I went up to Manchester on Sunday, all set for Party Conference; train paid for, accommodation paid for ... only to be greeted upon my arrival with the biggest administrative cock-up in the Party's history. Hundreds upon hundreds of people have not received their accreditation for Conference -- either their police checks are taking an inordinate amount of time, or their application forms have simply been lost. On Sunday, I queued for three hours to be eventually told that I was "not on the system", and that I would have to fill in a fresh form. The harrassed staff sent me tearing around Manchester looking for a passport photo machine, which I eventually located in a newsagent's. Returning to Conference Services I was told that no more forms were being accepted that evening and that I would have to return in the morning.

So on Monday morning at 7.30 I found myself queueing again. Two hours later, I handed over my form only to be told by a distinctly unsympathetic, shoulder-shrugging functionary that I shouldn't bother staying in Manchester because "there's no chance you'll get a pass for this conference". Cue much gnashing of teeth and a train journey back to Cardiff, precisely 24 hours after I'd made the journey to Manchester.

This isn't something which was limited to students at the bottom of the party food chain. MPs have had to forgo Conference and return to their constituencies; Ministers' assistants were there tearing their hair out; the woman who opened Conference didn't have a pass 20 minutes before she was due to speak and I even spotted someone from No 10 looking a little distressed. Hundreds of people queued their way round the Conference Services building for interminable hours, from journalists to fringe organisers, only to be met with slightly desperate people who had no idea what had happened or how to fix it. "I'm accredited to walk around the Houses of Parliament." No pass. "I'm speaking at a fringe event in fifteen minutes." No pass. "I am a Cabinet Minister." No bloody pass.

Beyond the fact that this is Tony Blair's last Conference as leader and I damn well wanted to see him speak, Conference is a fantastic experience. I can count on one hand the number of national events, too, at which I get to see friends in Labour Students from across the country. I can only assume that this almighty catastrophe has something to do with the fact that the Party's finances are in a hole, and that the mass laying off of staff has resulted in this chaos. Whatever the case, someone somewhere should be, to say the least, very ashamed of themselves.