Are your Zoom meetings ever like this? Parish Council meeting descends into chaos

[chomalungma]

There is some awful behaviour on here.

It breaks down badly at 4 minutes.

I've been on zoom now and then. How can you actually kick anyone off anyway unless you are the one holding the meeting.

Also, I thought she was brought in because of the lack of meetings and the chaos. And even if she doesn't have 'authority' what right did they have to speak to her like that. It would've been a different story if she'd been a man.

[quote Roussette]@HerselfIndoors

As I understand it, anyone can attend these meetings. In our village they are advertised in our newsletter and you can go to them.

If anyone on here has watched 'This Country' with Daisy May Cooper and her brother (funniest series EVER on iPlayer, cant recommend it enough), you should know this is what village life is like![/quote]
Where I worked the meetings were public, every first Monday of the month. Occasionally there would be extraordinary meetings, usually because some outsider had bought a house and wanted to alter it in some way. For some reason someone born and bred in the village was welcome to have an extension but if you were an outsider you were being outrageous to expect to do such a thing. I would have to remind them that they had let Betty have the exact same extension nextdoor so couldn't really use their objections six months later for the exact same thing.

The chairman was refusing to hold the meeting and trying to sabotage it. He was neither host nor co-host of the zoom though. There must have been enough of the councillors who wanted to have a meeting to have a quorum so the chairman could be overruled. I think I'll read the minutes a pp provided a link to.

BBC Womans Hour interview with Jackie Weaver.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0964vr8

ancientgran Oh yes, I know all about that! I think we've been accepted now that we're over 20 years here

Oh gosh. I belly laughed all the way through this. Much much needed! No one could have scripted that better!

I don’t know who has the authority to sanction these abusive men bit I really hope someone does.

Friend (does heaps of volunteering including as secretary for lots of groups) worked as clerk for parish council for a couple years & said it was a terrible experience for jumped up little Napoleans, obstructive thinking & regulation fanatics. Sadly this vid is exactly how she described the situation.

I wouldn't know if JW ("Britney Spears") was in her rights here, but honestly, what toddlers some of the others.

David Allen Green's legal take on it:

Did Jackie Weaver have the authority? – the law and policy of that Handforth Parish Council meeting
davidallengreen.com/2021/02/did-jackie-weaver-have-the-authority-the-law-and-policy-of-that-handforth-parish-council-meeting/

@JackieweaverhasALLtheauthority

Correct. Any cllr not attending a meeting for 6 months is disqualified. The only reason the whole council were not disqualified is because they held a meeting in August, to suspend the Clerk for doing his job and advising said Cllr they were not disqualified

It’s a sad reflection of the bullying that goes on in this sector, and there is a lot

But do they have a point even if they made it very badly? If she isn't a Councillor and isn't the parish clerk what authority does she have to kick elected Councillors out a council meeting?

She's apparently a senior officer who was brought in for the meeting because there were such serious problems with this council.

For anyone who wants to know if Jackie Weaver did have authority, here's legal commentator David Allen Green blog piece davidallengreen.com/2021/02/did-jackie-weaver-have-the-authority-the-law-and-policy-of-that-handforth-parish-council-meeting/

As a governance professional I found the whole thing very funny. JW was 100% in the right for her actions, the aggression was completely unacceptable and I wasn't surprised it was the men doing it.

They were just bullying her in a gang, literally shouting her down, what a horrid bunch of old men. The legal situation clear, if you read around what happened - what a shambolic public display of this group's disarray.

They were so disrespectful, rude, attacking her competence personally, I'm glad their behaviour is public and clear for all to see.

There is NO WAY they would have spoken to her like that if she was a man.

It’s scary to think that these misogynist twats might have any input locally, minor as that may be.

Also I want to show off my new user name.

@Roussette

ancientgran Oh yes, I know all about that! I think we've been accepted now that we're over 20 years here

We'll never be accepted as my husband is BAME but when you live somewhere where the neighbours think it is a major expedition to go 15 miles to the nearest city how could they ever be expected to accept him. Although to be fair the councillors on the local planning committee are ace. Our lovely neighbours objected to us having a sky dish and a shed, we didn't realise that you needed to get permission for them as we had moved from an area where you didn't.

A party of councillors visited, it was like a day out as they arrived in their minibus. How they laughed when they were telling me the neighbour didn't have planning permission for his shed and sky dish. They gave us retrospective permission and one of the councillors asked the clerk to make a note that they needed to write to the neighbours telling their didn't have permission for theirs. I so hope they were hiding behind the fence listening.

I am desperate to move back to a city.

A few months ago there was a poster on here who said that since WFH she had heard the way her DH spoke to his team and it had changed her view of him as he never came across like that at home.

I can imagine a wife listening to this meeting and coming to a similar conclusion.

Or their mother.

And the fact that this kind of behaviour is likely repeated up and down the country is frightening.

It’s time that entitled, misogynists are firmly booted back to the 50s where they belong.

Already there are memes

ancientgran great story! Hope your NDNs were suitably mortified.

I love it here, it's just pretty and lovely walks during lockdown etc. However.... I do not get involved in any petty village politcs and keep myself to myself, very much so. There are some lovely kind people here too.

I love that Reddit has a JackieWeaver subreddit.

JackieWeaver we salute you.

To be fair I have to say one of the female councillors on the Parish Council where I was clerk was as bad as any of the men, the other woman was nice as were a couple of the men. I think the problem is the nice ones move on as who needs to put up with that? I was quite well paid, I came in as the previous two clerks hadn't been able to get the accounts passed as they were such a mess so I sorted them out and got them approved by the auditors so they didn't want to lose me and doubled my money. It still wasn't worth it.

This is like an episode of W1A! Comedy sketch writers could not do a better job.

Seriously though, the behaviour of the men was pretty appalling and Jackie Weaver and the other women at least seemed measured and reasonably competent.

How on earth has this reached the Daily Mail and You Tube though? Isn't it some sort of massive breach of confidentiality?

@Lweji

Same sort of mentality as the other thread about elderly people having a go on Facebook about people not clapping for Captain Tom.

That has been taken down as probably untrue.

A version of it was definitely true. A bloke did put a moaning post on the parish council Facebook page saying he was disappointed in the number of people in the area out clapping for Capt. Tom.

Some people said they had clapped but were also disappointed in numbers. Others said they didn't know about it, lots were doing dinner or bedtime routines and 'some' got very defensive about why they weren't out and started embellished MN threads.

@ILookAtTheFloor

As a governance professional I found the whole thing very funny. JW was 100% in the right for her actions, the aggression was completely unacceptable and I wasn't surprised it was the men doing it.

Me too! It was so telling that it was the older men, who presumably were able to behave that way unchallenged in their professional lives in years gone by, were trying to bully and shout down the woman, who just quietly got on with her job.

Interesting that she has been parachuted in to the role, presumably the previous clerk was bullied out of the job?

The next board or committee meeting I am in which descends into chaos, I will channel my inner Jackie. She was fab.

Respect to Jackie Weaver Britney Spears and to Sue.