Iceberg right ahead!

We have just had lifeboat drill in case the ship hits an iceberg or something and sinks. Somehow the relaxed way people sat around in the muster point listening calmly to instructions on how to step over the edge into the water or which lifeboat we need to get into will not be repeated if we were to be holed below the waterline. Somehow panic will inevitably replace polished practice. The life jackets are an appalling dayglo orange colour better suited to LiB Dem election posters! Anyway, we set sail from Istanbul in 5 minutes and head into the Black Sea for Trabzon, on the North Turkish coast.

So far we have taken nearly 250 photos on this holiday, but only about 20 minutes of video. Much of it was taken this morning when we took a cruise around the Bosphorus Straits. This afternoon we hit the bazaars of Istanbul and stocked up with Turkish Delight and herbs and spices. Lots of pictured taken to be added to my photo collection of markets of the world I have visited!

Believe it or not, dinner on board comes with a suggested dress code. So I am sitting in my suit at the moment waiting for the 2nd sitting to be called at 8.30pm. We are liikely to abandon the bar shortly with its morbidly mediocre live band playing the hits of yesteryearand take our GTs out onto the promenade deck. We can feel the engines just rumbling into life now. So it's goodbye to Istanbul.

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Just what Cameron wanted

I saw the Telegraph headline yesterday about the Conservatives proposing the scrapping of stamp duty on share purchases. Today I have had the chance to read a bit more about what the Tory Tax Commission has come up with - 21 billion pounds of tax cuts but from what I gather no explanation as to how to pay for them. So the expectation is that public spending will have to be cut. A defeat for Cameron? Nothing of the sort. Indeed quite the reverse.

I over heard a conversation whilst at the Conservative conference in which a well know journalist was telling others that in the conversations he had had with people in Cameron's office they were positively gagging for a showdown with "Norman" (Tebbitt?) and the right. Being able to score a victory over them by forcing them to accept public spending over tax cuts is what they are after. And this tax report is therefore likely to be a battle that Cameron knows he will win anyway. Afterall, in the Conservative Party, there is no mechanism for forcing the leadership to accept policy. In effect the Leader decides. The vaccuousness of their recent conference is an indication of that.

So my belief is that Cameron will be seeking battles of precisely this nature in which he takes on the old right (the people who gave the Tories the nasty image) in an attempt to change public perceptions. That's what this is all about - realigning public perceptions. Just as Kinnock attempted in the late 80s and Blair did more successfully in the 90s.

In a sense our own tax debate was tackling for us a perception issue: high tax party.

So I can see the angle Cameron is coming from and I can see the neanderthals of the old right playing straight into his hands.

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Mosques, minarets and museums

Holidays are meant to be for relaxation. So they say. The reality is that you get up modestly early local time (7.30am) even though your body is saying it's 5.30am. All to be able to do a tour of Istanbul.

The itinerary was the Blue Mosque, Chora Museum, lunch, the Byzantine cistern and then St Sophia, now a museum and prior to that a mosque and prior to that an orthodox cathedral.

Typical that over lunch an email should arrive from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle asking me to do an interview later this week or early next week, on my favourite subject of the moment, video newsletters for constituents. Hopefully they can be persuaded to hold off a little longer.

I have been asked by a fellow passenger what I feel about being surrounded by so many elderly people on this holiday. I was tempted to reply that having this month been to the Tory conference (as an observer) people on this cruise are positively young! Tempted to say it but actually decided not to!

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We have arrived

We have been in Istanbul for about three hours now though we have seen nothing of the city as yet as we arrived after sunset. The ship is moored here til Friday evening.

Just had dinner in the main dining room. We are seriously young compared to the other passengers but at our table tonight we got onto the subject of politics. It started because someone asked me what I do for a living. After all they are all retired so the presence of David and myself representing the "younger generation" has caused a minor ripple of interest. So when I explain what I do, it means a conversation about politics. I thought this was supposed to be a holiday! The couple I was talking to were from Devon and were Lib Dem supporters. They like Ming but said he should have gone for the leadership when Paddy retired. Quite an interesting conversation.

Tomorrow we do a tour of Istanbul and then head out into the city in the evening. We are 2 hours ahead of UK so it is now 12.15am and we are in one of the ship's bars enjoying a GT.
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Wallace voting for Turkey

Well, here I am in the queue at Gatwick for the security checks. Having experienced the chaos of getting through the laughable and incompetent security at the Tory conference two weeks ago (when attending as an observer) this seems positively professional and highly efficient.

We are off for a cruise on the Black Sea, flying out today to Istanbul where we board our ship, Voyage of Discovery, a modest passenger ship for about 600 passengers. We sailed on the same ship two years ago when we visited North Africa and Italy.

This holiday starts in Istanbul then along the North Turkish coast to Georgia, up to Russia, over the the Crimea, then south to Romania and Bulgaria before heading through the Bosphoros to western Turkey and finishing in Cyprus.

Mother is looking after the house and Freda (our Gateshead cat). Dad had been lined up to do this but he only came out of hospital yesterday after his appendicitis op. He's staying at my sister's house instead.

Norman Lamb as usual makes a lot of jokes about my going on holiday. In the days when we both attended DTI Parliamentary Team meetings, comments would normally be passed about where I was heading to next. So at dinner last night the jokes flowed freely before we all got onto the rather heady political stuff. The taxi back to the flat cost me more than the train ticket I got to come from Newcastle to London on Monday morning. I suspect the cost of taxis in some of the places I am visiting shortly will be less than the cost of the cup of tea we have just bought. We are now through security and are sitting in the BAA tax free shopping mall (given the prices perhaps "maul" would be a better word given David's wallet has just been mauled by the visit to the cafe here.)

Five minutes to go before we board. Then a holiday of sun and sea sickness!

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Michael Brown and that donation

Whilst The Times almost single handedly thinks the Michael Brown donation is a legitimate line of attack, I heard recently that the Special Branch gave him a clean bill of health when he made the donation. Whilst some feel the need with the advantage of hindsight to question the donation, and whilst the guy at the time simply seemed to be a rich eccentric, it seems to me that he checked out at the time.
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1000 video viewings in a week

I checked my YouTube channel this morning. There have been 1000 viewings of the various videos on it in the past week. The biggest increases usefully have come with my local news stories which for once beat the various clips of Rio de Janiero, Egypt, Cuba and so on. The reason for the increased viewings of the local material is down to the email news letters I have sent out in the past week or so to residents in Gateshead. Circulation list is now nearly 1000 directly but there are many who receive efocus via family and friends.

I have changed the style of the videos as well. They are each single issue and the link to the video is at the end of the article about it in the efocus. This means they are much more "dog whistle" - we have found that most people reading efocus stroll down the screen looking for the stories that are of intterest to them. The result is that more people are viewing the single issue videos than the "local news headlines" style I had previously tried.

I filmed one video on Sunday afternoon about bus services, though I did one clip on Friday outside Parliament. We have had bus service cuts in our area recently so we carried out a survey on the impact. The video explained the results (the outline of which was given in the efocus).

The week before that I filmed one about an application for an opencast mine in my ward. This one was viewed by over 100 within about 24 hrs of the link being sent out.

In total, preparation, filming and editing takes about 2 hours. Cost is zero (once you have the equipment). This is definitely a system of communicating I would recommend. Compare that to the cost and time of doing a target letter!

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I did warn you – Northern Regional Awards

Don’t say I didn’t warn you! I said in my blog entry yesterday that I would annoy you all by putting up the video filmed of the Northern Lib Dem awards presentation held at Gateshead Civic Centre on Saturday 14th October.

Well, here it is! Regional Awards video

I have been certificated

Well, here I am in all my glory, complete with my old university chum Tim Farron MP. In the dim and distant past, when I was candidate in Hexham (1992 general election), Tim was one of a number of students from Newcastle University I dragged around the wilds of Northumberland delivering leaflets. 14 years later, having beaten me to Parliament, he is the special guest at the Northern Region conference where he hands me the prize for best political campaign, best Focus leaflet (highly commended but not 1st prize) and I stood in for Winlaton and High Spen ward in Blaydon who were unable to get to the conference. I collected their best election campaign award (but I did write their leaflets!)

And then afterwards I went with David to see Dad in the QE Hospital in Gateshead. He is up and about after his appendicitis op but has lost some of his appetite.

I'm currently writing a script for a video I'm doing tomorrow on bus services. I shot a scene for it on Friday outside the Commons. It only took me six goes to get it right! Meanwhile my video camera is uploading all the video I took at conference this morning. Just to bore everyone tomorrow I'll stick up on the blog the bit about me getting the prizes!

And keeping to the video theme, I sent out another email newsletter on Friday to about 300 addresses in the northern half of Blaydon constituency. There have been 25 hits on the video that was linked to it. Not too bad. One of the videos I linked to the eFocus I sent out in my own and neighbouring wards a week ago has as a result had nearly 200 viewings (it was sent to 650 so a 30% response rate is not bad!)

Hot news from the regional conference

Gateshead has won in the four categories we made entries for in the regional campaigns awards. We have won Best Political Campaign, Best Focus Team Achievement, and highly commended in Best Election Campaign and Best Focus Leaflet. We didn't win the Best Local Party category on the grounds we didn't put in an entry. Will have to make do with 4 out of 5!

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Regional conference tomorrow

Am I a stickler for punishment? I jump on a train at 10pm at Kings Cross to head for Newcastle after a slightly hurried meal in an Indian restaurant at Victoria. The big event this weekend is Northern Regional conference. If I haven't had my fill of conferences this year, then there must be something seriously wrong with me!

This is the regional AGM so most of the motions are party business. There is one policy motion whining about super casinos and the "moral" implications. Not exactly liberal, or logical. I may find myself speaking against it.

The real highlight is the regional campaign awards. I spent a mini fortune posting off 6 entries for 4 categories. I did not put in an entry for the fifth category - best local party. So I am hoping (especially given the time I put into the entries) that Gateshead wins something. It is useful for a focus story and a news release and for boosting my ego. But the prize is simply a certificate. Nice photo op if I were to receive one though. I'll be there tomorrow taking photos. I just need someone to arrange to take mine! (Should I win something of course!)

News from the home front is good and not so good. Dad is out of high dependency after his appendicitis operation and according to my sister Esther (via Mother then David and then me - why am I at the end of the information chain?) he is in the recovery ward talking and eating. He may even be home tomorrow no doubt to the relief of his brother John who has for the past few weeks been over here from Canada.

The not so good news is that David has come down with a heavy cold. The fact this is on the eve of our going on holiday is probably not a coincidence.

Anyway back to conferences and another Wallace gripe about the way we do things in the Lib Dems. Local parties are rightly invited to submit motions to spring and autumn conference. Fewer and fewer do so each year. And there is a tendency for just a handful of parties to submit large numbers of motions and amendments. I wonder how representative of the views of the local members those submissions are. I can't for a moment imagine that all of Canterbury Local Party's members are raving trots from the party's revolutionary sandals wing. But glancing at the submissions to the Brighton conference Canterbury did strike you as being on a Leninist day trip to the planet Mars.

I haven't any answer to this but how do we encourage local parties to put in more and better motions and amendments than some of what comes in now? One solution is to have themed days worked out in advance. My gripe about the Brighton conference is that in some respects, the daily themes were decided after the motions had been submitted and tabled. That meant the process was much more accidental. If for example Sunday at spring conference was decided in advance as having crime and policing as the theme, this may stimulate some more focused interest by local parties. And such an approach could link in more closely with campaigns that were being run by the party nationally. It would of course mean better coordination between FCC, media centre, campaigns, policy etc. But they have achieved this with the Green Switch campaign and I'm sure it could be a model accepted as the standard rather than the exception. Well, here's hoping anyway.

Train is now approaching York. Should be home by 2am. I need a holiday!

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Ming - a man of detail

I edit 2 publications which, as standard, contain quotes directly from Ming as Leader. Parliamentary Campaigner goes to Parliamentary Candidates Association members. North East Democrat goes to over 400 members in the North East by email (plus a number of others who for whatever reason have been put on the circulation list). It is a mark of Ming's diligence that he reads all content in his name before it goes out. Happily, for both new editions of these publications the changes were minimal. Though on previous occasions he has been good at spotting my typos! Very good on the details.

So emailed out tonight was The North East Democrat, just in time to remind everyone of the regional conference this weekend in Gateshead. And tomorrow Parliamentary Campaigner is emailed out to members. Beats me how we coped before emails. Somehow we did. It just cost us an arm and a leg in printing and postage!

Parliamentary Campaigner and Appendicitis

At last, the first draft of the next Parliamentary Campaigner is completed. I finished it last night. This is the fastest turn around of a single edition we have achieved - the editorial board only met last Friday to decide on content. It is normally the case that there is amonth between the board meeting and PCA members receiving the final edition in their inboxes.

It will of course have to go through the inevitable correction of typos stage and there is bound to be a decision to change the layout to make the bits with heavy text look more interesting. But hopefully it should be with members in a matter of hours rather than days.

But with the first draft done, I could then switch to doing the North East Democrat, which is emailed monthly to 400 members in the North East. I have 2 and a half pages left to do on conference but fortunately I press ganged some unsuspecting members to cover various debates for me!

News from the home front not so good last night. 2 days ago my mother emailed me to tell my Dad had gone into hospital for suspected appendicitis. Yesterday he had the operation. He won't be out of hospital for a few days.

That sort of sinks my plan to win the jam war in Cowley St (see blog entry for 30th September). He was being lined up to pick a load of fruit this week that I could use on Sunday to make a new set of jams that would knock Linda Seeking's lemon curds for six. May have to call this one a draw now.

Ming and PMQs

I watched PMQs today. Biased though I may be, I have to say I think Ming's performance was solid and statesmanlike. This image was assisted by the Punch and Judy show of Blair and Cameron that preceded his question (which was on the Northern Ireland peace process).

Ming is the only politician in the Commons who can perform the elder statesman role. Forget any attempts to portray him as a young cool dood. It doesn't wash and it detracts from his clearly sellable advantages of a wise head on calm shoulders.

Broad beans and Parliamentary Campaigner

I did some work tonight on the next edition of the Parliamentary Campaigner which is due out shortly. There's quite a bit in it about the Green Switch Campaign and a bit of a round up on conference. Which reminds me, I must get my report done on the Conservative conference. (Shouldn't take long to write up the policy side.)

Some of you were spared my blog contribution this afternoon in which I went head to head with Stephen Tall about politicians and baby photos. Somehow, there was a 2 hour gap on libdemblogs so I wonder if other blog updates from that time have been missed as well.

I got kicked out of Cowley St tonight at 9pm when Lib Dem Calling came calling at my office to give me my marching orders as they were wanting to lock the building and set the alarm. So I headed back to the flat, via Sainsburys for some cat food - I didn't realise how expensive that damned cat of ours would be when, as a stray 6 years ago, we foolishly started feeding it. It wasn't long before she finally moved in. She gets to eat meat. All I had tonight was a bowl of bean soup (made from broad beans we grew in our London back garden).

The cat's black and white and called Jess.....yes I know my Postman Pat!

Baby pictures - beating Stephen Tall at his own game!

Stephen Tall, Blogging Queen of the Year (2006), wanted to hide from public view a photo of himself holding a baby by putting it onto his blog so that it would be hidden from view by anyone else on the planet. (A Liberal Goes A Long Way).

In an attempt not to be outdone and with like minded spirit of not wanting it seen by anyone else on the planet, I have sorted through my folder of photos on my pc in Cowley St, found this picture of me and my niece Lily taken during the elections in 2004, a few days after she was born, and put it on the blog for no one else to see.

In digging up photo relics of the past, I could of course do a raid on my election photos from 1987 when I was first elected, and looked a bit younger than I do now! But I won’t inflict that on bloggers…well not yet!

Opencast Appeal at Skons Park

For anyone interested in producing videos for constituents, you may be interested in this one. This is a single issue video, about an appeal over refusal to grant planning permission for an opencast development in my council ward in Gateshead.

Fiona Hall Question Time Success

I was beginning to fear that we would get no one to the coffee morning and question time I was hosting with Fiona Hall, North East MEP, before the event this morning. I didn't have to entertain these fears after all. It ended up being standing room only in my living room. The question time was videoed and the raw results look good though there will need to be some editing to get it down into useful size chunks.

I have just been out shooting a video about a planning appeal over a rejected opencast application in my ward in Gateshead. The link for this will go onto the next email newsletter to constituents.

My next job is to finish editing the videos I took of the LDEG meetings at conference though I have just been reminded by David I need to choose the excursions we are going on during our forthcoming holiday. Difficult choices ahead......

Is there a Doctor in the House?

Just back from a Marie Curie fundraising event held in one of the community centres in my ward. The theme of the night was "goodies and baddies" so I went as James Bond!

At the end I was press ganged into doing a starring role in a series of on stage gags. Being the shy, retiring sort, I had to be forced to do it! I was picked on as they wanted a doctor to play a doctor and since there were only 2 doctors in the room, and the other one was the dj (amazing what consultants from the Royal Victoria Infirmary do in their spare time) I ended up playing the starring role. Not that I have the appropriate doctorate! I wouldn't know my bunnions from my backside. I was given the worst set of doctor gags in creation. Fortunately by then, a large number of people had left.

I nearly didn't get to the event myself. I got back late from a Post Office petition gathering exercise. 165 petition forms delivered in the morning. I collected 45 tonight.

Photo: Dr Jonathan checks whether or not he has a heart!

Francis Maude not organising a piss up in a brewery on video

When I got stuck queuing for my pass as the Lib Dem observer at the Tory conference on Monday, Francis Maude arrived to tell everyone he was terribly sorry about the cock up and it was all the fault of the police. I just happened to video it!

The best bit is at the end. Enjoy. Francis Maude video