It was Full Council on Monday night, which was strangely more fun than usual - and I don't think it had anything to do with the new "horseshoe" (sort of) seating plan.
We had two good deputations from local residents - one from a supplementary school in Tottenham that the Council is threatening to withdraw funding from, putting their 30+ year existence in doubt, and the other from the organisers of the annual Tottenham Carnival. My colleagues Cllr David Winskill and Cllr John Oakes in particular made important contributions to those discussions and there appeared to be some dissent between members of the Labour front bench.
We also had, for the first time, Opposition Business. This now allows the Lib Dem opposition a chance to debate a vital issue of our choice - until now, the Labour group controlled the agenda completely. Haringey has 30 Labour councillors and 27 Lib Dems (there are no Greens or Conservatives at all).
It's only a 15 minute slot in a two and a half hour meeting, but our leader Cllr Neil Williams made an excellent speech about the balls-up that is Haringey Labour's mad rush to flog off Alexandra Palace.
Later in the meeting, the Labour council leader proposed writing to Gordon Brown to wish him luck (as well as to Tony Blair to thank him for his great work!). I stood up to suggest that if Gordon wants to be better than Tony - and we know that he does - he could start with a couple of simple promises... Not to take us into any illegal wars and to scrap the national ID card scheme. Would be a start, at least.
Talking of war and Tony Blair, reminds me of something from a speech Stephen Gilbert gave recently: with regard to Tony's new job, it seems extraordinary that in the blinking of an eye he's made the transition from middle east warmaker to middle east peacemaker... I'm sure we all wish him the best of luck in that role though.
As always, the webcasts of Full Council and many other council meetings can be viewed here.
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