Andrew Reeves

Thursday 24th September

The final day has arrived, what a brilliant conference up to now. Yet again the day begins nice and early, I arrived at the conference centre at 8.30am to find many delegates already queuing, it means the home affairs debate will be an interesting one.

I ran around the stalls buying last minute supplies for the constituency party and arranging some meetings for the next few weeks.

9.30am the home affairs debate begins and yet again the Liberal Democrats lead the way in forward thinking. Jackie Ballard MP speaks in the debate with an amendment to the motion on behalf of DELGA. At 10am I had to leave the debate for a meeting and returned about 15 minutes later. Following the home affairs debate there were two emergency motions discussed.

Then the new Liberal Democrat President, Diana Maddock introduced the Party Leader, Paddy Ashdown MP. His speech was motivating, full of humour with a very serious message, not only for the Liberal Democrat members, but also for the electorate as a whole. We are definitely the Party that is ahead in our thinking, and we need to spread the word through our FOCUS leaflets and through the media.

I left the conference centre after Paddy's speech to go and back and return to Dartford for some sleep and also to spread the good news from conference.

What an exhausting week, but rewarding as well.