The democratic Process, Part One.

I went to a meeting last night of the Councils new General Purposes Committee. I had booked Myself in to speak on one of the items, well the only agenda item actually, under Council Procedure Rule 24.1 that allows other Members to attend and speak at Committee’s.
I set off all fired up because I had received a phone call just as I was leaving telling me that I would not be allowed to speak as this Committee was exempt. This came as a complete surprise to me as Members have always been allowed to speak, the only exception as far as I know is Licensing as that is a Quasi Judicial Committee.
Without wanting to sound too grand and full of my own importance I am a democratically elected Councillor and as such should have the absolute right to have my say on behalf of those who I am elected to represent wherever and whenever and about whatever I feel that I should.
So I arrived all fired up and full of adrenalin ready for a massive argument and quite prepared to be physically removed from the building by security if necessary only to have the wind taken from My sails when it was agreed that I would be allowed to speak. I can only assume that it was felt the subject matter on the agenda was potentially embarrassing and no-one should be allowed to criticise the proposals.
At this point I suppose I should congratulate Simon Moores for making a decent fist of his first meeting as Chair and allowing a free and true democratic debate to take place, I hope that he continues to run his meetings in the same vein in the future.
I don’t always agree with him but credit where it is due.
Basically the Committee were discussing the Council’s senior management restructuring and the resulting increase in Senior Officers salaries. I wont go into details here as the report is confidential, suffice to say that it was agreed that the proposals would be made public shortly and Cllr Moores undertook to ensure that this happened.
The only sour note is that Cabinet had already agreed last November that the Council would be bound by the Consultants report before they even knew the content or consequences of it!.
Now call me a Silly Billy but how can you agree to something in advance that you have no idea about or any idea what or where it will lead to.