When you are a politician you can spend many hours attending meetings, trying to do your best for the community, but when you are in Opposition it can be doubly difficult to make progress.
The County Council is controlled by Conservatives with Liberal Democrats being the party of Opposition. In my role as Leader of the Opposition, I spend many hours trying to raise issues that are important to my constituents. Unfortunately, all Chairs and Vice Chairs of the committees are Conservatives and all members of key outside bodies are Conservatives. Many people would argue that this is completely undemocratic and they would be right!!
However, the Government is trying to change this, turning backbench councillors into frontline councillors who will champion their own communities. I am looking forward to this day with anticipation, hoping that there will be rewards for those of us who try to do the right thing by those who elected us.
The ruling group changed the official name of their Executive decision-making body to the "Cabinet" - does this imply they had always intended to make every decision themselves without fear of any scrutiny?
This doesn't give politics a good name. Today I spoke about the floods in Oxfordshire and how it would have been better to take immediate action rather than waiting for scrutiny to do the job at a snails pace. I also spoke about the important role of public health and the challenges we face with our ageing population supporting everyone's needs without necessary funding from the NHS to cover it. It would be nice to think that the "Cabinet" was listening. Fortunately, the press were there today, so we can only hope that they will give a balanced view.
The County Council is controlled by Conservatives with Liberal Democrats being the party of Opposition. In my role as Leader of the Opposition, I spend many hours trying to raise issues that are important to my constituents. Unfortunately, all Chairs and Vice Chairs of the committees are Conservatives and all members of key outside bodies are Conservatives. Many people would argue that this is completely undemocratic and they would be right!!
However, the Government is trying to change this, turning backbench councillors into frontline councillors who will champion their own communities. I am looking forward to this day with anticipation, hoping that there will be rewards for those of us who try to do the right thing by those who elected us.
The ruling group changed the official name of their Executive decision-making body to the "Cabinet" - does this imply they had always intended to make every decision themselves without fear of any scrutiny?
This doesn't give politics a good name. Today I spoke about the floods in Oxfordshire and how it would have been better to take immediate action rather than waiting for scrutiny to do the job at a snails pace. I also spoke about the important role of public health and the challenges we face with our ageing population supporting everyone's needs without necessary funding from the NHS to cover it. It would be nice to think that the "Cabinet" was listening. Fortunately, the press were there today, so we can only hope that they will give a balanced view.
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