"Why should I give a stuff?" It doesn't get much more blunt, but, ultimately, it's the one question Labour activists here know most people are asking about this conference.
The party that for so long sat on the top of the pile at Westminster is, to many, the third most interesting party in British politics. Some even mutter the fourth: the SNP are in government in Scotland.
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So much for Liberal Democrats not believing in first past the post.
Their activists might have spent a lifetime trying to ditch the current system for electing MPs. But having lost the referendum over the Alternative Vote earlier this year, they appear, on the basis of their athleticism at least, to be embracing the system we've got.
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For just a minute, in a gap between Vince Cable's conference address and Nick Clegg doing a question and answer session, let's talk music.
Conference season brings with it a lorry load of policy motions and obscure fringe events. Some of them, let me whisper, are a little bit on the dry side. Sitting in one last year, having assumed a posture some distance from bolt upright, and a gaze that had morphed into a daze, I had an idea. An idea not entirely connected to the presentation I was watching. But hey.
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So, for John Pienaar and me, and the rest of the 5live team, the party conference merry go round begins. I am scribbling this at 0620am on Sunday morning, sitting in the Media Centre at the ICC in Birmingham. Fun, certainly. Glamorous, certainly not.
The Greens, UKIP and Plaid Cymru have already gathered, and the SNP will get together next month. But for the next three weeks it's the Lib Dems here in Birmingham, Labour in Liverpool and then the Conservatives in Manchester.
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What with the MPs' expenses scandal and the 'Hackgate' controversy surrounding the News of the World, this has been a great couple of years for investigative journalism.
Both stories revealed aspects of society which the great and the good wanted hushed up, which the public devoured with an unrestrained appetite over weeks of relentless media coverage.
Critics call our trade 'muck-raking', but as these episodes proved, it's not only journos who inhabit the dung-hill.
For me, investigations are the purest form of journalism.
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When I was first told I was going to the US for our 9/11 special programmes, I have to admit I didn't jump at the idea. Covering something that happened a decade ago, which (we think) we all know about, didn't feel newsy enough.
Also, the thought of trying to sustain Peter's interest in one story for a whole week, with his gnat-like concentration span, felt like a challenge too far.
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Last week we spent three days in the prison camp that's said to hold some of the world's most violent terrorists, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It's where Khalid Shaik Mohammed, the self-professed chief plotter of the 11 September attacks is incarcerated along with Abdal-Rahim al Nashiri, a Saudi accused of planning the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.
Yet we were astonished to learn that even most the dangerous detainees had a Sony Playstation at their disposal, could watch 22 satelllite TV channels, play football and were given food not dissimilar to that on offer in top hotels. Such privileges led to a "calmer atmosphere" according to the senior military officer in charge of the camps.
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For me, the morning of 11 September 2001 began early, thanks partly to jet lag and partly due to the bright sunshine streaming through my hotel room window in Washington DC.
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Traditionally, this week marks the end of what journalists call the 'silly season.'
Suddenly, there aren't as many cases of that tell-tale sign the person you're trying to get hold of is on the beach: the foreign dial tone.
Suddenly, there is more stuff popping into my email inbox, and there are more people around to chat to.
Suddenly, the biggest news factory in the country, Westminster, is cranking back into life. It is great to be back.
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|06:15 UK time, Sunday, 25 September 2011
