#ldconf: The Silly Bits

[miss_s_b]

Anyone who watches conference on the telly might have, quite understandably, got the impression that conference is all about sitting in an auditorium watching stuffed suits make long speeches about arcane bits of political geeky stuff. Now, that is a part of conference, to be sure, but it's not a large part. El Presidente mentioned at one point (I think at the "new to conference?" event) that she'd been to a couple of conferences in the past and not managed to make it into the hall once. This came as no surprise.

Obviously, apart from the debates and things in the hall, there are many many many training events and fringe debates and things like that. And a lot of you will have heard about those too. What you may not have heard about is the general air of silliness and fun that pervades the whole thing. Liberals are perplexed when people start taking the mickey out of us for laughing in the leader's speech: isn't that what the leader is for? Laughing at? Cleggy certainly seems to understand that, given the jokes he makes at his own expense. The start of conference rally involved Sarah Teather making a series of near-the-knuckle jokes about various political scandals. Many of us went to the beach after the leader's speech and spent time making incredibly silly sandcastles. But the king of all silliness is, of course, Glee Club.

Glee Club is a bizarre concoction of bad comedy, worse singing, sexual innuendo, and vast amounts of drinking. It's the kind of thing that shows that no matter how much the media and other parties might try to show us in an embarrassing light, there's nothing they can do that will show us up as sillier and more embarrassingly uncool than we will voluntarily do ourselves. matgb detests Glee Club. Possibly because he still has some residual cool. One person I have never noticed actively participating at Glee Club is The Honourable Lady Mark. But then, given the sort of people he hangs around with, I don't think he'll ever be uncool enough. The swine. It certainly scared the living daylights out of awesomegore, and for that reason alone is worth celebrating, in my view.

I'm trying to think of a way of describing it which conveys the true, magnificent awfulness of it, but I just can't. It's something which has to be experienced to be believed, and then you'll either embrace it like a lover or run away screaming.

Obviously, bearing that in mind, I have several ideas for new filks running round in my head to try to submit to the Liberator songbook. Several of us were agreed we definitely need a bloggers' song....

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This blog is proudly sponsored by Andrew Hickey, who will get a pretty logo when I get back from conference and have time to arse about with the graphics prog.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Whenever I go to Glee Club, I find myself thinking we need a song based on The Impossible Dream, though I'm never quite sure who or what it should be about.

And the amusing thing is that the captcha I have to enter is 'merger family' which sounds like it should be some SDP-bashing song from the late 80s to the tune of the Addams Family.

Nick (http://www.nickbarlow.com/blog)

[miss_s_b]

I just think singing the impossible dream would be cool.

[lizw]

Now, that is a part of conference, to be sure, but it's not a large part.

It's a large part of it for me and djm4, and I think it should be a large part of it for any voting rep, since that it what we are elected by our local parties to do.

I agree with you about Glee Club, though, and I love it to pieces. It's incredibly cathartic, especially in the autumn, when you've had the best part of a week of annoyances. Because much as I love the rest of Conference too, it's full of annoyances, from media misrepresentations to queues to leafleters who won't take the environmental policy seriously to important policy votes that narrowly go the Wrong Way to fringes with standing room only. There's nothing like a few choruses of Lib-Lab Lie to exorcise those demons, and nothing like The Land to remind me why I'm proud to be a Liberal despite it all.

[miss_s_b]

it should be a large part of it for any voting rep, since that it what we are elected by our local parties to do.

Just turning up is more than most voting reps do, to be fair.

I don't think it's the duty of a voting rep to vote on EVERY motion, just like MPs don't vote on every bill that goes through the house. I think it IS important for a voting rep to read the paperwork, and decide in advance which motions are important and which are just pointless grandstanding timewasters.

It's be nice if more people agreed with me on which ones fall into which category, though ;)

[lizw]

MPs are elected to do constituency work as well, so I feel they're in a different position. I don't find I can tell just from the paperwork what's going to turn out to be important - it often only becomes clear to me in the course of the debate. But ultimately, of course, if a rep's local party are happy with what they're doing, there's no problem :-)

[miss_s_b]

I kind of see going to the fringes and training as an equivalent to constituency work in that regard; I see the reps job as not just to vote on policy, but to report back to the constituency on conference, and thus to get the most possible out of it.