There are those who say that UK political party conferences are now so stage-managed as to be meaningless. I am not one of them. Although it's certainly true that the party leaders do their best to stifle dissent and make the conferences glossy PR exercises, they don't always succeed - and even when they do, you can sometimes learn a lot from what is not allowed to be said.

For example, look at the debates about a possible war with Iraq at the Labour Party conference. A motion demanding that Britain rule out joining in military action against Iraq in any circumstances was predictably defeated. A motion supporting war as a last resort if all diplomatic possibilities were exhausted was carried. But nothing that was allowed on to the conference agenda tackled what is for many the key question in this whole crisis: should Britain support the United States in a military mission against Iraq conducted without specific United Nations backing? Blair, aware of opinion polls and Labour Party opinion strongly opposing any such American-led adventure, carefully avoided answering that question himself, and Labour Party managers didn't allow the party conference to answer it for him.

Of course, Blair did attempt to answer lots of other questions. The extent to which I personally admire the Prime Minister these days may be gauged from the fact that I've applied to join the Liberal Democrats. Nevertheless, although I was suffering fairly badly from the 'flu last week, I left my sickbed and settled down in front of the TV when it was time for Blair to address the Labour conference.

I really didn't want to miss it. Seeing Blair give a big set-piece political speech is, for me, a bit like seeing Ronaldo playing football or Tiger Woods playing golf. It brings the pleasure of seeing a master of his craft at work, and a chance to admire the breathtaking nerve and skill that makes him so successful.

Blair is brilliant at making words appear to mean what he wants them to mean. His rhetoric about how 'We're at our best when we're at our boldest' cast anyone who disagreed with him as timid and afraid of the future. Such was the sheer verve and momentum of Blair's speech that you could easily overlook the fact that the 'bold', 'radical' policies he was promoting rested heavily on bringing private sector management into public sector projects, thus threatening the working conditions of people who work in the public sector.

He even had the nerve to say 'Let's put partnership in place of paternalism', and then to announce that the conference's vote for a review of Private Finance Initiative projects would be ignored, because he disagreed with it. How paternalistic, not to say arrogant, was that?

Throughout his speech, Blair focused on the need to be open to change: on the necessity for the Labour Party to be willing to question its entrenched attitudes and principles. The 'monolithic' public services set up by the post-Second World War Labour government in the late 1940s were now, he said, outdated. However, he defended his fierce commitment to the 'special relationship' with the United States by urging conference delegates to '... remember when and where this alliance was forged: here in Europe, in World War Two, when Britain and America and every decent citizen in Europe joined forces to liberate Europe from the Nazi evil.'

So, to sum up: we live in an entirely different world from that of the 1940s, and remedies that worked then may be irrelevant now. However, the alliance with America cannot be questioned because it was good and righteous 60 years ago. Got that?

The amazing thing is the way that Blair delivers this inconsistent, self-serving rhetoric with so much panache that it becomes believable. All the pundits said that he'd face a highly hostile reception at the conference, but his guile and charm won him an undeserved triumph.

Labour looked like a party brimming with confidence - and no wonder, when the official opposition seems thoroughly shambolic. It was tough on the Tories that embarrassing extracts from former minister Edwina Currie's diaries were published so soon before their party conference, thus setting the whole British nation talking and laughing about her confession of a four-year extra-marital affair with ex-Prime Minister John Major. Not even the legendary Labour spin machine could have contrived such a powerful reminder of the characters and patterns of behaviour that brought the Conservatives so deeply into disrepute in the mid-1990s.

In the circumstances, and given the state of the opinion polls, watching the Conservative conference feels rather like intruding on private grief. The fact that the BBCi Talking Point discussion on the conference is headlined 'Conservatives - can they reverse the decline?' speaks volumes about the state of the party.

There are people in the Conservative Party who recognise the need for it to come to terms with 21st century reality. It was good to hear the shadow work and pensions minister David Willetts declare that '...the Tory war on lone parents is over', although it's disgraceful that they ever waged such a war. Good, too, to see ex-minister and London mayoral candidate Steve Norris calling for the Tories to drop their support for the homophobic Section 28 legislation, which ludicrously seeks to stifle the 'promotion' of homosexuality in schools. As party chairman Theresa May said in her powerful wake-up call to delegates at the start of the conference: 'Some Tories have tried to make political capital by demonising minorities instead of showing confidence in all the citizens of our country'.

The trouble is that Tories like Willetts, Norris and May are trying to sell this modern agenda to a party whose members have an average age of 65. That ageing membership showed its real feelings about the prospect of Tory modernisation in last year's leadership election, when it chose Iain Duncan Smith - the most right-wing, reactionary candidate on offer.

Any democracy needs an effective opposition to challenge the government with new ideas. In applying to join the Liberal Democrats, I've gone to the place from which I believe such an opposition is most likely to emerge.

The story of Richard Reid and American Airlines Flight 63 is a very disturbing one, especially for anyone in the habit of travelling by air. The former petty criminal from Bromley, near London, has pleaded guilty to crimes including the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, attempted murder and placing an explosive device on an aircraft.

In court in Boston, Massachusetts last week, Reid cheerfully admitted that he wanted to kill himself and 196 other passengers and crew on board the flight from Paris to Miami last December. He had packed plastic explosives into one of his shoes, and was fortunately overpowered when he was seen striking a match and trying to light a fuse sticking out of the shoe.

The case is all the more startling because, in the police mugshot of him that's been gracing the world's newspapers, Reid looks like a harmless hippy. Looking at him, you'd expect to hear him asking if you had any spare cigarette papers. Instead, he told the court in Boston: 'Basically I got on the plane with a bomb. Basically I tried to ignite it. Basically, yeah, I intended to damage the plane'.

Reid thus revealed himself to be an unrepentant terrorist with a basically irritating verbal tic and a gift for understatement. (Damage the plane? Was the explosive charge meant to leave a nasty scorch mark on the carpet?)

Whether he was a member of al-Qaeda is disputed. The prosecution said yes, Reid says no, and his guilty plea means that the question need not be tested in court. What's certain is that the Reid case chillingly reminds us of the ever-present danger of terrorists trying to turn aeroplanes into bombs once again.

It also raises another question that is perhaps more important that the precise ideological alignment of this self-proclaimed 'follower of Osama bin Laden'. Which is: how come he had no problems getting his matches on board? Why, in these dangerous times, are people still allowed to carry incendiary devices such as matches and cigarette lighters on to passenger flights?

It's a question that greatly interests the brilliant American film-maker and writer Michael Moore. After all, since September 11 2001, an awful lot of different items are barred from all flights heading to and from America by order of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Administration.

So, when going for a flight shortly after the attacks on America, Moore was amazed to see people passing lighters through airport security checks in full view of security staff. He asked airline officials why such obviously potentially dangerous items were still allowed on flights, but none of them could answer the question.

Still intrigued by this question, Moore asked audiences on the tour he undertook to promote his book Stupid White Men if they knew the answer. Finally, whilst signing copies of the book in Arlington, Virginia, he got a reply. A young man approached Moore, lowered his voice, and said: 'I work on the [Capitol] Hill. Butane lighters were on the original list prepared by the FAA and sent to the White House for approval. The tobacco industry lobbied the Bush administration to have the lighters and matches removed from the banned list. Their customers naturally are desperate to light up as soon as they land, and why should they be punished just so the skies can be safe?'

And so, despite Richard Reid's best efforts, lighters and matches are still allowed into aircraft cabins. Look on the list of forbidden items on the Transportation Security Administration's website and lighters and matches are nowhere to be seen.

How can this possibly be so, after Reid actually used matches in an attempt to destroy an aircraft full of people? Does the Bush administration care more for tobacco corporations' profit margins than for air passengers' safety?

Moore has filed a claim under the US Freedom Of Information Act demanding that the FAA reveal the reasons why naked flames are still welcome on board aircraft. He suggests an alternative explanation: that Reid's claim that he was acting alone was the truth, and the Bush administration doesn't really believe that the threat from terrorists to aircraft is now that great, but needs to talk up the threat in order to justify its continuing crackdown on civil liberties.

That may sound a little far-fetched - but then, not so long ago, so did the idea that anyone would ever deliberately fly planes full of people into buildings full of people.

Watching the Celtic versus Rangers soccer match at the weekend, I was amused to see that the referee and his assistants were sporting a highly appropriate sponsors' logo on their shirt sleeves: that of the Specsavers chain of opticians' shops.

As Naomi Klein documented in her superb book No Logo, advertising gets everywhere now. We've already had ads on train and bus tickets, advertising stickers on pieces of fruit, ads on public library tickets and ads in public toilets.

Now, a Swiss entrepreneur is offering a new outlet for advertisers. For around £250, you can have your company's logo or slogan painted on to a cow.

The idea is the brainchild of Frank Baumann, head of The Cow Placard Company. He claims that he hopes the idea will 'help boost the rural economy'.

Some animal rights activists have criticised Baumann, making the shocking allegation that he's just an opportunist seeking money and publicity. But I think that his enterprise could be seen as a blow for gender equality.

After all, ads are usually a load of bull. Why shouldn't they also be a load of cow?

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