Having just been elected to the Town Council, it was my assumption that the newsletter is distributed to all households within Todmorden, letting them know what the Town Council’s doing. Labour axed the Working Group that oversees production of the newsletter and ran out of time to discuss it in detail at tonight’s meeting (as we predicted that they would). They’d asked for suggestions about it to be brought forward to this meeting – which we did – but then they wouldn’t discuss them but said they’d do as they normally do (produce 500 copies and put them in the “usual places” – the TIC, the library). When I asked for enough copies to distribute to each house in my ward they said that they wouldn’t do that and I think they tried to stop me doing it myself because of “copyright” and said that I can produce a LibDem newsletter myself (which, of course, we will do).

We want the Town Council to communicate directly with local people and encourage them to get involved.

Ar 9pm, the Chairman closed the meeting, deferring the remainder of the items to the next meeting, despite protests that there were some urgent and important issues that need to be discussed and decided upon (eg arrangements to hold a meeting of the Emergency Committee).