What happened at Annual Council?

The Annual Meeting of Medway Council on Wednesday 23rd May was the one meeting in the year where the public where not allowed to attend. It was solely invited guests, and so I was not able to attend.

So how do I find out what happened? Eager to discover the many goings on in the first meeting of the Council since the election, I decide the best option is to ask the person I have helped campaign since February (not yet done so). Yet suddenly, I see an account of the event pop up on the Medway Council Conservative Group blog, written by Councillor John Ward.

It seems as though Cllr Ward is becoming something of a regular now on the blog, with five posts in just over two weeks and being the only contributor to date, but in the context of this article, or otherwise, I am not complaining. Cllr Ward has given me my first insight into what actually happened at the Corn Exchange, an insight reaching beyond the official account on the Medway Council website.

Cllr Ward, who, although he is the first “friendly” to comment on this blog, was not one of the 64 people to have discovered it since it moved when my stats last updated at 15:17 yesterday, said that the “Annual Council Meeting at the Corn Exchange is a ceremonial event for Mayor-making and associated speeches” and “one thing it very definitely is not intended to be is a party political platform.” That just confirmed something which Reh told me at the count.

Cllr Ward then goes on to describe the seating arrangements. “In this years seating arrangement they formed just two incomplete rows: seven in front, six behind. There was a fair-sized gap between them and the eight Liberal Democrats (who for some reason are seated to the side rather than at the opposition end).” Now that would have been something to see. Although the mere memory of former Liberal Democrat Cllr Webber sat all on his own at the Development Control Committee session I oversaw was enough to get an idea of that picture.

The reassurance I got from Reh that there was no politics was supported by this article, almost. “Why, then, has the Labour Group’s leader (Councillor Godwin) insisted on abusing his position at these events to try to make political capital during his speech? It is not only inappropriate, it is extremely bad manners.” This, of course, is met with disapproval. “No-one among the distinguished gatherings — one at each end of the hall — appears to be at all impressed with this behaviour, even at the opposition’s guests end.”

So that’s it, my only insight into the goings on at Annual Council…

Or so I thought. Because I found out last night that one of the other Cadets was invited to the Annual Council meeting being the Medway Mayor’s Cadet for the past year (he got the good year, a Conservative Mayor, rather than the Labour Mayor with a liking for sea cadets).

He, however, is not interested too much in Politics (he did vote but he lives in a Liberal stronghold where we are the third party) and found the event “rather boring”. From the accounts so far, I can guess that if I had been there, I would have found it totally the opposite.