1 October - General Purposes. Total waste of time

It is nearly nine years since I last went to a General Purposes meeting and my report of the proceedings was entitled ‘Generally dull’. Maybe that is why I stopped attending, however a BiB reader who is housebound has complained about the lack of webcasting so I volunteered to do him a favour and go to see what was being said at GP&A.

The evening did not start well with no 229 bus showing on the TfL app in the half hour following 18:19 so I decided to make the longer hike to Abbey Wood station. A few minutes later, immediately after I passed the 229 stop, one passed by.

Fortunately an SL3 turned up at the station quite quickly and I was outside the Civic Offices door at 18:59 just in time for the Community Safety meeting which began at seven. However the doors were locked and not opened until 19:11 so had that been my meeting of choice I would have been late.

The General Purposes and Audit Committee meeting was a disaster in terms of being a public meeting because the brand new wireless microphone system was not working. Maybe it is my failing but I find that unless things are reasonably loud that after concentrating on barely audible speech, I have insufficient brain power left to process the audio. I heard very little and was reminded of the old days when Mick Barnbrook complained to the Equalities Commission when the Hearing Loop didn’t function, as is the case when the microphones are not in use.

I will listen to my audio recording in a day or two but I doubt there can be any meaningful report on last night’s meeting.

It was perhaps not a complete waste of time because I had a pleasant chat with Councillors Stefano Borella, Eliot Smith, Sean Brackstone and Debbie Ryan and discovered that Debbie and I worked in the same building at the same time 45 years ago.

There will not be another General Purposes and Audit meeting until the end of January.