I am not allowed to tell you what went on at the Corporate JNCC meeting last night. The whole meeting is held in what’s called part 2. This means the public and Press are excluded.

This meeting brings together Councillors (as the Employers) and all the Trade Unions. The Committee is chaired by the Leader of the Council. But only until later this evening when her predecessor as Leader is expected to be appointed in her place. This is odd because, well it is in my opinion odd, because the Chair of this committee ought to be a senior Politician who is a member of the Cabinet. The former Leader is now a back bencher. Well I suppose the Conservatives have their reasons.

Perhaps I can risk being told off to let you have a sneaky insight. I was told off for raising my hand and daring to ask a question. But apart from that my lips are sealed.

So I will talk about the weather. I did my bit and cleared the snow from outside my house. Some of my neighbours followed. The result was that fifty so yards of pavement was cleared. So pedestrians did get a couple of second’s respite.

This morning my dog and I slipped and slid our way to the park. Jake is getting on for fifteen so his back legs went a couple of times. But once he arrives at the park he loves the snow. Actually it was very dangerous. It’s ok gritting the roads but the pavements are treacherous. I noticed that quite a few of the regular dog walkers (mainly elderly) have not been in the park the past few days. I think the Council often underestimates the impact of frozen pavements and how trapped indoors people can become.

I also did my bit to put out bird feed. This morning started off like world war three. The Robins and Blackbirds were fighting it out. But gradually the cold and the urge to feed overcame territorial aggression (there must be a lesson in there). It is very unusual to see two robins feeding together. They were joined by a pair of Fieldfares. Apparently thirty thousand Fieldfares landed on the South Coast ahead of the snow from Scandinavia.

Finally news item this week which has caught my eye. Nick Clegg the Leader of the Liberal Democrat has had a set to with Gina Hogg, the author of a parenting manual called “The Baby Whisperer". Interviewed in the Sunday Times, Mr Clegg expressed his frustration about Ms Ford’s strict routines to encourage babies to sleep throughout the night. This came after a particular bad night with his ten month old son Miguel. When asked why he had not tried Ms Ford’s methods he groaned that he did not agree with her methods. He had tried it with his first child but found it like “following a sort of Ikea assembly instruction manual”

I have not read “The baby whisperer” but I can sympathise with Nick Clegg. I recall when our son was a few moths old. Nothing could induce him to stop crying and go to sleep. We had three cats at the time. One of the cats, the Tabby one, was becoming more and more upset. By this time we had baby in bed with us. Our cat decided to do something about it. She leapt on the bed. She plonked herself on our baby and commenced to give out the loudest purrs imaginable. It did the trick within seconds. You won’t find that in any baby books!