I attended my first proper meeting of the full council last week -- after the mostly ceremonial mayor making meeting. On the agenda were items ranging from the Coalition Agreement, to the Tree Strategy, to the "Regulation of Sexual Entertainment Venues".
Unfortunately, as I expected there was a lot of hot air and Punch and Judy politics at the meeting! The groups all started referring to each other as "you lot" which just seemed rude, no one had had the courtesy to build support for any of their amendments by showing them to me before the meeting and to top it all, the Lib Dems were labelled as Nazi collaborators by Labour.
As I said before the meeting, I would vote on an issue by issue basis, which is what I did. This meant sometimes I voted with Labour -- for example against cuts to care -- sometimes with the Con-Dem Coalition -- against favouring recycling over reducing the total amount of waste -- and sometimes I abstained -- when the Coalition wanted to move to a vote but Labour wanted to keep the debate going.
You can view agendas of upcoming meetings on the Council website. If you feel strongly on an issue please contact me in advance to discuss it further.
The meeting finished just before 11 p.m. I congratulated the Mayor on chairing the meeting and then jumped on my bike and cycled home.
No comments:
Post a Comment