Handbags at dawn

I am not a morning person. I am certainly not a 5:30 in the morning person. This is the hour that you have to get up if you are taking part in a Lib Dem press conference. It is all even worse when you've had to take a late train due to constituency commitments and haven't managed to get to bed until gone one.
Subject of press conference was women but at the 6:30 briefing it was obvious that people were going to be more interested in asylum and crime which were the other stories of the day. You can't win really - ignore a subject and people complain but devote a press conference to it and the journo's ask why you aren't talking about something more relevant (ie whatever they want to talk about on that particular day)

Quite a frustrating morning but as I left Cowley street the Head of the Press Office was grinning because the BBC had been saying that we were promising £100 a week more - it is of course £100 a month!