Blackpool Rocks

This year it was the 50th Anniversary of 'Crossbow', the magazine I edit for the Conservative think tank The Bow Group. So what better way to celebrate than with tasteful sticks of luminous blue Blackpool Rock?

Here we see myself and Boris anticipating the joys of Blackpool rock outside the conference venue.

If I can work out how to put PDFs on my blog, you can also read the 50th Anniversary magazine. I got Geoffrey Howe and Jilly Cooper writing in the same publication. That must be a first.

There's still some rock and a few magazines left, so if you'd like a souvenir from Blackpool, drop me a line.

Rock on.

Speaking at Conference

I don't know if anyone heard Iain Duncan Smith's speech at the Conference about fixing social breakdown? It was nothing short of inspired. I had the unenviable task of following on from that speech, with a speech of my own from the floor.

I spoke about boys - how the under-achievement of our young men is one of the main underlying factors behind the so-called 'broken society'. Over a quarter of boys don't get a single good GCSE, a fifth of them will have a reading age of half their years by the time they are 14, 80% of all expusions are of boys- and they will make up some of the 30,000 children who don't even get to take their GCSEs in an average year.

I called for a real technical, practical, manual curriculum for those who want it, so they can access good levels of literacy and numeracy through more hands-on means. I called for an unwrapping of the cotton-wool culture of health and safety from our school, I called for real competition to be allowed on the sports field and in the classroom.

I also pointed out the good work that Avonmouth National Smelting Boxing Club does in providing an alternative to hanging around on the street for young men in Bristol. I told the Conference they are in need of funds to expand - so let's hope that there were some rich donors in the audience who had not fallen asleep by the end of my speech...