Talking of the ‘incredible and offensive’ stance of the current administration of Argyll and Bute Council, Argyll and Bute;s MSP, Michael Russell has just (noon, 26 June 2011) called for transparency regarding decision making in this Council.
He sees this ‘based first of all on an open and full record of council meetings and major committees’.
The Russell intervention will be widely welcomed, given the depth of Argyll’s concern with its present democratic deficit.
It comes after the decision by the present pick n’ mix coalition of the Alliance of Independents with the LibDems and Tories to reject out of hand two motions on open government proposed by Independent and SNP Councillors at the Council meeting on Thursday (23 June 2011).
It has to be said that the range of issues highlighted by these two, eminently sensible and non-confrontational motions, has shocked Argyll – and left it appalled at the brute force rejection of them by a majority voting en bloc.
Mr Russell says: ‘All the Chamber and Committee Proceedings of the Scottish Parliament are recorded and published verbatim. In addition many of them – and without exception the major ones – are broadcast live over the internet.’
In a statement redolent of sheer incredulity, he goes on: ‘So I find it incredible – and the public will surely find it offensive - that in the second decade of the 21st century there are still elected politicians who regard such scrutiny as unacceptable and who defend themselves by reference to an inability to speak their minds when their constituents are around.
‘I have no doubt that if the SNP are in administration next May our councillors will move speedily to ensure that there is a full record of proceedings as well as public access to major committees and the full Council by means of either Internet broadcasting or digital recording.
‘Of course it would be better if the present administration accepted their democratic duty and changed the ridiculous stance they took up yesterday – but as this administration seems deaf to the pleas of voters, no matter the issue , it may well be that the public will have to wait a few months yet to get what everyone else regards as normal – and indeed democratically essential.’
In the articles we have published on this matter, most heavily commented by members of our audience, there has not been one single comment supporting the administration’s anti-democratic stance – not even one of those that occasionally surface and which are clearly (and laughably) plants.
No one, whatever their political views, is likely to feel that they personally should not be allowed to know how their elected representatives take the decisions that affect their lives and the sustainability of Argyll.
Who is ever going to feel – today – that all they need to know is what the decisions are; and that all they need to do is to accept those decisions unquestioningly?
Your life in their hands? No access needed? No questions asked?
Mr Russell’s description of the administration’s attitude to allowing pubic records of its proceedings, as ‘incredible and offensive’, could not be more accurately put.