Biscuitman

I've got the full list of comments from the opening session - I'll post them up in the morning.

Sorry I didnt seek you out Intbel but I was still a little bit phased - I was the guy moved his seat over to where the fir escape doors were... I shot off after the first session.

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IF THE EU WAS THE ANSWER, IT MUST HAVE BEEN A STUPID QUESTION!

Intbel

Um ... I was the guy who stepped just outside the fire-escape doors for a cigarette just before the first session ended. I have a time-limit of two hours without a smoke and then I suffer a nicotine fit. Not pleasant that.

And I was the guy who, when it was all over, wouldn't let anyone out until they'd put some cash in me bucket. Got about £300 I think. Even persuaded Petrina Baby (is she spoken for?) to contribute. Some folks who went out an' came back in again I made 'em cough up some more before I'd let 'em out again.

Thoroughly enjoyed myself. Took me back, that did: "Come on now, ladies, don't be shy ... everyone's a winner ... two donations for the price of one " ... all I needed was a sack o' coconuts

Intbel

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We are all free to choose - every step of the way - no exceptions.

Biscuitman

You were stood two foot away from me... obviously red wine has effected my biscuitaura!!

Any way back to the s/e meeting.

I missed the opening remarks as I arrived 15 minutes late. The assembly - 300+ there I would have thought, had broken up INTO phpbb_county groups with an appointed spokesman to report back. the brief that everyone was given was what went wrong, not what should we put right.

These are pretty much the results:-

Leaflet all year round; we need a party newspaper; What does UKIP local mean -(we were promised an answer to this but i left before the second session - hopefully somebody else can report on the rest of the day);

the leaflets weren't appropriate - although two later spokesmen said they thought they were good; prefernce was expressed for leaflets for specific local targets- i.e. a leaflet suitable for a Tory rural area were not neccessarily good for a Labour urban one.

(My view is that the party had little influence on the leaflet content - Alan Bown was paying for them - he designed and chose what he wanted on them - I'm not against this - if we wanted free leaflets then those were what was available - if we wanted something else then it was up to us to pay)

"Say No" was a Negative campaign and was wrong. No media awareness - we didnt educate the electorate to the core message.

No credible brand identity - (I said they nicked some of our best stuff)!

We need spokespeople, candidates for next time should be in place now.

Start designing the literature now.

Target groups/cohorts, i.e motorcyclists - target a message at them and let them spread it.

Mailshot young people as they appear on the electoral roll, (My suggestion would be NOT to send them a birthday card, like the one they are going to get from their MP - send them a letter pointing out the cycnisism of the b/card they are going to get and say that you will include them in your mailing list unless they would like you to stop - then educate them slowly and steadily).

Free membership for young people/students for two years - Nigel wasn't kean on this - he pointed out we already had a half price concession and that we needed money. However, as he was speaking and thinking he warmed to the idea and came up with the idea it was something we could approach a sponsor for, (He said just asking for money was difficult - asking for a specific project was easier).

My view on this is I'd quite happily forgo the first two years subs to get activists INTO phpbb_the party, the younger and fitter the better.

As a branch chairman it is within my powers- with committee agreement to grant free membership, in fact I did so before the election with three young asian guys as I want to attract younger people to the party and I also want to encourage a greater ethnic presence locally.

Hampshire found that using Nationally recognised speakers, Nigel, Petrina, Mike Nattrass was very effective. (Don't want to pick on Hampshire but their spokesman came back with the wrong brief - he spent three quarters of his allocated time talking about the success they'd had - It was so glowing and self congratulatory that I nearly stood up and asked him how many seats they'd won but thought it unfair to embarass him - he then spent two thirds of his allotted time - he over ran thats how, before you ask - addressing what he was supposed to).

We used our Corporate ID, (such as it was), from June '04 and it didnt work,

Where were the MEPS - why were they standing they should have been supporting groups of candidates instead.. Nigel's response was that they chose to lead by example and not ask candidates to do what they weren't prepared to do themselves. (No comment from me on this one)

Somebody leaked that we have more celebs in the pipeline, (thrills).

An EXTEREMLY unpopular suggestion was that we should consider forming an alliance with the Tories, the same person said that he had analysed the votes and we DID cost the tories 26 seats - (this transpired to be on the basis that the difference between the winners and the Tories was less than our vote) - anyway he got howled down on this one..

Lack of charismatic leadership.

No central source of Info for candidates

Have an opinion poll to find out what the public think of us, (this was from my County Chairman and was the one Lechlade group idea i was willing to throw INTO phpbb_the pot.

We need a seperate website for members/ or activists within the membership.

At the end of the reports Nigel spoke, he pointed out that at the AGM he had warned thatwe would not get the EU on the agenda for the election and so we should do a deal with 12-14 EU-sceptics from other parties - we wouldn't stand against them provided they brought up the EU.

I think Nigel was making the point he was right we were wrong.

He then said that we will not win a seat in Westminster until we have more County and district councillors - possibly made this statement to focus us on next years elections - otherwise why didnt he say it in April when nigh on 600 of us were encouraged to burn our deposits.

John Harvey was then invited to give a snippet from the analysis he is conducting on the election results.

I can't remember why but there were a group of 35 seats, 7 of which there was no previous data for so 28 seats net, where our vote increased by 0.8% which was also our national average - in those same seats the Tory vote increased 1.5% which was far more than their national average.

The conclusion being that the tories benefitted when we stood against them. The afore mentioned chap who had done his own 'research' was apopoleptic at this statement and rubbished the statement - John had to offer to discuss it with him at the break.

Petrina then answered some points - Dick Morris's strategy & message were wrong - somebody from the floor said that Dick had recommended Say No followed by a positive... Petrina denied that he had done so - seems Dick is carrying the can and we wont be seeing him next time.

She continued that we need to identify spokespoeple and give them media training - (don't hold your breath this was proposed after the 2001 election along with selection and grooming of candidates post electio for the next election).

She also said that the Lib/dems have offices in all the county towns and we should consider, through our county committees, doing the same.

Printed versions of the manifesto had been available before the election - David from lyminster said S/E region only got 6 boxes of I think 400 each ONE week before the election.

Nigel returned to answer questions during which he pointed out that time and energy were lost between Oct & Jan having to deal with the rift in the party, this meant effectively that candidate seclection etc etc were put on hold.

A suggestion from the floor was that "Say No" was okay but we didnt explain why - Might have been intebel said this one just before he went for a ciggy - a discussion followed on the suitability or not of the cartoons and leaflets Vs newspaper... I don't think any concensus was reached although one branch did say that they got better response from the cards than they had ever done from the previous attempt at a newspaper.

I think i remember Steve Harris saying that when he dropped off the newspapers people still had the previous one's bundles in their garages.

And thats about that -

My personal view was that the vast majority of our candidates were enthusiastic - certainly committed but were mainly unsuitable, unprepared both themselves and by the party and lacked resources, infrastructure and support.

One thing I didnt get chance to do was to thank Steve Harris the S/E regional organiser and David down at Lyminster - they certainly helped and supported me.

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IF THE EU WAS THE ANSWER, IT MUST HAVE BEEN A STUPID QUESTION!

Intbel

Should have stuck to the white ...
That about sums up the first half, a couple of things, though.
Re the leaflets - there seemed to be some disagreement as to the advisability of using cartoons. Bearing in mind the "Five second rule" and the need to attract younger folks, I suggested that cartoons can work admirably; however, they need to be appropriate.

Further to what B'man said about electioneering. It was said that we can not expect any GE result unless we have a permanent presence ie. local and county councillors and that the Libe Dems (bless 'em) demonstrated this admirably, having a continual high profile local presence. Also, we could usefull get our candidates for the next GE in place now ... many of our candidates could reel of many facts and figures re the E.U. buthadn't a clue about local matters of concern to constituents. The message here is clear - define your next GE candidate a.s.a.p. so by the time the next GE comes, his/her name is well known locally and he'she has a thoright knowledge and understanding of constituency concerns. Think of it as a three or four year training thingo.

Afternoon session follows ...

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We are all free to choose - every step of the way - no exceptions.

Biscuitman

How could you even suggest it... filthy stuff fit only for the ladies, EU bureaucrats and cleaning windows with.

I only ever drink it when there's no red left.

__________________
IF THE EU WAS THE ANSWER, IT MUST HAVE BEEN A STUPID QUESTION!

Intbel

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We are all free to choose - every step of the way - no exceptions.

Paul Birch

Ditto.

He didn't have the wrong brief from us, he just added his own long in front of it! Us candidates agreed that local members had done sterling work leafleting, but that the leaflets and posters were not good, lacking variety and appropriateness, that the election address was rubbish and its distribution sometimes unreliable or non-existent, that we saw little guidance or leadership from above, that the manifesto was absurdly late, that funding was tight.

Some cynical better-off-without-them comments from the floor on this.

I'm afraid it looked to me as if he still refuses to accept the democratic conference decision and means to ignore it. His argument was totally duff - there's no way this would have got more than a teeny bit of extra mention of the EU, because none of the main-party candidates would have honoured such an agreement - and even if they had, they'd have got squeezed out of the headlines just like UKIP.

However, he also made the good point that we in UKIP should not be like the other parties, but should place the goal of getting out of the EU above purely party and personal interests. On the other hand, comments were heard that doing deals looks all too like the other parties and should be avoided like the plague (comments with which I agree).

I don't think this argument is really sound either. More importantly, no one in the afternoon discussion on the local elections seemed to bring up the crucial matter of getting enough people to put themselves forward as local candidates (admittedly, I wasn't paying much attention at this point, since on the IOW we don't have any more for another four years, so I might have missed something).

These were the seats in which the most "eurosceptic" Conservatives were standing, and in which UKIP also stood.

I thought this was Nigel not Petrina.

Nigel asked slightly off-target questions here, which made it difficult. However, I think there was a consensus that (a) the particular cartoons used weren't much good (b) if cartoons are used they should be simple and striking, fitting in with the "five second rule" (c) the card format for leaflets was good, easy to deliver, easy to read (d) newspapers are appropriate when targetted and in between elections to fill in more detail.

Anthony Butcher

Is this really how pathetic and weak Nigel Farage regards the party? He thinks so little of our manifesto that he is willing to trade 12 candidates for a bit of extra coverage about the EU? I don't think that he could make it any clearer that he believes and wants UKIP to be a pressure party and nothing more.

Doesn't he realise how desperate this makes us look and how incredible we become?

And so what if we had got some more coverage about the EU? Would this improve our vote or actually damage it by making us even less electable? Would the public care, given how little priority they place on the EU in a general election?

We need a party vote on this as soon as possible. Perhaps the next leadership election will become a party referendum on the issue of single-issue versus full party.

Anthony Butcher

Dick Morris spent a full five minutes at the Exeter training session explaining that every message should be in the format of:

"Say no to the EU so that we can add £25 to the pension"
"Say no to the EU so that we can regain control of our farming"

Whoever denied this was wrong.