Fellow Council members, many apologies for missing the meetings in LA this week but alas my duties as IPRA president intervened. And I was flying during our voting meeting so could not dial-in without bankrupting the BC. Anyway, it seems that some good progress was made on many issues (though I note not on the politically sensitive issue of IGOs). GNSO reform The reform proposals pose some fundamental challenges to the heritage we guard known as the bottom-up process. While we may differ in outcomes with respect to constituency boundary changes, it may be productive to have debate on some of the wider issues of the reform proposals. In particular it would be good to know fellow Council members views on the objective that Council should manage the PDP but not decide (if I may paraphrase). This objective is separate to its implementation (eg work groups ) for which I see little need to debate as we do them anyway when we believe they are right to do. But I am concerned that the objective may weaken Council by diminishing the incentive for participation. It would be good to learn of opinions on this. Philip