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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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15th June '08
It is now a year since Torridge District councillors were voted into office – a suitable time to stand back and take stock of what has changed for the better or worse. Firstly, communication between councillors has become much better. The old council’s leadership seemed to treat information as a private commodity whereas James Morrish the current council Leader has made a point of including all the various political groups in decision making and information spreading. As to the personal/political animosities amongst members these seem to be greatly lessened – possibly because a lot of the new councillors are not ideologically driven. There are, I think, still problems between the council and its constituent parish councils - the Torrington car park fiasco springs to mind and Northam town council recently aired their anger in the Journal at ‘being kept in the dark’ so perhaps inter-council lines of communication need to be made smoother. The main problem for Torridge, however, is still the public perception of what the council has achieved. From talking to many townspeople this is still low. Partly this is a reflection of the in-built English cynicism I think but also it does represent the absence of any large physical achievement the council can point to. Certainly in Bideford the incredibly slow moving Bideford Regeneration Initiative badly needs some new impetus but, given the crash in property prices which were the engine expected to have driven the whole process forward, one cannot be that optimistic. Torridge may well be ‘on the up’ but the looming problem of current moves to scrap all of Devon’s district councils isn’t going to give Torridge much chance to really shine. The final decision as to future council organisation hasn’t been taken yet – and given the mendacity of Devon county council it might yet end with nothing changing. I for one hope this is the outcome. Torridge has improved and Bideford could well share in this given time for the momentum now being built up to come to fruition.
Amongst other things the district council runs the local cemeteries and, as with all other services regularly reviews its charges. At Bideford fees were last altered in June 2005 and this week we voted to increase them by 5% - well below the rate of inflation for those 3 years. In real terms this means that the cost of interment for an adult will rise from the existing £450 to £473 – yes even the cost of dying has become dearer. I did suggest we could offer a reduction to people using easily biodegradable coffins, e.g. of wickerwork or thick cardboard, and this was accepted by 5 votes to 2. My reason for doing this is that it has always seemed a pity to bury good wood and in years to come cemeteries will almost certainly have to be re-used and I know as an ex-archaeologist that solid coffins can last a very long time. I suspect that some people will not want to be thinking about this but we all die so we all should consider these things.
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