An away-day feeling

And so I say farewell...

FITTINGLY for the final council meeting of the municipal year it turned into something of an away day; away with three councillors, away with Labour on £15,000 jaunts — and away with me.

And was the Mayor away with the fairies when it came to turning off his microphone to let everyone else speak or was that, after 12 months in the chair, a plaintive plea for a bit of peace and quiet?

But there is no peace at the final meeting of the year. The place to be, though, is with the fly on the wall at the pre-meeting meetings, when councillors concoct questions to ask one another to make their group look like the best thing since sliced bread, curling at the edges a bit.

What they should do is just plant one question: “Can the leader tell us, the opposition and especially the reporters in the corner, how brilliant we have been this year and how we deserve electing next year so that we can continue to enjoy these allowances, especially as we’ve got an expensive holiday planned in June.”

But no, such honesty is not politics, so we get questions that are little more than commercial breaks — no music and no frisky pets, though.

If you take all of that electioneering out of a three and half hour meeting (actually it felt like half a day) what were we left with? Well, there was big Howard, still smarting at criticism that he and his cabinet and council staff had spent £5,000 on an away day in Worsley (Worsley: why there, for heavens sake?) had done his homework and discovered that despite the indignation of Labour at such frivolous spending, they had actually spent £15,000 on out-of-the civic centre away days when they were in charge.

What’s that about politicians being all the same?

But we did have an interval. Well, less of an interval than an outbreak of malignant chaos. Jean Jones wanted to make a point of order, or was it a point of explanation, or was it a point of no return? You could lose the will to live.

Charlie tried to solve the problem by quoting the rules but as Jean’s real problem was that she didn’t know the rules, it was no help. The Mayor called for a five minute “comfort break” asking Jean and Labour group leader Jim McMahon to “approach the bench”, he’s clearly watching too much daytime TV.

What was it all about? I haven’t a clue.

Labour thought they were on a winner - or at least a consolation goal - revealing that the sneaky Lib-Dems had taken £500,000 out of a pot of money intended to be spent across the areas.

But it wasn’t a slush fund or to pay the annual pie bill but had been used for gritting. No scandal there, more’s the pity.

Mohammed Massud, who has a fabulously theatrical voice - a cross between Olivier and Peter Sellers playing an Asian doctor - heaped praise and much blessings on his leader for building new homes in St Mary’s after the despicably wicked Labour lot had made a mess of it.

Dave Hibbert, who has been pretty quiet of late, said that the collapse of the initial housing plan wasn’t Labour’s fault because the company had gone bust.

But Howard Sykes let fly with a snappy: “So we’re all in it together when something goes wrong under Labour but when it goes wrong for us, we’re bobbins.” Lovely word, bobbins, but what does it mean?

We finished what felt like a marathon session with a sharp reminder that councillors these days are feeling their age.

Keith Pendlebury, forced to rush a worthy resolution on Greater Manchester Police, was told that he had 30 minutes by the Mayor.

“I can’t do 30 minutes,” said Keith forlornly and the Mayor, sympathetic to the last, replied in understanding, agony-aunt tones: “Well, let’s go as far as we can.”I think we had done that. Farewell