'Oh, so that's who Richard Morris is..." Lord Hattersley on The Daily Politics

'An influential activist' - The Guardian

'Iain Dale, without the self loathing' - Matthew Fox in The New Statesman

'
You are a tinker...' - Tim Farron

Tuesday 17 September 2013

EXCLUSIVE : Tim Farron's speech to conference: the story everyone's missed



I was trying to get hold of a copy of Tim's speech to conference - I've been in touch with the press office twice, no joy, checked the website lots, no joy, and in the end Tim offered to send it to me himself (I assured him he probably had better things to do with his time).

So I transcribed it myself. All 21 minutes and 15 seconds of it - not including the standing ovation at the end.



And I was glad I did; for while I loved watching the speech at the time (and if you haven't seen it, you should really take this chance to watch it), transcribing it gave me a whole new insight into it's message.

There's been a lot of talk about the speech.

The way it channels Obama (very Presidential): multiple references to 'Hope', to 'Change' and even to 'Audacity'. What could Tim have been trying to say?

The use of religious symbolism: multiple uses of 'evil', of 'preaching' - a message, in the week of LDDG that its OK to be a Lib Dem and religious...

The call for a return to Bevereridgism; or if fact Butskellism (a pheenomenon I was unaware of until Stephen Tall pointed it out to me, and he's the 32nd most important Lib Dem in the country or something)

And the call for a consensus, a word I'm really going to have to learn to spell.

But doing the transcript (I'll send you a copy if you're interested) revealed something else; the subliminal message; the hidden agenda; what Tim was really trying to say.

So I stuck it in a word cloud.

Guess what.


I really don't know how everyone missed it.





Update

Oh alright, here's the real cloud. Sorry Tim xx













10 comments:

  1. In fairness, Tim has made several "makemeleader" speeches before which have been transparently so. He was trying too hard and was too much of a whippersnapper to pull it off. This time I think he made a speech which was truly worthy of a leader of our party. It was a real corker.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As President, Tim Farron is already the leader.

    Maybe the Telegraph list of the most influential Lib Dems will also put him ahead of Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, although this seems to be based solely on press coverage not real influence on policy and voting.

    PS I like the word cloud with the subliminal message incorporated.

    David Evershed

    ReplyDelete
  3. Make him leader and the word liberal will have to be dropped. Socialist Democrats isn't that an oxymoron?

    ReplyDelete
  4. A truly cringe-making speech : yep, worthy of a new LibDem leader!

    ReplyDelete
  5. yeahh utter shite

    ReplyDelete
  6. Shite from a gobshite who can't keep his mug out of the local news.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Who's Tim Farron?

    ReplyDelete
  8. What's a Lib Dem?

    ReplyDelete
  9. He is MP for a constituency that includes a part of the County Palatine of Lancashire (north of Morecambe Bay). He has the arrogance to circulate propaganda sheets called Westmorland XXXXXXX
    -it is significant that the Lib Dem dominated council (SLDC) appears to do all possible to upset the population in that part of the area including scheme to build unwanted housing on a grand scale

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi Richard. Could you please send me your transcript of the speech to my email address: haber.matthias@hotmail.com?

    ReplyDelete