Blackpool. Tuesday morning. Windy.
Been here for 24 hours now, and why are there quite so many policemen? It’s not as if the Tories are in power. They are probably further away from it than ever. The big question is my mind is not whether Gordon will call an election or whether George is cute, but what would the IRA or any terrorists achieve by blowing up the Imperial? I think that everyone has gone overboard on policing because all the security makes shadow politicians feel important, or because Blackpool is a marginal seat and most voters work for the Lancashire constabulary.
I had plenty of time to admire the police presence because it took me the mandatory three hours to get my pass, for which I paid £80 despite having requested it – thanks to Ann’s dark warnings – back in July. But when I arrived off the train at the Late Accreditation office to retrieve it, having been assured it would be present and correct, it wasn’t there.
After three hours of re-accreditation decontamination procedures carried out at behest of the Blackpool police, I did get it. Slinging it nonchalantly round my neck, rope of pearls style, I went into the Winter Gardens and found a grim room where the press have been housed, under strip lighting with no windows. There was a clipboard nazi at a booth. She told me that I wanted a seat at the press centre, I would need to pay a further £25, if I wanted power, an additional surcharge, but if I wanted broadband access, well – said the gatekeeper of the press centre – “that’s very complicated.”
So I am sitting blogging for Coffee House at the table that says FT IT support. Needless to say I got my pass but over my toasted teacake this morning I had a call from my husband who is minding shop in London telling me that there is Indy story saying I have been refused entry not just to Blackpool this week but Bournemouth. As I have to go to my fringe meeting thing now here it is.
Pressganged So far, the Tory party conference is treating Boris Johnson pretty well. Less so, his sister Rachel.
Yesterday, Johnson, a journalist for The Times, fell victim to the conference organisers’ notorious “clipboard Nazis” who refused to grant her accreditation to the main conference hall in Blackpool.
Although she apparently produced all the necessary paperwork, she was informed it was supposed to have been handed in weeks ago.
Johnson has reason to be particularly miffed. Not only will she miss her brother’s Q&A session today, in which he will set out his stall for the London mayoral race, but she told passers-by she was also refused entry to Labour’s shindig last week in Bournemouth
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