You may have missed the protesting chants, “What do we want?” “An end to the ban on pre-determination”, mostly because they’ve not existed. But it is a very welcome move.

Consider the previous situation.

Resident is annoyed about a plan for their community.

Resident decides to stand for council to do something about it.

Resident campaigns, saying “Vote for me so I can stop this plan”.

Residents vote for said resident.

Resident becomes a councillor.

Plan comes up for vote at council…

… and council lawyer steps in: “Terribly sorry, but hang on a moment. Congratulations on getting elected and all that – but as you said you would oppose the plan if elected that means you’d already made up your mind before this council debate started. And you’re not allowed to do that. So you’re banned from voting”.

The pre-determination rule was deeply anti-democratic: it banned council candidates from telling voters their views on certain issues unless they wanted to then lose the right to vote on them.

Steps back, steps forward: keeping track of the localism shuffle is by no means a simple affair, especially as some of the steps forward are coming from Conservatives as well as Liberal Democrats. But what it does mean is that keeping up the pressure on decentralisation is important – and especially for councillors who can use councillor and council associations to get their views through to ministers.

• Chris White – good to see another councillor using ALDC’s excellent MyCouncillor system.
• Giles Wilkes – a think tank blogger spawns his own blog, which is an interesting take on the question of why there are so few successful think tank blogs. His explanation? “‘Institutional’ blogs look and feel terrible.  You need individual personality.”
• Jeremy Rowe – do not look at the photograph on this post if you are easily scared.
• John Ault – the man who triumphed on Top Gear turns to blogging.
• Nigel Roberts – a highly local blog for a local councillor. It’s the place to go to find out the latest news on reflective bus lane poles facing the wrong way in Bath. (You’ll notice that this isn’t a new blog, but it is new to the aggregator.)
• Roger Harmer – see Chris White.

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?