New Chamber, Same Old Synod (And Voting...) - (a) 26Feb2007

Well, a year has passed since the last CofE General Synod held in London, and since that time, Church House in Westminster has been formally 'closed', and much re-furbished, with many new offices for staff now shoe-horned into the building. This means that the Church Comissioners staff, and other Church House staff, are all now gathered under one roof. This allows '1 Millbank' to be used for other purposes, and the funds that generated to be redirected towards the Church's mission, which sounds good to me.

I have a few photos of the chamber which I wilapparentlyortly; though I was stopped from taking some others - aparently Synod members are not allowed to take photos from the Press area - which sounds a little bizare. I suppose one shouldn't complain, as at least we do have wifi access this time, and so blogging this synod is back as a possibility.

I have comments later about the 'new' chamber in practise; but one of the surprises is that though we are in the renewed chamber, electronic voting has not yet arrived. There is to be a discussion about the introduction of electronic voting during a lunch-time break in debates on homosexuality on Wednesday.

But for today's debates, we have still been voting in the good old fashioned way, with even a division of the whole Synod for a close count on an amendment to the 'Trident' debate.

Alastair GS101