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One of my photos

Another council meeting

January 18th, 2006 · Posted by Skuds in Politics · No Comments · Politics

Hows this for a crowd at a council meeting! It was not even a ‘proper’ council meeting – just a meeting of the executive committee.

Even allowing for the fact that many of the people were only there for Nimby-ish reasons, it makes a change from the usual apathy in the town, and elsewhere.

The whole thing was a lot more civilised than last week’s fiasco (a Town Hall attendant I spoke to a couple of days later hit the nail on the head when he described the behaviour there as ‘boorish’) which might have a lot to do with the way it was chaired. The leader of the council actually has quite a presence and air of leadership about him, much as he tries to mask it with folksyness and the odd malapropism.

I feel bad now that when I first joined the council and the Labour group was selecting a new leader I voted for someone else. In retrospect he has turned out a lot better than the person I preferred would have done.

As a sign of how civilised it was by comparison, this week one of the travellers felt able to get up and speak. Last week they felt too intimidated.

I was not going to go to the meeting, but I was watching the local news on TV and they went live to the K2 leisure centre to interview Chris Redmayne, and seeing that nothing else was on – Lost having finished now – I decided to pop down. I suspected that traffic would be nasty, so I walked and it turned out to be a wise decision.

I took the shortcut from our estate to the A23 and walked down there. Its a strange route because the footpath is on the Broadfield side of the road and halfway down the hill it just stops and continues on the other side so you have to cross a busy dual carriageway with no lights or any other sort of assistance.

This did give me the opportunity to see the most ironic sight of the day. The crowds of people from Pound Hill and elsewhere who drove to K2 so they could protest about travellers and their antisocial behaviour had already filled up the car park at K2 and had started parking on the verge of the A23 – including blocking the access for the few properties on that road, causing more trouble for those houses than when they had travellers camping in nearby Tilgate Park last year.

I was impressed by the main hall at the new leisure centre though. It had been laid out for at least 1200 seats and there was room for more. I do hope this means we will be getting some larger scale bands playing in town in the future. As long as everyone doesn’t drive there again, obviously.

Interestingly, although the turnout of backbenchers was not bad for an executive meeting, not a single one of the ‘independent’ councillors were there. After breaking the whip on a group decision to defeat their own party, none of them was interested enough in the issue to go to the meeting which resulted from their actions… I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this. When I put on my vice-chair-of-the-constituency hat I can’t help really hoping that the chair turns up for the next meeting of the constituency so I can sit at the back. Near the door.

One last photo, just because I like it. Its Crawley’s most photogenic bloke, Chris Mullins. When he was mayor he must have had about 6 photos a week in the local press. Every week. It was a running joke that he could hear a photographer unscrewing his lens cap from half a mile away.

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