Stop Thief! Mr 12% has run off with our democracy…
Posted in News under Adur | Council Watch | Worthing | on Jan 07 2008
We left the windows open and the back door unlocked. While we were asleep, they ran off with our democracy. Powerless and disenfranchised, we watch ‘our’ Tory councillors - supported by just 12% of the electorate - decide local issues by themselves, without check or balance.
They have now decided to abolish the cross-party committee system and move to a ‘cabinet’ system where individual councillors make decisions without consensus, without the inconvenience of non-Tory opinion, without even a Scrutiny Committee that can change and challenge decisions.
They ran a ‘consultation’ on their plans. The outcome was over 80% against. In the meeting that rubber-stamped their deeply undemocratic, self-serving proposals, where a third of their placemen didn’t even turn up, the uncomfortable results of their ‘consultation’ were rubbished as un-representative and irrelevant.
There is a saying in the IT world: “Rubbish in, rubbish out” That is the outflow of what we have allowed to happen. We have sleep-walked away from the political process, dropped our guard: a tiny and un-representative minority is claiming squatter’s rights over the abandoned space.