Friday, September 17, 2010

Off to Conference

Off to Liverpool today ready for the Lib Dem party conference. There are going to be many interesting debates and no doubt some controversy but tonight was all about meeting up with colleagues old and new, catching up on news and generally getting to know people. Amongst the interesting conversations was one about Mackie’s ice cream – what has ice cream to do with politics you might ask. It turns out that the dairy is wind powered, with 4 turbines on the hillside providing most of the power needs and selling the surplus to the grid The owner pays “compensation” annually from the proceeds to those residents who live within sight of the turbines. During the night when not producing ice cream they freeze water to produce those bags of ice cubes so loved by party organisers, which then fill the spare space in the lorries transporting the ice cream to the supermarkets. Winners all round! Except that at present he doesn’t seem to use Fairtrade sugar in his product, so a little campaign is brewing there I think. Nevertheless it was good to hear about such a worthwhile enterprise.

At last this afternoon my council email service was restored, though any sent during most of Wednesday are lost for ever. I can only suggest that you resend if there was anything important.

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