September 2025

The Full Council meetings since the summer have been downright depressing.

There was a meeting on Local Government Reorganisation (2nd Sept )

<a href="http://<a href="http://Youtube pm

<a href="http://<a href="http://Youtube am Comment on city at about 1’15

The leading group voted with Tories to put Rushcliffe with north Notts,  and Gedling and Broxtowe with the City. There was a lot of awful stuff said about the City, by everyone including the Broxtowe Independents. Everyone (including senior Labour leaders locally) are kicking the City to improve their own political position. I wont play that game, and I honestly believe that the current plan (putting us with Ashfield and Mansfield rather than the City) will be worse for West Bridgford in the long run. Rushcliffe Tories have led us down the same bad path in my opinion. The only good news is that this required Reform to make a decision, which then annoyed some of their voters.  In the meantime the County Labour Group got thanks from the City Labour Group and the City Labour Group wrote an open letter to County Councillors calling out their lies and misinformation about the City.

There was then a full council meeting (18th Sept), which was also annoying.

<a href="http://<a href="http://Youtube pm amendment at about 1’50; our motion at about 3’00

<a href="http://<a href="http://Youtube am

The Tories brought a motion on flooding which suggested that local knowledge was better than using “experts”. We tried to tidy that up to ask the Council to provide a route to capture local knowledge for the experts. This change was generally agreed (although the original author did say they were sorry they couldn’t be so “sophisticated” in their writing, which I think was meant as a dig at the Labour group). However, we also added a few words which noted that flooding is increasing because of house building and climate change. We were told by Tories and Reform that this was “politicising” the motion. Depressing comments about climate change followed, and as a result our amendment fell.

We then brought a motion on allowing 20 mph limits where residents want them. To support this motion, I had arranged a number of petitions from our group calling for this in particularly neighbourhoods, and we were inadvertently supported by many other councillors who had done the same thing by chance. But of course the motion was voted down as “political overreach”. I was variously told that I was trying to impose this on everyone, that it was not going to help rural residents where speeds are faster than 30 mph, that it was already available (it isn’t.. it is against Council policy), and that I was in effect a nasty commie wanting to dictate people’s lives.

One positive point was that there was a question about vaccinations from Reform that was answered sensibly.

After this meeting we had the Rushcliffe meeting, so all in all It was a depressing day.

More generally, the Council is now having regular meetings, and more of them are at Oak House which is not suitable in many regards (although I love the 3s bus drivers who will stop and drop you off or even pick you up if they see you walking apparently in the middle of nowhere there!). The new councillors have a lot to learn but Reform do seem to have a policy of not doing much – not rocking the boat. We need to call them out of this.

As a group we have now arranged to meet the unions before every full council meeting to make sure we can ask questions guided by their members concerns about staff conditions and residents’ services.