ON THE EDGE

Last night was Full Council. As it was the annual meeting it was mainly about back-slapping, with the election of a new Chairman and Vice Chairman and fond Tory farewells to the outgoing LibDem Chairman. Both new appointments I abstained upon as the Tories consult with all groups about these non-political positions except Labour - apparently (in the words of the bigoted Council Leader) because we don't attend Christian prayers at the start of each meeting and therefore don't deserve to be consulted. I am not making this up. I wonder if the same would apply if we were Muslim, Hindu or Sikh rather than atheist ? Of course not.

We then learnt that the outgoing Chairman will not be re-joining the LibDem group, but will now operate as a Liberal Independent !!!!!

For annual election of Council Leader, the LibDems voted against the incumbent with me, with all but one of the Independent group abstaining.

We then had a paper re-jigging the membership of committees/commissions that will serve to remove Deborah and I from areas like health scrutiny (sse my post on 16 April). The Tories tabled at that point some revised recommendations, one of which will serve to change the Assoc of Town & Parish Council representative on my Scrutiny Committee. I protested that for the second Full Council running changes to Scrutiny were being proposed by the majority group without even the courtesy of informing me, let alone consulting with me.

I advised them in the strongest terms possible that if this happens again I will have to resign as Chair of Scrutiny - a position I was then re-elected to for the next year.

As the meeting ended numerous people came to me to express their disgust at the Council Leader's religious discrimination. I then left County Hall whilst the rest of them and various civic bigwigs went to the traditional new Chairman's drinks reception.