Home > The Magazine > The Week

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Tamzin Lightwater’s conference diary

Tamzin Lightwater

Wednesday, 26th September 2007

Sunday: All eyes on the opening ceremony for what I’m sure will be a truly memorable performance by world-renowned professional speechmaker William Hague.

Keynote speech by Hezza on rebuilding our great northern cities. I think that should be rebuilding the Tories in our great northern cities — although I did once overhear Lord Tarzan musing about ‘knocking it all down and starting again’.

Our Special Guest, the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.

I know, I know. If a certain former Terminator hadn’t turned all girly-man, we might have a proper celebrity speaker, but unfortunately some faded Hollywood stars seem to think they’re within their rights to send a useless video message just because we’re six points behind in the polls. Well, I have news for you Mr Muscles — we’ll be back. Maybe not this week, maybe not next, but when we are we’ll remember who our friends were. Oh yes.

On the fringe:

Making Poverty History with Andrew Mitchell. Always a treat to hear a fellow member of the Pony Club on the subject of Third World deprivation.

Parties: Jazz night with Conservatives at Work. Followed by champagne breakfast.

Monday

‘Family and Opportunity’, or Life, The Universe and Everything with Redwood and IDS. Whoever thought of putting these two together in a single session should be shot. (It was Poppy.) Apart from anything else, how are we going to make enough room backstage to fit the two huge teams of people who travel with JR and Smithy to stop them making cock-ups? It’s a logistical nightmare. IDS leading a debate called ‘Fixing Our Broken Society’. This could take some time. He’s got new figures showing that ‘Britain is the worst place in the developed world’. Gids will sum up and blame it all on Gordon. Excellent boost!

Fringe: The Answer to Obesity, with Andrew Lansley. I’d avoid this one. Once he starts banging on about his low-carb diet and Arena photoshoot it’s hard to maintain the will to live.

‘Are We On The Road To Nowhere?’ with Theresa Villiers. I could answer that in one word but I won’t because it wouldn’t be sisterly.

Parties: The Conservative Future bash, for bright young things and yummy candidates....

Tuesday

DD day! Our man in fatigues kicks off the Crime and Security debate. Expect a lot of jokes about not hugging hoodies. They’re old, but he can do them. As usual he’ll be nervous as a kitten, so please give him lots of support.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 Next page

More articles from: Tamzin Lightwater | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.