Leicester Mercury Political correspondent
Posts tagged Colin Hall
A Royal engagement
Jul 14th
A list of Lord Mayor Colin Hall’s weekly engagements has just arrived on my desk.
Thursday 22nd July:
10:00 - Lord Mayor & Guests - Buckingham Palace Garden Party
Stay away from Prince Philip, he’ll only be a bad influence.
The Soothsayer
Jul 2nd
On Sunday Lord Mayor Colin Hall used his Twitter account to warn the Mercury to expect a “fiery week”.
If I was Coun Hall, I’d put a lottery ticket on this weekend, because he clearly has the power to see into the future:
- On Monday his attack post against me and the newspaper was pulled by council bosses.
- On Tuesday his trousers fell down in front of a library full of schoolchildren.
- On Wednesday the story made international headlines.
- On Thursday the leader of the opposition said he had undermined the historic office.
A ‘fiery week’ indeed. Have a good weekend everyone, and I’ll be back on Wednesday.
Belt-gate: 24 hours later, a ten word statement
Jul 1st
One of my contacts tipped me off yesterday about a development in the pants-down controversy of Lord Mayor Colin Hall.
A brief text said simply: “The Lord Mayor ignored advice from civic staff to wear belt. They had even bought him one.”
I approached the city council’s press office with the claim at 3pm yesterday. They responded just before 3pm today with the following response:
“We have no further comment to make on this matter.”
That’s a ten word statement which took 24 hours to prepare.
In other news, the council’s desperate hunt for inefficient non-frontline services to cut continues…
Wardrobe malfunction
Jun 30th

It doesn’t just happen to international superstars, it happened to our very own Lord Mayor yesterday.
Lord Mayor has attack blog post pulled
Jun 28th
I called the press office this morning asking for a copy of the guidelines that councillors operate under when posting to their council blogs.
The link to his controversial post now leads to a 404 page.
A council spokesman said:
“We have temporarily removed the entry to allow us to discuss these issues with him away from the glare of current publicity.”
More follows…
Just how urgent was Colin’s urgent item?
Jun 25th

This week Lord Mayor Colin Hall decided that a motion, put forward by a fellow Labour councillor, was so urgent that it simply had to be added on to the agenda.
Adding an urgent item incurs the extra expense of printing and distributing details of that item. Last-minute additions also put opposition councillors at a disadvantage as they have less time to prepare a response.
This motion was about the budget – a serious issue which will affect the people of Leicester. But it wasn’t a motion to change council policy, or help the authority prepare for tough Tory cuts. Instead it was nothing but a bit of political posturing from newbie Virginia Cleaver, to rally the Labour troops. One eye on the local elections, which are just 11 months away, perhaps?
It read:
“Leicester condemns this coalition budget, for millions of families this is a budget from hell. The combination of a sharp and unfair rise in VAT, the callous freezing of child benefit and the deepest cuts on our public services will be a hammer blow to lower and middle income families.
“This budget is totally unnecessary by cutting the deficit further and further this budget flies in the face of all economic logic and will lead to slower growth and higher unemployment. Freezing child benefit has all the hallmarks of the same Tories of the 80’s and 90’s”
Questions must be asked as to why Coun Hall, a politician who is supposed to be apolitical for his year of office, felt that it was so urgent and vital to council business.
He also voted for it. Bear in mind that Lord Mayors often decline to cast their vote on overtly political matters due to their position of impartiality.
Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come…
She’s a tough-talker, alright, and gave me the hairdryer treatment at Monday’s scrutiny meeting about a story in that day’s Mercury.
I spoke to some councillors for their reaction, but we already had the results, of course, courtesy of