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…
The sound of silence
Mar 23rd
Colin Hall is rarely lost for words – particularly on Twitter.
He raised a few eyebrows when he used his account to broadcast last week’s Labour AGM. But for the second round of selections he’s been carefully toeing the party line.
So what’s prompted him to turn over a new leaf? Could it be the recent installment of no-nonsense Barbara Potter as Labour chief whip, in place of laid-back Piara Singh Clair?
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.
The fact that the story was entirely correct didn’t stop her trying to give me a stern dressing-down across the committee room.
Councillor Hall is right to be cautious…
Colin Hall scoops them all…
Mar 15th
Labour leadership night in Leicester, and what a serene affair it was too.
With a clever system of self-nomination, and a closing date well in advance of the meeting, you avoid nasty surprise challenges come party polling day.
Done and dusted in 60 minutes. I barely had time to finish a late night scotch egg and cup of coffee in the office before the Labour councillors were filing out.
I spoke to some councillors for their reaction, but we already had the results, of course, courtesy of Colin Hall’s Twitter account. Keep on going like that and we’ll be out of a job…
Three contenders. Veejay Patel – front runner, Mary Draycott – the challenger, and Manish Sood – throwing his hat into the ring. In the end he got one vote. What on earth was he up to? I still can’t figure it out. Veejay won the day, and Mary put in a fairly respectable showing. There were two spoilt ballot papers. Wonder who.
Other party positions were dished out which have little relevance to those outside the party, but are interesting nonetheless.
Barbara Potter was nominated as chief whip. One councillor gave me a call after the meeting and growled: “One of the most outspoken critics of the council on issues like market policy and road conditions is suddenly in charge of maintaining order in the party and a united front. I can’t decide whether it’s genius or madness.”
Piara Singh Clair had dropped out of the chief whip race at the last minute. “Must have been offered a cabinet position,” winked one wag on leaving the meeting. We’ll wait and see. The cabinet will be selected on March 23.
One other point, it was confidently predicted by those closest to Coun Patel last month that he had 27 cast-iron votes in the bag. He ended up with 24.
So who are the trio that deserted him at the final hurdle, and why?
