Read them and understand them (61/365)

[white_hart]

I'm sure most of you will have encountered the Handforth Parish Council video and its many spinoffs (including sea shanty, trailer for a political thriller and indie band) a few weeks ago. For anyone who didn't, this was a video of a meeting of a parish council in Cheshire where a senior local government official who had been called in to support the meeting amid accusations of bullying behaviour by some councillors dealt admirably with the troublemakers, which ended up becoming a viral sensation. Probably the most-quoted phrase was "YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY HERE, JACKIE WEAVER!" (shortly before the speaker was removed from the meeting for disruptive behaviour), but only slightly behind was "READ THE STANDING ORDERS. READ THEM AND UNDERSTAND THEM!", which, for obvious reasons, is now the automatic response to any mention of our standing orders at work.

However, there are problems with actually reading the standing orders. For instance, discovering that representatives of a particular should have been invited to attend a particular meeting and have not, in fact, been invited to do so since 2013...

Comments

[cmcmck]

Reminded me of the student politics of my youth although I think e were slightly more grown up than that obnoxious guy!

[white_hart]

I don't think anyone in my student politics days even knew what standing orders were! And we were generally more good-natured.

[machiavellijr]

Oh good, it's not just me finding that out. It's not alarming at all that a fairly major committee dealing with very substantial sums of money has technically not been quorate since 2015, is it? Or that a certain Bursar, who shall remain nameless but it's probably the one you're thinking of and no I don't know where his dried frog pills are either, has failed to be re-elected to an external body and blithely kept turning up to meetings as its representative for the past three years.

[white_hart]

Honestly, I swear that sometimes the standing orders change when we aren't looking at them! Though really I suspect that it's because they are so long there is a tendency to miss details. And sometimes things change and we forget to update the standing orders, so they're wrong... (I did once only discover that one of our standing committees wasn't mentioned in the standing orders when we abolished it and I went to take it out.)

[danieldwilliam]

I have quite a lot of sympathy for the general view that Jackie Weavers don't have any authority and that the standing orders should be followed.

[white_hart]

The standing orders should definitely be followed, but while the clerk may not have authority, they definitely have a responsibility to ensure the meeting is run according to proper procedure. Which I think includes ejecting people who are trying to disrupt the meeting, even where they are members of the committee.

[danieldwilliam]

That is a fair comment.