness of the Liberal Democrats in Government just look at what’s happening without us. In the words of Joni Mitchell

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone “

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Paul Walter

15 years on – Lib Dems up the ante on the Human Rights Act

By Paul Walter | Sun 4th October 2015 - 4:00 pm

Parliament Acts by -JvL- FLickr CCLTim Farron tweeted on Friday:

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Paul Walter

Video: Nick Clegg’s speech to conference

By Paul Walter | Sun 4th October 2015 - 2:30 pm

We previously carried the full text of Nick Clegg’s speech to the Bournemouth conference. Here below is the video of the speech, courtesy of the party’s conference YouTube channel.

I wasn’t in the hall for the speech.

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Paul Walter

Foreign affairs – facing up to failure

By Paul Walter | Mon 21st September 2015 - 1:00 pm

20th Sep 2015 conference LDV fringeLiberal Democrat Voice hosted a very stimulating conference fringe meeting yesterday evening. Our editor, Caron Lindsay chaired the session discussing how we forge a liberal foreign policy in these challenging times. The panel consisted of Hannah Bettsworth, Julie Smith, William Wallace and Nick Tyrone. My photo above shows the panel while Hannah was speaking.

Thank you to the panel for each providing extraordinaryly thought-provoking inputs. Thank you also to the representatives who came along and asked excellent questions or made superb points.

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Paul Walter

A welcome rebalancing of the media/members ratio at conference

By Paul Walter | Mon 21st September 2015 - 11:30 am

Tim Farron 2015 bournemouth

Tim Farron, with Rosie Farron, awaits the cue to deliver his first conference speech as leader at Saturday’s night conference rally.Photo by Paul Walter.

Pssst. Let me tell you a little secret which you may not have noticed if you haven’t attended Lib Dem conferences. As we went through the coalition years, the numbers of members attending conference dwindled. No doubt someone is going to dispute this and quote detailed numbers. But it was pretty obvious and, towards the end, feintly embarrassing.

While the numbers of members attending conference went down, the numbers of media, police, security guards and sycophantic business people buzzing around soared.

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Paul Walter

Conference kicks off

By Paul Walter | Sat 19th September 2015 - 8:26 am

imageConference kicks off with an important consultative session on party policy making this morning at 10am in the Marriott Hotel.

The main conference centre opens at 12.30 for members.

I took this photo of Bournemouth pier at 8am today.

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Paul Walter

Conference Countdown 2015: …And breathe – advice for first time conference goers

By Paul Walter | Thu 3rd September 2015 - 10:36 am

When you first go to conference there is a risk of overloading with “stuff”.

Bear in mind that conference is a very unusual situation for a human being.

You are there being pumped full of the highest octane level of high octane political content for up to 18 hours a day. I once counted up over 50 subjects on which I had listened to speeches or explanations during a conference week.

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Paul Walter

Conference Countdown 2015: Human Rights motion – we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water

By Paul Walter | Fri 28th August 2015 - 9:42 am

As many will know, there is an excellent motion on Human Rights to be debated at the Bournemouth conference. I have set out the motion below this post.

I have one query which readers may be to help me with.

It pertains to this section of the motion:

Conference resolves to:
…C. Retain the Human Rights Act unless it is replaced with a Bill of Rights which incorporates and builds on those rights set out in the ECHR and oppose any attempts by Conservatives to introduce a British Bill of Rights which does not achieve this.

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