Below is my email response to a candidate in the forthcoming Conservative Councillors’ Association (CCA) elections. In a recent campaign email they suggested that these elections were important because ministers for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), took notice of the results and in particular the numbers that vote.
‘Thank you for your email. I was most intrigued by your comment that (D)CLG ministers take notice of these elections. Could you please expand on what exactly you mean by take notice?
My experience of DCLG ministers to date and I won’t even name the most obvious one, as I see them all in the same light, is that they are wholly negative, spiteful and completely divisive, when it come to local government.
Even with Conservatives in the lead at the Local Government Association(LGA), DCLG continues it’s onslaught on local government, at every opportunity. This universal condemnation is dressed up as an attempt to ‘out’ bad Councils, with the majority supposedly non-Conservative. However, as far as the public is concerned, all councils are now lazy, over staffed, over paid and to be condemned in the local and national press at every opportunity. Finally, their politicians, should be voted out of office as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
As such, one could suggest that having a seat at the table, when your own party is in government, all be it in coalition, achieves little and may even fetter those in positions at organistations such as the CCA, ability to defend local government as robustly as many of us minions would want, or like. Good luck with your bid for election.’
I suppose what I would really have liked to tell this particular candidate, is that I would vote for them if they promised to give Eric Pickles a bloody good kicking (verbally at least) at every opportunity they got, once they were to be elected! Of course this is always a vain hope, given that most of those standing for such positions are likely to have the sort of aspirations that mean they will be seeking further advancement within the establishment, something that is unlikely to happen if you upset that establishment. Oh well, come the revolution…..
Roger Gambba-Jones 