Your handy weekly guide to all that’s good on LDV.

Well, what a week. Europe dominated the early part of the week. We had inconsistent Tories, inconsistency from IWantAReferendum, inconsistency from the Lib Dem parliamentary party, (well, 13 of them) – but at least the sure and certain knowledge that Britain is behind us. Not that you’d necessarily know that from our comments this week. And of course, the Tories were more split than we were, but that somehow didn’t seem to make it into the media much. And contrary to what you might have read elsewhere, Susan Kramer didn’t storm out of a meeting.

Then Friday dawned bright and breezy, and record numbers of Liberal Democrats headed west to party conference in beautiful Liverpool. We were there with our tape recorder, video recorder and trusty ole keyboards. In amongst the dozens of conference entries, it’s hard to find particular favourites, not least because I wrote large chunks of it, but I enjoyed the FCC meeting write-up, the thirty minute recording of the CGB Blog awards, Vince Cable’s speech and Joe Otten’s thoughtful contribution about legal aid.

A special mention, too, for award winning blogger Alix Mortimer who made her début on LDV this week with a series of conference diaries. They’re comprehensive, entertaining – but not short. If you have a spare half hour this week, sit yourself down with a cup of tea and read through parts one, two, three and four. I think – hope! – a further instalment is due this week.

On a sadder note, Tony Greaves resurrected an old thread with the news of the death of Claire Brooks shortly before conference. Claire had stuck in David Spender’s mind:

The other abiding memory was the civic reception where Claire Brooks discovered that the waitresses were being paid less than the waiters and tried to make a speech about it. When the authorities turned off the microphone she sat down in the middle of the dance floor, rapidly joined by every YL present.

Comments this week were well dispersed across the huge number of posts, but our weekly date with Dimbleby and Question Time netted more than 70 comments, partly due to a barnstorming performance from Baroness Williams of Crosby, partly due to our own Stephen Tall popping up on News 24, and partly due to a deeply strange diversion on whether Hitler was Catholic.

We welcomed a wide range of contributors to LDV this week: Chief Exec Baron Rennard of Wavertree reflected on 20 years of Lib Dems, Martin Veart brought news from the Scottish Lib Dem conference in Aviemore, and Andy Strange asked what is the point of the Party President. Incidentally, the constitutional amendment to abolish Simon Hughes decouple the presidency from the chair of the Federal Exec failed to clear the 2/3rds majority hurdle.

And finally, my second special mention this week goes to Will Howell’s Something for the Weekend, which is consistently ace, and all the more so this weekend thanks to a surprising find when you search Youtube for Gladstone.