Fantastic Fringes

What an odd decision it was to condense the fringe meetings into three main slots, lunchtime and evening timeslots. http://www.labour.org.uk/images/uploads/200050/f02fb126-5ea6-0e74-1111-e0d9e76ee796.pdf
Perhaps it was easier for the hotels, certainly more profitable, as they seemed to be offering food at all fringes in all places. It was certainly much more challenging to get to as many fringes as usual, for delegates, lobbyists and more importantly MPs and Ministers, some of whom seem to have spread themselves so thinly there was never a chance of making even most of the promised appearances.

That said, the quality of contributions to the events I attended, on environment and sport, and the future direction of the party were really impressive. Where else other than at conference can you breakfast with Will Hutton, lunch with Tony Juniper and have pre-dinner drinks with Gerry Sutcliffe? Love or hate it, Labour conference http://www.labour.org.uk/conference/ is the place to be!