Second March Report

Quite a lot has happened since the budget earlier this month.  These reports are getting more rambling I think but I am working on the basis of write them fast and get them done.

NFFC

It looks like they are staying up which is good news for lots of reasons but mainly because I think it means less messing about on the planning application that is currently in on City ground.

James managed to finally get a meeting with the Borough, and the travel and planning consultants for Forest. This was very useful as we found out that at last there are people taking a systematic approach to trying to resolve the football traffic issues. We did submit thoughts on the proposed planning application for the City Ground to Rushcliffe (which Ill upload on this site later), but there are other issues, such as the effects on the various boat clubs, and telecoms which need sorting.

Adult Social Care

There was an Adult Social Care meeting last week. I learnt that more than 50% of young and older adults in care in Nottinghamshire come from outside Nottinghamshire (which could include the City). This is another reason we need a sensible outcome to LGR.

Roads

What can I say? James is running a campaign on this. The increased use of Viafix (that’s the black gunk they stick in a hole for a very quick and messy looking repair) is causing huge upset. But I understand why it is being used right now. It is meant to a temporary emergency repair to make the road surface safe in the short term- which is very important especially if you cycle! The trouble is it doesn’t last and leads to further damage to the road if they cant get back to do a proper fix soon. In the meantime, the County have put out the list of projects for the next couple of years. West Bridgford and West Bridgford North have done very badly indeed I think. I want to do the maths at sometime but if someone beats me to it please let me know!

Full Council

Last week the County Chief Executive called a meeting of group leaders, probably with the aim of calming the meetings down (spoiler alert.. it didn’t work). However it made me realise that before the election Kate Foale (previous group leader) used to speak to the Tory leadership before meetings, so I tried this approach for the latest meeting and it was useful in some ways as you will see.

The meeting started with the room being rearranged, because for some reason the press had been moved from inside the room to up in the gallery. This might have been because previously they sat behind us so we could direct points to them in speeches! Anyway, this meant there was a point of order before we even sat down, and the Chair, which is really quite like a bad tempered head mistress, not at all even handed, got all hypersensitive, flustered and upset.

There has been a reshuffle in the cabinet because partly because one councillor seems to have been “pushed” out (maybe) and because Reform have realised that they need deputy cabinet members. Because of the gender make up of their group this has inevitably led to male dominated council leadership. One of the Labour Councillors raised this, accepting that little else was possible given the make up of their group, and noting that the two women cabinet members were both on Communities and Public Health. These are quite nuanced points and this led to a row, and most shockingly a reform councillor (who had previously been a Liberal Democrat), said something like “we don’t need EDI hire, as this will lead to people like XXX”. I won’t name XXX as this story is too upsetting, but this person is a senior Front Bench Minister from an Afro-Caribbean background. He was actually sitting between two ethnic minority Reform councillors and I felt sick on their behalf and on his behalf. If you really want to listen it is at about an hour and half in on the Youtube recording for the morning.

There was also a report on Council pay. I’m pleased to note that pay inequality in the County (i.e. the ratio of highest to lowest pay) has fallen and this is largely because of the Government’s increase in the minimum wage etc. However, it turns out that everyone on grades 2, 3, 4 and 5 are all being paid the same, which must be very demoralising for the lowest paid staff, and probably explains why the County has a problem with too many agency staff.

Our motion on Speech and Language Training was discussed next. As a result of premeeting discussions between groups, Reform amended our motion, frankly improving it, resulting in it being a shared Labour/Reform motion. This led to a positive debate and resulted with the motion being passed unanimously, which was a great success. I will try more cross party working in future as it is important that we actually get things through that really matter to residents, rather than things being voted down just on party lines.

Next we discussed the Tory motion against a mooted tourist levy from Mayor Claire. Weirdly Reform voted against – which meant their leader had to expend quite a lot of political capital with his group to get this voted down. It is worth noting that during this vote, Reform were proud to say “Redistribution of wealth is not the reform way”. We also voted it down but disappointingly the (far left) Broxtowe Independents voted with the Tories. They said taxes should come from multimillionaires etc. However localism is fundamental to my socialism, and at the moment all councils are completely ham strung with no ability to invest in their areas. If the Mayor can raise £1-2 per from people coming here to spend the night this gives her a way to start to invest in new ideas.

At one point in this discussion someone accidentally said one of the Reform councillors was ex Labour (many of them are ex something!). This led to lots of childish banter and then the chair said “you owe him an apology”. I don’t think that was a all even handed or fair. I tried to call her out politely but I wont bother to be polite in future.

Childish and fundamentally unpleasant sums it up in my mind at least.

Finally Keep Britain Tidy campaign has asked us all to do litter picking. If anyone wants to come out with me let me know as the place is filthy (particularly north of the river!)