New councillors wanted; Numpties need not apply

So Jason Kitcat is baling out at the next election. Smart move on his part, as he would doubtless otherwise be made to look a complete fool, if he were simply booted out of Regency ward.

I am aware of several others who are making the same sensible career move to avoid humiliation. Who, however, do we really have to replace them? With a few notable exceptions, the 54 councillors we have allowed to grace our town hall in recent years are a pretty pathetic bunch, to say the least.

We should halve the 54 immediately, to 27 - and certainly to no more than 30. We need to upgrade the quality of elected councillors. For the avoidance of doubt, being a complete numpty is not a qualification for becoming a councillor. So that would automatically get us down to somewhere near where we need to be, as far as numbers are concerned.

That alone, however, is not enough. If we are to continue trusting elected members to run what amounts to  a £750 million turnover business, then we must have people who are really qualified to act on our behalf.

Surely, to be running a budget of that size, we need proper business people, not computer geeks, or people who should have been put out to grass long ago. Nor is it appropriate to have people who you would not normally trust to run a bath deciding on dramatic changes to our city that affect us all, such as much of the traffic planning we have recently experienced.

We should be chaining some of these people together, forcing them to walk along the seafront in order for them to acknowledge the filth and disrepair caused by neglect that none of them will accept responsibility for.

As with all politicians, it is never their fault, but something they have inherited from previous administrations. We need and deserve better.

Or do we deserve better?

We are the ones who have allowed these morons to act allegedly on our behalf. We are the ones who will need to make some changes. But getting rid of most of these egotistical twits from office will take some help from central government, I fear.

We need central government to dictate that we appoint an elected mayor and halve the number of our elected councillors. Perhaps then we would really be cooking with gas. It would be interesting to see how many proper candidates stepped up to the plate. Especially if they knew they were not just going to be hanging out with a group of people who, if not in office, would either be drawing their pension or on the dole.

See a response to this article from Warren Morgan, leader of the Labour and Co-operative Group on Brighton and Hove City Council