Have a goat day tomorrow!

 

It's the Chase Park fair in Whickham tomorrow. We will have some of our goats there tohelp raise funds for the park. So pop in and have a goat day. 12pm to 4pm.

Pride inside instead

 

One of Reform's first decisions on taking control of Gateshead Council was to ban the flying of the Pride flag. This was expected. Reform council groups are known for the robotic way they take their instructions from their party HQ. Most other ruling Reform groups banned the flag. We weren't however, going to accept this lying down. If we can't have the flag flying outside the Civic Centre, we would have it inside instead. To be more precise, we flew the flag in the council chamber after the council meeting yesterday. All three opposition parties - Lib Dems, Labour and Greens - took part in the flag waving. No one from Reform joined us!

Replacing a one party state with another

Gateshead now has a Reform administration. With 38 out of 66 seats, they are sitting on a majority of 10 in the council chamber. That may change on 9th July when a by-election is held in High Fell following the resignation of Reform Councillor Danielle Cavanagh. She managed 11 days as a councillor before throwing in the towel and sparking a by-election costing anywhere between £16K and £25K. At last week's annual council meeting, 7 Reform councillors were away in Turkey at a wedding. That brought Reform's majority down to a perilous 2. Knowing so many of their own side were away sunning themselves or writing resignation letters, Reform wanted the opposition to abstain in the vote for the leader and deputy leader of the council. An inducement was offered - the mayoralty and a number of committee chairs. This was rejected by the opposition. As Lib Dem Leader of the Opposition Ron Beadle said at the annual meeting, what was on offer was a sordid deal aimed at saving the prospective Reform leadership from falling over the edge of a cliff.

In the end, despite Reform absences, the Reform leader and deputy leader election saw both elected with a majority of 2. An interesting skin-of-their-teeth scenario. It could have been so different. Reform could have agreed as a point of principle that there should be a fair share out of the committee chairs. Instead, they took everything for themselves once they knew their leader was elected. They claimed that the people of Gateshead had voted to give them full power and all the chairs. They had, however, taken only 37% of the vote. The combined opposition won 63%.

This reminded me of the days of Labour rule in Gateshead. It appears that a one party state has been replaced by another.