Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

Perhaps the highlight (if, indeed, any party conference can be said to have such a thing) of today's Krep conference was the speech by Albia's Minister of Finance Bragdny Door. In a wide-ranging and emotive speech, Mr Door sought to put an end to the damage caused by the incessant whispers in the Albian media (whispers said to have originated from a shadowy group within Noy Krep circles, known only as "Bragdny Door's friends") of a bitter rivalry between himself and Prime Minister Schlop by uniting the party around a common cause - namely making him leader in the Prime Minister's place.

Having spoken at length, as he so often does, about the manifold advantages of prudence (*), the Minister entered a long and moving passage about the opportunities that would be available to Albians under a third successive Krep government. The most effective moment came when, with tears clearly forming in his eyes, Mr Door called on delegates to create a new and better Albia, "an Albia where war-mongerers are brought low and honest sons of preachers raised high, where the dour and straightforward are praised above the smiling and spinning; an Albia, fellow delegates, where an ordinary man - a baker, a streetsweeper, perhaps especially a Minister of Finance - can hope that his fellows will lift him up and take him to the very highest position in the land." As he said this last, Mr Door was visibly overcome, both by emotion and by the teargas which the Prime Minister had accidentally ordered members of the security forces to release into his old friend's face.

(*) generally assumed by Albians to be the name of Mr Door's mistress.