Conference calls
Sunday, September 14, 2014 at 13:47 The conference season is almost upon us.
Actually it began with the Greens but I wasn't paying attention.
Labour are in Manchester this year (September 21-24) but Forest won't be going. The last time we organised an event at a Labour conference in Manchester the party omitted our fringe listing and officials stopped us from distributing leaflets to delegates inside the secure area so the event was impossible to promote and hardly anyone turned up.
Instead we're saving our pennies and going to Doncaster for the Ukip conference (September 25-27), which should be fun. We've booked a stand in the exhibition area and will be handing out leaflets to promote 'Last Chance Saloon', the latest phase of the Hands Off Our Packs campaign which we are launching next week.
From Doncaster we're going straight to Birmingham for the Tory conference where we're organising two events.
The first, Stand Up For Liberty with Conservatives for Liberty, is on Sunday September 28 at 21:30 in the Hyatt Hotel. It's a bit different from your ordinary conference event because in addition to free drinks plus guest speaker (journalist James Delingpole) we'll be featuring a new Forest video, 'The Freedom Cage', followed by 30 minutes of stand up comedy.
The second event, Last Chance Saloon, is on Monday September 29 at the same time. Venue is the IEA/TPA ThinkTent outside the ICC but within the secure area. It's a drinks reception with a Wild West theme – hence the food (barbecue chicken wings, burgers and ribs) and drink (margaritas, whisky sours, bottles of Budweiser and (alcoholic) ginger ale.
If you're going to Birmingham and would like to join us email events@forestonline.org for an invitation.
Unusually the Lib Dem conference follows the Tory conference this year. For the second year in a row they're off to Glasgow.
I hear it was pretty depressing last year. Not only were delegates rattling around the enormous SECC but the weather was miserable.
I like Glasgow but there's nothing more miserable than a wet Wednesday on the banks of the Clyde.
So, no, I won't be going. I'll be somewhere else. Watch this space.
Reader Comments (3)
Forest at UKIP conference? Wow, that shows how far UKIP has come. I guarantee you will have fun, lots of it. There isn't a puritanical smokerphobic in sight there.
Pat, hear-hear totally agree with you, even those who don't smoke believe in freedom and choice unlike the Lib/Lab/Con all -be- it their are a few Tory's who think the same way as we do. If i can make it up to Doncaster I'll buy you a beer Simon.
Tolerance for others - not anymore!
Quite right Pat!
It just shows you though how desecrated democracy in this country has become doesn't it. Anything connected with smoking or smokers now should never be countenanced especially by the Labour Party which brought in the ban in the first place.
'The last time we organised an event at a Labour conference in Manchester the party omitted our fringe listing and officials stopped us from distributing leaflets to delegates inside the secure area so the event was impossible to promote...'
Even though you were engaged in a legal activity with the fringe listings and the distribution of leaflets...they weren't simply going to allow it at any costs.
This is how far this outright hostility towards us has gone now without equivocation.
Now that’s what I call democracy - how about you?
Sometime ago I was asked by my County Council through a leaflet drop if I would like to write in to complain on the council’s behalf, about government cuts to council budgets, this would then form a petition which the authority would then send to the government. Well I refused telling them that since I was a pariah and fully ostracised from social society because I smoked, then I had no intention of ever giving my services to any public body – no matter how minor – that discriminates against a section of society because of their lifestyle choices, but who nevertheless have helped in their own way over the years, to make this country of ours what it is today.
Perhaps one day groups of people with real influence will do the same. Imagine some large investment companies refusing to take money from the government to invest because of their persecution against one sector of society. I really don't think that would go down too well.
The knife don't you know cuts both ways.