MADAM, POSSIBLY the most intelligent response to this planning scam in Hereford has come from Barbara Ferris of Dinedor in the Hereford Times. She expects a proposal like a change in the council's constitution to be on public view and open to public comment well in advance of its implementation. I would only add that a council has no mandate to implement such a measure unless it has been promised before an election.
Planning has been made politics by this lot simply by imposing a whip on its creatures (a threatening request to vote with it) in respect of a proposal about planning. The definition of 'politics' in my old dictionary includes the words; 'crafty, scheming and artful'. Put simply it is the art of leading donkeys by the nose and Niccolo Machiavelli was good at it.
This Herefordshire council's intention to change its constitution in November, hopefully without the public finding out and without any sort of mandate, can certainly be called politics.
I detect a preference for skulking in dark comers with parish councillors of the co-opted sort — who have never bothered to ask anybody for a vote. Whereas the district councillors who are about to be ignored are all local and voted for.
So expect runaway parish precepts, a contempt for the word 'democracy' and more holes in our roads.
Keith Horne, Gorsley