Sir Humphrey Appleby Is Alive and Well and Now a Councillor for Ormskirk!

WEDNESDAY evening and to full council where there was a good turnout in the public gallery of people from Skelmersdale.

They'd decended on Derby Street - much to the surprise of many councillors and civil servants - for a number of reasons, but primarily the Skem Vision/Firbeck will-they, won't-they knock it down saga.

Now the meeting, the public part of which lasted more than 3 hours, was a pretty hot-tempered affair, no doubt due to the fact they had an audience of plenty instead of just me sitting at the back. In fact, I even had to 'push up' a few spaces for some very nice elderly ladies who couldn't believe what they were seeing.

"How do you manage to sit through this?" one of them asked half way through.
"Oh, you get used to it," I replied, before adding: "I even know which parts to nod off in it's that predictable at times!" (Only joking).

In fact, I find that the most mundane looking agenda items usually bring about the most drama and laughs. The cracker came this time when Cllr Paul Greenall stood up to address the chamber of the Review of Polling Stations.

His speech (if you can call it that) went some like this: "I'd like everyone to look at Appendix C on page 290 and you'll see it directly corresponds with the recommendation made at 9.2 on page 300 but if you actually go to Appendix A which in turn points out at page 292 in paragraph 6.1..." and so on.

The whole chamber was in uproar, both councillors and the top brass enjoying a massive belly-laugh, so much so that at one point I was frightened that the chairman's chains were in danger of whacking Bill Taylor, WLDC's extremely dapper Chief Exec, who was sitting to his left.

Great stuff and proof that Sir Humphrey Appleby, of Yes Minister fame, is alive and well and is now infact a councillor for Ormskirk's Derby Ward.

It's not the first time Cllr Greenall has brought some colour to the council chamber and he breaks the Bob Pendleton-Adrian Owens-Terry Rice-Rob Bailey-Cynthia Dereli-Geoff Roberts-Terry Aldridge-Ian Grant axis very well.

In fact there even seemed to be a few councillors who have now started to remember why they were born with tongues in their mouths and actually stood up and spoke at full council.

Some said some very quotable things, for instance Cllr Jim Kay (Tarleton, Conservative) wondered why the Labour councillors were complaining about the state of football pitches in Skem when teams in his neck of the woods owned their own pitches and "don't come to the council with their begging bowls".

But other remarks were, well, surprising and to be honest unecessary. One supposed joke from Rob Bailey (Knowsley, Conservative) was met with a deafening silence all round with many - mostly on his own side - not knowing where to put their faces.

On the whole it was more interesting listening to the public's comments of the meeting. The words "children" and "playground" were used more than once.

Unfortunately, most of the public had left by the time things started getting really interesting, but more of that later...

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