One of the consequences of my round robin e-mail to the 60 Councillors was that one of my own ward Councillors was disturbed by Alan Eastwood's refusal to allow Claire Atkinson to circulate the e-mail by pushing the button that would have done this.
This Councillor raised his concern with Mr Eastwood as follows:-
Alan,
I was made aware of the email from Mr Richardson of my ward two days ago and the email being blocked by yourself. Whilst I understand that your views are different than Mr Richardson’s views surely he had the right to allow his email to be circulated to elected members.
In recent weeks we have received many emails from residents on many subjects in particular Cutacre and planning applications and in many cases the comments within them are incorrect. These emails have not been blocked.
As you are aware residents are entitled to their views, could I ask you to inform me of the reasoning behind this when other issues are sent without being blocked.
Regards,
Alan Eastwood replied as follows:-
Dear Councillor
In no way did I block Mr Richardson from sending the email to members. We received a request to Members services to circulate the email. As you will see from my email I drew Mr Richardson’s attention of my concern to using the Councils resources for distribution because of the inaccuracies contained within the email.
Mr Richardson had sometime ago received a full response via his MP on the same subject matter with the same information.
In the event Mr Richardson did distribute the email and I therefore responded to all members with the response that I had sent to him.
I hope this helps.
Does this man understand the English language at all??
'In no way did I block Mr Richardson from sending the email to members''
The 'way' in which he blocked my e-mail was by telling Claire not to distribute it.
That means he blocked my e-mail.
He didn't ultimately prevent me from painfully copying and pasting the thing sixty times in order to send it one by one to the Councillors, but his hope could only have been that I wouldn't go to that trouble. If he had known that I was the determined type of guy that I am, he would have accepted that he might as well let it through.
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He doesn't answer my Councillors question as to why other e-mails with 'inaccuracies' in them have successfully been distributed in this way.
In any event, why should he, an unelected employee of the Council, albeit of a 'high' status,have any right of censorship or veto in communications between Electors & Elected.
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In reference to the 'full response' via my MP with the 'same information', - the 'information' is exactly what I was questioning in my e-mail to the Councillors.
The document, which was the consequence of a query from another Elector and which Brian Iddon freely forwarded to me, did not satisfy my doubts and queries.
I did not and do not accept that his reading of the Act was correct and I was drawing the Councillors attention to that for them to make their own judgement.
Is he too 'great' to have his opinion challenged or for the Councillors to re-examine the advice he had given them.
For the Director of Legal Services of a major organisation such as Bolton Council to have such a casual approach to the meaning of words causes me to wonder how sound and legalistically accurate other advice to our Elected representatives might have been.
This might sound like it is becoming personal. It isn't.
It is to do with :-
1) We are Electors
2) We elect Councillors
3) Councillors proceed, on our behalf, according to the various statues and Acts of Parliament to implement their policies.
4) Legal Officers of the Council advise them in a scrupulously accurate, impartial and detached manner as to that which the law requires.
5) The Electors have to be confident that this happens in all matters.
In this case, I am not sure that 4) & 5) are happening.
Paul
I quite like this post
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