Richard Baum

So I spent Hallowe’en with a collection of faintly ghoulish representations of the undead. Yes, it was full Council.

And it was my speech, which seemed to go down well. Nobody fell asleep, there was no heckling or rotten fruit thrown my way (no more so than normal, anyway) and most importantly of course, our amendment calling on the government to extend yellow school bus provision to every secondary school in the country and introduce a free fare for school children carried with unanimous support. As did the other Lib Dem motion on post office closures, calling on the government to halt their attacks on these vital community facilities.

Mine was a nice safe topic to debut on, and something I know a bit about and care a lot about. So I was lucky I suppose. It was an enjoyable experience, and one I hope to repeat again soon.

And I was only 15 seconds longer than I said I would be in the little game of “guess the speech length” that Cllr O’Hanlon and I had going on. I should’ve put some money on it, although I imagine that may have been a legally dubious thing to do. He was well off, by the way. A good minute and a half too short.

It was nice to receive congratulations on the speech from Councillors from all sides, as well as their attention during it. These things are not, I imagine, offered to Councillors who have been members long enough to annoy their opponents!

Again though the Council experience was marred for me by the petty political nonsense that clouds so many of the meetings I go to. Quite why The Leader had to respond to a straightforward question about wearing poppies at remembrance day time with a political remark is a mystery. And I think it was a pretty low thing for him to have done. Which is probably why he retracted it after the shouts from the opposition benches (and many of his own Councillors). Other questions to The Leader lurched from the sensible to the nonsensical, with several too many diatribes from both sides about how terrible the other side is.

It’s all very much unnecessary and makes us all look like petty playground fools to the public who come along to see democracy in action. One day I hope there’ll be a straight question about a serious topic and a straight answer. And that both question and answer are brief and related to one another.

But that will have to wait for another night.

Rick