It's My Party

The SWP conference was today, or possibly yesterday, I can't be sure. Heh! It's not often I get to misquote Albert Camus in an online diary.

Anyway, I didn't get to go - no room in the car, more useful people took the seats etc. But John M got to make his candidacy speech, about how the existing leadership is deliberately failing to face the reality that left politics is in the shithouse.

Strikes are at their lowest level since records began (1880ish), Socialist Worker sales are disastrous, recruitment of new members is minimal and retention even worse. Oh, and the internal democracy is tokenistic.

He got 57 votes, though I don't know out of how many. I'd guess 300-500.
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The party have given a job to Gareth E - District Organiser, or something similar. So he's left his post as sociology lecturer for a significant cut in wages and a job that essentially involves co-ordinating between south east branches and the party apparatus.

I think he's a damn fool, considering irreconcilable pressures he'll be under from all wings, and the way the party tends to treat it's full time members. It's no accident that 'apparatchiks' tend to burn out in five years or so.

But, to misquote a different author (John Le Carre), "I'd rather be his kind of fool than theirs.
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I bought a simple 'point and click' camera/webcam on ebay for UKP25 - it should arrive monday or tuesday. 3.1M pixels, internal storage, JPGG/MJPEG AVI 15fps, and a slightly horrible orange case. Enough for my small immediate needs - a camera that won't reboot at random intervals.
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Right. Time to start on that album. Ha!