Full Council was somewhat unusual last week. If you looked at the headlines of the minutes, you would have thought everything was hunky dory, tickety-boo and the two main parties agreed on everything. This didn’t cover the whole story.

After a mixed bag of questions, I proposed a motion, graciously seconded by Council Leader Sean Brennan, asking for the law to be strengthened, making the defacing of a war memorial a specific criminal offence. This follows the appalling theft of the yorkstones surrounding the Carshalton War Memorial just before Remembrance Sunday. A stonemason Samaritan stepped in to replace the stones allowing 250 people to commemorate the fallen. The police apprehended the thief. Anyway, the motion was passed and a clear signal was sent by the Council.

The second motion was moved by my colleague Barry Russell, asking for the Union flag to be flown daily above the Civic Offices and the Mayor to sit under the Borough Coat of Arms rather than the European Flag. An exchange of emails between Barry and Cllr. Tope raised the hoary issue of Health & Safety as the wall above the Mayor contains asbestos within the Artex. Despite this, since there seemed to be a willingness to get this change made, we amended the motion to allow further investigation of costs etc. Failing this, I’m sure one or two of our larger councillors can do the heavy lifting with the requsite safety equipment. I’ll cover the LibDem motions in the next post which should have been straightforward but became flashpoints despite the fact that we all agreed in the end.