Lord Mayor, fellow councillors, good morning.
This month marks the first year since my colleague and I were held up in a bar in Northenden at gun and knife point.
As the leader of this council would agree, it is never a pleasant experience to be robbed, and unfortunately weapons are often used to ensure resistance is minimal.
That is why it I pushed so hard to successfully get replica hand guns removed in Northenden, and this is why my colleagues and I are pushing so hard to remove combat knives from display in our city.
Members may be interested to know that less than a mile from this chamber, you could walk past a shop openly displaying combat knives in it's front window.
When I showed Cllr Ramsbottom the shop in question, a couple of young people who were passing stopped to look at these knives also. The age and the interest shown by these youths did not escape our attention.
Nor has the fact that Greater Manchester has the third highest number of knife attacks anywhere in the country.
Only last week an innocent youth was stabbed in the face in Wythenshawe. He was lucky to survive, and thankfully only needed stitches, but others and not so lucky.
It is indeed depressing to read how many, mostly young people are fatally stabbed every year in Manchester.
This is why it was no surprise, when Cllr Ramsbottom and I met with the police, that they offered us their support.
Would such a restriction work in practise though?
Two weeks ago a bill was introduced to Parliament outlining how the Government wants to remove tobacco from open display in all shops and supermarkets.
The Government noticed that when Canada did this, it coincided with a drop in smoking rates for teenagers.
The same principle should apply here. If the government believes that removing a product from display will reduce usage of that product, surely by removing combat knives from display will have the desired effect of reducing knife crime.
Our city expects us, their political representatives to uphold our highest duty – to protect our citizens from harm.
We are responsible for doing all we can to make sure we fulfil this duty. We have an opportunity right here in this chamber, today, now - to do something positive, to fulfil that duty and make that choice. I urge this council to pass this motion unamended.
Labour's response was to move an amendment that deleted our motion entirely and replaced it with one that congratulated themselves on various knife control measures, and stated that they would continue to campaign for a "National Code of Practice to control the sale and display of ... knives".
A Code of Practice would not be enforceable, and would only be taken up by businesses on a voluntary basis. It would also have to be passed in Parliament, beyond Manchester City Council's control.
It is not clear how the Council would persuade the Home Office to put such a bill into the next Queen's speech, but even if it could then such a Code of Practice would be at least 2 years away, and only then as mentioned, taken up voluntarily.
The Lib-Dem motion would have meant a Manchester wide ban on the display of combat knives in months.
The Labour effort meant persuading parliament to introduce a voluntary code of practice which would only come into effect sometime after 2011.
Lots of speeches were exchanged, and as usual Labour got quite bitter and personal, claiming we were soft on crime, that I was running on a "populist" agenda and that we were somehow making Manchester more dangerous. When I get the transcript, I'll post it up here, it should be hilarious!
After all the speeches, Labour used their majority to pass their own amendment.
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