That’s the way to do it – or not!

First, a bit of background. In an attempt to resolve some of the 'process & procedure' issues the Council has operated for some time, a 'usual channels' confidential committee involving the Leaders & Deputies of the Opposition parties and the Chief Executive and Monitoring Officer – the so-called Constitutional Working Group (CWG). Originally, just me, June Burtonshaw, Chris Holley & Gerald Clement (and now John Hague) attended, but were later joined by Rene Kinzett when he had his Cameroonian conversion. The principle reasoning was to sort out non-political stuff away from the floor of the Council Chamber, avoiding tedious, boring (and not just to members of the public) arcane, and to outsiders, incomprehensible debates. In addition, there were ad hoc meetings between the Group Leaders only.

However, these meeting became increasingly pointless due to Chris Holley's inability to deliver his Group on a wide variety of issues. Although I still nurse the suspicion that not everything had been taken to his Group (see my earlier posts on the Planning Committee issue) and this was just a handy unarguable excuse.

In addition, we also had the Scrutiny & Overview Working Group (I think that was what it was/is called) and the pre-Council briefing, both chaired by the Presiding Officer. The first to determine the order of business for Scrutiny and (given that it had a huge in-built Administration majority) control what was actually scrutinised. (It was this that led to the complaint from the Intervention Board – see earlier post). The second was where we sat down and told each other what we were going to do in the meeting. No, we did really. Well not everything – there had to be some surprises.

Anyway, in response to the appointment of Milady Fitzgerald as the Council's Presiding Officer (it was hardly an election – being a golden gag and a seeming reward for her previous failure)and the control freakery of the Administration, who both started refusing to allow their Leader to meet Opposition Leaders on his own and made the CWG 'proportional', ie loaded it with additional Admin members to build-in a majority (for a committee that could take no decisions), in response to all that, Opposition Leaders took 'industrial action' (I guess that Rene would not want to be seen to be on strike!) and refused to co-operate and attend all these useless meetings.

The consequence of this was that the 'workings' of the Council began to grind exceeding slow – and this bothered the Chief Executive. To the extent that he persuaded us to go along with a conciliator (whom I have described as a 'marriage guidance counsellor') to see whether we could find some common ground to reinstate the 'usual channels'. This proved surprisingly productive. And in a 'full & frank' exchange R & I expressed our dissatisfaction with her conduct of the meetings (especially her frequently exasperated expression and body language), whilst Milady accepted that she could do with some training and would do better. SO meetings between Chris and I were re-instigated and Milady's conduct of the last Council meeting was almost ok – certainly much improved.

However, however....all that was not to last.

Last week's meeting was dreadful. Chris had declined to discuss the Independent Remuneration report and refused the suggestion of the Chief Executive (so I am told) to discuss his plans for the revised committee structure (see previous post) – what was he afraid of? – and Milady's conduct of the meeting was abysmal. I would admit that I started the meeting in a bad mood, as I just learnt that agreements (I thought had been secured) as to how certain reports were to be dealt with had been reneged upon. The Leader of Council had told me (prior) that Peter May (the Uplands Uriah Heep), the Housing Cabinet Member would be late to the meeting (see next post). The first couple of items were to do with the Housing Portfolio, so I asked, not unreasonably, for the items to be deferred until he turned up. This provoked a ridiculous row, as neither CH nor Milady would allow the matter to be deferred to later in the meeting, even though it was obvious that Milady Fitzgerald had been advised by the Chief Executive to do so. Milady then refused to allow me to speak even tho' it was a ward matter. One of my colleagues sought to get the matter deferred to the next meeting and Milady refused that as well. She was then countermanded by CH who said he didn't mind if it was deferred, so she changed her mind and deferred it. This was all completely mad and ridiculous and had unnecessarily raised the temperature of the meeting. Points of order flying around, Two Dinners screaming his head off and Milady F looking right royally irritated – to the extent that I demanded that she took that 'damned exasperated expression of her face' – with her response 'How dare you be so rude' and so on and on.

This was a battle that didn't need to be fought, what was being asked for was not unreasonable, but the way it was handled was disastrous. Unsurprisingly, the meeting went downhill from there. It was one of the worst, I think I've been to. Heaven only knows what the public made of it.