Local Democracy In Action

[tazdevil]

I was a Parish Council Chairman for some years and peoples expectations of unpaid Councillors are eye openly optimistic. You're putting time, effort and money into the job for no reward and people attack you for not doing enough or even doing too much. There's an awful lot of 'not over my dead body' opinions and vicious slander directed at what people see as officialdom. I eventually had enough when I arranged for grants to equip the village hall with new technology, TV's and internet access, and the people with opinions and arms folded tightly across chest and disapproving looks (the meeting room committee), said they didn't want any of it because they didn't want the responsibility? It was effectively free stuff I'm still proud of my time as we did manage a playing field, community garden, new benches, village gateways and other stuff and its interesting to see the objectors at the time now using these facilities regularly that they have young families

[SueEllen]

Yorkshire style

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...e-dale-council

Walk around the North Yorkshire village of Thornton-le-Dale and the word that comes most readily to mind is genteel. Located on the edge of the North York Moors national park, it boasts the sort of thatched cottages that are evocatively familiar from chocolate boxes. A pretty stream flows slowly through the streets as a stately game of bowls is played amid the sleepy splendour of the local bowling green.
Yet all is not quite as it seems in this sedate corner of rural England. Stories have emerged in the local press of a bitter dispute between some residents and members of the parish council, a vote of no confidence, dark claims that a clerk was hounded out of her job, and grumblings about how the grass is cut.
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A fortnight ago, an extraordinary poll was held to determine whether villagers wanted to dissolve the parish council and elect another.

Some 244 people voted, with 180 in favour of dissolution and just 64 supporting the current council. However, the parish council chose to dismiss the result as “undemocratic”, because only 16% of the village electorate voted.

“Local elections have notoriously low turnouts,” counters Sandra Bell, the former chair of the parish council. “The point is that 74% voted for the motion.”
On YouTube it’s possible to see a series of Thornton-le-Dale’s bad-tempered parish council meetings which, almost in homage to Handforth, never seem to progress beyond matters of procedure.

The person who has filmed the meetings and put them online is Janet Sanderson, a local Conservative councillor on North Yorkshire council and a resident in Thornton-le-Dale.

She took this step, she says, in an effort to curb the poor behaviour of some parish councillors, whom she claims made slanderous statements that could incur legal action. “If they see that the films are going to be public,” she says, “they might stop slandering people in public. It would be funny if it wasn’t so very destructive and damaging.”

In an effort to escape the camera’s attentions, some of the parish councillors have taken to hiding their faces behind sheets of paper.
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