Proposal to stop councillors asking questions.

Reason for asking no questions then I will tell you no lies

As I said if you thought 5 Jobs was bad

It's an attempt to avoid the awkwardness of having to answer to the electorate not just opposition Councillors. If you can't ask the question then the people (whomever they are) don't have to live with the answers. It's getting more like a Politburo than a Council all the time. It's a one party state and they can do as they like.

FOI requests take weeks to be returned and even then the semantics are deliberately obscure and stop at the absolute minimum in reply. By the time they are returned it's all too often a fait accompli. You shouldn't have to struggle to get information out of your elected representatives.

I suggested some months ago that all Council Agendas should be advertised in the local press and/or in the RCT Labour Party propaganda rag 'Outlook' and that the Council meetings should be broadcast live on the net. Not everyone's idea of entertainment but it would at very least show us what a one party state does and it's even free. I'll not hold my breath though because that's about the last thing they want to happen. To be exposed for what they are might open sleeping eyes. Far too dangerous.

Graeme.

I've always known that the local Labour Group has never liked the idea of democracy or too close a scrutiny of their nefarious affairs. Anne Clwyd would always duck and dive at election time when those with questions to be answered would approach her. She'd jump into her escape wagon and hurtle off at a rate of knots to avoid the awkward questions.

Same with local Labour councillors who are well skilled in the noble art of waffle and bulls**t when it comes to discussions of the things that matter to people in their wards.

No, I'm afraid that democracy, scrutiny and Labour politics are not easy bedfellows. They just don't like questioning and too close an eye upon their dealings. It may well be that Carwyn Jones in the Assembly likes to think that things have changed now and Labour is ready to listen, that they are not the former party of arrogance and complacency they used to be.

Well I got news for Carwyn; a little trip to RCT would soon convince him that nothing's changed around here. We still live under a Labour dictatorship, much like the satellite states of the former Soviet Union, and the new Labour leader will soon prove that to all who care to look.

He's much like the last incumbent, perhaps worse, because if close scutiny is now going to become almost impossible under his watch, then democracy will wilt away to nothing in RCT.

Let's wait and see whether he follows the hypocrisy of Five Jobs Roberts who was fond of saying that he had two ears and one mouth, and that meant that he should listen twice as much as he talked.

Well, we know that he never did that. It was just some little cliche that he picked up from someone, somewhere with more understanding than he ever had, and he had no intention of sticking to it.

It sounded good in the press for the gullible sheep who continue to vote for these mindless specimens, but anyone with an ounce of clem could see right through his hypocrisy, and as has since proven to be the case, he was in it for what he could get out of it for his own personal gain. Much like the rest of his Labour gang in fact.