Some majority party councillors, who profess to be unhappy at the curtailment of public speaking now in force, have said that they did not realise what was going on (either by not being around or not reading committee papers)and therefore found themselves painted into a corner come the vote at full council.
This matter had been debated at Overview and Scrutiny more than once, and at the Executive and the papers for full council appeared several days before the meeting. The topic had been given extensive coverage by this blog, the blog of Claire Wright and letters on the subject had appeared in the Midweek Herald, the View From papers and the Express and Echo.
This means either:
(a) councillors take no notice of their own committees and do not read local blogs and newspapers (although they appear very quick to write to them if they are being criticised) – which would be an appalling state of affairs or
(b) they do read them, choose to ignore them and use (a) as an excuse for saying they did not know what is going on – which would be an appalling state of affairs.
How come Lib Dems, Independents, journalists and the public knew but some of our councillors didn’t so, come the day, were unprepared to discuss alternatives?
Are they equally in the dark about Skypark too?
East Devon Watch 
I don’t know why we continue to be surprised by this behaviour! Both EDDC and DCC continue to follow their own agenda which in no way appears to represent either central government policy – or at the other end of the spectrum – public opinion.
When was the last time that a public petition was positively acted upon? Thousands of signatures appear to mean nothing…
Even though the TAFFs are put in place to examine various issues (eg high street viability), this does nothing more than to pay lip service to popular opinion, but none of the actions developed from those forums appear to be followed up and/or progressed?
Is ‘the system’ not the quantity which needs to be addressed, rather than those who egotistically support the continuation of a non progressive hierarchy?
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