Saturday, June 20, 2009

UNISON NDC 09 – End of Conference


Conference finished at about 4.20pm yesterday afternoon and I am currently recovering in Worthing - relaxing and drinking coffee in The Denton overlooking the Pier and the beach.

No more motions, composites or standing orders papers to read, no more speeches to write (and never actually deliver) no more fringes, no more plotting and gossiping – thankfully, no more sitting in the most uncomfortable and cramped of seats.

I have a mass of notes made on fringes and controversial debates which I will hopefully write up and post before they get too out of date.

Some initial thoughts. It was a constructive and informative conference, a little quiet compared to previous years, yet there were important debates and decisions taken. I hope that my branch first time delegates enjoyed themselves and that they were not too fed up about being “bumped off” debates without being able to address conference.

Brighton itself, as always, looked after us all. I still prefer Bournemouth but look to forward to I think Manchester next year?

I remember listening to a weather report on Radio 4 one morning last week which described the out look for the day's weather as “warm sunny spells with occasional thundery outbursts”.

Which I thought also summed up UNISON conferences pretty well.

(Picture is of London Regional Convenor, Gloria Hanson, addressing conference. Afterwards I was then quite rightly told off by the President for forgetting to turn off my camera flash)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what did the United Left achieve this year? Stopping us getting a rule change to kick out BNP members and stopping us getting a black vice president for the first time. What a bunch of racist *****.

Anonymous said...

that stuff about flash photography is just urban myth

Anonymous said...

MPs expenses
lets look at united left expenses

why dont their nec members (and ex) publish their expenses

Anonymous said...

The NEC majority wanted the union to no longer be able to expel combat 18 members by changing the rules from proscribing fascist organisations to just proscribing political parties, are they racists? No doubt this new rule would have been used to further expel descent within the union especially the left.

Anonymous said...

The stuff about flash photography is NOT an urban myth. Apart from the fact that people can be photosensitive (PSE) and it can trigger epileptic episodes, it can also be a problem for deaf people trying to read a signer. So try thinking before spouting ignorant claptrap in the future.

John Gray said...

Hi Anons
Not sure about the flash photography thingy? Also, I don’t think name calling will help anyone.

I will post on the expelling BNP rule change which I think that UL were just typically completely and utterly wrong in opposing.

How can you reason with such people?