Alternative conference: Toasting Gordon Brown

By Ollie Stone-Lee BBC News Online political staff

Throughout the party conference season, BBC News Online is delivering a flavour of what is going on away from the main conference hall as Blackpool, Brighton and Bournemouth are taken over by politicians, party activists and the media.

For Labour's seaside gathering, we will be visiting the Churchill's Bar, "the friendliest bar in Blackpool", as our alternative conference venue.

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It is the gloomy "truth" which keeps politicians and political journalists awake at night - people are just not interested in politics anymore.

That does not ring true as, over a lunchtime pint at Churchill's Bar, the people on the outside of the conference chatter grabbed the chance to discuss political issues.

It may be the day of Tony Blair's speech but it is Chancellor Gordon Brown who 66-year-old Kenny Hayes hails as his hero.

Kenny Hayes: One of those ready to talk politics

"He looks after pensioners, he's made us all better off," says Mr Hayes.

A Labour voter who would never shift parties, Mr Hayes still cannot see the sense of going to war with Iraq, especially as the Allies should have "finished off Saddam Hussein last time".

"It's going to upset the Arab world," he argued, "and this Bush is a nut case for me."

Mr Hayes chastises his drinking companion for "sitting on the fence and waiting for the money to come in".

Classroom discipline

But the hum of political discourse soon attracts others in the bar, who move to our table to join in - and this in a country supposedly rife with apathy?

Anne Kirkpatrick, 63, is on a day trip from Darlington with her aunt, 73-year-old Audrey Chrissey.

Churchill's offers a break from the beach

The wife of a school governor, Mrs Kirkpatrick is sure what should be a top priority for the government.

"The kids in this school are so badly behaved it isn't true," she says.

"What they have got to do now is give teachers and governors the rights to punish children who behave badly and to expel them."

The discussions do not stop there - there is no need for any interviewing, I just sit by and watch.

'Vote, vote, vote'

The debate moves through the need to give men better wages so women do not have to put work before their children to the decline of manual work, the level of pensions and efforts to get more people into universities.

Mrs Chrissey contrasts life now with her childhood in a home with no bathroom.

And she remembers how as a child she used to shout "vote, vote, vote for councillor..."

Local elections may not excite that kind of passion among the youth of today but on this showing at least, real political debate is in no way confined to the conference floor.