 the successful rollout of the vaccine means it's at least plausible that within a few months we'll be able to have meetings in real life instead of on zoom however there could be elements of the online platform which we'll miss i personally have grown. Fairly font of never leaving my room it's quite nice i can do these shows on here it'll be nice to go back to the studio but at the same time there are clearly downsides. There are also other benefits of having meetings on zoom for example hosts can eject abusive attendees with relative ease where once a fight might have broken out if it were in in real life in a room on Thursday a clip of an incident along these lines went viral this is from a meeting of hand forth Paris council. You have no authority here Jackie weaver no authority at all. She's just kicked him out. No she's. Don't don't she's kicked him out don't. This is a meeting called by two councillors. Illegally may now elect a chairman know they can't because of ice chairs here I take charge. Read the standing orders read them and understand them. Read the standing orders that's been viewed four point two million times the last time I checked presumably a little bit more than that now. If you ever been in a meeting quite that aggressive if I have been it's probably been a local government meetings because I don't want to say if I have been it was probably me. Just me like screaming yeah I think like I think there is this like tendency to like really romanticize like local government and stuff but without realizing that oftentimes it could be like incredibly charged and like difficult chaotic like spaces but yeah I feel like if I have been in one it's probably been in like a local government context like this one. So that was that was a 30 second clip which went as I say completely viral. It's also been like leading the news today I don't think enough happened today and but there is also a longer video online so there's an 18 minute highlights video very entertaining I've watched the whole thing we're not going to show you the whole thing we're just going to show you some choice segments so you can get an idea of what that anger was about. Why was he so annoyed that the was she wasn't the chair we'll get to that it's actually quite complicated. The chair she wasn't that Jackie Weaver hadn't read the standing order right this is how the meeting starts. When do we plan to start. I think we could start any moment chairman and I think it's perhaps helpful just to go through the same things as we went through before which is just to encourage people to switch off their microphones because it does reduce the background. That being which tells us that somebody else wants to come in so I'll continue to admit people if you'd like to start the meeting. So you didn't imagine that the second sentence said was fuck off. It was it was unclear who was saying fuck off to who thought they were muted but it really did set the scene for what was to come so in the next clip you'll start to work out what some of the beef was about. Can we be assured that we won't be thrown out of the meeting like we were last time. And as long as we have reasonable behavior from everyone no one would be excluded from the meeting I was I was thrown out of the meeting. So was so was counselor Broughtham at the point of order chairman. Could we start again. Check. Check. We haven't started the meeting yet. Do you want to speak anyway. I really love the guy quite rightly and then you get Julie's iPad come up to sort of really really remove some of the tension. So the man you saw there whose tag is hand for PC Clark and we'll come to that later because he wasn't actually the Clark again another source of controversy he was Brian Tolver who is chair of Hanford Council. He is furious that Jackie Weaver she's sort of the main character all of this really she's been sent to host the meeting by Cheshire Association of local councils on the request of other counselors who had complained of poor. Behavior the next clip will show you I suppose suggest why those complaints might have arisen. Are you here as the proper officer. I am here offering support to Hanford Parish Council in the conduct of this meeting this evening. You're not the proper officer. Is that as Clark or proper officer. There's no difference between Clark and proper officer. Of course there is yes there is you must know the basic law. Are we going to start this meeting. It isn't it isn't the role of somebody who however kindly volunteers to do the clarking for a meeting to act as a proper officer if they haven't so been appointed that's against the law. And let me also quote to you the standing orders of Hanford but when you stop talking. Oh my god. In the whole thing you're going to keep getting more and more shocked by what you see. I've only seen this short clip where he yells at her. I don't know why but this is triggering me really. Oh, I really like that line. I'm going to use that before you don't know the basic law. You don't know the basic look because I know what it means by basic look. I don't do laws apply to the stand like are there laws about the standing orders of parish council meetings. I'm not sure we'll need a legal expert for that one. Let's go to our next clip. I think we have some more poor behavior here from from the elected chair who has provoked complaints. Points of order according to our standing orders are determined by the chair. If you want to raise a point of order as a councillor you ask if you can raise a point of order you state it and then the chair decide it is not for the clock to raise a point. It is not for the clock to decide what kind of order. And you must be aware of that. God knows what you're doing. If you don't know that this meeting is, shall we elect an alternative chairman? Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm just in a meeting at the moment. I'm going to give you a call back when it finishes. The good one. OK, all right, bye, bye. Julie's iPad, I think, is really the star of the whole show. Because every time you've got like this enormous like tension rising. She's just like, hey, I'm not listening. Yeah, well, because it's not even Julie, it's Julie's iPad and then you go, sorry, I'm in a meeting. That's that's one thing I think I will miss from from two meetings. Let's go to where the drama really starts. This bit is a bit a bit longer because it's this is the real action. This is this is the best bit of that 18 minute clip. Let's take a look. We'll start the meeting and I want to repeat what I said at the beginning of the last meeting. But this meeting has not been called according to the law. The law has been broken. It has been properly. Will you please let the chair. This is where the please. Disrupt this meeting. I will have to remove you from it. You can't. It's only the chairman who can remove people from a meeting. You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver, no authority at all. She's just kicked him out. No, she's kicked him out. Don't don't just kick him out. Don't. This is a meeting called by two councillors. Illegally may now elect a chairman. No, they can't because the vice chairs here, I take charge. Read the standing orders. Read them and understand them. Dear me. Appalling behaviour. Chairman gone. A copy of this will, in fact, be sent to the monitoring office. I'll just get out of those people. Where's the chairman? Read the standing orders. It now reboots to me. Where's the chairman gone? I'd like to elect a chairman for this meeting. You don't have to elect a chairman. There's a chairman already installed. The chairman of the council. Councillor Birkel, we've been through this. What are you talking about? You don't know what you're talking about. Chairman, the chairman of the council is the chairman of the council. Yeah, I'm the subpoena, everybody. Could I ask you to be respectful to Jackie Weaver please? Here comes the subpoena. Chairman. I'll have to leave. You go as a house woman. She's kicked Barry out some way, but don't. Barry, no. Barry has gone. I'll stay. Take a picture of my house, be careful. We're trying to have a team's meeting, you fool. We're trying to have a team's meeting, you fool. We can't if you've got that. We just don't. Jackie Weaver, I find that the person on Aleb Bruton's Zoom is being very disrespectful to everybody. Coming from you from Birkenhead, that sounds good. My first point is to apologise to Jackie, but welcome to Handforth. John Smith is one of my favourite ones. He's the voice of the audience, just being like, what? Because he seems really impartial, because the guy on Aleb's the guy on Aleb's iPad on the couch, he's obviously sort of, you know, laughing in quite a contemptuous way, whereas John Smith is is like laughing, but just in a neutral, in a neutral way. He's our voice in the room, of just being like, what the fuck? Also, stop doing that. I also think this is the definition of power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Because clearly being involved in the parish council has completely gone to their head. And I'm just very, very scared right now. Is this what's going on in our communities? Isn't the message more that even a little bit of power can corrupt almost absolutely? Absolutely, exactly. You have the almost, I suppose it must have been Aleb, if it was Aleb's iPad, yeah, it was Aleb, who moved into this sort of golem sort of style of speaking, where you couldn't work out what he says. We are using Microsoft Teams, you fool! It's fantastic, the whole thing's fabulous. Anyway, Tolver, so he was the chair, he was the chair who was ejected from Zoom, even though Jackie Weaver didn't have the authority. Apparently she didn't have the authority because you have to have a vote before you eject someone from the room. She constitutionally didn't have the authority, but spiritually she absolutely had the authority. Well, most people's takes on this actually has been that she had the moral authority, and I do kind of fall down on that side. I think I struggle to have sympathy for Aleb or the chair, who apparently hadn't held a meeting for a few months anyway, so I don't know if he'd been doing his chairmanship properly, but I'd seen some arguments from people on the left. I hate the drama and nothing else. They were saying, why are we on Jackie Weaver's side? She's the bureaucrat. She's been imposed from the top down to undermine local democracy, and the chair is quite right to be a little bit annoyed, which is the position he has taken. So he spoke to the Associated Press today. Jackie Weaver's been on the airway. She's the one getting the platform. She's been on Woman's Hour, she's been on Times Radio, but the chair, who is Brian Tolver, he did get to have his say. He spoke to Associated Press and said, I cannot think of any other council meeting anywhere that was taken over by an unqualified member of the public like this, removing half the councillors from the meeting, denied half of the voters of the village from being represented. It was an appalling attack on our democratic rights. The sort of calling her an unqualified member of the public, I suppose it was a bit hard because she was brought in by the local council association of Cheshire. So obviously, the sort of larger body had recognised that there was a bit of a problem in one of the units below them. On the request of some of the councillors, they bring in Jackie Weaver to mediate. She attempts that and then lots of people throw a bit of a hissy fit. Are you sure you're on Jackie Weaver's side, Dali, or is there a sort of shadow of doubt in your mind that maybe the chair and Allid with his golem voice, with his subpoenas, he was sending subpoenas, but do you have a shadow of a doubt as to whose side you're falling on? If I was Jackie Weaver, I would have injected myself. I would have just been like, you'll have issues. It's not my problem. Goodbye. So that was the correct position, I think, to just excuse herself for the whole narrative. She was chill. If you watch the whole video, she goes on to say, because someone asked, why had the chair written in his little badge, which was quite funny, because then she was like, is that a real badge? It was very, they were all completely confused about how Zoom works. But she was saying, no, he's just called himself the clerk, which doesn't make him the clerk. You can call me Britney Spears if you like. She was, she had some wit about her. I think she enjoyed the whole affair, to be honest.