What was the point?

Against my better judgement, I agreed last night to go with a couple of pals to the Annual Meeting of Stone Town Council held in the Station. In the event, I wasted twenty minutes of valuable drinking time!

Apparently it is a legal requirement that such a meeting be held to enable the Council to report to the public and to afford members of the public an opportunity to question their elected representatives. Well that sounds all very commendable but in practice it's a farce!

So what happened? Well, Cllr. June Price, the Town Mayor recited from a list of events that had taken place in the town over the last twelve months - none of which, bar one, had been organised by the Town Council. Stone's County Councillor, Phillip Jones, gave a report which only briefly referred to Stone but managed to weave in words such as "austerity", "growth" and "coalition"!

Then the floor was handed over to the public. Antony Lucas, as Chairman of Stone in Bloom, took thirty seconds to thank the Council for it's support and I took a further thirty seconds to point out that, according to research carried by Taste of Staffordshire,  the Stone Food and Drink Festival generated almost £400,000 additional revenue for the town. And that was it! The Mayor then used her gavel to close the meeting and the only 'real' member of the public sitting next to me was totally bewildered!

He thought he was coming to see 'democracy in action' and that he might have heard something about the Christchurch Way controversy, the negative comments about our thriving High Street or the recent graffiti problems. But not so! As we bade him farewell, he was wondering how he was going to explain his swift return home to his wife - he'd warned her he might be out late!

When I retired from local politics last year, I vowed I would never attend another Council meeting. I am now wishing I'd stuck to my resolution!