Locally there are two strands. The first is the individual event and its treatment by the council officers. This I thought was best directed at the officers and the department(s) concerned by the form of an a formal complaint, which is progressing slowly. Ironically it is the Director of Tourism that is pushing the hard line, by supporting the actions of his department. He has now however compromised his boss, The Chief Executive by obtaining his full support for their actions. My complaint is currently with him.

The second strand was the general effect this PEL policy of 'members of the public as performers' will have on local traditional events. I thought The best way for this was to have the council members meet and decide this. Sadly the the offcers saw this meeting only as a chance to compromise the members into endorsing their actions and used their control of their system to ensure the meeting did just that.

We are not without support from the councillors (not many of these were on this committee), but if members are (wrongly) told by their legal advisors that the 'law is clear', they will tend to agree, for it is a complicated subject. They would certainly need to understand it better to enable them to refuse to endorse their officer's actions, as they were asked to do at this meeting.

Sadly I was not at the meeting (which may have been a good thing), so will have to wait for the minutes, to see who said what and which councillors may be helpful.

I would like to publicly thank Hamish Birchall for coming all the way down and doing such a fine job at this meeting.