Back in the halcyon days the Tory Conference used to run from Monday lunchtime through till Friday afternoon. It was then changed from Tuesday to Friday and under Hague (I think) to Monday until Thursday. One of the more popular ideas I persuaded David Davis to adopt during the leadership campaign was to say that there would be two conferences a year, each running from Thursday to Sunday, to enable more women and people of working age to attend. Francis Maude has partially adopted this idea and this year's Tory conference will run from Sunday until Wednesday. I understand that they did some market testing on dates and found this option to be the most popular. So this year's sojourn in sunny Bournemouth will begin on Sunday 1 October and end on Wednesday 4 October. I guess the only people who won't be pleased will be Her Majesty's Press corps, for whom it will be giving up a weekend. Well if it's good enough for us...
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Tory Conference Date Change
Back in the halcyon days the Tory Conference used to run from Monday lunchtime through till Friday afternoon. It was then changed from Tuesday to Friday and under Hague (I think) to Monday until Thursday. One of the more popular ideas I persuaded David Davis to adopt during the leadership campaign was to say that there would be two conferences a year, each running from Thursday to Sunday, to enable more women and people of working age to attend. Francis Maude has partially adopted this idea and this year's Tory conference will run from Sunday until Wednesday. I understand that they did some market testing on dates and found this option to be the most popular. So this year's sojourn in sunny Bournemouth will begin on Sunday 1 October and end on Wednesday 4 October. I guess the only people who won't be pleased will be Her Majesty's Press corps, for whom it will be giving up a weekend. Well if it's good enough for us...
Can they switch locations? Nice would be good, cheaper to get to on Easyjet as well.
ReplyDeleteI think the Sunday-Wednesday has more to do with the fact that the first day would still make the Monday papers and the final day would allow for the final speech (presumably the leader) to run on mid-week news bulletins, rather than on weekend news spots that nobody watches
ReplyDeletePerhaps Her Majesty's Press Corps could do us all a favour and take advantage by having a long weekend.
ReplyDelete