Councillors voted to retain a raft of measures aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus at a town hall meeting on Thursday (7 April).
But passions ran high as some councillors urged Brighton and Hove City Council to get back to business as usual.
While Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s name was invoked in an earlier row about cycle lane petitions, Independent councillor Tony Janio told the meeting that “Joseph Stalin lives”.
In the end it made little difference as members voted along party lines to keep a number of covid restrictions in place over the coming months.
The Greens and Labour backed retaining the restrictions, such as masks and testing for meetings, with fewer speakers and less debate.
The Conservatives wanted to end the restrictions, along with Councillor Janio, who was previously the Tory group leader.
The council switched to online meetings when the first national lockdown was imposed in March 2020, with the move backed by a temporary change in the law.
The temporary laws lapsed last May but many councillors felt that this was too soon so they returned to the town hall but in a limited way. The measures were agreed between the parties.
But the consensus had well and truly evaporated by the time the latest version of the rules was debated at the meeting of the full council on Thursday.
Councillor Janio accused the Green leader of the council Phélim Mac Cafferty of not having “read the science”.
He cited Charles Darwin and said that continued mask-wearing and lockdowns prevented the evolution by natural selection of a “less virulent” strain of the covid-19 virus.
Councillor Janio, who has a PhD in engineering physics and applied physics, said: “By perpetuating these lockdowns and mask-wearing, in very small ways across the country, we’re increasing the length of time that more virulent strains will be among us.
“Then try telling people in two years, who are still passing away from this illness, that we didn’t do our bit.
“Our bit tonight is to take our masks off. Our bit tonight is to reopen the council and get workers back at work and set an example to this city.”
Few members of the public are allowed into council meetings at the moment with municipal buildings closed to the public unless they are attending a meeting in person – and many council workers were still working from home.
Councillor Mac Cafferty said that 19,903 people were in hospital with the virus, up more than 2,000 on the previous week. And 60 people were in hospital in Brighton with covid.
He said: “The thing that will stop us fully getting out of covid is exactly what the government is doing at the moment, which is pretending covid has magically gone away.
“That is the very thing that’s far more likely to see more variants happen and this pandemic get worse. You don’t get rid of a pandemic by pretending it doesn’t exist – and the figures are stark.”
Councillor Mac Cafferty said that the meeting arrangements balanced the transparency of the decision-making process with the protection of everyone’s health and safety.
Conservative councillor Dawn Barnett said that the council needed to open its buildings again, saying that it “looked silly” for staying closed to the public.
She said: “Councillors must lead the way by returning to Hove Town Hall for meetings. After all, how can councillors expect others to come back to work if councillors are not fully attending meetings themselves.”
Councillor Barnett added: “Everybody is talking about covid but for many years now the elderly vulnerable ill people go into hospital with other things wrong with them.
“Elderly vulnerable people die every year from pneumonia and flu but this year, amazingly, nobody has died of flu. No one dies of pneumonia. It’s all covid – and I don’t believe it all.”
Separately, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that 21,614 people died from flu or pneumonia in 2020 when they were also an underlying or secondary cause of 127,575 deaths.
ONS figures for covid deaths indicated that 92,913 people died from covid-19 in 2020 and 102,544 people died with covid as an underlying or secondary cause.
Labour councillor Amanda Evans said that even those who had had their jabs were experiencing an illness that was more than “flu”.
She said: “My traumatised junior doctor daughter and her many traumatised colleagues are really, really not all involved in some giant conspiracy to confuse deaths with covid with deaths from covid – and have never been asked to lie on death certificates. In fact, they would lose their careers if they did so.”
She said that her colleague, Labour councillor Amanda Grimshaw, was not at the meeting because she was still unwell with long covid four weeks after contracting the coronavirus.
Independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh said that her temperature had been checked before a recent meeting in London and asked whether the council could try something similar.
People with a high temperature were immediately sent home, she said, which helped to limit covid transmission. She backed the Greens and Labour to vote for the retention of the current measures.
They’re not hiding from Covid
They’re hinding from the Electorate….
It IS astonishing that the council offices have not reopened.
Covid has not gone away but it is a winter flu-like disease now and although catching it can be unpleasant for many people, cases will decline sharply as the weather warms up this month.
The re-opening of the council’s front desk should not be used as a political football and by now you’d have thought they’d at least have a date set for staff getting back to work and delivering basic services.
The nature of the virus is that it mutates, and there is a distinct possibility that, in the winter, it will return in a virulent manner.
Then, if it does mutate, reintroduce restrictions🙄
Do you advocate never returning to “normality” in case a virulent virus of any form ever develops?
Are you as qualified in virology and epidemiology as much as Phelim?
Green councilors we must enact the Tories Gear change! Green Councilors we must ignore the Governments covid policies! The hypocrisy of this lot will never be surpassed. Pick and Mix politics.
The Greens seeking to stifle debate and limit interaction with the public? Well I never!
There’s still absolutely no evidence that WFH should end for anyone, ever. My work has gone from strength to strength in terms of efficiency and output over the last two years. No reason the majority of council office workers shouldn’t be the same. Plough the money from running the town hall back into IT support for online service delivery, and sell the building off.
I’m guessing you haven’t needed to access council services recently.
The scariest words in this article are “less debate”. This equals less democracy.
All other businesses are back to work as normal. What is the excuse of the council? Too lazy? Hiding from the electorate they have mistreated?
Haven’t had any problems, but I’m not a heavy service-user.
Have you tried a council service lately basically it is almost shut down. So i think its time to get them back to work.
Brighton, the Pariah state; no surprise it being a holdout council either!
Time to get back to normal and provide the services council tax payers pay for.
“and many council workers were still working from home.”
How nice for them. Not a bad life. No having to get up early or having to travel to work, while the rest of the public are back at work. And let the taxpayer foot the bill.
Can you tell us who who are, and how you earn a living, rather than hiding behind a name? You appear very silly, as it is.
Many people hide their identity due valid reasons – see all your Green Party activist pals posting comments in The Argus.
Has your working life been affected by Covid-19? Do you have a job that meant you needed to work from home? Do you use council services and have you been affected by the lack of face-to-face access to council staff?
And you don’t? Well, that’s a laugh! And by the way, what makes you think that everyone else here is using their real name?
This is really poor and a clear demonstration of how badly the council is run. Almost, everyone else now is back at work. Certainly, all the council tax payers that you see running shops, working in restaurants, tradespeople etc. They need to get back to work or alternatively the council should seek to cut costs by 50% and outsource their services to a cheaper location.
>everyone else now is back at work
That’s not strictly the case. More like everyone else is back to normal throughput. Plenty of office-based roles are staying remote for sensible reasons, now the pandemic has shown the advantages of remote working. If council services aren’t back up to snuff, that’s an issue (admittedly not one I’ve felt the brunt of) but where they’re working from isn’t really relevant.
It is relevant when one cannot go along to Hove Town Hall to buy residents’ parking vouchers. I know one can do so online, and I did so, but I had to wait for a delivery of them a few days later. I had not been given any warning about the delivery, and it was just by chance that I was at home at the time. The system may have improved since then. I hope so. And before anyone moans about residents buying them, some of us need them when we have to call in experts to deal with building repairs, furniture removals and blocked drains.
That’s a fair point, though you have to admit that needing a resident’s permit on short notice is a pretty rare occurrence. Feels like it’d be easier for them to tweak the system online than to maintain an enormous town hall just to sell parking tickets out of it. Hell, they could even downsize to a single customer-facing office for such matters and rent out the rest of the space as they do with Platform 9.
It really gets up my nose to see people campaigning to make the council less efficient and more old-fashioned for nebulous reasons, when the only upside of the pandemic is the lesson we’ve learned from it.
Many councils and businesses have taken the opportunity that working from home presented to completely detach themselves from office based systems and records. Mine certainly has and actually it makes a lot more sense and works far more efficiently. If we are serious about helping the Ukraine and also dealing with environmental concerns then we need to stop buying Russian oil and funding their war. Everyone working from home at least several days a week works just fine and the reduction in unnecessary travelling to commute is a good first step.
Finally something we pretty much all agree on. Indeed, its really harming our local community the longer this goes on. Unless a dangerous strain comes up, surely with a bit of ventilation, people should be able to get a front line service.
The telephone lines for Housing Options, which covers a broad spectrum of issues and needs opens just 12 hours a week to the public and inbound calls, they say the doors at barts house is open, asked two questions at they said its open, thats a lie, as I went the other day, stood outside 5 mins and no one came to open it, saw no staff.
Phone lines are open 3 days a week, for 4 hours each of those three days.
I am shocked at the way councillors seem to have no power or will to challenge officers, whose left anyway, as most have gone.
Still a few in housing are clearly clinging on, and they are totally ignoring local need.
This needs to end not continue. This is a power grab and is essentially causing more harm than good.