Okay, so the title may sound like I’m back at school in September writing about what I did on my summer holidays, but here you have a few of my thoughts on my experience of the first meeting of the new Stoke-on-Trent City Council Chamber.
It may have been a bit of a “Ëœrubber stamping’ affair, but the Annual City Council Meeting was perhaps the first chance to really see the new council in action.
For my first visit to the Council Chambers I was impressed by the broadcast equipment found around the chambers providing (what I hope was) excellent online coverage of the meeting. I say hope, because as sod’s law would have it, the City Council website doesn’t appear to be online this evening so I haven’t been able to watch it back.
For those readers unaware of the business of the annual council meeting ““ it was to set the council’s affairs in order ready for the next year of government.
One of the first speeches was perhaps one of the most interesting ““ a Christian prayer by the outgoing Lord Mayors pastor ““ Paul Lockett. In this incredibly diverse city, I find it very interesting that such a traditional Christian custom is still continued today in the council chambers.
A CofE member myself, I suddenly found myself back in first school, quietly mumbling 90% of the Lord’s Prayer ““ it’s always those last few lines that get me!
Official proceedings soon kicked off with the emotional farewell to Denver Tolley, outgoing Lord Mayor and retiring councillor who joked that he would be spending his days skiing. Not in the sporting sense, but Spending the Kids’ Inheritance.
Mr Tolley shared memories, thanks and a couple of tears with the chamber and handed over to newly elected Lord Mayor Cllr Terry Follows and his deputy, Cllr Majid Khan to continue chairing the rest of the meeting.
Cllr Pervez was re-elected as Council Leader but wasn’t the only nomination. Non-alligned Cllr Paul Breeze offered his own name followed by an energetic speech which was granted extra time by the Lord Mayor. He launched an attack on Labour who, according to him, aren’t the popular majority with the public.
His speech was met by cheers from the public gallery but failed to convince the chamber as he only received one vote, followed by 3 abstentions and 37 votes for Pervez. 3 councillors were absent for the vote.
Cllr Pervez declined to respond directly to Cllr Breeze but gave a long post-election speech outlining his plans for the next four years in charge with his Labour majority ““ although he didn’t quite manage to find the same energy as Cllr Breeze.
The afternoon saw the approval of committee placements meaning that the political machine of Stoke-on-Trent City Council now has all of its cogs in place.
How long they stay in place is down to our city’s elected representatives.
Here’s to the next four years of Potteries Politics!
I think you get a bit of a better feel of it actually being there Sam. But the webcasts are good. I couldn’t go to the meeting because of work but caught about 20mins of it online live at lunch time. Actually turned out to be the best bit, Paul’s self-nomination for leader. I watched the rest back later.
The microphones now are good, especially compared with the junk they had before. Downside of the new system is when they vote electronically you can’t see who voted what way.
Keep going to observe Sam if you can. Normal full councils are more interesting because of the petitions, so you get to see what ordinary people are concerned about. Public and members questions could be interesting except they have a silly rule that the original questions are neither read out at the meeting or published online in the reports pack, leaving us much in the dark hearing answers and supplementary questions without knowing the original questions.
A few thoughts. On Terry Follows as Lord Mayor, proposed by Tom Reynolds (0:24:21)
http://connect.stoke.public-i.tv/site/player/pl_v7.php?a=58968&t=0&m=wm&l=en_GB
(Tom – suggestion – hand out of pocket when speaking.)
Tom talked about Terry’s initial rise to fame objecting to a mosque (which Tom rather blandly refers to as a ‘building’) on Fen Park and also more recently helping us in the fight to save Trentham High, even though Tom was on the other side of that argument.
Terry (0:29:00) refers to these and also his opposition to Britannia Stadium because of parking problems (which indeed there are). So a good history of siding with people in his wards. (I know Tony says he was unfair on Mitchell High however, not in his ward, which he voted to close and I don’t disagree with Tony there.) So now he has to be sure to represent the whole city as Lord Mayor, but at the same time will have to go along with the labour leadership this year before hopefully reverting back to opposition where needed. His charity is Dot Griffiths Cancer Fund – interesting.
Paul’s speech was interesting, I agree with some and disagree with some, but a good thing is he’s willing to voice his views. He blames labour government and council for much of the mess we’re in and reprimands labour for trying to offload the blame to the condems, I agree there. He said the labour tactics don’t wash with the majority of people, well they don’t wash with me but they have with enough to give a labour majority on council. He thought the coalition worked well but I don’t think it did. He suggested cabinet posts he would have had, but for myself I’d ditch the whole cabinet system and go for a more equitable committee system.
Hi Nicky,
Thanks for the comment.
I’ll make sure I keep going. As a student who only moved to S-o-T last year, I don’t really know many of the councillors which I hope gives me an unbias outlook on things.
And I definitely agree with you on the voting system – I thought at the time that it was a bit secretive not seeing where the votes go. So I waited for the minutes to be published and that doesn’t even provide the number of votes per candidate – let alone how individuals voted.
I’m intrigued as to how we’ll be able to find out how councillors vote…