As a Governor of Shaftesbury Park school, you must have seen the irony in the screaming and abuse hurled around – if a teacher at the school experienced the same from a child there, would that be seen as acceptable by parents of other children whose class may be being disrupted? I’m sure it would not have been acceptable. Nor should it have been, really, from grown adults, no matter how passionately they felt about the issues. Personally I felt sorry for those who had hoped to hear more from the council officers present and for the person chairing the meeting, and all 3 of you Councillors, for whom the evening was pretty much a waste of time – it was disappointing you all didn’t show more support for the lady who was chairing the meeting….she wasn’t local, clearly, and you were one of her hosts – it doesn’t matter if you aren’t all from the same political party, you all had an equal duty to work together to make that meeting more productive. You yourself could have spoken out to make it a better meeting, and brought order to it, if you had wished to, but you didn’t. You could have done so if only for the sake of the officers who gave up their evening and sat patiently and quietly on the sidelines, there to serve the residents and councillors present without recourse to political point scoring.

The change was mainly done as part of a rebrand to start promoting the council leader more prominently (his picture is about a quarter of the leaflet now); the name change just a happy coincidence…

I was thinking more about when councillors have to act as decision makers (from planning, to trees, to everything else). If there’s that degree of separation it might make them less susceptible to bias. I accept it’s a weak argument.