Conservatives called on the council to celebrate the coronation of King Charles with a programme of inclusive events “to mark this historic occasion and to foster civic pride”.
But Labour said that Brighton and Hove was not “particularly over-stuffed with royalists” and the council should not be paying for something like this during the “cost of living crisis”.
One Tory councillor said that the Queen’s funeral gave the economy a boost – notably the retail sector – and that the council should consider the potential benefits of the coronation of Charles III.
A senior Green said that Brighton and Hove City Council planned to waive fees for road closures if people wanted to hold street parties as they did for Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee.
The call for the council to give civic leadership came in a motion proposed by a former mayor of Brighton and Hove, Conservative councillor Dee Simson.
She asked for backing at a meeting of the council’s Tourism, Equalities, Communities and Culture Committee at Hove Town Hall yesterday (Thursday 12 January).
Councillor Simson said that she remembered the coronation of Elizabeth II, in June 1953, and said that residents and community groups would be starting to organise events.
She said: “There are going to be thousands of people. There’ll be street parties and many types of civic events. It would be impossible for the mayor or deputy mayor to attend all the events organised.”
Fellow Conservative councillor Samer Bagaeen said that thousands of people celebrated the platinum jubilee last year – and if people wanted to celebrate the coronation, the council should support them.
He said that the Queen’s funeral boosted the local economy and added: “There will be economic benefits, not necessarily costs. We can’t keep looking at costs without looking at the benefits.
“We can’t get the benefits unless we spend a little bit of money.”
Green councillor Steph Powell said that fees for road closures were likely to be waived and that the council would collate applications for street parties planned for the coronation bank holiday weekend.
Labour said that the council should support and promote events organised by the mayor’s office or attended by the mayor or deputy mayor.
Labour councillor Amanda Evans said that Brighton and Hove was not “particularly over-stuffed with royalists” – but thousands would want to celebrate and were welcome to do so.
She likened the motion to a Tory plea last year to fund a statue of the Queen to mark her platinum jubilee.
Councillor Evans said: “I just don’t think the city will thank us in the middle of a ‘cost of living crisis’ when people can barely afford to heat their homes or eat half the time.
“I don’t think they’d thank us for paying for a full programme of civic events.”
Fellow Labour councillor Amanda Grimshaw said that she attended the Queen’s funeral commemorations and had a train ticket booked for the coronation as a historian interested in the nation’s royal history.
She said: “There is a long tradition in this country of celebrating coronations and jubilees. I’m quite sure prior to this period of time people managed to celebrate without having council funding.
“Let’s go ahead and celebrate if you want but we cannot possibly condone taking money from the council purse when we have children starving and nurseries being closed.”
The committee voted to support events organised by the mayor’s office and events to be attended by the mayor or deputy mayor – but against the council organising a programme of events itself.
The coronation is due to take place on Saturday 6 May. The Children’s Parade that marks the start of the Brighton Festival usually takes place on the first Saturday in May but this year it has been moved to Sunday 7 May. Monday 8 May has been declared an extra bank holiday.
The monarchy is worth £28 billion, while many of its “subjects” are queueing at food banks, and cannot afford to heat their homes, and about 500 people are dying each week, due to underfunding of the NHS. Why should any of us care about the greedy and dysfunctional family? It would be a huge waste of public money to celebrate the coronation. But no doubt the Greens will provide plenty of vanity projects to mark the occasion.
There seem to be several strands to this article – so let’s start at the beginning:
So, and unusual for B&H News, the article starts with vague anonymities (no names!), as though possibly based on a City council press-release – as it’s par for the course for our Council to offer us taxpayers as little objective information as it thinks it can get away with!
Which it can’t, the stupids in the Town Hall seem to have forgotten the public words of Tony Blair, as his Premiership was drawing to a close, to the effect that: ‘Spin has become counter-productive!’.
But presumably the turkeys in our council’s over-stuffed spin-doctoring Communications Team are not going to vote for a Christmas of being made redundant?
All at the Town Hall, including our Councillors, need to wake-up to the fact that, over the past almost 26 years since the 1997 municipal merger, the multiple negative actions of our City council have so angered almost every one of us that the time for sweet words has long gone – it’s the actuality of solid serious professional work to bring our City and its public services back into the reasonably respectable shape we once had, and for which we pay ever-increasing amounts of Council Tax, in addition to the various rivers of tax-money sent to us by Whitehall (of which, very sadly, we seem to mis-apply or waste a large proportion!) which is urgently needed?
Happily the article does go on to name names – which will leave some readers wondering about the extent to which the Tory proposals are based on true patriotism, or for electoral propaganda ahead of the council elections in May?
Which, very regrettably, flags-up the apparent ineptitude of all of our Councillors at that TECC committee meeting on Thursday.
How so? Well, due to the words of the committee chair-person to the effect that: “… fees for road closures were likely to be waived …”.
Sorry, Councillors; “Likely” is simply NOT good enough – you should all have voted unanimously on Thursday to definitely not take any fees for road closures, surely?
Street parties are almost always organised by a handful of public-spirited souls, working to a shoe-string of a budget, and these noble people need certainty at the earliest possible date – which should have been last Thursday, if our Councillors had not been asleep at the wheel!
Additionally; street closures often involve the need for a few of those waist-high metal crowd barriers, which seem to get trucked-in for major events (or does our Council actually own a stock of them for local use?) so, and bearing in mind the alleged tightness of the council’s finances, Councillors should have gone the extra mile to say that street parties would also be lent crowd barriers, free-of-charge including delivery to the street, if requested by a given date (as nationally such barriers are likely to have all been rented-out ahead of the Coronation).
And where to look for economies to help fund such simple support to our communities?
Well, let’s start by allocating £500 from the £1k annual funding each ward gets for its Councillors to use ‘For the common good’, perhaps? And at our Annual Council the time has probably come to replace the giving of extravagantly expensive large bouquets of short-lived cut flowers (often flown here from around the world), with something such as a personalised large-ish framed civic medallion, which can be hung on one’s wall for evermore?
Just saying …. Doubtless other readers have many ideas as to where a few thousands for street party fees and barriers can be found?