I tried sending a blog entry from my phone on the train back from Bristol on Sunday but somewhere along the line (boom boom) it disappeared into the ether.

I was at LDYS conference, where, as chair of the steering committee, I missed most sessions because I was busy ensuring the conference ran smoothly. We had a number of speakers, including new party president Simon Hughes, and it was a pleasure to chair speeches by LibDem PPC Marie-Louise Rossi and fellow blogger and Welsh Assembly Member Peter Black.

On Saturday night, we experienced the dubious pleasures of LDYS members doing karaoke. I did end up belting out a number of songs with other people, and was happy with my harmonies for California Dreaming – although Ryan‘s just played me a video of it on his P910i and it was rather less tuneful than I remember. Perhaps the least said the better though about my, James Blanchard and James Graham’s performance of Paranoid Android – not the most suited to karaoke.

Just spent the weekend at LDYS Conference in Bristol. Speakers included party president Simon Hughes and fellow blogger Peter Black. We were amused to find as we arrived that we had been condemned in Friday’s Daily Mirror. There were some painfully close elections, lots of policy debate and some great karaoke last night.

Via Anders, I bring you BetLiberal – a website encouraging people to vote LibDem in order to make an absolute killing at the bookies when we win the General Election. It’s certainly a novel idea and I really do wish them all the best with it. Don’t think I’ll be having a flutter though.

So the Daily Mail the other day proclaimed from its front page that it was disgusting that in a ‘civilised’ (their punctuation) such as ours, it is “disgusting to even think about raising the retirement age”. It went on to insist on “dignity in retirement”.

I agree with the second point, but why should retirement begin at 65 and not later? But the Mail would go ballistic if taxes went up to pay for its pensions demands (the Express complained about drastic tax rises to pay for pensions rather than about the retirement age on its front page).

When Beveridge’s contributory state pension was introduced, the life expectancy for men was 63 – two years younger than his male retirement age of 65. Now average life expectancy is pushing 80 and will be higher in the future (when the critical pensions will need to be drawn). In the Mail‘s world (and I know I should just ignore it), you should be entitled to 30 years retirement on a good income for working maybe 40 years previously. Is it surprising that that attitude has caused a crisis?

And now the PM is suggesting using incapacity benefit funds to pay for pensions. While I’m sure there are some claimants who could be helped into work, it sounds suspiciously like robbing Peter to pay Paul.