Quote:
Originally Posted by Guinness
b) Even Ken Moss admitted on this forum that he had zero chance of being elected without aligning himself with a political party, and he approached the tories first, but was ignored  ...now he's a dyed in the wool labour guy and boy has he started to toe the party line since his election despite any protestations he's made (or about to make up) |
No I did not, I simply wrote to all three Rishton Councillors to ask what they actually did for us and only Labour responded. I have never claimed to be a dyed in the wool red but at a local level they whizz all over the blues from the top of the viaduct.
I'm vaguely amused by the notion of the elected representatives not doing their best for the people because their views differ from the most vocal opponents. Presumably a good representative is only one who does exactly what the voters say? Having the benefit of seeing things from both sides of the fence, I'm glad I don't live in that world.
In Rishton alone that would mean spending our annual budget approximately 18 times over in less than a month whilst drastically lowering wasteful spending, putting in more play parks whilst simultaneously stopping any new play parks for fear of noise pollution and antisocial behaviour, preventing traffic parking on the streets whilst increasing the number of parking spaces, doing more to support local businesses whilst encouraging larger corporations to open stores in the village, promoting Rishon firms and helping people to get jobs but restraining local companies who get so successful that their traffic supposedly causes huge disruptions, getting better mobile telephony signals and internet connection whilst absolutely forbidding new masts to be erected, improving conditions on park footpaths which are damp in winter but restraining spending on that park because it gets all the money, increasing the number of litter bins and dog waste collections whilst cutting back on excessive numbers of staff, spending more on Christmas decorations but cut back on the ridiculous amount of trivial activity I support each Christmas and introduce a combined recycling wheelie bin costing well over a million quid to implement but absolutely under no circumstances increase Council tax.
Above all, I should stop claiming expenses and get my trotters out of the trough.
Despite this easy life I find that I still need to work six days a week and the queue of people waiting to replace me as Councillor is shorter than a midge's tackle.
By all means stand for election, wage a five month campaign out of your own pocket, replace me and do all the research and solve all the problems which have come my way over the past four years.
Being an active Councillor is not an easy job, the pay is lousy for the hours and the hassle is phenomenal. Half the battle is being able to see the bigger picture and the other half is being able to recognise that you will never ever please everyone.
We live in times of massive compromise and therefore massive disappointment but every decision is thought through and then thought through again, picked apart, revised, reviewed, costed over and over and then finally a policy is implemented which has more positives than negatives.
It is never ever going to please everyone but we never take decisions lightly.