A strange meeting – Firstly, I was still recovering from one of these 24 hour flue type bugs and I was due to speak on both motions that were up for debate. But first we had a time of tributes to the late Cllr Olwen Evans. She was what I would call one of the old school of councilors who can be found in all parties and none. The type od person who put their community before their political allegiance. This came out in the tributes from all sides.

Then we had the motions. Two conservative motions, one on youth service and one on the rising cost of living for our residents. Both had a large element of self congratulation that seems to fill tory motions. I had put forward an amendment praising the staff rather than the councillors for their achievements. The tories voted against it.

On the second motion I had an amendment in calling for a re-zoning of High Barnet and New Barnet stations from Zone 5 to Zone 4. This replaced a paragraph in the original motion that called for the Council to support the Conservative ‘Live for Less’ campaign. The live for less campaign seems to amount to a website that lists other websites where you can check your utility suppliers costs and a section on not letting your “inner tosser” loose at Christmas. Well I personally don’t think Barnet should be supporting such campaign, which when it boils down to it is all whizzy graphics and zero content.

The Tories obviously not happy with this tabled a very late amendment which copied mine and added a few more stations. The difference being that they added their amendment to the end of the motion. This allowed them to vote my amendment down whilst still keeping the re-zoning clause. When we first saw it, the Lib Dem group agreed that getting the rezoning pledge was more important than worrying about the inane ‘Live for less’ paragraph so we agreed to support the motion if the tories votes voted ours down (which of course they did).

Now if you have got this far then I shall tell you the amusing sting in the tail. The tory amendment listed High Barnet, New Barnet, Edgware, Cockfosters station and a station called East Barnet. Now of course there is no East Barnet Station. In their hurry the tories hadn’t done their research. Cllr Richard Weider whose amendment it was looked extremely uncomfortable as we waited to see if his motion was ruled out of order for being incorrect. In the end he was allowed to present it as a verbal motion.