Brid Smith

February 2011 Meeting

I was struck by the passion of the contributions against a motion put by Cllr Perry on a proposed development of social housing on Spencer Dock.

Cllr Perry’s point was that this development of social housing was substandard, approx 15% to 20% below the standards for size of dwellings set by the council itself. One after the other councillors condemned the motion as an obstruction to achieving social housing for an area in dire need of accomodation with hundreds of families on the waiting list.

Cllr Perry was accused of “electioneering”, he was described as a “far leftie”, he was dismissed as having no interest in the housing needs of the people. I disagree. If we have set standards for accomodation for our tenants, our citizens, then they deserve those standards to be adhered to. We don’t build palaces for them. Just basic housing. They deserve housing that meets those standards and since this developement has not even been started, the point of his motion was to insist that such standards be met.

This is far from a reactionary proposal. In fact he is right. And I couldnt help thinking, if only those councillors who lined up to condemn Cllr Perry could put a fraction of that passion into demanding that the 40,000 empty NAMA units around the city be given over to the Council for social housing, we could be in with a chance of getting homes for the hundreds of families on the waiting list.

After all, the same councillors passed a motion from Cllr Joan Collins, with overwhelming support from all parties, that the Government move to take NAMA properties into local authority control. Let’s hear passionate pleas for this to happen instead of condemnation of a proposal to stick to our own standards for our own people.

 

February 8th 2011: Dublin City Council Passed a motion of support for Egypt

At the February Council meeting I put down an emergency motion on the Eqyptian Revolution.

Since our People Before Profit candidate Joan Collins was out canvassing and absent, I asked a Labour councillor to seconded and she refused because she hadn’t time to consider it. Fair enough. Criona Ni Dhalaigh of Sinn Fein seconded it, no problem.

When the motion was put to the house, Paddy Bourke a Labour Cllr attempted to put an amendment. He had to get two thirds of those present to agree to a suspension of standing orders to put his amendment. He didn’t get nearly that. Then the Lord Mayor declared the motion had fallen. I insisted on an explanation since it was the attempt to put the amendment that had fallen, not the motion.

After much obstruction to get this explanation and to get the substantial motion put to the house, the Lord Mayor agreed that I was right. He asked for a suspension of standing orders to agree the motion without debate, which was comfortably won and then overwhelmingly the motion was adopted by the chamber with some Labour Councillors voting against.

Paddy Bourke indicated that he had problems with the second part of the motion. That’s the part that requires us to do something and not just be descriptive and express solidarity.  People Before Profit and the Eqyptian community want to thank all councillors who backed this motion. It does matter.

 

The wording of the motion see below

This Council declares its total solidarity with the heroic democracy protesters of Egypt, and especially with those currently occupying Tahrir (Liberation) Square. It strongly supports their demands: for the immediate removal of the dictator, Hosni Mubarak, from his office as President; for the repeal of the anti-democratic Emergency Law (which since 1981 has given the notorious State Security Forces the right to detain people without charge or trial); for the dismantling of the whole Mubarak regime of murder torture and corruption; for full freedom of the press and genuine democratic elections. This Council resolves to refuse all collaboration with the illegitimate Mubarak Government or its agents .

This Council also calls upon the Irish Government to; a) end all diplomatic relations with the Mubarak/Suleiman regime until such time as a new democratically elected government is established; b) to make a public statement of its support for the democracy movement; c)to vote accordingly at the United Nations and in the EU Council of Ministers and European Parliament; d) to call publicly for Mubarak to be put on trial at the International  Court of Human Rights at the Hague.

 

January 27th 2010:  Comment to the below report on the Budget Meeting.

Cllr Killian Forde  (Labour ex-Sinn Fein) says that I have misrepresented him and has quoted the minutes of the meeting:

“It was agreed, that as a committee, the majority are supportive of the report with the exception of the Water Charges”

Great news and lets hope we can look forward to the continuing opposition to water charges from Killian and his Labour colleagues and hope it will last longer than their opposition to Bin Charges.

 

My Account of Dublin City Council Budget Meeting- December 2009

At the Dublin City Council Budget meeting on 21 December 2009, Killian Forde proposed the budget as Chair of the Finance SPC and voted in favour of it. As a Sinn Fein member he was apparently, in breach of his party’s mandate. The most controversial content of the budget was the removal of the waiver for social welfare recipients of the waiver on bin lifts (the waiver remains on the standing charge of €95 per annum).

Sinn Fein says he went against the party mandate on the budget given their opposition to the removal of the waiver but this is not the first time that SF councillors voted in differing ways on the budget. In the past a number of their councillors voted for and others against the same budget, all of which contained bin charges. It seems though that this has been a step too far and Forde has resigned from the party saying he would be guilty of “chancery” if he voted against this budget.

So the rest of us who did vote against the budget are “chancers”? Well my mother always says “brave are the chancers” and now I have a context for what she means. If voting on principle against double taxes on essential services such as refuse and water is “chancery” then here is one proud “chancer”. Perhaps he was in the wrong party all along but I doubt it. Sinn Fein have gone all over the place on the bin tax and if Forde’s response as Chair of the Finance SPC to the report on the Commission on Taxation is anything to go by they may well do the same on water charges (as they have done in the North of this island). At the last Finance Committee meeting Killian Forde as chair, proposed that we broadly welcome the report. This Councillor objected and People Before Profit are very clear, we do not welcome the introduction of water charges as proposed by the Commission on Taxation. We will campaign vigorously against this next double tax.

Sinn Fein’s remaining four councillors who voted against the budget were most unhelpful in the budget debate. We witnessed grand standing by Fianna Fail who mouthed loudly against the removal of the waiver on bin charges and sounded almost radical. Killian Forde behaved like he was looking for an Oscar nomination when he dramatically and correctly condemned their hypocrisy. The Labour party almost gave themselves blood pressure in their condemnation of the “Trotskyite” People Before Profit councillors who, they claimed “instructed” working class people not to pay their debts to the council. What an insult to working class people that they would be instructed by us or indeed by the Labour Party who not so long ago advocated non-payment of the bin charges.

Management used their Executive Powers and refused to take any budget amendments that contained any interference with the issue of waste management. People Before Profit, some Sinn Fein councillors and other independents had tried to move amendments that would eliminate the removal of the bin charge waiver and the 5% increase. We are elected. Management are appointed. But we don’t get to exercise democratic control and at this meeting barely got an opportunity to express our democratic opinions.

One crucial point that was missed during this debate was that this budget reduced the commercial rate on city business by 2% and cost the rest of us €7 million. That is the equivalent of the recent  pay cut suffered by the council workers who are now effectively subsiding the cut in commercial rates.

Killian Forde claims that the budget estimates was  “the best possible deal available”. But he is wrong. This was far from the best possible deal working people and the poor. It was the best deal available for big business that turned over vast profits during the course of the Celtic Tiger and are now screaming for cuts to rates because the “footfall” is down.

There is a political lesson from Killian Forde’s departure from Sinn Fein and  move to the Labour Party. We need a working class party that represents the interests of our class and our class only – not those of big business, bankers and economists. It is impossible to straddle the two camps and trying to do so is real “chancery”.

My Account of Dublin City Council Meeting- November 2009

The Bus Gate

Last Monday night was another experience of “Democracy in Action” and there was a group of young people from the Base in Ballyfermot who attended the meeting as observers to see some of the action.

Most of the meeting was taken up with reports, one of which was highly controversial dealing with the proposed postponement of the Bus Gate for a limited period to allow traffic flow for the Christmas shopping. I have always believed that the case put forward by the City Centre Business Association was spurious in the extreme. They produced no evidence that this improvement in public transport has damaged their trading figures. But nevertheless the City Manager proposed a compromise with guarantees that the Bus Gate would re-open in full mid January next. It was clear from early on that his proposal would receive the full backing of the original proponents of the Bus Gate including Councillor Montague of the Labour Party. I voted against it because of my stated reasons – there is no evidence to prove that Bus Gate is losing us jobs. We have now given into a tiny but powerful lobby of business by the overwhelming vote of councillors to temporarily close Bus Gate. The challenge now is ensure that this is indeed a temporary closure and that Bus Gate will be back in its complete form by mid January next.

I would like to congratulate the cyclists, students and supporters of public transport for their vigilant and vigorous campaign. I would also like to congratulate the shop workers and members of Mandate Trade Union for their campaign to suspend Bus Gate. But having worked for many years with Mandate Trade Union I am aware of the pressure that the City Centre Business Association can put on workers to achieve their own ends. They have repeatedly pressurised workers over the decades to get the changes in work practices, reduce overtime, to create a more flexible workforce, to undermine Sunday premium payments and now to undermine improvements in public transport. Until the lobby of big business is met with an equally determined lobby of workers and their unions, then we have not seen the end of this saga.

Workers Rights

Dublin City Council awarded the contract for re-cycling glass to a company called Glassco who have now taken over the business from Oxigen. When the council issue a contract there is an obligation on the contract holders to sign a Declaration of Standards that will guarantee workers their statutory rights. Glassco have signed this in relation to previous Oxigen employees who will now work for them. Under the Transfer of Undertakings (TUPE) employees moving from one company to another should get full recognition of their pay, conditions, terms of employment and service. All of this is being recognised by Glassco except the service of the workers. This is in order to avoid paying full redundancy entitlements in event that they have to let workers go. But of course this is unacceptable to the workers involved who have clocked up many years service with Oxigen. On October 29 the company wrote to the workers representative in SIPTU explicitly stating that they would withdraw the offer of work to the employees involved if they did not accept their terms, including a non-recognition of their service with Oxigen.

People Before Profit councillors have consistently being on the side of these workers and Councillor Joan Collins has been given written answers from management in relation to this issue. So when this end-of-October ultimatum was received from Glassco Joan and I put in an emergency motion to the Council (in my name only as Joan was out sick) calling for the termination of the contract with Glassco Recycling if they refused workers their rights.

It led to a very interesting insight into “Democracy in Action”. Firstly, I was approached by the Lord Mayor Emer Costelloe before the meeting started who urged me to change the last sentence in my motion because if the effect of this motion incurred a cost to the council, under rule we would have to rule it out of order. Any motion which incurs a cost has to have the full costing in front of the meeting for it proceed. Fair enough but I argued that there should not be a cost since it would be Glassco and not us who are in breach of the contract. She advised me to talk to Kevin Humphries (Labour group leader) who then advised me to talk to one of the officials of the council (whose name I forget). He and I spoke about this for about ten minutes outside the chamber during which time we were joined by another official (whose name I forget).

The officials argued two things. One, that any obligation to the workers that was not fulfilled by this contract was not the council’s problem as we are indemnified by any law suit that my result from an Unfair Dismissals case or any case arising from the Labour Relations Commission etc. The problem was with the company. I argued that in this case the company seemed to be in breach of the contract because they were not adhering to the declaration they signed. He didn’t answer that but stated that it wouldn’t be ruled out of order. However, he said if passed it would be meaningless as they (the council officials) were not obliged to enforce it. The second official informed me that it was meaningless because there were negotiations to take place later in the week between Fingal County Council (who are also party to the contract) and the two companies Oxigen and Glassco which would come up with a resolution. But as I argued, we had no guarantee over what that resolution would be or indeed would it satisfy the workers in granting recognition of their service.

My insistence on putting the resolution forward was to show the will of the councillors towards this issue and to put down a marker that the rights of workers are important to this council when it comes to the awarding of contracts. If we accept that at any stage it is okay to undermine workers rights, then we are setting a precedent that is detrimental to the citizens who elected us.

When the emergency motions section came before the councillors, the Lord Mayor made an introduction in which she explained the nature of emergency motions and urged that they be used only in cases of emergency as they prevent other motions already on the agenda from being heard. They are normally taken without debate and by so doing allow the rest of the agenda to be dealt with. It is the choice of the councillor who puts the motion to decide if they want the motion with or without debate.

Having spoke to a number of other councillors whose motions fell at last months council meeting because they did not get sufficient numbers of votes to pass them without debate, I decided I should ask for this to be put with debate.

When the motion was called out the Lord Mayor told the council that she had spoke to me and asked for an added sentence because the motion could have a cost implication and she read out the rule governing this principle. I tried to explain the conversation I had with the two officials. She ruled me out of order. While I am protesting the unfairness of her ruling, Councillor Dermot Lacey (Labour Party) was shouting at me across the chamber that this is a waste management issue and that it was the likes of me and Joan Collins who were responsible for this being taken out of our hands. He was well out of order even from a basic good manners point of view. The way he pointed and shouted was manic. I was wondering to myself what do the young people in the gallery think of democracy in action now. All the time the Lord Mayor was shouting me down I stuck to my point. That point being that there was no need to rule this out of order as I had spoken to the officials.

She then said ok we will take the motion without debate. I had to interrupt to remind her that it was my choice whether it be taken with or without debate not hers. I asked for it to be taken with debate. Then she announced that in that case it would go back onto the normal agenda and would have to wait its turn to come up. I protested that she had not explained this in her preamble to the discussions on emergency motions. She insisted she did, while I insisted she did not and pointed out that the meeting was being recorded and we could always check the record.

I then argued that if the motion was to go back to the normal agenda it wouldn’t be heard till 2010 and would be meaningless and therefore I requested it be taken without debate. She then put the motion to the floor without debate. It was overwhelming supported with one vote against.

Back to democracy in action – When asked for his comments the Manager indicated that he was not obliged to act on it.

Two last comments – one from the young people from Ballyfermot. They said “Its getting exciting now at last”. And the other from the workers concerned “That was hard going but you did it. Thanks”.

My own view – Once again I have seen the goal posts shifted when it comes to debates in the council. If certain power blocks try to control everything that happens and do not welcome real debate, then we don’t have democracy in action. We have bureaucracy in action and that does not serve the interests of the citizens who elected us. We are there for them and to be honest there are an awful lot of councillors in my view who need to be reminded of that fact and leave their own importance and egos outside the council chambers.

My Account of Dublin City Council Meeting Monday August 31st  2009

Back from the welcome break in August, the first Council meeting I attended was on Monday 31 August. The Finance Strategic Policy Committee (SPG) had to decide on choosing five “outside bodies” from a list of nine who had sent in nominations for inclusion onto this committee. The first one we decided on was ICTU who had sent in their nomination late but nevertheless welcome. Five of the other eight bodies directly represented business interests in the city. The other three were Trinity College, Griffith College and An Taisce. A clear majority favoured the immediate inclusion of “old familiar faces” i.e. Dublin City Business Association, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and Trinity, the more senior Labour councillors indicating that these bodies had made a very important contribution to the committee in the past. I then pointed out that we now had two bodies out of five representing business interests and our final nomination should be weighted in favour of civil society rather than commercial. Then the controversy opened up. The three Labour councillors Kevin Humphries, Dermot Lacey and Paddy Burke were strongly in favour of the IBEC nomination indicating that “we have to have our policy informed by people who know”.

Indeed IBEC know alright. They know how and when to screw workers. They are pushing a strategy now with employers which are clearly taking advantage of the economic crisis. They see an opportunity and they won’t miss it. Employers after employer are ”outsourcing” work in the private sector. They get rid of the unionised workforce just as in MTL Dublin Port, Coca Cola, Carrolls Joinery. They make them redundant at the lowest possible rate and replace their labour with cheaper and importantly non-union labour. They advocate using High Court injunctions to curb effective picketing and protesting as in MTL Dublin Port, Coca Cola and let us not forget how the strong arm of state ended the Thomas Cook occupation.

Back in the Council Members Room our discussion continued on the merits or not of IBEC. We were not spoiled for choice on nominations, it has to be said. But we could have chosen from An Taisce (I don’t know why but all the old experienced councillors agreed they had no contribution to make on this committee), Griffith College (who Labour argued was a private college and would push a private agenda – Where does that leave IBEC) or the Irish Small & Medium Enterprise Association (ISME) (who Sinn Fein argued was a preferable option to IBEC and Cillian Forde spoke strongly against IBEC’s inclusion).

In the end I proposed Griffith College for the last nomination (knowing I would get no support for An Taisce) and the Labour Party proposed IBEC. The vote was 4 to 3 in favour of IBEC. Fianna Fail voted with Labour. Sinn Fein and the two independents (me included) voted against IBEC.

This is a learning curve to say the least.

Last night I spent hours with pickets on Coca Cola in Belgard. It was very cold and dark. It was tense and rough. The employers there were nasty and intimidating. The Gardai kept an eye on all of us. Injunctions had just been placed on these workers earlier in the day. But they were inspiring and were determined to stand their ground and fight for their jobs and their futures. We talked about the employers’ agenda and how they were seizing the moment to drive down wages, conditions and unions in the midst of the economic crisis. We talked about IBEC as the strong union of the employers. We also talked about our unions and their apparent weakness. We look forward to the day when our movement will take the initiative and unite all workers in a fight against IBEC and their cohorts in Government. We imagined what it would be like to have a nationwide general strike against the savage attacks on workers’ lives and the “race to the bottom”.

My Account of Dublin City Council Meeting Monday July 6 2009

Last Monday was my first full Council Meeting. The long and confusing agenda looked daunting. I thought I would never get my head around it but with a lot of help from Joan and Kieran, I think I got it.

After a long discussion on emergency motions dealing with the recent flooding in Dublin, we welcomed into the council chambers Maria Metcalf who is replacing Maureen O’Sullivan. It’s great to have another truly independent councillor on board.

The next three hours was taken up with Governance Issues – appointments to committees and council bodies (most of this sorted outside of the actual meeting).

Reports from the council officials on protected structures, disposal of properties and the granting of leases then followed. One report in particular was controversial.

A three-year lease to operate the market at the Red Stables in St. Anne’s Park, Raheny was awarded to Fingal Market Management. Previously this was held by the Irish Farmers Market.

I asked the manager to answer three questions on this

(1) We are told this was the most favourable tender but we are not told Why – What were the conditions submitted that made this tender the most favourable?

(2) Why is the rent – €7,200 per annum – so low? I had helped a friend run a stall at that market two years ago and the rent of a stall for one day was €75 plus each stall holder had to provide their own public liability insurance and deal with their own waste. In one day of the market (and it ran two days each weekend) they would pick up about €1,000 in rent from stall holders.

(3) One of the Fine Gael Councillors has just reported that three of the workers employed at the market have lost their jobs and are not being given their rights under the Transfer of Undertakings. Is this so? And if so all councillors should vote against this to protect the pay, terms and conditions of our citizens.

The answers were totally unsatisfactory

(1)   This was the most favourable tender because they answered all the questions. Other tenders didn’t.

(2)   Yes the rent tendered was lower than other tenders but they filled other criteria

(3)   Any issues to do with the workers are between them and the employer. They are not the business of this council.

So that’s the answers and you get no chance to butt in and query it further. It goes straight to a vote and some sensible councillor called for a role-call vote (I think that is the term – it means each councillor has to call out how they are voting either for or against – instead of a show of hands). The Lord Mayor quickly informed us that she needed at least five councillors to stand up to enforce such a vote. More than five of us duly did so and the roll call vote took place. The end result was 39 for, 14 against and 4 abstentions. I know all independents voted against but the rest I am not sure of where the opposition came from. It had to be a mix mash of a number of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. What I did notice as it was glaringly obvious, was that to a man and a woman – all of the Sinn Fein and Labour councillors voted in favour.

It is shocking that they would not have serious misgivings about the awarding of this licence on the basis of the rights of the workers concerned being infringed, never mind a concern about the low rate of rent. We will be scratching and scraping around for money when it comes to the budget in the Autumn. This is the sort of area where we should watch the finances. The rates we are charging for rent are important and it seems to me that this sort of rate is ridiculously low. Most importantly, the parties that claim to represent working people and who get their votes in the main from working people, failed again to represent their interests. I don’t accept what the manager says, that issues of workers rights are between the workers and their employer. I think that workers rights are our business too and especially the business of the left parties ie Sinn Fein and Labour.

After this, the only other area we had an input into was the reorganisation of committees on the northside of Dublin. I asked for time as a new councillor to consider the issues involved but the vote went ahead. And I believe the outcome was the one that the independents favoured most. So that was a good thing.

I had an emergency motion in condemning the closure of a respite ward in Cherryorchard Hospital and calling on the HSE to lift the recruitment embargo and employ the nursing staff required to keep the ward open. The practice in the council is that emergency motions will be dealt with quickly without debate. The motion on Cherryorchard was unanimously adopted. The council has no control over the HSE but it has to be worth something that the entire elected council of Dublin City has expressed its concern and wants the ward kept open. It will help our campaign for the hospital.

Another emergency motion on the Moore Street national monument was hotly debated. I am confused about this issue. I understand that the monument is safe and guaranteed in a deal done with the developers. Councillor Joan Collins worked on getting this passed last year. But another group of concerned citizens are now calling for more protection for this historic site. There are conflicting messages from different groups and it is difficult to have a clear picture. But one thing is clear from what happened here. If an emergency motion is not voted on by the time the meeting is ended, the motion falls. And this is what happened in this case.

Joan tells me that this is often used as a tactic to avoid a vote – drag the debate out until there is no time left and avoid having to take sides on the issue. This has been Joan’s experience on many occasions when she has put motions before the council on the bin tax.

Is this what “democracy” looks like?

We have the month of August free from meetings. Looking forward to the break and recharging the batteries because we will be hitting the ground running in the autumn on the Development Plan for the City and the Budget. We will be organising local public meetings on these issues to get the people engaged in these crucial issues. Looking forward to that – See you in September.

MY FIRST WEEK AS COUNCILLOR – 22nd June 2009

The response to my election victory was amazing.  I got literally hundreds of messages by text and email and of course in person. People who elected me are really delighted as I am.

Our first engagement with the council as newly elected councillors was an induction session where we met the main management team of the council and were briefed on meetings, facilities, positions etc.

Dublin City Council is a huge organisation and has a bureaucracy to match. But what alarmed me mostly was the horse-trading for positions that goes on among the elected councillors themselves.

The majority of “Independents” met briefly after the induction session. We were enlightened by more experienced councillors as to how “the system” works. Basically the majority parties work out blocks for taking positions on the council itself and the various policy committees. As a group of nine “Independents” we could have some influence in this process (we have more than Sinn Fein or Fianna Fail). So the horse-trading begins.

It was quickly apparent that the main block in the Council is Labour/Fine Gael. What struck me most was the ease with which these two groups slot in together into one power block. There is no revelation as to what policies or politics they intend to pursue – the right (Fine Gael) and the left (Labour)! Labour with the majority could have formed a block with the rest of the Left i.e. Sinn Fein and independents. But chose the right instead. Shame on them! People voted for change but got heaps more of the same.

The only thing that concerned us Newly Elected Councillors, apparently, was what Strategic Policy Committees that we as individual “Independents” want to be part of – there are six of them. Three of us choose Housing and Social Policy. Sorry NO – you can’t all be part of that one or indeed of any one. So having studied our limited choices, Joan chose Environment (she can be part of the discussions relating to bin tax and water charges). I chose Financial Policy (I want to know where the knife is going).

The real prize though is who gets the chairpersons of those committees. The position of CHAIR carries an added financial reward and you also get more access to management. Needless to say the six committee chairpersons are all but one either Fine Gael or Labour. Sinn Fein got one chair.

For what price?

For total commitment to voting with the Labour Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor position.

But I didn’t realise how total that commitment was and what other “deal” may have been done until last Monday night when we allegedly “elected” the Lord Mayor of Dublin. Before that meeting the “Independents” met again. This time we had the company of Christy Burke (formerly Sinn Fein). We again discussed the “committees” and positions on them. All of the experienced councillors were helpful in explaining the situation, in making suggestions of what boards and committees are useful and what are not.

Then Mannix Flynn told us he wanted a nomination for Lord Mayor. Joan and I indicated we would be very happy to nominate him provided he too was opposed to stealth taxes like bin charges and in the future water charges and he was and is.

But when Mannix asked for a seconder we discovered that Christy Burke had “done a deal” and was voting for the Labour nomination. Councillor Ring (Independent Fianna Fail – Whatever that means) had done a deal. Councillor Jackson said nothing. Mannix was psssss off and withdrew his proposal. So the Independents had lost their independence.

When it came to the vote in the chamber without any reference to policies or politics and only reference to membership of the Council, the sole nomination for Lord Mayor was Emer Costello of Labour. There was no discussion, no election, no hands raised in the air. Just done and dusted followed by a standing ovation.

When it came to the election of Deputy Lord Mayor and with his agreement, I nominated Mannix Flynn. I pointed out how the cosy consensus of the council chambers was in contradiction to the how the people voted and that Mannix’s nomination was to offer choice in that sea of consensus. Great – We had to have a democratic election. It was amazing. As the Manager called out each councillor’s name, one after another called out “Councillor Humphries” (the pre-arranged and agreed Labour nomination). The odd voice in the wilderness – all five of us in fact, called out “Councillor Mannix Flynn”. All of Sinn Fein, Christ Burke, Ring and even Vincent Jackson voted with Labour and not with the “Independents”.

As Mannix Flynn’s election agent sat in the Gallery and clapped she was ticked off by the porter. What a cosy consensus indeed. We were not even allowed to acknowledge the dignity of Mannix for putting his name forward in order to make the point. It felt and smelt wrong. It felt undemocratic, rotting and needing the winds of change to blow through the windows and into the council chamber.

There is more stuff to tell you about but I am off to the west for a rest. I intend to keep a daily blog on my experience as a councillor. I think everybody should know what democracy looks like so we can decide if we have enough and how we can get the change that so many thousands of us voted for. It’s worth thinking about!