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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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26th Oct '08
At the last meeting of the Policy committee of Torridge district council Holsworthy councillor Des Shadrick put forward a motion asking the council to support the Local Government Association call for the government to levy an annual charge of £500 million on the energy companies for at least 5 years – the money to be spent on insulating homes. Given that Bideford is in one of the poorest paid areas in Britain this would be very helpful but as councillor Shadrick was the first to point out things had moved on since he first proposed this in that Gordon Brown has retreated from levying any such windfall tax - but he still wanted us to support the motion. Councillor Miranda Cox made the important point that this money needed to be ‘ring fenced’ for insulation as governments of whatever hue had a nasty habit of redirecting taxes to uses for which they hadn’t been collected in the first place. I did suggest that the real answer was to renationalise all the energy companies as the current wasteful duplication of administrators is foolish in a time of rapidly rising energy costs – but unsurprisingly given the political make up of Torridge I didn’t get any support. The vote when it came was 8 in favour and 1 against.
Torridge’s most recent full council meeting was a fascinating one. It began curiously when it was announced that the first item of business on the agenda ‘The Way Ahead’ had been deferred. Councillors weren’t sure if this was a general comment on local government or what! The next item concerned changing the council leadership structure from the present cross-party committee working to either an elected Mayor or a Leader with a cabinet chosen by that person. Councillor Phil Collins wanted this also to be deferred saying ‘It just was not on’ as the leaders of the five groupings on the council had never discussed this – as is usual with such serious moves. A recorded vote was demanded on deferral and intriguingly all 10 who voted to go ahead were Tories – with everyone else (21 of us) voting against. Whether the Tories were ordered to vote this way I couldn’t possibly say but this party political voting is sad as up until now the council had been working well together – with none of the vitriol and rancour that characterised the previous administration. The Tory leader and Leader of the council James Morrish looked rather nonplussed by the vote – clearly he had not thought it through. Following an intervention by the Chief Executive John van der Laarschot we are now to have an ‘informal’ meeting to discuss the good and bad points of the idea – which, in any case, will have to go to the public for ‘consultation’. Seeing that Torridge may well not be here in 18 months time this may all seem like re-arranging the deckchairs on the deck of the Titanic but there we go.
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