Saturday 4 December 2010

Need to Report Potholes?

4 comments:

  1. Just thought you might want to know that the last Full Council meeting was again not attended by Cllr. Miss Watts. Her lack of attendance at Council meetings is frankly staggering.

    Very important issues were discussed at this meeting but the people of Fosse were not fully represented once again.

    Given she only attends about 40% of meetings maybe she should only claim 40% of her £400/month Councillor allowance? Just a thought.

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  2. I hadn't responded to this comment mainly because it related to Rachel Watts, and it's for her to respond if she so desires (she's been know to hang around these parts on occasion!) But seeing as I've now been directly asked what I think, here's my view:

    Firstly, I've no idea why Rachel wasn't at the Council meeting. If it was because it clashed with a particularly good episode of Eastenders, then she's at fault. If it was because she was dealing with a ward matter that was more important than the Council meeting, or if she was unavoidably delayed at work, then things like this happen and I wouldn't criticise her for it.

    I don't actually get too hung up on the 'being at council meetings' thing. Clearly, there are important meetings you NEED to attend, but attendance for attendance sake is not really what I want from my councillor. And it's for this reason that I wouldn't go back to paying councillors' allowances at a daily rate for turning up to meetings. You create a culture of councillors turning up simply for the money (not unlike what goes on in the European Parliament, but I digress!)

    If you ask me what makes a good ward councillor, it's about being an advocate for their ward and helping out/supporting local people when they need that help. She's still new to role, but on the occasions when I have asked her for help over a particular problem, or support for a particular campaign, I've always found Rachel very willing to do what she can.

    At a parish council level, I come across too many councillors whose sole contribution is turning up to a meeting once a month for two hours, and then do nothing else. My advice to anyone thinking of standing for election would be that it's what you're prepared to do outside of committee meetings that'll determine whether you're a good councillor or not. Meetings have their place, but there's so much more to the job than that.

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  3. Apologies for only seeing this now.

    Unfortunately, as was read out at the full council meeting, my train was severely delayed and I couldn't get there.

    I do wish that anonymous would have the courage to write to me directly with their concerns as I think that defaming me anonymously is fairly cowardly.

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  4. Dear Rachel,

    I do not wish to get into an unseemly row on Dan's excellent blog.

    I must point one thing out: in order for me to defame you my statement would need to be untrue. If you can point to a single part of my previous comment that is false then I will retract it immediately.

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