This was abundantly plain the following day when the full council debated the Ouseley Report. It has already been reported in the KN that executive member and Worth Valley councillor Kris Hopkins got into trouble with the Tory leadership for demanding to know why two highly critical accompanying reports to the main Ouseley Report were not tabled. These were by Ram Singh and Graham Mahoney, the former chief race relations officer to the council, and were much blunter about the problems in Bradford district. I applaud Kris for raising the matter, but wish he'd stuck to his guns. Instead, he made a short, embarrassed and embarrassing speech which said nothing of note.
Nothing really sums up the debate.
It was simply amazing and appeared as if the whole council lived in a parallel universe where none of the events of the last few months had taken place. All that came from it were vague calls for further reports and woolly promises to throw more money at the problem. The only person who emerged with any credit was Cllr David Ward, former Lib Dem leader and current executive member for education. Although having no new suggestions for dealing with the problem, he did at least remind the council that all that was being said had already been said after the '95 riots. That I can vouch for.