[gynn]

My experience was that 90% of the work carried out by local councillors has little political significance. How do you apply political dogma to the re-alignment of a bus stop, the complaints about bin collections or dealing with noisy neighbours?

Most decisions taken at committee are in accordance with national guidelines or officer advice. Again, not much political significance.

Some decisions DO reflect party policies, but these seem to be getting fewer and fewer. When was the Council Tax level last fixed according to political considerations, rather than simply cash limiting it at last years level?

The 'group' mentality at Hyndburn is certainly strong, and once a group decision is made, everybody is expected to stick to it, but again the decisions aren't generally governed by political colours.

And the strong 'group' mentality has been abused at times. How many Conservative councillors REALLY wanted to walk out of Council meetings? I bet most of them were raising their eyebrows at their Labour colleagues as they left the chamber!

The Kashmir issue has been raised as an example of local politicians acting politically, but I suspect the real story there is that they saw it as a hot potato that nobody wanted to handle, and they dealt with it as best they could to avoid upsetting too many people. Seems they failed on that one!

Councillors are local representatives first, and politicians a long way second!