Harrogate, for those not in the UK, is a lovely town not far from where I come from and not far, in the other direction, from where I am now. Where I live now is on the map. It would be the perfect place to hold a conference and had I known about one, I’d have made the effort to get over there. Not to worry.
Yesterday, apparently, there was a conference. Let’s make some sense of what it was about.
First stop is the Boiling Frog:
It seems to have been an initiative of Richard North, one of the leaders of free thought in this nation of ours:
… with whom many of us have been pushing Referism for some time but somehow, it seems, I don’t appear to be part of that conversation any more. I can only hope that the Independent Bloggers had a smattering of representation at the Harrogate Conversazione.
To get some further info on what was being discussed, Witterings from Witney has some posts:
From all that, I think it’s a fair conclusion that they were discussing democracy, whether we need MPs and so on. I wonder if the question of the Lords came into it. No doubt the referendum was mentioned in passing. Witterings mentions one aspect of the conference:
A most congenial and informative conversation followed, aided and abetted with an obligatory glass or two of our chosen tipple. We were joined, during the course of our conversation, by some of the attendees who I will not mention in case they wish to remain incognito.
On a more serious note, if the attendees at that conference were able to thrash out some sort of way out of our current troubles vis-a-vis democracy and the new serfdom, it would be supported, no doubt, by the majority of us not part of the conversation. No doubt we’ll be informed in good time what the proposals are and how they can be forced upon the MPs and Brussels.
I wonder if Them was taken into account because if not, then there’s hardly any point – one must tackle the source, rather than the symptoms. So well done to the lads and one lass at the Harrogate Conversazione and here’s hoping some good came out of it.
Yes, and where (approx) do you live now – regarding the “railways” conversation?
See Manchester, Greg – some distance from there to the west, on the side of a hill overlooking a valley.
OK so (referring to the “Railways” discussion) from somewhere near M/cr to Harrogate (?) or somewhere else takes either approc 50 minutes or 135 mins?
Err ….
I’m even more confused, now!
You seem to be a bit hurt about being “left out” but if you followed Dr North’s blog for the past three months you would have known all about it and there was nothing to stop you signing up, paying the money and going.
Anyway, nothing is going to be “forced” on any MP or Brussels. It isn’t possible and Dr North doesn’t consider this attitude desirable anyway as far as I could tell.
Thank you, Rich, for speaking for Richard and putting OoL into the picture. No doubt some excellent proposals will have come out of it, as I wrote above and they’ll be posted on on, point by point, when they come out.
As for “hurt”, perhaps missing a few pints with chums, e.g. Witterings, was closer to the mark. Either way, the main thing is that Harrogate gets publicized though, isn’t it?
UPDATE: There’s been a bit of email correspondence this morning by those in the dark on Harrogate and one of AM’s sheds light on it:
link to autonomousmind.wordpress.com
From this, it appears Harrogate might just be the birth of a new UK democracy. If so, then OoL would need to keep its eye on developments.
OK, well a quick summary is that everybody split off into groups and “brainstormed” some suggestions. These were then presented to the whole group.
Unfortunately, Dr North rubbished many of them in a not particularly diplomatic way. There were several people who were angry that they had come a long way just to have their suggestions dismissed.
However, I tend to side with Dr North on this one as he is very experienced and has a better idea of what will work and what won’t. Unfortunately, he talked very quickly and it was quite technical so I would struggle to summarise what he said.
I don’t know what the future holds but I will attend future meetings in the North of England but I won’t travel further afield myself.
Ah, Democracy in action. Sounds like a great replacement for what we have now.
One aspect.
Is there any suggestion that there could be “true democratic” refernda (or whatever) just to STOP major guvmint ideas?
ID cards, the vile olympics – which are costing us vast sums, further EU enslavement, etc?
Still waiting for Richard to come out with his write-up.
Interesting comment from Rich Tea, it strikes me that whilst Richard North is an extremely intelligent and clear thinking individual his iconoclastic manner is likely to led to the whole project dying an early death.
Still, better to have fought and lost etc, and there is always the old fallback of piano wire and lamp posts.