The meeting took place on Weds 11th November 2011 at Kings Heath Community Centre.

There were maybe 50 or so people, the hall in Kings Heath community centre was packed. No councillors were present on the panel, which was odd. A presentation was given by someone Burrows, (sorry can't remember his first name), he is strategic development director, so not an elected representative, but fairly high up in council. He talked about the necessity of budget reductions, how the council is funded, what changes they are proposing to make, the presentation carefully steered clear of using the word "cut", instead opting for words like "restructuring", "efficiency" etc. He was disengenous about what they said they had considered but rejected, saying that they had rejected raising the eligibility threshold for adult social services, but neglecting to say that this was only cos a judicial review forced them to backtrack - so I pointed it out for them. They also were quite "economical with the truth" regarding cuts to children's centres, which again I pointed out and the head of Highbury Children's Centre spoke from the audience about the proposed budget cuts to children's centres and merging of management.

The meeting got quite rowdy in places, with the general feeling of the people there that the council were not being entirely truthful with us and an overall anti-cuts stance from the audience. Someone from Birmingham Against the Cuts proposed 2 motions from the floor, one which was that this meeting opposes all budget cuts and the other that council directors should take a pay cut equal to the budget cuts, both were passed with a good majority. Mr Burrows then demanded to know who in the audience was from Birmingham Against the Cuts, to much derision and heckling. He also gave a blatant political speech about how the deficit was huge, the country couldn't afford the public sector and cuts were necessary, again to much derision and heckling. The council handed out a questionaiire which basically asked what we wanted to cut and what we wanted to save, the general feeling was that we were not prepared to do the council's dirty work for them

The comments are supposed to be going up on the council website and will be looked at by the council on January 8th and no doubt ignored. Overall, a good turnout and an overwhelming anti-cuts position from the audience, but the process itself was a totally shambolic whitewash.