Politics - any point?

The more I become aware how both politicians and local government work, the more I can understand why people have given up.

I believe the system, while good in principle, has ceased in far too many ways to reflect the will of the people.

Most people believe the town council is ineffective, even though six of the 18 town councillors are also district councillors. Some say that even though some SLDC councillors attend a lot of meetings, they exert little influence because they are outnumbered by councillors from Kendal (actually the latter are in the minority). It doesn't help that some district councillors fail to serve on committees or don't attend regularly. Why are they there?

With the use of this new site you can check for yourself who your councillors are, get in touch with them easily and check on their SLDC attendances.

There are organisations like the Neighbourhood Forum that could be used to communicate between local politicians and the average person but some feel that it's not worth attending because they have been taken over by the county councillors.

It is easy to be sympathetic to those who have given up on the system when one attends something like the recent series of three consultations between the county council and Ulverstonians.

Here the Chair, county councillor Wendy Kolbe, made promisses that I challenge her to honour.

She repeatedly stated that we could speed the proceedings up by leaving it to her and councillor Pauline Halfpenny to sort details out with Highways Engineer Nick Raymond.

Could she then sort out the following ridiculous situation that arose during the recent public consultations about the Community Travel Plan?
In spite of the many voices calling for additional signs for the under-used Stockbridge Car Park, Raymond, by a method of marking he did not explain, managed take this almost to the bottom in the list of priorities with a score of -1.

This failing, among several others, renders the whole consulation process null and void and the outcome cannot therefore be taken seriously.

I have asked Debbie Binch several times to clarify the marking scheme that was used and to obtain the final document for me - the one that we were promised well ahead of the final meeting. So far she has not been able to get any sense out of Raymond. ( I assume that he is/should be concerned about the call by Tim Farron MP for an inquiry into the recent gritting fiasco).

If the town council accepts the result of this 'consultation', it will be yet another demonstration of its ineffectiveness.