Four members of Harlow Liberal Democrats have travelled to Harrogate - my favourite conference venue - today for the party's spring conference. Local party vice-chair David Wright, Cllr Robert Thurston and myself have arrived by car; Liberal Democrat council leader Cllr Chris Millington has travelled separately by train after work.

I'm at Harrogate as party staff, not as a voting conference representative, so I spend the afternoon sorting out training arrangements for the following day. Training is always a major attraction at Liberal Democrat conferences, and the training facilities at Harrogate are the best of any conference venue we use.

So I miss the two consultative sessions going on in the conference centre, and also Ming's first speech as the new party leader. I hear that far more people want to hear Ming than there is space for, so disappointed members - some quite senior - are having to be turned away.

We get a phone call at about 8:00pm to say that Harlow's emergency motion, which we submitted earlier in the week, has been accepted for debate on Sunday morning without being entered into the ballot along with the others (emergency motions are usually chosen by a ballot of conference representatives). Clearly the Conference Committee believes we've chosen an important subject.