Councillors

As already said, below, this week various council seats are being contested. My observations of the council at work are not based on a lot of experience so I'll confine remarks to where they directly relate to Blacka Moor and the disposal of council land and assets.

I've no doubt that the real wielders of power are the government agencies and Westminster. Somewhere in there as a malign presence is the party machine keeping discipline in one way or another and at local level this top down control is exploited by professional officers all to a degree self serving. Increasingly in recent years private companies such as developers and service industries are getting their own way by knowing the system and having privileged access to information.

So all you can hope for from a local councillor is that when a serious injustice comes up (inevitably given the vested interests and arrogant approach of some of these groups and organisations) he/she will make a fuss and get the impact reduced at the margins. This limited role so emasculates the representatives themselves that there's little surprise that very few people of genuine talent and commitment put up for council seats.

In my ward the councillors are Lib/Dems are usually elected and probably do as good a job in the circumstances as anyone although you always feel there's a point beyond which they won't go even when the justice of a case is beyond dispute. And there's also a sense that policy is made up on the hoof by the local party leader opportunistically, and this ties the hands of individual councillors who are denied the chance of being as independent as they might want.

The Labour people I've seen on the council committees are a pretty hopeless shower. In Cabinet meetings they seem utterly cowed by the comparative cleverness of the officers and directorate. In Scrutiny Boards their performance often seems surly and defensive when serious questions are asked. Very depressing.

The one Tory in the city has used her independence (as her own local party leader) to good effect and therefore punches above her weight at a time when the balance of power is an issue.

But over and again my feeling is that there's just too much cosiness, too much cronyism and too little independent thinking around. The party that would get my vote is the one which insists that on major local concerns consultations start with a blank sheet, that local communities are genuinely empowered to make decisions even when they could get them wrong.