23 July (Part 1) - Not the Place report
Last night we had the Places Scrutiny Committee attended by, at its peak,
four members of the public and about 21 councillors. With committees of this
size Teresa O’Neill will never be able to
reduce the number of councillors to 42
as she keeps promising voters at election time.
The new committee is close to being the old Environment and Leisure combined
with Public Realm and the chair has passed from a woman for whom lying is a way
of life to a man who can happily stand in a court witness box making up a story
he knows, and the documented evidence showed, is just a figment of his imagination.
The chairmanship fell a little short of the standards set by
James Hunt
(People) and Steven Hall
(Resources) but at least there was no sign of the aggression that characterised
Public Realm meetings in the past. It was unfortunate that from the public
area everyone was clearly audible except for chairman Melvin Seymour. He
usually remembered to switch his microphone on but made no consistent effort
to speak into it and there may have been technical problems too. A pity because
in other respects the meeting ran well enough with some interesting facts coming
from senior council officers.
However those facts - assuming they are, I have difficulty reconciling Toni Ainge’s
400,000 visitors a year to Lesnes Abbey with what I see by living opposite the main gate - are going
to have to wait until tomorrow because there will not be time to produce a full report today. I have a
dental appointment, there’s another council meeting this evening, and I really must gather some fruit from the
garden before the parakeets nick it all.