COALITION GOVERNMENT ! WHAT COALITION ?

Full Council last Wednesday. Many absences - 10 - 25% of the Council. Kicked off with loads of questions about Northwood House, which the Council appear to have decided to withdraw from entirely.

My Motion seeking for a 3rd time to get the Council to reduce its carbon emissions by 10%, thus saving up to £410k, to then be used on services for vulnerable people, was then discussed. I tried to tell the Tories that contrary to their recent local Members Newsletter there isn't a Tory government and that the national Tory leadership have signed up to some decent things in the Con-Dem Coalition - like a 10% reduction in carbon emissions. But they don't like to listen to me !!! Because they really don't want to know.......

Instead they claim they are making ‘planned and sensible’ carbon reductions (Cllr Giles, Tory), presumably unlike the coalition Con-Dem government in which his party has signed up to 10%. And they ‘can’t save any more’ on emissions (again Cllr Giles). Welcome to my world, where Cameron & Clegg’s cosiness is ignored at local level.

So, once again I was defeated by 18 (all Tory) votes to 8 (me, the 3 LibDems present, and 4 independents), with 3 abstentions (including 2 brave Tories - Webster and Wyatt-Millington).

One thing is increasingly clear - local LibDems are not comfortable with the coalition there leadership has signed up to, just as local Tories are just going to ignore it's more 'progressive' elements...........

After that we had the Standards Committee Annual Report, which only I did not support, as I have little faith in the local process. And then agreement of a new scheme to deal with Petitions - a legacy of the last government.

Finally I asked a question of the Council Leader about whether he could guarantee that Years 6, 7 & 8 in Middle Schools from September will get the full breadth of the curriculum delivered to them. He gave that guarantee...........