24 September 2006

Labour Conference - Smoke & Mirrors Forecast

I am intrigued by the Labour Party Conference in Manchester brought to you in association with Wal-mart, Nestle and Murdoch. As a result of Labour inefficiency (or efficiency?) poor Old Bob Piper (and others) didn't get his police clearance in time, leading to an unfortunate queueing incident which he "mentions" today in his blog. No such problems for Labour's offical blogger, conference virgin Jonathan Roberts.

"So, arriving at Manchester Piccadilly circa 2pm, I was instantly impressed. A sea of eager staff in yellow jackets guiding you (ed. singular) from station to tram to G-Mex to hotel."

JR has plumped for two to three posts a day and I've just read his first five. In his opening post he dampens the idea that he is in competition with other Labour blogs - which is pretty evident as he's only had one comment so far from some anon who's asking whether they can just walk into the Conference off the street (I wonder if this was posted to wind Bob up specifically). Despite the lack of encouragement from his comrades I particularly enjoyed the following excerpt from post number four -

"After a few glasses of wine, the rumours started. "The PM's on his way", "The PM will be hear in 10" and so on."

Clearly, distinguishing between hear and here gets tricky after a few drinks, but I thought the fact that TB's on the way was a bit more than a rumour. Is this apparent lack of proof-read a deliberate ploy or have they simply decided that nobody will read it?

I make no claim to design guru status, but it's a bit disappointing that JR is using the same template as Political Hack.

Anyway, enough background noise. After the Wolfgang incident last year, I fully expect the NuLabour spin machine to do their usual "smoke and mirrors" over the next few days. Let me know what you spot.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did a a trawl on Labour blogs today which I have posted on, I was not impressed with the official site, it seems more like an interactive press release. My favourite is Antonia Bance's, to date.

Praguetory said...

I shall pay your blog a visit. Thank you for this information.

Anonymous said...

A bit disappointing so far, end of day one, and only one cock up (Cheries' off the cuff comment).

Let's hope for more disarray tomorrow.