We had two brief full council meetings today.  The first was to decide on which of the government modernistation schemes we wanted to adopt.  It was a bit pointless as this is legislation that is a hangover from the last Labour government that will probably now never come into force.  As a City Council we don’t like either option but have a statutory duty to choose one of them at the moment.  The Greens wasted a lot of time with a ridiculous amendment trying to wreck the whole thing.  Thankfully it fell otherwise we would have risked being outside of current legal requirements on the council.  I fully expect the Greens to produce another misleading leaflet that claims that Labour and the LibDems have voted against democracy.  We’ll see.

The other council meeting (which legally had to be a separate meeting) decided on a couple of committee memberships following the Barton by-election and I’m pleased to see that our own Cllr Mark Mills is now a Lib Dem member of the appointments committee.  We also talked about e-petitions and I got an amendment accepted by the leader of the council that just clarified a few things around e-petitons and collecting validated e-mail addresses rather than actual signatures.  I was pleased to be able to  make a constructive and accepted amendment, as a member of the opposition.

After those meetings we had the Lord Mayor’s Christmas reception which is a great opportunity to invite people from local charities to meet local councillors and other dignitaries.  Councillors all get to invite a friend too so I invited Pearl Lewis, the coordinator of Oxford Street Pastors and Martyn Chalk, a neighbour and local film director, founder of Chalkstar Films.   Excellent networking opportunities were exploited to the full by all present.  The event is always a joyous occasion and it’s a great opportunity for the Lord Mayor to express his or her gratitude to all those who do so much for our City on a voluntary basis or as part of its many charities.