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Don't you mean trawling? Anyway you know I always thought you were one of a very limited amount of elected members who could discuss matters with a degree of detachment and we have done so many times and disagreed profoundly. Unsuprisingly this is another case in point. I think given the fact that several members had been WDC councillors and two were also long standing NCC councillors there should have been enough experience there to bed even a brand new parish council down after say the first year. Others managed it! You seem to be implying our Town Council couldn't make a difference because it had been set up from scratch but at the same time putting an onus onto the next one to do so? Secondly, and I think most importantly, the mention of "no single party running it” speaks volumes seeing as my campaign is about politics being part of the problem not part of the solution. How many times did we hear the Mayor telling us to shut up even though there was more specialist knowledge in the public gallery about the item being discussed that was apparent within the ranks of the elected councillors. You yourself suspended standing orders when you chaired a subcommittee to ask me about my organisation's experience with another body so you understood their input into our area. One way allows decisions based on merit and knowledge the other expediency, hegemony and hubris! To intentionally ignore potentially valuable information can only lead to poor decisions and I think we have seen plenty of them. We even saw the elected members vote against a planning application and they didn't even know where the place was! Finally I read through the rules, regs and recommendations regarding Parish councils when they were imposed onto our area 4 years ago and in part of it was mentioned the fact that political parties should have no mention. The recommendation was that Parish councils should be independent of any sort of party political control. Funnily enough that isn't in the rewritten one out now, mores the pity!

NO SINGLE PARTY RUNNING IT ! There should be no party politics in a parish/town council. It should be run by the people (who live in West Bedlington) for the people (of West Bedlington), which it will be if i and the other independent candidates have any say in the matter/get elected. Under the parish council you were part of we saw 3 Councillors who lived in Bedlington Station making decisions that did not affect them (3 years of precept increases) voted for 8 in favor, 1 abstain or in 2 over meetings 7 in favor, 1 abstain because 1 Councillor was missing from both precept meetings and worst of all no member of the public in the precept meeting was allowed to speak if you spoke the chairman/Mayor would threaten to suspend the meeting, how can that conduct be answered for?