We have just finished the Party Conference Season. This lasts for about a month and even though only one Party has an active conference at any time, they all take a month away from their jobs in Parliament. This is despite just having finished twelve weeks of summer holiday..
The House of Shame uses the university holiday dates, these give much more time off than the school holidays. They take 3 weeks at Christmas, three weeks at Easter and a whole 12 weeks in summer. This comes to 18 weeks a year. Add in the 4 weeks of Conferences and they are basically on holiday for half the year. They never miss a chance to tell us how lazy we are but look who is talking.
My big beef about all of this is why don’t they move their Party conferences to the end of their summer break. This would at least allow them to turn up in the house for another 4 weeks.
Can any one of you remember anything significant about this year’s load of dross. The anchor baby wants to abolish stamp duty on house purchases or at least on your main residence and reduce our energy bills by £165. Is she having a laugh, divide the annual bill by 3 and that should be the target. This would mean getting rid of net zero, few would lament that.
I have yet to figure out the point of these Conferences. I suspect there is a lot of plotting going on behind the scenes but our ludicrous PM is still in his job. Some Ministers do get a bit of good publicity and heaven knows they need it. Sometimes a rising star makes a name for him or her self. Who could forget a 16 year old William Hague wowing the Tory Conference back in Maggie’s day.l If only he had lived up to his promise rather than being just another clean shaven man with a beard.
Reform’s Conference was one of the more lively meetings. More promises were made and many seemed rather popular. The only question is do they have the cojones to carry through with it if the polls are to be believed.
Speaking of polls, both Labour and Conservative ended their Conferences with a lower poll rating than the had at the start. Small wonder with Labour, they have to defend the indefensible. The Tories on the hand can’t rid themselves of the 14 years of failure tag they have attracted. I have no memory of the LibDem Conference, probably Ed Davey riding round on a hobby horse. They used to be the “none of the above” Party but have since morphed into the weirdo Party although to be fair, they have always attracted their fair share of weirdos.
I just checked the Congressional calendar for the USA, they get the whole of August off plus 8 other weeks. This adds up to 12 and is about what our slovenly lot take for a summer break. We need to get our lot away from Conferences in what should be working time and place them in the holiday time.
Somebody posting on policy-insider claims that the long summer break allows our MPs to rest, recharge and reconnect with their constituents. This should be filed in the BS folder. They often go on fact finding missions. Many times these missions visit places we could only dream of having a holiday in.
There are also people who are removed from a conference. This year’s star was the boy Jones who was banned from the Labour Conference. In 2023 a Tory, Andrew Boff, was removed after heckling Suelle Braverman’s speech. The star of this though has to be Walter Wolfgang who in 2000 was removed from the Labour Conference. He was 82 at the time for shouting “nonsense” during Jack Straw’s speech. He was also jewish and somehow served to highlight Labour’s anti-semitism. Having gone a step too far, some Labour high-ups later apologised to Herr Wolfgang.
There was also a Green Party Conference. Now I can’t take the Greenies seriously. They justify their ludicrous claims by insisting there is a consensus and by soundbite science. Having a NHRN as leader also strikes me as a trifle Soviet. Zack Polanski is really David Paulden – he says Polanski is the original name of his father who anglicised it when he moved here. Perhaps he is channeling his inner Grant Shapps, a man of many different names. Zack Polanski sounds like something from Hollywood and he bats for the other side but that is nothing unusual these days. The worst part is that he a vegan.
My view remains the same, if they want conferences let them do it in their own time.
© well_chuffed 2025
