The pantomime season is clearly not yet over, as on Wednesday the Purley and Coulsdon Debating Society is hosting an event featuring local councillor Steve “Three Jobs” O’Connell and Inside Croydon’s very own Andrew Pelling. Oh yes it is…
Steve O’Connell: will he be defending the indefensible?
Pelling, the former independent MP for Croydon Central, will propose the motion that, “Party politics puts local government in a straitjacket”.
O’Connell, a Conservative member of the London Assembly as well a Croydon cabinet member, who was dubbed Britain’s most overpaid councillor, will argue the merits of party politics in local affairs.
Between them the speakers have held more than a dozen different political offices, so hopefully they can provide some deep winter entertainment although the hatred in which ex-Tory Pelling is held by his former colleagues may yet see sparks fly.
The debating society has operated through two world wars and is enjoying its 102nd year of existence. This latest debate, which is open to the public, is being held at the Old Coulsdon Day Centre, opposite the Tudor Rose parade in Grange Park up in Old Coulsdon. It starts at 8pm, with the public encouraged to join the debate in the second half.
O’Connell: I wouldn’t be so silly as to take £500 a day
4 days in August: O’Connell’s lasting shame?
O’Connell took gift from cricket fixer Majeed
Twitter exposes O’Connell’s priorities over the incinerator
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