Conservative Conference – Tuesday

I spent all my time at the Freedom Zone today:

Local Authority chief executive performance-related pay should be incentivised to reward cutting council tax.

If you have Stalinist power structures, you should use them.

Councils should do what they are good at, like sweeping streets; not what other people are better at, like running art galleries.

We need an In/Out referendum on the EU.

Elections in the 19th century were often fought on foreign policy, whereas now the FCO always gets its own way irrespective of who is in power.

Eurosceptics bore people, and this is the EU’s secret weapon.

Supermarkets sell portions that are too large.

Energy prices could double by 2020 due to climate change policies.

If you grow biofuels, it will inevitably either displace food crops or wilderness.biodiversity.

Scotland used counter terrorism stop-and-search powers 15 times in the same period of time that England used them 150,000 times.

All 5 people that were incarcerated for the full 28 days were released without charge or found to be innocent.

Individuals have a conscience, bureaucracies do not.

Saying “You can’t say that” is the first step to saying “You can’t think that”.

Surprises are more valuable than confirmation of what you think you know

Daniel Hannan (UK Conservative Member of the European Parliament) was describing a speech he did at a Republican committee meeting in the Deep South of the States.  In the context of something else he mentioned gay marriage, and immediately felt that he had dropped a clanger.

Sure enough, after I had finished, a man with a beard and a red baseball cap sauntered up to me.

“Son,” he said, “Ah ’preciate you comin’, an’ Ah ’greed with most of wut you said. But Ah must disagree with your position on so-called homosexual marriage.”

He paused to hitch his jeans up his great belly, looking into the middle distance.

“Far as Ah kin see, not bein’ under any pressure to git married is one of the main advantages Ah enjoy as a gay man.”