Full Council

Today's Full Council meeting has just finished with the guillotine keeping it to 5 and a half hours. I'm not usually upbeat about such occasions but the actual debates were of a unusually high and Topical quality. There is a darker side which I will come onto but much decent local government was discussed. As ever the day started with "Delegations" where by the public can present a case to the Full Council for 5 minutes. The winner of the "Mayor for the Day" competition for school children came along with class mates and spoke of the need for more concern for the Environment. It was probably the best speech of the day. If you are going to denounce the Council for cutting your funding getting the Rector of Leeds to do it for you in full clerical gear is a good Visual. I was pleased to pick up on front bench hints that the Cutting of the grant to RELATE may be reversed as evidence, anecdotal I accept, that poorer people are not seeking counselling because of the charges now in place is mounting. WE hear more residents anger about the Tinshill Recreation fence fiasco. However sympathetic I am to there cause the matter is legally closed. We can only learn the lessons and not repeat them. Then came two Headingley issues. An impassioned and well reasoned plea for the Council to purchase the LGHS playing fields for the green space deprived children of Hyde Park. I will blog about this seperately. Finally a delegation about the possibility of the Elinor Lupton Centre being sold to a pub chain. As a Headingley Councillor I share peoples pain around alcohol fuelled disorder but I just sometimes wonder if other people across the city understand the tone.

I skipped a "Question Time" ( 30 minutes of questions to the Executive) to pop to the bank and write a speech on the Former Headingley Primary School and some of the later debates. We then moved on to the "Minutes" this is a nitty gritty opportunity to comment on detailed local or city wide matters by referring to various committee minutes that have met since the last Council meeting. Because we never have time to discuss even a fraction of them people have become astute about raising what they want before the guillotine falls however tenuous the link the minute is. I spoke on Headingley Primary School and the HEART proposal. As ever I tried to take a slightly different view and speculated that the long term impact on public space and rental housing that the Trust might make rather than just think of the proposal as a glorified community centre. I also pointed out that contrary to some peoples spin the thing is far from definite. If the trust fails to find refurbishment costs then the scheme can still fail. Is it worth sacrificing at least part of the Town Centre regeneration scheme to save HEART? I at least
asked the question.

After a 20 minutes Tea break we went onto "White Papers" which are council resolutions. The Labour Group attacked the administration for wide spread use of 0845 numbers which charge people for ringing the council call centre. The administration countered by pointing out that the answered call rate had gone up from 38% to 97% while they had been in power. True but not strictly speaking the point that was being debated. I suspect after today that 0845 numbers will be quickly dropped.

We then moved on and discussed the central Governments financial settlement for Leeds this year which is fairly grim. This was guillotined with out much debate. I had two speeches on my pocket on Nuclear power ( on a Green White paper) and the only local government fiance that will never See the light of day. I suppose the moral of the story is if you want to make a noise at council get your comment in on the minutes.

The high light of the day was seeing Coun John Proctor ( Con, Wetherby) have to show signs of humility over the Half Marathon fiasco. I don't see any shame in saying a mistake had been made and reversing it which is what the Council has done. There would have been a blood bath if the cancellation had still been in place today but as it was the issue was deflated.

On a negative side? I'm an old fashioned and idealistic politician who thinks to achieve forward momentum in politics by ideas and success. When most of your defensive comments is about how much worse things were under the last lot then perhaps something has gone wrong. I'm also increasingly irritated by the sheer volume of loud conversations that come from the Lib Dem /Conservative benches during Labour speeches. I just think its petty and betrays a certain lack of self confidence.

If i have learned anything over the last few years its that these set pieces effect internal morale enormously but have little relevance to the outside world. You can kid your self that a debating triumph means an issue doesn't matter while it will resonate with ordinary people. I suspect that 0845 numbers and the marathon are two of these.

As I have commented before I would like to say these meetings should be abolished but actually powerful people are held to account albeit in the most off putting of ways. The city would be worse off without them. As ever at this time of year the "Public gallery" was thronged with prospective council candidates , just as 8 years ago I sat and watched. They all looked entranced with it. I'll let them them have there idealism for a few more months. Those that make it will quickly begin to reappraise the freak show.