Category: Alan Jennings

Yesterday evening the new Mayor was “installed”, in front of about two hundred and fifty people in the Civic Hall at Wallasey Town Hall. The annual meeting which decides the Mayor is always well attended as Wirral Council send out invites.

I took some photos (which unfortunately were rather blurred, I must start using a tripod) and video, the first half hour of which is below. Unfortunately I didn’t press the record button hard enough so I missed the first few minutes of Alan Jenning’s speech and the pun about filling up at a petrol station is lost. It is in low quality, as I didn’t know how long it’d last and am limited by battery life and memory card capacity. The rest of the footage is in HD (Mayor McLaughlin’s speech in two parts, the prayer of the chaplain and the installation of Cllr Ellis as Deputy Mayor). Sound quality is a little bad, but speakers such as Cllr Green could hardly be heard from the back row. There is a backup audio track recorded seperately on which the sound may be better quality.

Humour is subjective, but I found Alan Jenning’s jokes better than the ones attempted by others who made speeches.

Wirral’s Young Poet Laureate also read out a poem, Cllr Moira McLaughlin was made Mayor, Cllr Gerry Ellis was made Deputy Mayor. Strangely (as they haven’t done it at previous meetings where they install the Mayor) the three party leaders were appointed to the Merseyside Police Authority Appointments Committee (probably because it meets on the 27th so they need to send agendas out soon). After the annual council meeting was adjourned there was a light buffet and drinks for guests.

The whole thing had the formality of a wedding.