Abraham's 'Empty Heads' Law.

It's always going to be difficult when elected councillors are asked to rule on planning applications from their own councils. When it happens, they're expected to exercise the same dispassionate and independent judgement as they apply to any other planning application. That includes, in particular, avoiding any possible charge that they have prejudged the decision.

That was the situation on Wednesday, when Bristol City Council sought the blessing of its own Development Control Comittee to construct the in-city leg of the South Bristol Link Road, attracting heavy traffic through Withywood and across Highridge Common to the A38. There it joins the North Somerset leg, already approved for construction, and primarily a route that opens up green belt for development while clipping as much as a minute off airport journey times. (It will also save busy commuters the embarrassment and inconvenience of running over Barrow Gurney villagers)

On the day, the Bristol councillors voted the Withywood leg through by 8 votes to 2.

One of the dissidents was the Greens' Daniella Radice, who found a host of reasons (reinforced by the transparent failure of officers to offer convincing answers to her questions) to vote against. The other was Labour's Sean Beynon, who could not reconcile the undoubted expense of a very dubious project with a cash-strapped council being forced into harsh austerity measures by a ruthlessly ideological government (my words, not Sean's!). It just doesn't add up.

Helen Holland would surely have joined them – but as a long-standing and very public objector to the project she did the decent thing and stood down from the Committee – only to be replaced by a Labour colleague, Afzhal Shah, who decided to go with the flow and approve the road.

Of course Helen should have invoked Abraham's Empty Heads Law. All she needed was a simple statement saying “But I wish to give an absolute assurance, and that assurance is, that I come to this with a completely open mind. That must be done, and that is what I shall do.” It worked for Peter Abraham on the Ashton Vale Town Green debacle.

At least two previously-declared cheerleaders for the Link Road weren't troubled by any suspicion that they might have formed a view before the meeting. 

Both Claire Campion-Smith and Mark Wright had been part of the LibDem Cabinet that unanimously agreed to bid for government support for the road back in March 2010. Mark Wright had, at that meeting, (and in comments on this blog) rehearsed some of the same pro-road arguments as he repeated on Wednesday before voting in favour of the new road.

Planning applicants..... planning committees...... sometimes they just seem to merge into one.

(more on the nosouthbristollink website)

Whipping Yarns

"We're not being whipped" Cabot's LibDem councillor Alex Woodman told the council debate on abandoning the sell-off of the city's green spaces.

Technically, he was probably right, because a Labour amendment had just been introduced, and any formal whipping on it was impracticable. But only the previous day the LibDems had announced that "Bristol City Council’s ruling Lib Dem group (38 members out of 70) will amend the Tories’ motion on the Green Spaces Strategy (PGSS) at tomorrow’s full council meeting (Nov 16th).". It's hard to know how Alex could have any choice but to do what his party had agreed.

You'd think that the selective sale of green space wouldn't really be a big 'party' issue, except maybe for the Greens - but right through this debate, every vote was conducted entirely on party lines. LibDems in wards threatened by proposed sales still voted for it; Tories and Labour in wards that could only gain voted against. The usual disciplined tribal voting patterns, in fact.

Why this 'default' of routine voting as a block? Don't parties trust their own councillors to make their own judgements?

I put in a Public Forum statement to the same full council meeting to suggest that where a whip is in force, speakers should say so, and say why. I explained that "If an election or manifesto promise is involved, or some intrinsic party values, then a whip is understandable; but for the majority of council decisions (for instance the motion to be heard later about the funding for the Area Green Space Plans) it is very hard to find any rational difference between the parties."

The statement's been referred to the respective party whips. So far, only Labour has responded; I'll come back to this when I hear more.

As a footnote, it's worth noting that Alex Woodman and his fellow Cabot councillor Mark Wright (defender of Green Belt except when it involves a stadium) have put out a 'Cabot E-News', acknowledging that "that there is opposition to the sale of some of the sites (around 15 of the 60 proposed)". It turns out that the 15 are not actually sites, they're protest groups, while the 60 are proposed sale sites - so it's grossly misleading. It's still not been corrected though.

Meanwhile my own Freedom of Information request for the officers' assessments of the various suggested disposal sites remains unacknowledged, a couple of weeks after the statutory date for a full answer. With decisions imminent, you have to wonder why such a delay.

The new (radioactive) neighbours

Nice to hear Cllr Mark Wright speaking up on Original Radio on behalf of Bristolians who might be alarmed at the prospect of a new nuclear reactor being built at Oldbury - just nine miles from the city. Mark wants us to have more of a say in the decision - or at the very least, for the authorities to come and ask us what we think.

Once upon a time Bristol's people did have just such a forum, when the city council was part of the Association of Nuclear Free Local Authorities, a mutually supportive group of councils to help with fact-finding and with organising resistance to the threats that come from all things nuclear.

Today's LibDem council may be nominally anti-nuclear, but it's not going down that road. Last month, Mark's leader, Barbara Janke, turned down - for the second time - a Green Party appeal to rejoin the Association, on grounds of the cost (could be as much as a bank-breaking £30K).

Obviously she didn't ask Mark first. Too preoccupied with the World Cup bid, perhaps?

Is that a knock? Must be the LibDems.....

More unimaginative knocking copy from the LibDems.

Mark Wright, in his Cabot election leaflet, clearly knows the Greens better than they know themselves. The Green Party, he thunders, "joined the the Tories in voting Labour back into power after the last elections. In a choice between LibDem and Labour" he confidently assures his electorate, "they will back Labour".

What grounds he has for making this startling assertion remain a mystery. It's certainly not based on the voting record of Charlie Bolton (and his one seventieth share of the full council vote).

Maybe Mark's worried by the progress made by the Greens in Cabot since he was elected four years ago. He'll certainly be worried by the national opinion polls, due out tomorrow. They show that new Green voters are drawn especially from disillusioned LibDem supporters.