Mini riot in Cecil square

At last nights Council meeting there were some bright spots and some dull ones. It is worth noting at this point that there were twenty three items on the agenda only one of which required an actual decision. Whether this is a result of the Cabinet system or plain and simple inaction on the part of the Tory Administration I will leave you to decide.
Anyway back to the action, as part of the meeting we were to have two new items The Chief Executives report and The Leaders report. Note at this point there is no provision in the Constitution for these items but nonetheless it is probably a good idea to be updated as to what is or isn’t going on. Nor is there any talk of allowing questions or discussion on these reports but that will be addressed when it is considered by the Constitutional Working Party.
The Leader was apparently going to give a Powerpoint presentation with his report and this was when trouble‘t mill started. Having cleared the Chairman’s bench and all the top dogs had moved themselves to another part of the chamber and the screen had been lowered the first slide appeared!
The first words to appear were something like ‘The Council is facing financial Armageddon’ it immediately became apparent that the Council was to be treated to a Party Political broadcast by The Leader, this provoked a furious reaction from the Labour benches not least from Myself, several of us immediately leapt to our feet to protest and chaos ensued for a few moments with the Leader vainly trying to continue with his presentation.
My objection is very simple, as Councillors we are constantly reminded that we represent ALL the people in our Wards and not just those who voted for us, by the same token The Leader is the leader of the whole Council and not just the Ruling Group, this applies equally whoever is in power. Nor is there any rule that says the leader of the Ruling Group has to be the Leader of the Council. As the Council Leader is elected by the whole Council I feel it is wrong that the minority groups should be subjected to a Party Political diatribe. As this report was supposed to be a report on what the Council has been up to is wrong to use opportunity to score political points in this way.
The Chairman, Cllr Margaret Sheldrake, to her credit recognised the problem this was causing and refused to allow The Leader to continue, despite this he started to desperately flick through the slides in the vain hope that they may have some impression on Members.
Eventually order was restored, top dogs returned to their seats and we continued. Sitting in the audience were the Chair and Vice Chair of the Standards Committee, quite what they made of it I don’t know but I do know that what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong and it is wrong for a senior Member of Council to try and use his position to berate members about the financial position the country finds itself in and to somehow place all the blame on The Government when we all know but appear to have forgotten that the current financial situation was initially brought about by the irresponsible lending in the US sub prime mortgage market.
Co-incidentally I hear differing reports about whether this presentation also shown to the Tory Group beforehand.
There was more excitement a bit later when poor old Tom Betts from Your Thanet got his wrist slapped for daring to take a picture of the Council in session to put beside a report he is going to write for his paper.
Quite why this paranoia exists about someone taking a picture of some old duffers sitting about talking about stuff is beyond me!
If you read this Tom can I suggest that you just write to the Chief Executive and ask permission to take a few pictures during a meeting for publicity purposes.
Of course if TDC were to stream their meetings onto ‘tinternet like a modern Council would Public could actually see us at ‘work’.
After ‘The Incident’ with Tom Betts the public were unceremoniously ejected, a decision incidentally that the Labour Group spoke and voted against, we proceeded to the only item requiring a decision this was the one about the future of the old Pleasurama site.
A lively and interesting debate then followed during which some potentially actionable remarks were made about the Labour Groups due diligence checks on the original plan and Developers and the Officers that made them. This caused an outbreak of harmony and The Leader leapt to his feet to correct the offending Tory and defend what went on at the time and remind Council that the proposal was agreed at the time by the whole Council.