Today was the Annual Council, normally a very stately affair where the new mayor gets “made”. Today though, the last item on the agenda was a little more fun than normal.
“Election of Leader of the Council”. As the Conservatives do not hold a majority of the seats we could not vote en masse to make Nigel Holdcroft (Conservative Group Leader) the Leader of the Council, without support from the opposition.
Ron Woodley (member of the Independent Party) decided to stand against Nigel. The votes cast were:
Holdcroft – 25
Woodley – 16
Abstentions – 9.
Hold on a minute…….. the people of the town spoke last week, about who they wanted to be their councillor. 51 councillors are in the chamber (well not quite, 1 Lib Dem couldn’t even be bothered to attend, having booked a holiday…) and they have a job to do. Deciding on who the Leader of the Council is going to be for at least the next two years (formally 4 years) is quite an important one. So important in fact that we didn’t vote how we normally do by saying “agreed” or show of hands, but we had a named vote.
But how did Graham Longley – Lib Dem Leader and BLENHEIM PARK COUNCILLOR vote?
How did Duncan Russell vote – Lib Dem BLENHEIM PARK COUNCILLOR?
Town Clerk: “Cllr Longley”
Graham Longely: “Abstain”
Town Clerk: “Cllr Russell”
Duncan Russell: “Abstain”.
What is going on? We elect our politicians to make decisions. Sometimes these decisions are tough. But this should come as no surprise to us all really as the Lib Dems have done this abstaining malarkey before over trivial things like £500 million budgets!!
So the answer today was Blenheim Park had one councillor who bothered to vote. So fortunately all 7,000+ electors of Blenheim were not disenfranchised today.
Perhaps we all need to put a few quid together to electrify the fences in the ward?
PS Credit where credit is due – One Lib Dem made a decision. Top Marks for Ric Morgan, don’t do it too often Ric or they might ask for your party membership card back!