Muddle-Headed Tories Contradict Themselves

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Sun 5th Oct 2008

At yesterday's full County Council meeting, the Tory administration seemed to get into a muddle and vote two different ways on the same topic within 10 minutes.

Council was discussing the Sustainable Communities Act and the opportunities it raises for local people to suggest things that they would like to see done. Having amended, and then voted for a Labour motion, welcoming these opportunities, the Conservatives then voted against a similar Liberal Democrat motion, despite the Leader, Keith Mitchell, admitting that the two were 95% the same.

"The only difference," said Cllr Zoe Patrick, "was that we asked the Cabinet to start planning to set up the community panels that would consider any ideas coming forward from local residents. The Tory amendment to the Labour motion asked the Cabinet to explore setting up the panels.

"We felt it was important to actually ask for some action from the Cabinet to indicate a definite intention to start asking local residents for their ideas, but, obviously, we expected them to think about how best to set up the panels first! That goes without saying. I'm therefore extremely surprised that the Tories could draw such a fine distinction between "exploring" setting something up and actually doing it. After all, the Sustainable Communities Act was supported by MPs of all parties, and in fact the Tories spent a lot of time reminding us yesterday that their party is entirely in support of it. I would have thought they would therefore like to actually implement it in their Councils.

"Sometimes, they appear to vote against Lib Dem motions just out of party political dogma."