ANY OTHER BUSINESS.

Byline: PETER YOUNG

AS ANIMAL welfare campaigners paraded outside Newcastle Civic centre dressed as hens, I can reveal that inside the building some councillors were tucking into chicken.

The protesters were calling upon Newcastle City Council to ban battery-farmed eggs from civic restaurants, staff canteens, schools and home meals for elderly people.

By an unfortunate coincidence, chicken was on the menu at the high tea served to councillors before their monthly meeting.

"Someone must have negglected to tell the catering staff," quipped one wag.

There's a row going on as the council's Lib Dem leaders consider a Labour call for battery-farmed eggs to be banned.

Lib Dem leader John Shipley says there's broad agreement that the council should not be buying food linked to animal cruelty, but they need to get it right before introducing a new policy. Meanwhile, he was at pains to point out that in the Shipley household they eat only free range produce.

Labour leader, Nick Forbes, who is pressing for immediate action, can go one better. He's a vegetarian.

BLAYDON MP Dave Anderson welcomed spending taxpayers' cash to make all council swimming pools free and help persuade more people to take up sport in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics.

He goes further and suggests the next, logical step is to provide free school dinners for all children. "Any decent government should encourage good health" he said.

"A good diet improves fitness and educational achievement. I hope the Government will listen to the growing lobby for free school meals for all."

CYNICS have long suspected that job projections for some grand projects are over-hyped.

Now we learn there is disagreement over how many jobs might result from plans to create a new science park on the site of the former Tyne Brewery in Newcastle with estimates ranging from 2,000 to 5,000. Eventually, the city council went with the 5,000 figure.

LABOUR councillors have accused Liberal Democrat council leaders of snubbing their own staff after they refused to back a motion put forward by Coun Kevin Graham at Newcastle City Council praising the work of children's centres and the Government for introducing them.

Nonsense, says Lib Dem executive member for children and young people Coun Nick Cott. "We are very supportive of children's centres," he said. "Our objection was about the party political nature of the motion."

AT LAST, Labour has some ammunition to fire at the Conservatives following the row over expenses claims by two Euro MPs and now party chairman, Caroline Spelman.

Mrs Spelman is accused of paying her children's former nanny from expenses funded by the taxpayer in 1997-98. Mrs Spelman says the woman, Tina Haynes, was employed as a worker in her constituency office, and she's done nothing wrong.

Scenting blood, Labour rotweiller Kevan Jones, MP for Durham North, said: "David Cameron talks about honesty and transparency in public life but in a matter of two days, his sleazebuster appointed to Europe has had to resign because of questions over his expenses and now his party chairman Caroline Spelman has a big question mark over how she has been using hers."

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FREE MEALS: Dave Anderson