The outcome of the second council meeting 15 January 2002.

Mr Locke belittled the whole issue. 'Too much officer's time had already been spent on a matter that was only of concern to one individual', He did not read Chris Lonergan's or your letter. He contemptuously said whilst throwing them on the desk that as fast as they answer one E mail another comes in. He told the members that they were not going to use suggested recommendation contained in them, even though to my knowledge the members were not made aware of what they were, although they had a pre-meeting where this may have been 'discussed'.

Under questioning he had to admit that there was a LGO complaint being investigated. That led to discussion about whether they should be talking about the matter at all. He told them they could. He was questioned about if WPBC had to hold the current definition and he just repeated that no other authority held a different one and vaugely implied that they had consulted other experts.

I gave my councillor 3 questions to ask. One to legal, one to Mr Locke and one to Sue Allen. As Mrs Earnshaw (legal) was not there, after reading out the first one, he just handed them all to Mr Locke and asked for written replies! The other members not even knowing what the questions were.

He asked his big one. What was a performer? That led to the usual rubbish from the Licensing Manager about the nature of the events witnessed at the Cove and general merriment about the committee being performers. They did not seem to understand that it did not matter what their opinion on the subject was as the officers had stated there wa no discretion available to the members on the definition of the word performer.

At the point when one of them was saying a word for our poor Licensing manager, "who had taken a few knocks and was doing a fine job", I lost my patience with them and left. Whatever rubbish they were going to decide, I didn't have to listen and be insulted any longer.

So much for local democracy!

At the item before they had just made a big U turn, when they decided that their previous decision, not to build on any allotment land, was made on insufficient information!

Roger