The most important meeting of Bristol City Council’s year took place this evening as the new budget was approved by councillors after a mammoth six-hour session in the Council Chamber. Despite protests, £27 million of cuts were still made in this budget, which also saw 350 council posts lost; but on her new blog, council leader Barbara Janke said that she knows that “councillors across the political spectrum all want the best for Bristol”.
As I arrived in the Council House soon after 6pm, two burly security men were escorting two people away from the public gallery. “Please make sure these two leave the building,” one of the security men said to a colleague, as even more security staff lounged around in a corridor.
They were obviously taking no chances. Without a press pass, I was unable to sit in the press seats with my mate Sam from the Evening Post, the solitary reporter in the chamber.
(The last time I was asked for a press pass and couldn’t produce one, I was thrown out of Asda in Bedminster before an album signing by Peter Andre, but that’s another story).
From the cheap seats at the back of the public gallery, I gazed up at the fresco on the ceiling as the debate continued in the chamber below. I counted 48 sailing ships and two tug boats, but I may have miscalculated.
Meanwhile, the debate was also hotting up, and not just in the real world but in the virtual world too. Around the chamber, notices reminded members to use Twitter with the hashtag #bccbudget, and so they were, including Lib Dem Jon Rogers on an iPad and Green Gus Hoyt on his iPhone, joined by many watching events unfold online.
Conservative deputy leader Mark Weston declared himself “bamboozled” at one point. He had no need for a hashtag, nor a microphone.
His Tory colleague Peter Abraham would also never join the Twiterrati, and spent much of the meeting wandering around his party’s benches, chatting and backslapping, rather like a rugby captain on the field of play, before returning to his seat to vote with one of the newfangled electronic thingamajigs.
The gentleman next to me in the public gallery interrupted a speech about twinning to protest about why the discussion was taking place at all, as it only involved a few thousand pounds. He was told to be quiet. Democracy in action as our councillors made sweeping cuts under a fresco featuring 48 sailing ships and two tug boats.
