Depressing occasion

With the exception of the well-deserved presentation accorded to Mrs June Millman, what a thoroughly depressing and negative occasion Seaton's Annual Town Meeting turned out to be.Firstly, and most unusually, for a meeting of this calibre, no apologies were forthcoming on behalf of the councillors who, for whatever reason, failed to attend.Secondly, there was no verbal clarification as to who chaired the various committees, whether they were in attendance or not.Thirdly, with one exception, throughout the meeting not one syllable was uttered by the councillors on the platform.In the fairly recent past, council chairmen, or their nominees, were verbally allowed to give a short resume of what they had achieved, what they had hoped to achieve and what they had not been able to achieve in the council's year that was about to end.Again, with one exception, was the confidence of the councillors present at such a low ebb that the written word was allowed to supersede the spoken one to such an extent that the proper interaction between platform and floor was also allowed to disappear when the occasion itself could have offered so much more?Lastly, and once more with one exception, the councillors themselves managed to look thoroughly bored and weary, indeed some looked as though they didn't want to be there at all.Come on councillors, surely you can do better than this and show some physical and verbal enthusiasm for the things you have and are trying to achieve and also for the battles that will certainly lie ahead. This is what leadership is all about.John Seward Lyme Mews Seaton