Good morning Dear Reader. Traffic to the site has spiked, which can only mean one thing. There was a full council meeting last night and people are waiting to read our humble opinion on the matter. We are touched. The roof is currently leaking at Debunking Towers and the email urchin is busy stood catching the drips so this writer can concentrate.
Last night marked the first meeting of Labour being in control of course. Which was painful to watch for many reasons, and not all of them were Labours’ fault. It didn’t start off well with the technical problems that beset the beginning of the meeting. If only the audio had remained off, for what did we have after the new Mayor Gareth Coates had taken office? A self indulgent dragged out quarter of an hour speech from outgoing Mayor John Harper, who apparently didn’t listen to his wife when she told him to keep it brief. Thankfully it is the last we shall see from John Harper politically, unless he decides to stand for Labour in a few years time, which believe it or not could be a possibility as he has before.
Once the meeting had actually started it became apparent to us that our new mole needs to be invited into our offices for a good flogging. We aren’t quite sure why the lineup of senior positions was not reported correctly to us, it’s almost as if we made up a mole to mess with Labour and just had a reasonably good guess (obligatory, or did we?). As it happens, we were surprised to see that Councillor David Foster was picked as the deputy leader of the Council, a surprise move which suggests that Carol Dean won’t actually be leading anything. Foster pronounced Dean as the first female Council leader, although we are told this was shot down by former Councillor Daniel Cook stood at the back shouting ‘Irene Davies’ who was actually the first in ‘recent’ history (Danny of course apparently being unable to accept not being part of the meetings any longer). Former MP Brian Jenkins who was sat at the back of the meeting, apparently facepalmed when Foster made this assertion. We facepalmed when we heard just how good Dean will apparently be for the town as leader. There was one person in the room who showed his displeasure at the appointment of Dean as leader, that being Charlatan Councillor Richard ‘gaslight’ Kingstone, who was the only one who voted against her appointment. Then going on to say this on Facebook since he is of course as two faced as they come.
Quite why anyone would listen to advice from Kingstone is beyond us, the man has done nothing but lie and self indulge throughout his entire political career so far. But we digress.
We were pleased to see that mostly the rest of the lineup was correct, with Councillors Ben Clarke, Sarah Daniels, Lewis Smith and Nova Arkney taking cabinet positions. Arkney being the surprise since her very first time on the Council and her very first meeting has somehow seen her rise in the ranks even over and above incumbent members of her party. We don’t imagine that has gone down well. Evidently she is following in the footsteps of MP for Moseley North (who was conspicuous in her absence) Sarah Edwards who has chosen the career path in parliament.
Councillor Chris Bain has taken on the role of Deputy Mayor, which we are seeing as a signal from him of his retirement once he has been Mayor 2025 – 2026. Again it surprises us that Bain has not taken up the baton of Deputy leader, it seems that old school Labour are very much back in business within their engorged group, and this is certainly not a good thing for Tamworth.
The substantive meeting itself was to his credit well chaired by Mayor Councillor Gareth Coates who appears to have been hiding his light under a bushel. He even made his audience laugh, and not just politely either. We do hope that Coates manages to maintain this throughout the year since Council meetings can very much be a snooze fest.
What of the Tories! We hear you cry. Well the much smaller group appeared to be resolved to the fact they are very much in opposition, apparently deciding to vote for all of the Labour induced motions for leader and Mayor. Whereas Labour were fans of abstaining on just about everything, we get the feeling the Tories are certainly not going to mess around sitting on the fence this year. It was quite funny to see the tentative glances across to the Tory side from Labour presumably expecting the Tories to play at their tricks and propose alternatives. Evidently they are fans of judging people by their own standards.
We can’t imagine it was pleasant for the Tories listening to Labour set out ‘their’ plans which were essentially to continue what the Tories had already started. No doubt we shall hear Labour taking credit for those things in meetings to come. There was certainly nothing new on the table from Labour and their only ‘achievements’ will be built on the hard work that went on before them. We do wonder how long it will be before the money in the bank that Labour told everyone on the doorstep was gone, is pissed up the wall. They do after all have to start bribing the voters now if they want a good run at control.
PS: Councillor Helen Hadley meeting attendance 1/1. Good start.
