Democracy needs to keep working
It was interesting for me to read of the frustrations of the leader of the minority Lib Dem group on Wealden District Council (letters, March 5). I lead a minority group of 18 in a Lewes District Council of 41. Clearly we minority group leaders should stick together as we seem to have a lot in common.
I refrained this year, unlike in previous years, from putting forward an alternative budget largely because the room for manoeuvre was so limited as to be virtually unnoticeable.
If the Lib Dems had set a rate a bit higher than that which they did set they would have been capped. No virtue other than necessity there then!
It is interesting how in opposition the Lib Dems in Wealden called for a freeze last year. It is a shame that she did not tell Lib Dems in Seaford how to do it. They have just put the town council's tax up 33 percent.
One can only assume from what Councillor Jane Clark says that as a Lib Dem councillor travels from the Lewes District to the Wealden District a sort of Damascene conversion takes place. Some of the most expensive councils in England are Lib Dem controlled.
It is rather defeatist of Councillor Clark to say that the existence of the Conservative block vote in Wealden prevented Lib Dems engaging in the budget debate.
Surely if there is one debate in which engagement is necessary, it is the budget debate. Of course if you are a minority you know you will not win.
Councillor Clark seems to make a virtue of not participating in her budget debate on the grounds that to do so wastes officers' time. I am afraid I do not regard it a waste of their time if I seek what lawyers term "further and better particulars" to assist in our group in coming to reasoned conclusions.I regard that as a necessary part of democracy. If we as minority group leaders do not make local democracy work, who will?
The problem with local democracy is that the centralising hand of New Labour makes it more and more difficult to be distinctive and to feel once elected that we are other than pawns of central government in large areas of our business.
I will refrain from using this letter to contrast my views on the democracy of the National Park with those of the Lib Dems. Suffice it to say that being a councillor in the town of Lewes will not be the same in future as being a councillor in, say, Seaford. And the Lib Dems have not uttered a word of concern.
I sometimes feel Lib Dems are more comfortable as a pressure group. Councillor Clark's letter seems to reinforce that view.
Councillor Tony Nicholson, Lewes
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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