Followers of mine on Twitter will have been expecting updates from the recent budget-setting Council meeting. Sadly, this wasn’t possible after a decision by the Conservative-run Council to ban Councillors from using mobile phones for any reason in meetings. As someone who tweets by text, this means no Twitter for me, and no updates for constituents.

At the start of the meeting, the Mayor informed us that anyone using a phone for any reason would be asked to leave the meeting because such activity is rude and discourteous. I respected the Mayor’s request, but I disagree with it.

It might seem like a sensible plan. After all, talking on phones during meetings is discourteous. Disrupting meetings using phones is discourteous. Wandering in and out of meetings to take calls is discourteous. I’ve seen all of these and worse at Council meetings, but the Mayor has never before been compelled to react.

If the Council thinks that mobile phone usage is wrong, that’s fine, but they’ve taken their time coming to that decision, and it’s odd that it’s come immediately after I became the first Councillor to start tweeting in Council meetings. Anyone would think the Mayor was put up to it by the Conservatives worried about me revealing their incompetence in real time!

I think that it’s perfectly possible to send text messages to Twitter (or anywhere else actually) whilst in meetings without either disrupting that meeting or concentrating any less than is required. Sending a tweet takes a few seconds, and is a fine way of keeping people informed on what’s going on. To ban it is not forward-looking or fair, in my view. Even if phones have been banned for another reason, they’ve chucked the baby out with the bathwater with a blanket ban.

At the last meeting of the Council, I sent various tweets. I don’t think they interrupted the meeting in any way, since the phone I was using was out of view and on silent. The tweets told constituents what was going on, and were even picked up by the Manchester Evening News who broadcast them live online alongside those of their own journalist. There was no difference between texting my thoughts and writing them down, except that by texting them to Twitter I was letting my constituents know about them there and then.

I managed to ask four questions and take part in two debates during that meeting as well, which is more than probably 45 of the other 50 Councillors in the Chamber. I see no reason to believe that my tweeting had any negative effect at all. In fact, I think we should be encouraging it so long as it doesn’t interfere with how the meeting goes on.

If the Council wants to tackle discourtesy in meetings, it needs to go further than stopping phones. It could start by banning pens, which are used frequently to doodle during debates, or to write down the thoughts that I’d otherwise be tweeting! It would then do well to talk to several high-ranking Councillors and ban them from talking, laughing or nodding off during questions and speeches. Many do that frequently.

Officers too would have to receive the Council’s ire, since they are not above reproach. One was the victim of one of my tweets, in fact, when I caught him mouthing “blah blah blah” during a Councillor’s speech and tweeted about it. I don’t know when my tweeting became ruder than his blah blah blah-ing, but apparently it is.

That type of stuff is far more discourteous than a bit of under-the-table texting. At the recent budget Council meeting both Cllr Trevor Holt (Lab) and I had to actually stop our speeches to allow for Conservative Councillors to stop talking, laughing and interrupting. The Council might want to look at that as well. It’s worse than tweeting in my view.

The behaviour of a number of Members is beyond discourteous and bordering on the rude. But worse is the frequent lack of complete answers given to simple questions and the Leader’s repetitive habit of leaping up and speaking without the Mayor’s permission throughout meetings. I’d like to see these things tackled too. They don’t add to democracy in this borough, and they put distance between the people and their Councillors. Tweeting does the opposite, and yet it’s this that’s been stopped because of the phone ban.

Sadly, I can’t see anything happening to tackle real discourtesy. By all means make it clear that phones should be on silent and nobody should take calls. I don’t want a speech interrupted by “Sex Bomb” blasting out as a ring tone. But there’s good stuff that can be done with phones, and I’d like to be able to do that.

Rick

Council Tax in Bury will rise by an inflation busting 3.65% after the Conservatives running the Town Hall rejected Lib Dem budget proposals for a greener, safer Bury.

Last night was the annual budget setting meeting of the Council. Despite it being less of a carnival pie-chucking fest than normal (largely due to a very welcome change in the Conservative Councillor making the budget speech) it was still a disappointment.

The Liberal Democrats proposed a Council Tax rise of less than 3% for all of Bury. Both the Conservatives and Bury Labour proposed higher levels. The agreed rise in Bury is amongst the highest in Greater Manchester.   Lib Dems also proposed measures which would have improved local roads, put more police on local streets, and made Bury a greener place.  

Obviously it’s a personal disappointment that the Conservatives didn’t vote for our amendment (although Labour did, and we voted for their’s too, because both were pretty sensible). The Conservative priorities are clearly not those of my party or me.  

I made the speech proposing our amendment. For some reason I get more nervous now making speeches than I used to when I was a new Councillor. I don’t know why that is, but hopefully it sounded OK. I am very self-conscious these days. Perhaps a return to my awkward teenage years! But hopefully not…

Anyway, the Liberal Democrats proposed:

DOUBLING the amount of money for local road repairs

SCRAPPING the controversial Fairfax Road parking charges set to be introduced by the Conservatives

Giving every part of Bury extra Police

REVERSING Conservative cuts to parks, playgrounds and the countryside service 

Sadly, they were voted down by the Conservatives. Our plans were for a green Bury. We wanted to change the way the Council uses energy to reduce its carbon footprint, but this was rejected by the Conservatives.

We wanted to have a lower Council Tax rise but this too was rejected by the Conservatives. 

And we wanted to see more police but this was rejected by the Conservatives as well.

To top it all off, it was revealed that the Conservative budget contains £100,000 cuts to Civic Halls like the Longfield Suite in Prestwich. This despite a consultation on the issue still going on! We are all disappointed that once again the Conservative in Bury have let local people down. They continue to neglect Bury, and are again asking us to pay more for less.

So we’ll all have higher bills from next month than we would’ve had if the Lib Dems had had our way. So much for lower taxes under the Tories!

There was also more bad news for Prestwich after the plans to introduce car parking charges on Fairfax Road were approved. Again, we voted against, but the Conservatives who run the Council have more Councillors, so they won. Another mistake which will damage Prestwich.

Rick 

Wednesday night is Budget Council night, when the Council Tax level for the coming year will be agreed. It’s the boring legislative equivalent of a bevvy of black-suited heavies holding you upside down until all the money has fallen out of your pockets.

It’s actually one of the more interesting nights in the municipal year. What will happen is that the Conservatives will propose a budget, then Labour and ourselves will propose amendments which we think will make it better, and then there’ll be a vote which the Conservatives will win because there’s more of them than there is of us.

In a way that is hugely depressing because the party whip system means that debates are meaningless and we may as well not be there. But on the other hand the budget is pretty much the only thing we vote on that we legally have to agree, so if we don’t get a result we all get sent to prison. One Bury politician facing the threat of jail time is quite enough to be going on with for now, thanks. And of course the Conservative majority is only one, so if one of them happens to be in the gents at the crucial time (as happened a couple of meetings back) there’ll be much hilarity.

Us Councillors don’t have a huge sway in terms of what gets spent and how much. Most Council funding comes from central government in terms of grants, a lot of which have to be spent on certain things like schools. What Councillors can do though is set the Council Tax which makes up about 25% of Council funds, and reduce it or increase it up to 5%. We can also make changes to lots of services like roads maintenance, street cleaning, parks, libraries, youth services and so on.

Obviously the most headline-grabbing bit of the budget is the Council Tax level, but there are also lots of other bits, the importance of which we realise as they creep up on us during the year. For instance, there will need to be lots of cuts in services to make up for the fact that Councils need to do more things these days (buy lots more grit because it has barely stopped snowing for three months / provide care for the ageing population / maintain civic buildings that are falling down etc etc) but aren’t getting that much more money to do it with. These will also be agreed at the meeting.

I find Council budgets really interesting (which is probably why no girls fancy me) and you can come down and see the process in action tomorrow. You’ll see how the three parties do things differently, what our priorities are, and how the whole thing gets turned into the bills and services you receive. And if you don’t like it, there’s an election in a few weeks so you can vote to get it changed!

It all kicks off at 7pm, and you can come down to Bury Town Hall and watch the proceedings live if you like. Due to the seating configuration of the chamber, you won’t even need to look at my ugly mug because you’ll be sat in the balcony on top of me, so that’s a bonus too! But if you can’t make it, I’ll be on Twitter and you can follow me there. Rumour has it that the Council are about to have a fun-ectomy and ban Councillors from Tweeting in meetings, so this may be the last chance you’ll get.

And if the worst comes to the worst and the Tories savagely cut services whilst bumping up bills and ignoring our sensible amendments to the contrary, at least me being at that meeting saves me from the horror of watching Stoke 0-0 City (AET Stoke win 4-3 on penalties) in the cup instead.

Rick

This Thursday evening it’s the first meeting of Prestwich Local Area Partnership of 2010. This is the body which brings together all the “partners” involved in delivering local public services, such as your elected Councillors and all the other unelected people involved, like the NHS, Police, Fire, and voluntary groups.

As well as presentations on key local issues (this time a road safety scheme) there is a general update from the Local Area Partnership Manager, and your chance to ask the Partnership members anything you want in the open forum. There’s also the chance for 1-1 chats with your local Councillors who will be there.

It’s at 6.30 at Sedgley Park School on Bishops Road, which, incidentally, my Mum went to in days of yore. Little did she know that decades later her son would be there, bored, trying to get a cogent response to legitimate residents’ grievances but being met by an immovable wall of silence known as Bury Council.

You may want to ask about the Council’s recent response to the ice and snow, or about roads, parks, bins, libraries, civic halls, or anything else. Here’s your chance. Come on down and say hello.

Rick

Last night’s Council meeting was notable for a number of firsts. It was the first meeting to have been broadcast to the world live via Twitter, courtesy of the Prestwich Advertiser’s reporter beaming our thoughts to the globe. Unsurprisingly this didn’t result in an international internet meltdown, but I saw this morning that at least one or two people had tuned in. Hopefully the interest will grow.  

I am of the view that we should follow the example of other Councils and broadcast the meetings themselves on line. The more open and viewable we can be, the better. It might also encourage some of the Councillors to behave better and think before they open their mouths.  I need to find out how this Twitter lark works, because if anyone’s self-absorbed enough to think that the world needs to hear my thoughts distilled into short sentences it is the author of this blog. Maybe next meeting I can tweet myself. 

Last night was also the first meeting to be over by half past eight. They normally trickle on til ten, but due to a mixture of end-of-year weariness and a growing realisation that it’s all a load of pointless shouting, nothing much was up for debate last night. I skipped the Mayor’s festive mince pies to make it home for the football. Which was a mistake.  The reason it’s a load of pointless shouting is because backbench Councillors (that’s all of the 51 of us except for ten 9 who are on the Executive) are more or less completely powerless thanks to the government’s changes to the way local Councils run. Voters may think that their locally elected representatives have a say on policy development and the future of the borough, but in fact they don’t. In 2000 the old “committee” system was overhauled, doing away with policy development by committee which would be voted on in Council, and introducing policy development by Executive members of the ruling group. Backbenchers were reduced to “scrutinising” their work, which is fairly pointless since the scrutiny is undertaken by people who largely don’t know what they’re talking about, and can be easily ignored. 

Now the government are going to make it worse by reducing the powers even of the Executive, and placing them in the hands of a new “strong” Leader of the Council. He can, if he wants, give back some of these powers to the Executive (although not to the backbenches). So last night there was another first, as members from all political parties openly criticised these new rules. Sadly, we had no choice but to adopt them. 

The government can talk about “localism” all it wants. The truth is that it has been a centralising force, taking power away from community representatives, and reducing backbench councillors to little more than community busybodies. There is little point in us existing if the only thing we can do is wait for the scraps from the Council’s table. Policies change, decisions are made and services opened and closed without so much as a word to Councillors. If we want things done, we rely on the will of officers without any power to change that will.  Gone are committees of elected people which decide on the borough’s future. In their place are officer and government controlled darkened rooms where decisions are made to go unchallenged.  

Gone are area boards where communities came together to decide on Council services. In their place are “area partnerships,” a hotch-potch of meaningless drivel mixing the elected with the unelected and where nobody’s quite sure who’s in charge or why. Partnerships are fine, but we were elected and the others weren’t, and that should be remembered.  We are the people of Bury, but we have so little say over how Bury is run. Last night’s Council meeting was the first time I’d really realised that. 

Rick

Tonight is another meeting of Bury Council - the last one of 2009.

it’s a public meeting, which you’re all welcome to come along to. It kicks off at 7pm in the Council Chamber at Bury Town Hall. I hope it will be over by 8pm, because that’s when Spurs v City kicks off at White Hart Lane. But there are 51 Councillors in a room together, each one’s ego bigger than the last, and so there’s more chance of the meeting finishing in an hour as there is of the match ending in anything other than City’s 43rd draw on the bounce.

It’s not a particularly heavy agenda tonight. There are no motions for debate, which is something of a relief after the debates last time descended into chaos amidst tied votes, arcane constitutional rules, and a gaggle of people not really sure what to do next.

What we do have is a proposal to change the way the Council is led, which has been forced on us by the government. It says that we have to elect the Council Leader for four year terms now, as opposed to a single year as now. The idea is to give Councils a “strong leader,” although in reality all it will do is mean that the same weak leaders are kept in post longer. Strong leaders aren’t created by tinkering with job descriptions, they’re made by strong leaders being elected to lead Councils. Unfortunately the government think differently.

Not only does the “strong leader” idea not work in principle, it also won’t work in practice for a Council like our’s which has elections most years - in effect it means electing a Leader for four years despite that Leader’s party not being guaranteed a majority, and despite the Leader himself probably being up for election during his term.

Thankfully, as well as being silly and pointless, the legislation is about as solid as a jelly skyscraper, and so it’s easily circumvented. We agree to elect a Leader for four years, but say that he can be removed after a Council resolution at any time. So if his party loses control, he can be got rid of.

Which is much as it is now, only after lots of time and money wasted drafting and having to adopt pointless legislation.

It’s a good job the country is awash with cash or else that would have been a colossal waste of mon… Oh.

Rick

Last night was another meeting of the Council’s Licensing and Safety panel. This is the committee charged with dealing with matters to do with the taxi trade. It’s not as glamorous as, say, a post-Oscar Hollywood Studio party, but it’s important and the only thing between the Great Bury Public and any old maniac giving them lifts.

So we make sure that any drivers who want licences but who have criminal records are only given their license if we consider them fit and proper people, and we decide if license-holders who’ve been naughty should keep their licenses.

We also have to decide which vehicles are suitable to be licensed as taxis. There are some which blatantly aren’t, which is why you’ll never see a Bugatti Veyron plying for hire on Silver Street. But there are some where it’s a bit less clear-cut, and last night we heard a plea for a new type of car to be given a Hackney license. The cost of the traditional “London style” black cab is quite high, so drivers struggling with falling demand and rising fuel prices are looking at alternatives.

There are already some new types of taxi on the road, but for a while now the Taxi Drivers’ Association has wanted us to grant a license to the Fiat Freedom. This is a modified version of the Fiat Doblo. Unfortunately, we had to say “no” to their request last night, because the Freedom is a rear-loading vehicle for wheelchairs. This makes it difficult for disabled passengers to get in and out, especially if there’s a rear-shunt.

After rejecting one type of Freedom, we then turned our attention to another type of freedom, when we heard several cases of drivers who’d either been naughty at some point in their past and now wanted a license, or had got a license and been naughty.

Obviously I can’t talk about individual cases, but often on nights like this I am astounded the some people are brought before us as “criminals” when really the truth is very different.

Last night we had one gentleman who’s CRB disclosure contained police information which had somehow been acquired, but never sent to a court. He was up before us for us to judge the merits of what could well have been canteen gossip.

And another man who had been arguing with his wife, had been overheard doing so by a passing policeman, arrested, cautioned without either husband or wife knowing what was going on, and all of a sudden finding himself with a criminal record for assault after 60 blame-free years.

Another evening in the wacky world of the Licensing panel.

Rick

Sunday nights are often spent typing away on here about what I’m going to do with my week. It’s not very exciting, but I either do that or spend time contemplating the deeply disappointing spectre of another working week, and the more time I spend doing that the more chance there is of me ending up naked on a hilltop howling at the sky.

Tonight the situation is even more acute, as I have been banished from my living room whilst my in-laws-to-be (who are here for the weekend, which I never knew until today actually means “Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon”…) watch some God-awful period drama on BBC1. I’m not much for programmes like that - they require too much long-term investment. I am of the ADHD generation, all flicking and Teletext.

So, what delights await me over the coming few days? Well…

Tomorrow night is a meeting of the Lib Dem Council Group, which is always good fun and is inifintely preferable to sitting alone at home eating and watching Monday night TV, which is the alternative since I am being abandoned for half term by Tam.

On Wednesday it’s a double header, as we gather for a meeting of the full council, preceded by a youth service scrutiny sub-committee meeting. The youth service thing will be as thrilling as it no-doubt sounds. Thankfully I am chairing it so if it all gets too much I can call a halt to proceedings.

Sadly I can take no such liberties with the full Council meeting, which may well go on and on and on and Ariston for hours.

The Council meeting looks set to be one at the duller end of the spectrum. There’s nothing hugely controversial on the agenda, although someone may attempt some pre-bonfire night fireworks by mentioning the “civic halls” debacle which the Tories are starting to preside over. I can only hope.

Remember, the Council meetings are public, and you can come along if you want. I am going to be playing “Bob Bibby Bingo,” which involves listening carefully to the Leader of the Council (Bob Bibby) and seeing what foolish things he says when riled. His confusing verbal offerings are rapidly becoming legendary on the opposition benches, and they are without question the shining lights of fun in otherwise bleak meetings. If only he wasn’t making such a mess of running the Borough, I’d almost be a fan.

Since it’s not a Champions League week, why not have a different kind of Wednesday night and come down to see us? 7pm at the Town Hall. It would make a change to see someone in the public gallery who isn’t:

a) A former Councillor struggling to let go.

b) A council candidate at next year’s elections, present either to suck up to current councillors by attending meetings or to ask a planted question whilst masquerading as an ordinary member of the public.

c) A young person who is into politics a bit too much and who should really be out trying to kiss girls or something rather than being at Council meetings.  

Unless you come down, those will be the only types of people there. And I may find that too disappointing to cope with.

The only things of note on the agneda for the meeting, in fact, are the motions for debate. Both Labour and ourselves have put forward very similar motions calling on the Council to adopt the 10:10 carbon reduction campaign, which will see Bury Council reduce its carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Despite the similarities in the motions, neither party has put environmentalism before publicity and withdrawn their motion in favour of the other, or worked to have them merged. So we have them both printed, wasting paper, ink, and another few seconds of our lives.

To paraphrase William Hague, most of the Councillors concerned won’t be here in 30 or 40 years time as Britain drowns in melted ice cap as a result of this kind of needless printing. I, though, will be.

Rick

Last night was a meeting of the Resource and Performance Scrutiny commission, which I needed after my 13 hour flight from Hong Kong about as much as a man trapped in a lion enclosure needs a suit of beef. 

What is normally a fairly tepid affair was last night though transformed into an angry frenzy when a combination of jet-lag and bureaucracy made me very nearly lose my temper. Even in the harsh light of the morning (and after an apologetic email to anyone I may have offended), I have come to the conclusion that scrutiny is still utterly knackered in Bury. 

Last night we received a report on the future of the Council’s in-house security staff. Basically, if some skin-head youth is in a Council buildings or a park, and the occupants want rid of him, they have two choices. They can ring the police and wait until they grow old and die for a response from a service too busy dealing with car-chases and burglaries, or they can ring the in-house security staff, who come straight away like Bury’s own Delta Force. 

I can’t go into the detail of the report, because it’s confidential. But, like the review of Civic Halls a couple of weeks back, we as scrutineers of the Council were asked to do stuff with it with which I was not at all comfortable. 

At this point I am going to dive head-first into the minutiae of Council meetings. Please bear with me because even though it is dull, it is also important.  The report on security was considered by a sub-group of the commission, on which I don’t sit. The same was true of the civic halls review, which was considered by another sub-group on which I don’t sit. In both cases Council officers recommended the setting up of “Task and Finish” groups to progress certain clear recommendations which they specified as the way forward for both services. Essentially, the “Task and Finish” groups were to be tasked with carrying out specific changes to services. 

Asking scrutiny to approve such a course of action is a wrong-headed way of going about things. 

What should happen is that Scrutiny, whether as a full commission or through sub-groups, need to be presented with facts and options where a service change is needed. We shouldn’t be presented with a single preferred option. We need to be sure that everything’s been considered, and then we need to give the process the thumbs-up (or down). Once we’re satisfied with the process, these options then need to go to the Council’s Executive (the Tories who run the Council) who then need to make the decision as to which option for change they prefer. 

The current system does two things wrong.  

First, it gives Scrutiny responsibilities which it shouldn’t have. We shouldn’t be recommending service changes to the Executive. Where service changes might be needed, we should approve a range of options and make sure that service reviews have been done properly. We should only be directing policy in the broadest sense, suggesting general direction when we give the Executive an overview of a policy area. We should not be dealing in specifics.  

Second, it absolves the Executive of responsibility. The Executive have been elected to make decisions, and they should do that. Getting scrutiny to recommend specific things for them allows for muddling of responsibility. Scrutiny should step in afterwards, if appropriate, to make sure that the decision has been properly made. It shouldn’t make the decision in advance. 

At the moment we’re getting muddled. We’re asking the scrutineers to make recommendations on policy detail, when our only recommendations should be much broader and more general. And we’re removing the scrutinising function entirely by making the decisions which are then rubber-stamped by Executive before supposedly being re-scrutinised by us. 

Of course I’d love to be making policy decisions. But as a Lib Dem I wasn’t elected to do that. The Tories were. Anything I say as a member of a scrutiny commission is constrained by the commission’s remit. The Executive need to take decisions in the context of the whole Council, prioritising as they see fit and taking responsibility for their actions. We at scrutiny cannot and should not make their toough choices for them. We can only make sure they do things properly. 

It might be a bit of a dry subject to get hung up on, but it’s important. We need to be clear who’s in charge and who’s making the decisions. Without that clarity, we won’t be able to hold the Executive to account, nor will scrutiny be able to analyse Executive decisions or provide the Executive with broader policy overviews. That’s what scrutiny should be about, but it’s not working right now. 

Rick

For some time now I have been making the types of ridiculous verbal gaffes more suited to a comedy club than a Council Chamber. I have a rare and debilitating condition which renders me unable to resist saying things I shouldn’t. I think its official medical name is “stupidity.”

Occasionally these things make people laugh, although I am certain that in the end they will result in the end of my political career, or my professional career, or both. Sometimes my tongue is on such a hair trigger that I make Boris Johnson seem like Harpo Marx. It’s not a nice place to be.

“Bacup” Bob Bibby, the Conservative Leader of Bury Council seems similarly afflicted (see his breathtakingly pompous quote at the bottom of this shameful article), and although it seems to have done him no harm, I worry that it will harm me greatly in the fullness of time. The difference between him and me, I suppose, is that he says things which he seriously means but which are actually hilarious, whereas I say things as jokes which people sometimes don’t laugh at at all. One day it’s gonna come and bite me in the bum, I know. Opposition leaflet writers, prime your pens…

With my affliction in mind, I put my money firmly where my mouth is, and last night took part in an “open mic” event at the Comedy Store in Manchester. The aim of “King Gong” is to stand on the unforgiving stage, alone, for five minutes, and avoid being “gonged-off” by the compere (less fun than it sounds). Various audience members display their displeasure at the woeful comics by waving red cards in their direction, and once enough have been raised, the gong sounds and off they troop, before being replaced by the next eager would-be laugh-generator.

Anyone who does manage to get to five minutes has the chance to become “King Gong,” and is rewarded with fifty quid and a spot at the bottom of a bill somewhere on a night with professional comics. It’s the first rung on the comedy ladder - the only ladder I know where preposterous verbal japery is rewarded rather than viciously crushed, and thus one which appeals greatly.

I shan’t delve into the wrinkly unpleasantness of my routine, suffice to say that I didn’t reach the holy grail of five minutes. I was up there for three minutes and forty three seconds, stared at in confused bafflement by a hundred pairs of eyes. The first couple of minutes were fairly pleasant, if not entirely revelatory, but I trooped off dejectedly after what felt like an awfully long time struggling. I froze midway through something about the oddities of circumcision in a society that makes babysitters get OFSTED registered but which allows people to take knives to babies’ rude bits, and from then on, it was torture. Believe me, I’ve sat through (and given) enough tedious council speeches to know how long five minutes is when all you’ve got is one voice and a lot of listening ears. But it never felt as long as it did last night.

I suppose it probably wasn’t the worst first-time in comedy history. It certainly wasn’t the worst attempt of the night, that’s for sure. But I wanted laughter, applause and girls, and I got tittering and sighs. Maybe next time.

Unfortunately, that toe-dipping into the world of raucous comedy marks the end of my week’s joy. Tomorrow night I get to dive head first into the mirth-free seriousness that is the Bury Council Licensing and Safety Panel. It is here that we get to judge the fitness and properness of a variety of people wanting to be taxi drivers, all of whom are united in their possession of a criminal record and/or some evidence of improper behaviour. Jokey it ain’t, as they could quite easily be giving a ride to my mum.

As well as that, I have casework to look into. That mixes the tragic with the hilarious, as I do battle on behalf of troubled constituents against the forces of incompetence ranked against me in the guise of the unskilled Tory executive running this Council.

Where this is concerned, I am afraid to say, the jokes often write themselves.

Rick