I agree it's a hard life being a councillor.
I hear them criticised regularly , in fact it's rare to hear a good word said.
This is unforgivable and I mean it.
How dare people criticise if they aren't ready to do the job themselves.
I've been watching out for people to run for council for the past two years and haven't met one other than members of the Green Party. This is not entirely to their credit as they are quite open about wanting to promote the Party as their main objective. Becoming an Ulverston Councillor seems to come second.
So if you're not prepared to do the job, how dare you criticise.
By contrast I am keen to become elected and would love to replace one of our six SLDC councillors.
So maybe this grants me special privileges.
What do you think?
20 comments:
Yes Geoff your outspoken, and Im sure you have sharpend up the council in some aspects.
The council are a parish council not a town council and have very little control.
Your sights should be on SLDC its a pity you didnt get the seat have you followed the man who did get it and his effectivness
What has HE said what has HE done this would be the right time for a review he isnt very prominent a little involvement at the time of floods
Mmmmm?
You would be a truely dreadful Councillor. You have no sense that another person might have a point of view different to your own, no empathy for people you don't like, and there's a lot of them, and you would only be interested in the allowances and the opportunity it might give you to pose for the local media.
You guys out there are the ones to judge whether this is true.
This view differs greatly from the feedback that I get when I meet people face to face on the Market Square over issues like the Tourist Information Centre when there were lots of "Well done Geoff, sorry I can't help more as I'm working".
400 signatures and most leaving contact addresses.
Some even press money into my grubby hands and insisted that I took it to cover costs. One of the notes was for £20!
Another comment was "I support anything that you want to do", which is rather worrying.
How about a town brothel?
As for the first comment:
Remember I ran for the County Council for East Ward.
The next elections are for District Council in about two year's time.
I'm not following the man you refer to as I've had no contact with anyone pressing issues from East Ward, even though there are some important ones re the Flooding.
I feel it's best to wait for someone to seek my help; the people down South Ulverston are very independent and like to do things themselves. Instead I'm concentrating on West Ward where I live and know more about - it's conceivable that I could run for County Council which would be a year after the District elections.
If I got in at the latter then people could judge how effective I was in practice and might want to vote me in for the County as well as District. I would then be running against James Airey who is doing a good job at present. I'd rather work with him and not displace him. No point in replacing those that are working well.
You're too old to be an effective councillor and you haven't achieved anything for the community except brag about your campaigns but even then you're too stupid to target them at the right organisations. You have a marginal grip on reality and you're not even on nodding terms with the truth.
Not a comment that I can answer.
It's a matter of perception.
Yours and the others in Ulverston.
Remember when United Utilities dug up all the way down Market Street to install a new water main.
When the councillors were annoyed because the County Highways totally ignored them and wouldn't repair all the pot holes that were left behind because of poor workmanship.
Well Geoff took this on, got up a petition and found the same response from the County Council.
But he didn't give up. He tracked down the head of United Utilities and faced them with the fact that they had down excellent work somewhere in Yorkshire when they had done similar work.(a fact he found out using the Internet)
He then shamed them into coming back and looking at the work that their contractors had done here.
They agreed that the work was poor.
They then returned and did the work again in over a dozen places down Market Street even though they were no longer legally obliged to do the work.
Pretty good going don't you agree.
Since then I understand that Geoff has been keeping an eye on any work that United Utilities do.
As a result recent work has been of a high standard. He is in regular contact with the boss for United Utilities in Penrith.
Shows what a determined bloke can do.
You can imagine that the councillors didn't enjoy being shown up by his enterprise.
Nobody is perfect Geoff,
What you have acheived though is to issue ballet shoes to organisations,service departments, local goverment,ETC when you have your beady eye on them they dance a little prettier and are on their toes.
Wonderfull choreography keep it up
My, you have a wonderful way with words.
It works both ways.
Now I feel that several councillors are gunning for me and I have to keep very much on my toes.
It all adds a little je-ne-sais-quoie to life in the fast lane (excuse the 'French' - I'm guessing).
Try this so apt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6dpooV4tlQ
Geoff what the politicians must remember is they are your servants not you theirs
This also goes for companies that take cash from the public purse. Customer Focus is a worn out buzzword but must be applied and you have a right to question.
You live in north ward you idiot, not west ward. How are you going to save the town when you don't even knbow how the ward system is organised?
Without working together councillors can achieve even less than the system allows them to- who's going to work with you when you have dedicated so much energy to attacking and belittling them to the point where most of them must loath you. And on issues that almost always have nothing to do with them.
Crack on, you didn't get elected once because you're too weird for east ward people you won't get elected again for the same reasons whereever you stand.
Someone said you are too old ,well some people are old at 50 ,some still young at 90. I had the pleasure today of meeting again a lady of about 96 recovering from a broken hip. I must admit I had written her off ,well I was pleased to be proved wrong ,her spirit is unbroken. I think you would make a good councillor Geoff ,but you would find the same as the rest of them ,the officers are in charge.Like the town council,you would find yourself .....powerless.
I live in West ward - we're talking county council not district.
I work very well with several councillors; we're already achieving quite a lot through our combined efforts.
A.R. power is to some degree in the hands of the person.
In the past, I've found that when dealing with officials, knowledge is very persuasive.
Now with the Internet, followed up with appropriate phone calls a lot of knowledge is available.
One of my first steps , if elected, would be to employ someone to help me research what is being done in other parts of the country, if not elsewhere in the world.
I did this in the period up to the last election for county and will be doing it again.
Geoff
"Its all bread and circuses"
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
Who will guard the guards.
You're right.
Our political system has in many ways fallen apart because very few people want to get involved with it.
Politicians have taken power away from the people and the people don't want to get involved with the politicians.
There's a mood amongst the doers in Ulverston that if you want something done, steer clear of Ulverston Town Council.
We're learning that getting involved with them only saps our energy in trying to get them to do things.
We're far better off forgetting they exist and getting stuck in and doing the job ourselves.
I suspect an example will be the collapse of our Tourist Information Centre though we haven't learnt the outcome yet.
Had we realised that no serious bid was going to be placed by the Town Council (as was done in Grange) or by the so called Ulverston Community Partnership, a group of us could have mounted a bid ourselves.
There was a lot of support and even volunteers for this and we could most likely have made it happen.
When elections come up we get swayed by what the political parties are doing on a national level in the way to vote in a similar way on a local level.
We don't vote for the people themselves and choose the doers.
The people are out of touch with the politicians and the politicians are out of touch with the public.
Maybe the hard times ahead will give the local system a shake up as it has on a national level.
No, you weren't talking about the County Council you were slagging off South Lakeland District Council and South Lakeland District councillors. You live in the north ward of the District Council. Even though you don't even know how it is composed you have apparently convinced yourself that if you get elected to SLDC you'll be able to run it like a business, and that this hasn't occurred to any councillor who has ever existed before you. Which means that the direct services, housing and leisure arms of South Lakeland which are run as, errrr, business units, must have just somehow magically done it by themselves. You don't know what you're talking about but that doesn't stop you, does it?
Seems like a lot of punching in the air.
Why be anon when you have a point to put forward?
I see the toilets have been reprieved.
Phew, what a relief for some.
I don't mind the odd p put on the rates.
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