BACK IN THE MUD....

After missing last month’s Full Council as I was at Glastonbury I would like to say it was good to be back last night, but it wasn’t. At times it felt very similar to Glastonbury – like wading through mud to make the smallest progress.

On the bright side two councillors said they agreed with me during the evening – one a Cabinet member – which must be a first in my time on this Council. It was during a discussion about publication of the annual Best Value Performance Indicators, when I pointed out that having a ‘traffic light’ system to show how Council performance actually was against targets – red, amber and green – was meaningless if they insisted in publishing the papers in black and white.

Earlier my motion calling for a time limit to the Undercliff enquiry – amended to 30 September after a briefing earlier in the day that suggested that date was very achievable – was lost by 2 votes (us) to 32, with the Liberal Democrats and Independents once again voting with the Tories on an important issue. The Tories tried to paint me as wanting a guillotine on the enquiry; I told them my main concern was the continuing expenditure on this enquiry – I estimate £1m by end of September – when the procurement of the Undercliff contractor has never been shown to have cost the Council anymore than it should have.

We then learnt that we may get a new Scrutiny Chair in September ! Now that Brian Mosdell has left the Tory Group he counts as an opposition member – though still sitting as an un-whipped Conservative – and he is eligible to be the Chair of the new Tory-controlled Scrutiny Committee. Consequently the Tory leadership are keen to put him forward to September Full Council, provided they can get him a place on the committee as he cannot keep his current Tory group place. That may be more difficult than it seems as of the 4 places on the committee for opposition members, 3 are occupied (including me) and the LibDems won’t lend theirs in case they want it in the future.

Personally I feel that if we are not to have an opposition-controlled Scrutiny Committee as it was when I was Chair, then Brian is as good a person to have as Chair under the new regime as we will get. If necessary I will facilitate him getting a place on the committee. He may be a Tory, but both Deborah and I have grown to like and respect him over the last two years. And his speech subsequently on no longer being the Champion for Civic Pride (and public conveniences) was the best hoot of the evening ! A man unleashed from the mogadon......

Finally, under questions to Cabinet members I asked the Deputy Leader for an update on his April commitment not to use portakabins when year 9 is retained in middle schools. He maintained that commitment for the first wave of retentions in 2009, but NOT for the remainder in 2010. Now there’s a surprise ! Tories – they can’t keep a commitment for more than a moment…..