#ldconf providing the real alternative?

So it's conference season already and all the party machines are gearing up for their event of the year. For me, this year is already more exciting than previous years with twitter allowing the public a backstage pass and generating it's own public debate. Of course when I say 'more exciting' this is a step up from the political equivalent of a school assembly. In this non-literal game of 'follow the leader' the parties use the now highly publicised conferences to big themselves up. A couple of new policies might be announced but long gone are the days when heated discussion arose in those conference rooms.

Nevertheless with a summer that, in Britain at least, tends to generate very little political intrigue, us self-confessed anoraks take what we can get. With this surely in the back of their minds it is the Liberal Democrats who headline this years conference season and have already attracted much press attention. One does have to question if there would me this much interest if the conferences took place in say February but that is beside the point.

The Lib Dems seem to have gone on the offensive from what I have seen so far. Vince Cable in particular has challenged the Tories economic plans even referring to them as "ill-equipped politically, morally and intellectually for the challenges ahead" and stating in no uncertain terms that the shadow chancellor George Osbourne is too inexperienced to run the national economy.

It is clear that Clegg an the rest are on the hunt for votes but it is this really the best way to do it? The Lib Dems reputation as the 'nice guys' of Parliament is being challenged on a daily basis and isn't doing them any favour anyway but picking such petty squabbles will only generate hatred. In the same way, having poor excuses for having no policy is just as bad. Surely even the Lib Dems have to accept that they aren't going to beat the Conservatives at the next general election so surely their best bet is to attack the outgoing party and not completely alienate the incoming government?

Following my advice may mean the Lib Dems need to become even more authoritarian in their style and annoy me further but if it wins them votes I'm sure they won't mind too much about little ol' me.

Norwich North

Firstly one has to congratulate Chloe Smith on her election victory today. I'm not going through all the statporn here but it's enough to say that a 16.5% swing and a 20% margin ahead of the nearest candidate is a pretty comprehensive win.

With parliament in recess, it is no surprise that the blogosphere has been attracted to this story like a moth to the only light left on in politics. I myself have succumbed as well, simply because there is no other news, but generally I don't like to look into by-election results too closely. With so much attention from the press and political parties alike the results are often not a true representation of either local or national feeling but how recent events are spun in the local and national press.

Furthermore the Conservative win wasn't all too surprising. We can't say that we now know that the Conservatives are likely to beat Labour in the next general election because the man on the street could have told you that. It would be unfair to even guess the results of the next general election from this for the reasons set out above.

Perhaps we can learn two things from this but I'm afraid neither are good for the Lib Dems. I've honestly not got some vendetta against the party, I'm just pointing out what I see. Firstly, the Liberal Democrats have actually lost out in terms of share of the vote going from 16.2% to 14%. I know this may be just a by-election which isn't necessarily LD-friendly but one expects them to be taking votes from Labour, not losing out to the Conservatives.

This brings me to my second point. it appears that the expenses scandal is over and has had little effect on the voters. The Conservative party were arguably the biggest losers in this debacle but seemingly gained votes from the Lib Dems who came out from the affair reasonably unscathed. If this is the public's fickle attitude only months after the Telegraph broke the story then I have little doubt it will be gone and forgotten by the next general election.

I suggest that the public are fickle but, in my opinion, it's not a bad thing this has gone both from the news and the minds of the electorate. There are much more important issues at stake which must be considered when casting a vote.

Lib Dems are all a twitter with Cleggy.

Most Torys are too old for computer whilst most Labour supporters are too poor. On this basis it was always going to be the Lib Dems making breakthroughs with technology in the party politics arena. The blogoshpere is dominated by Lib Dem blogs with middle-class mothers and self-employed geeks offering their opinion on the issues of the day. Every so often they come up with good points but more often than not it's the boring drivel you would expect from anywhere on the Lib Dem, proportionally represented, pyramid of power.

Anyway the reason I bring this up is that now the party leader has joined his supporters by doing an interview with the general public via twitter. However, rather than throw himself into the great unwashed, questions will be vetted by, you guessed, The Independent newspaper.

This is being hailed by many here in geek-world as the greatest thing since sliced bread and the Lib Dems themselves are mopping it up like the badly aimed cumshot it is. In reality it's not going to be any different to any other contact method your ordinary man on the street has with Nick Clegg apart from being limited in terms of time and to 140 characters. All questions which he doesn't want to be answered won't make it through The Independent and any responses that do come back will be shortened versions of "We don't have any policies we're ever going to implement because Britain has a two-party system. We just like to chip in with nonsense about PR every so often".

Stop wasting bandwidth.