A Question of Democracy

Now that the Tories have banned written questions from Council meetings, oral questions have taken on more significance.

The advantage of asking written questions was to tease out information from members of the Tory Executive not previously known.

Answers from Executive members were also in writing - and a matter of public record, published in full with the minutes of meetings.

There is no such record of oral questions - or the answers given.

Until now!

Thanks to freelance journalist Richard Orange who runs Orchard News Bureau, there is to be a verbatim record.

Frankly, this is a service to democracy that the Council itself should be providing.

Hopefully, the Council will eventually be embarrassed into modernising its communications with voters.

It will take a few days for Richard to get the exchanges transcribed.

Meantime, there's lots to read on his site, including the full story on the demise of two former Tory Leaders of the Council - Jim Speechley of Crowland who went to prison and Ian Croft of Bourne who has been banned from being a councillor for misconduct.

Just published on the Orchard News website is the full debate on the Tory motion to ban written questions.

You can see it at:

http://www.orchardnews.com/questimedebate.htm