It’s been a hectic week, which means my good intentions of posting my first impressions of life as a Town Councillor have been a bit delayed. Monday night was meetings night!

Planning Committee kicked off with a brief training session for new councillors; followed by a meeting of the Planning Committee (14 planning applications rattled through in 40 minutes – 3 recommendations for rejection, the rest for approval with or without conditions). Planning decisions are actually taken at the next level up of local government (SLDC). The Town Council is expected to provide a broad, informed perspective from the town’s perspective which helps inform the SLDC decision making. I’ll let you know how I think it works in practice

Then on to a full Council Meeting. The Council Chamber is a grand affair, and the Council likes to think it is conducting itself with great formality, but it doesn’t always work like that. The meeting opened with a presentation on possible phased improvements to various green spaces along the River Kent. Achieving the big picture would cost the best part of half a million pounds … we wish … but some steps along the way may be affordable.

We then got a bit excited about the threatened closure of the Youth Hostel in Kendal, which not only sounds daft in a tourist destination, but would also have a serious impact on visiting youth groups, sports teams, and our town twinning with Rinteln. The Mayor will lend his weight to the campaign to save the hostel.

Even more excitement followed over the issue of prayers. Like many historic councils, Kendal had been in the habit of opening its meetings with a five minute prayer slot organised by the Mayor’s Chaplain. In other councils, this practice has incurred the wrath of secular humanist fundamentalists, and the previous Council had tried to find a compromise position. The new Council agreed that any Councillors desirous of a ‘Thought for the Day’ could organise one themselves for the five minutes before the Council meeting. If a six month trial showed there was no demand, it would be dropped. It seems the good Councillors of Kendal of whatever religious persuasion (or none) are able to get along together without resorting to the courts.

After that the other agenda items threatened to be a bit of a let down. Councillors were (morally) blackmailed by our very able Town Clerk into volunteering to don hi-vis jackets to maintain law and order during the Christmas Lights Switch On (21st November – put it in your diaries. Based on Sunday’s experience a severe weather warning should be issued).

We agreed to stump up £500 for the Cumbria Community Memorial Fund – created in response to the shootings of June 2nd – and to advertise the fund. The Council has already created a Book of Condolence, in the Town Hall. We also agreed that the proposal for a directly elected Mayor for SLDC was bananas; that the lack of polling cards for the Council election was a disgrace; and that new Councillors needed some tender loving care.

I agreed with the last point as we staggered out after nearly four hours of meetings.

Following the driest spell in Cumbria for years, you think the weather could have stayed dry for the twenty minutes it took to process from the Town Hall to the Parish Church and back again for Mayor’s Sunday. Alas not – it started raining on the way there and positively bucketed it down on the way back. Cynics might argue that the Mayor and Councillors deserve what they get, but even they could spare a thought for the youth groups in their Sunday best uniforms – from Sea Cadets to Brownies.

So, it wasn’t a baptism by fire for the new councillors – more a baptism by total immersion. But it would be a brave person who suggested the whole thing is a waste of time anyway. Kendal is very proud of having had a Mayor for nearly 400 years. Judging by the reaction of the admittedly rather sparse audience along the route, our efforts were appreciated.

After living in Edinburgh (population 450,000) it’s a bit of a change living in Kendal (population 26,000). We went to a Fairtrade event last night, and were pleasantly surprised at how many people we knew already from other places. I spotted another town councillor plus a district councillor there – it made me wonder how the councils could help recognise and promote the work of people like the local Fairtrade group.

A number of towns announce their Fairtrade town status on the signs at the town boundaries. I think it’s time that Kendal did the same: “Welcome to Kendal – a Fairtrade Town” – and for that matter “A Transition Town”.

Now to canvass opinion, and find out who is responsible…

Just back from our first holiday in two years, which meant I missed the first ‘real’ meeting of the new Town Council. However, I won’t have long to wait, as the next meeting is a week today.

It’ll be interesting to see how things work in our ‘one party state’. Where a council has political parties involved, it is common practice for the party groups to meet in private in advance of the public council meetings to agree a common approach to the items up for discussion. This avoids the groups arguing among themselves in public, and being accused by their political opponents of being a disorganised rabble. When the various groups put their cases forward in council, the public can hear the arguments, and hopefully see democracy in action.

However, I wonder how this approach works when all the members of a council are members of the same political party? Having spoken to many of my fellow councillors, I have no doubt that we do represent the diversity of views held by the good people of Kendal who have voted for us. But we need to be able to demonstrate that in public, and show how we weighed all the arguments before reaching a reasoned decision … without appearing to be the disorganised rabble mentioned above.

A nice challenge to have I suppose?

My proudest souvenir of our stay in Edinburgh is the quaich I received from Balerno Community Council for Outstanding Service to the Public as a Community Councillor 1998 to 2009. In Edinburgh, a single City Council was the only local government unit, leaving just the Community Councils as a forum for local communities (but without fund-raising powers).

When we moved to Kendal in January, I thought I had spent my last evening wading through planning applications, traffic orders, appeals from local residents, etc. I was also surprised to see that England had retained three tiers of councils – Kendal Town, South Lakeland District, and Cumbria County, all with fund-raising powers. I wondered what role Kendal Town Council could have, and did it really need 28 councillors for a town of 26,000 or so inhabitants?

It looks like I’m about to find out. I was persuaded to offer my experience of community council north of the border to the good people of Strickland ward in Kendal, and following a LibDem landslide in the elections yesterday, I find myself heading back to town hall meetings again.

I enjoyed the six months or so break…

My expectations were low for last night’s televised debate between the three contenders for Number 10 Downing Street:

• it encourages the “I’m voting for Brown / Cameron / Clegg” syndrome – no you’re not (unless you happen to live in their constituencies) – you’re voting for your local MP. Voting for parties and not candidates has resulted in some truly awful MPs
• it makes personalities more important than policies – the shade of pink of Brown’s tie attracted more comments than degree of socialism in his policies
• the one-minute format assumes any question, however complex, can be addressed adequately in a one-minute soundbite – important issues are reduced to a passing comment (e.g. the Trident issue)

Despite that, I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome – possibly because Nick Clegg came across so well   It does prove that when people actually hear LibDem policies explained, they like what they hear. A good morale booster for the troops out leafleting, door-knocking, etc…

Since I made public my decision not to stand again for the OpenOffice.org. Community Council I’ve had a flurry of emails from people asking what the ‘real’ reason is: is it a consequence of the Oracle purchase of Sun Microsystems? and I disillusioned with the whole Council process? have I been offered a job by Microsoft?

The answer is of course much simpler than the conspiracy theorists would like. Since taking early retirement last November I have – ironically – had even less time than before to spend on OpenOffice.org business. I missed the last Community Council meeting, and I’m going to miss the next two, and I don’t really see things improving in the near future. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it seemed only right to make way for someone who has sufficient bandwidth to do the job properly.

And for the conspiracy theorists: any merger / acquisition process makes life difficult for the employees of the target company. The Sun Microsystems team in Hamburg were and are major contributors to OpenOffice.org. It’s very hard to participate fully in an open-source community when there are severe regulatory pressures to prevent ‘leaks’ of information. There’s also a natural human tendency to keep your head down and your mouth shut when you’re not sure what’s going to happen to your job.

Am I disillusioned? The Community Council is where the Sunnies and the volunteers come together from a governance perspective, so it’s not surprising that it’s been tough going there recently. I’m optimistic that with the right people on board, the Community Council can serve the community well. A steady influx of new blood is essential for that to happen – serving successive terms should be an exception rather than a rule.

What about Oracle? IMHO IT vendors – especially software vendors – are a bunch of shysters, hucksters, pimps, and pushers earning ridiculous fees peddling the impossible to the ignorant. Among this slough of mendacity, Sun Microsystems in my experience stood out as a beacon of comparative probity. Let’s hope the ex-Sunnies keep their core values as they are absorbed into their new corporate structures.

And no, I haven’t been offered a job by Microsoft.