Tuesday, February 10, 2009

State of the City Debate

Well I went, even despite the last time I went through this, I thought I should give of my best.

And I thought I should invite my OBV shadow councillor Caroline too, just in case it was useful. She left half-way through, because she said she had a Christian Prayer Group to go to, but five minutes before that she was very anticipatory about the soon to be revealed buffet, so I am not entirely convinced. I suspect she just thought it was terribly tedious!

I went into the first plenary, listened to four speakers, who were okay if I am honest but it was dark and I kept nearly nodding off, which was embarassing. I dont think it was because they were all tedious, I certainly hope it was not, but I could hardly keep my eyes open. Perhaps that was because I had been working hard all weekend? Who knows?

Then we went into workshops - I chose community safety - and we talked about how we could do more and how we could more cleverly in the face of a credit crunch to improve the situation for our residents. I thought we made some good points, especially a young black man named Addi (I think) who I thought I ought to have recruited to the Labour Party except that he rushed out of the workshop as soon as we broke up and I didn't spot him again. But I didn't hear anything new and I wonder what if any difference any of us made, even despite having the Chief Executive himself facilitating our session

Then we went back into a final plenary.

I did enjoy meeting new people but I did not hear any new views. We might need to make this very much more imaginative next time, but at least Warren had listened to me and found some women to join the front bench after last time's mysogynist efforts!

Did you go? What did you make of it?

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