Forum Topic

How embarrassing

Our glorious council. https://order-order.com/2021/07/19/hounslow-council-ban-the-words-trash-and-pressurising-during-shambolic-meeting/

Mike Paterson ● 1483d14 Comments

Are we children? Must we look to the government for every tiny aspect of how we run our lives? You don't need a law to make an internal rule for No Mobiles in Council Meetings. School children shouldn't have mobiles in class either. Our society from top to bottom has been thoroughly infantilised. That's why governments, local and national alike, treat us like infants. Because we let them.

Mike Paterson ● 1472d

I have just watched this video and my blood pressure has soared into stratospheric heights.  How dare the jumped-up nobody purporting to chair this meeting coerce those speakers into changing the words they used?  Apart from anything else, she shows a lamentable lack of education by saying that the words "pressurising" and "trash" are not acceptable.  Under the circumstances, the two speakers were remarkably restrained in their responses.  In what parallel universe does she exist?  Big Brother is clearly alive and well and chairing LBH meetings!

M H Mason ● 1472d

This is a brilliant comment and I'm sure carries an element of truth.

M H Mason ● 1472d

"The law has not kept pace with technology" - perhaps good so. To expect anyone who wants to write notes on what has been said has to revert to pen or pencil and paper instead of writing notes on their mobile would be absurd.

Sue Rowe ● 1473d

There is no law banning phones during council  meetings. It is similar to children with phones in school, no law. It is clearly the fault of the goverment. If your manager phoned you one evening and said could you come in early the next day for example you cannot go to the police and take action against him as you can in some countries. The law has not kept pace with technology.

Nicholas Beard ● 1478d

I don't attend many council meetings, but I do remember the planning meeting that discussed LBH's plan to sell Brent Lea recreation ground to Floreat for a pittance. On that occasion, following complaints from the public gallery, the chair of the meeting, Cllr Bob Whatley, publicly reminded members of the committee to pay attention to proceedings and put away their mobile phones.Might one suggest that mobile phones not be used at all during council committee meetings?

John Bradley ● 1478d

It's amazing, in 20+ years I've attended hundreds of Council committee meetings and I don't recall one where I've seen any Member 'glued to their mobile phone'.At the  same time, often I heard someone addressing the committee, be it an Officer, a Councillor or a member of the public make a statement which I've immediately though "I'm sure that's not right, it's important that I check this out" and to do so I've gone on the internet either on my mobile phone or on my laptop.Of course if a member or officer sits through an entire meeting staring at their phones than that's completely unacceptable, but me thinks there's alot of exaggeration in your post Raymond.

Adam Beamish ● 1480d

Ruth Cadbury seems to spend most of her time at meetings on her mobile phone, from what I've seen

Barbara Stryjak ● 1480d

I have attended many council meetings and forum type meetings and find it the height of bad manners and contemptible to see councillors almost without exception glued to their mobile phones hidden away like school kinds with calculators in exams.In some meetings like planning one wonders if they are being guided by messages.Who knows.But given the utter contempt some councillors show towards those who bother to attend meetings as either spectators or inexperienced participants. It's about time some spoke for themselves and stopped hiding behind the cowardly objections of pointlessness to cover for their own ineptitude and ineffectiveness as local representatives.Phones should be placed on the table face down and switched to silent.

Raymond Havelock ● 1481d

No reason for Cllr Lambert to pay attention to any council meetings when all decisions are decided beforehand in private

Paul Fisher ● 1482d

If my memory serves me well Winston Churchill once called a fellow MP a: "bloody liar"; when called upon not to use unparliamentary language he apologised and called the MP a: "sanguineous perpetrator of terminological inexactitude". A spade is a spade and trashed is trashed (he says having recently spent forty minutes on a bus going along Chiswick High Road trying to get back from Hammersmith; and I approve, usually, of bike lanes).Could LBH give councillors et al. a list of proscribed words, a bit like the Vatican's proscribed books, so that we can all think correct thoughts?Am I mistaken or is that Cllr Lambert in the background paying attention to the debate by checking the messages on his mobile?

John Bradley ● 1482d

That 'dreadful chairperson' was one of our local councillors - as useless as usual I'm afraid. Facebook has so many comments about this appalling exhibition, the Chair clearly had no conception of what scrutiny entails.

Vanessa Smith ● 1483d

I had not really thought about NEWSPEAK. Of course you are right, thanks for drawing my attention to this. However what worries me is this is happening now!

Nicholas Beard ● 1483d

What an inept meeting - who was that dreadful chairperson? I have alluded in this forum in the past to Orwellain Newspeak - do the council think that banning words that make them look bad will remove individual's rights to hold them to account? Are they aware this is behaviour carried out by the worst totalitarian regimes of the 20th century?An except from the Wikipedia page on Newspeak - "Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will. Such concepts are criminalized as thoughtcrime since they contradict the prevailing Ingsoc orthodoxy."

Graham Thorpe ● 1483d