We are half way through a very strange day for Party Politics from my vantage point. A day that doesn’t appear to show Party Politicians in their best light, although I admit as I wrote yesterday, I am no fan of Party Politics. Over the next few hours Parliamentarians will gather in one of the most costly meeting halls in the country. Instead of discussing Government Business, their debate today will be on a subject chosen by backbench MPs. This is a vital aspect of our Parliamentary processes, inevitably there are many issues that the Government does not want to spend time debating, and often the Government is wrong! However on this occasion the Government is certainly not wrong and indeed it would be strongly criticised if it tabled the business that will be discussed today. A small number of Conservative backbench MPs want the August Bank Holiday to be named after Margaret Thatcher, and so in this very expensive venue our money will be spent on a debate to decide if a Bank Holiday should be named after our most recently buried ex-Prime Minister. It seems inconceivable that this will ever be endorsed by this government, let alone any others in the future. There is no doubt that the work of Margaret Thatcher will be remembered and assessed for decades to come. However with 8 Bank Holidays in England and Wales each year, and 5 named after dates that are historical, there are 3 which are essentially nameless. To attach the name of a Politician who is reviled in some quarters as much as she is revered in others seems to show how out of touch Politicians such as Peter Bone are. If his proposal was adopted, one can imagine a few Socialists wanting to name the Bank Holiday at the beginning of May (we used to call it May Day) after a Socialist hero (perhaps Keir Hardie). That would leave the late May holiday for the other 99% of society to call their own. This is the way of madness and it is sad that these men and women want to use some of the limited amount of public money we can afford to spend on our democracy to debate this crazy idea.

A few hours ago as I wrote yesterday the three Political Parties which make up the Council in the City of Brighton & Hove debated the annual budget. By the end of the night, as I understand it from twitter, a compromise budget was proposed. The Greens believe that 4.75% increase is needed to fund the necessary spending on social care, the Conservatives claim that all of the needs could be met from a 0% increase, and the Labour Party suggest that we can afford 2% and any more which would trigger an expensive referendum would be too much.  The compromise was 2% or the Labour Party figure, which was not surprisingly trumpeted by Labour tweeters. However by the end of the evening the Greens proposed and managed to vote through a decision to delay the decision by a week. This proposal must have been supported by a number of Councillors from other parties. However the tweets criticising the Greens were numerous. The sadness here was that Parties had not managed to work together to come up with a budget that all could support as many of us had asked at an earlier public meeting to discuss the budget. There will now need to be yet another meeting (again involving cost to the public purse) to try to find final agreement, let us hope that in time a budget is agreed as the alternative is the Government imposing its ideas on us.

One of those tweeting their derision following the final outcome is a prospective councillor in my area. I have been following  Michael Leissner in order to determine if he is someone I could vote for. His tweets responded to the news with “what is it with the Greens? Can’t they deal with responsibility? Residents are seriously p… off. I am too” Because I had spent the last few days explaining to people about the Council meeting and the decisions at stake, I felt I had the confidence to point out that Michaels optimism that residents were even aware that there was a meeting taking place was a bit misplaced. My response to him was “it is very naive to assume that most residents even know that a meeting has taken place” after a couple more tweets in which we discussed if Coldean residents (where he lives) are unusual in having knowledge about the meeting and how many knew, he responded with “it is based on my love to this area. Don’t give me your politics. A councillor serves!” It seems very revealing that as one of a number of local men and women who will spend the next year knocking on doors in order to attract voters that Michael and some of his colleagues are not at all interested in understanding our views as residents, but they want to explain their own views and then ask us to elect them, claiming that this is a form of service. This attitude along with the debate involving people like Peter Bone in Parliament today, and the leaders of our three parties in the City Council last night is perhaps is at the heart of the malaise affecting Party Politics in our nation. Sadly the cure is a bit harder to find!