Council Leader Richard Leese has probably never been accused of not saying enough. He’s articulate, confident and ferociously well-briefed.  He has a regularly-updated blog too, on which I lurk.  And I seem to be stalking him in real-life; I keep hearing him speak at events and committees. Never short of facts, figures, plans, visions.  But there’s a pattern of silence – four times in a six weeks or so is enough of a pattern for us – and it’s around the central dilemma of the 21st century…

Item the first: He gave up his Friday night (May 25) to speak at an event organised by Campaign against Climate Change, on “One Million Climate Jobs.”  No blog post about this, nary a paragraph (despite plaintive comments).   Judging from this photo he wasn’t finding the meeting particularly in the chuckle-zone, but still…

Item the second: On Wednesday June 20th he was at the Economy Scrutiny Committee’s rather interesting discussion/workshops around green jobs, business, investment and what was that concept again – oh, yes, steady-state economics.  Again, nothing on the blog.

Item the third: He gave a detailed speech at a “Going for Growth” conference the other day.  No mention of the “Mini-Stern Review”, or the Climate Change Action Plan that he went to Copenhagen with.  No mention of climate change until prompted by a questioner, in fact. And, then, no mention on his blog.

Item the fourth: His blog post about full Council meeting on July 11th neglects the “Making Manchester Sustainable/anti-fracking” motion (see our stories before, the evening after, the day after). To be fair to him, it was a very very long (over three hour?!) meeting and he may have lost the will to live – or at least blog – by the end of it.

Still and all, you can tell how much someone powerful wants to talk – or feels the need to talk – about an issue by the amount they, um, talk about it….