Ban councillors from wearing two hats (From Bucks Free Press)

Ban councillors from wearing two hats

5:32pm Friday 22nd January 2010 in

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CAMPAIGN time. I am sick to death with our councils complaining they don’t have enough cash and blaming the Government.

They may well be right but it’s just gone on too long. As I’ve mentioned several times previously, there are just too many councils and too many councillors to make the local system democratic and understandable in Bucks.

One of the worst aspects is the fact that some councillors sit on two or three local authorities at a time, so in effect they sometimes end up referring business to themselves on another council.

It’s a nonsense. If our councils truly believe in the validity of having separate bodies, then they surely can’t justify having the same people sit on these different authorities.

So who will back me in proposing a new law that states individuals are only permitted to belong to one council at any one time? So called 'two-hatted' or even 'three-hatted' councillors must be banned.

And if that ends up meaning there’s a shortage of councillors to go around the various bodies, then tough. They’ll just have to streamline the system and have fewer councils instead.

THE ice and the snow brought forth a species of creature in south Bucks that I like to refer to as the Greater Spotted Wally.

These are highly dangerous pests which you need to beware of, and they are separated into different breeds.

First there is the Mobile Phone Driver. I spent several minutes watching one of these as I walked to work along the London Road last week.

I couldn’t drive myself because it was too hazardous, but this motorist was obviously vastly superior to me because not only could he handle his car in the snow, he also could do it with only one hand while the other clutched his mobile.

He seemed quite happy though as he chatted away at the same time as he rolled along in the traffic. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so smug if I had managed to locate my camera phone and then reported him to the police.

I find it a bit bizarre this still goes on given the fact it’s so easy to get hold of hands-free systems.

Nevertheless, this creature is not quite as dangerous as the second breed – the Untrained Cyclist, who believes the rules of the road only apply to cars and not to him.

I crawled along behind one of these one icy night and was quite happy to do so and give him a wide berth, before eventually carefully overtaking him. But then I stopped at traffic lights and he carried on quite merrily, overtaking me as he sailed through the red.

I suppose if you don’t need a licence then you don’t have to fear losing it if you break the law.

A day later, I was carefully turning right, across heavy traffic, on to the London Road from Chestnut Avenue. Cars on both sides generously stopped to let me go and I was moving forward when a cyclist overtook the traffic on my right and continued obliviously past everyone.

Quite clearly, he had no intention of looking to see why the traffic had stopped and could have crashed head-on with me. But since there is no official requirement on cyclists to learn the rules of the road, this is hardly a surprise.

Luckily for him, I was far more careful and anticipated his movements, saving him from his own folly and from serious injury.

When, oh when, will someone in power wake up and realise that cycling needs to be licensed and that cyclists need to be able to actually prove they know the Highway Code before they risk everyone’s lives on the road?

Just being green and trendy doesn’t make it safe.