That time of year again when Political Party’s have a pretty pointless conference. I saw nothing of Labour’s conference last week even though I watched Sky News, News 24 and the terrestrial bulletins. Gordon Brown allegedly made a speech but I never saw any reports about it. Perhaps the media have got their own back over the decision to cancel it last year. It was interesting though that all the written reports were about how negative Labour were about the Tories, calling us all sexist racist homophobes. Pretty desperate stuff from a desperate party.

In contrast, the Lib Dem conference seems to have been covered extensively. Obviously the nonsense of their position on the EU treaty, and the three line whip to abstain has put them in the news again. Everyone seems to expect them to drop in the polls because of this. On the flip side it has got them noticed again, so we will see if Mike Smithson of Political Betting fame’s rule about David Cameron doing better when he’s in the news no matter the subject extends to Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems.

Anyway back to their conference. I have to say that I think Vince Cable’s VAT policy on smoothies seems to be a good idea. As long as it doesn’t extend to things like sunny delight, then it’ll be worthwhile and the idea will probably get stolen. However things did get a bit wackier after that. Vince seems to think he’s the Lib Dem William Hague who can give a comic turn. However a lot of those jokes turned into basic insults, and if he continues in this vein, I fear he will turn into the Colin Hunt of the political world, making an amusing comment once and then spending the rest of his life trying and failing to replicate it. Go out at the top Vince, you're no William Hague.

Talking of funny comments, Richard Littlejohn’s take that the Lib Dems have replaced Captain Mainwaring with Pike amused me. Sums it up very well.