[Madhatter]

I agree with that neil.
There is clearly a big difference between our town council and your area council. Do you not have proper meetings for this area council? . As I've said, our town council deals with a lot really, and is increasing it's power and budget every year. We wouldn't have cctv, christmas lights or flowers in town if it wasn't for town council. Town council is made of of ellected on local volounteers that put themselves up for election. They don't get paid and get very little costs. It's only town mayor who really gets costs. Borough have their own mayor too.
I've put myself up in the past, but didn't really have my heart in it, At the time I wanted the contract to put the christmas lights up and regretted getting so involved with the raising of money for them, because that effectively cut me out. I could have used that money to put the lights up in my area of town, instead of me paying it all. For that reason mainly I didn't have my heart in it, didn't vanvas and was glad at the time not to have got in. I'm still in two minds as to if it's the right thing to do, even our town council is still politically led, that is things are pushed and blocked to score political brownie points.
In my opinion there's no room for political crap at that level, the things town council do are very close to the public, as listed above but even more sensitive is the cemetary, which is totally run by town here. Don't know if you've ever heard of topple testing gayle but if not I'm sure you will. Political point scoring, based on destroying peoples graves. Think not.