AN outspoken critic of the Forest of Dean District Council is planning to put a key council committee under pressure this week.
Dr Daphne Pearson, 73, of Redbrook (a village "clinging onto Gloucestershire by its fingernails," she says) will be standing up at Thursday's Corporate Scrutiny Committee to ask some pertinent questions, the main two being:
•Why are committee members all going on a trip to Gloucester to study how the county scrutiny committee works?
•Why are they following this up with a trip all the way to Westminster for the same purpose?
And how, she asks everyone else, can the council talk about 'value for money' flagged up in audit criticisms, when they embark on expensive trips at a time of severe economic restraint?
Dr Pearson asks the question under the council's new protocol to allow members of the public to floor questions at committee meetings. She fears however that this privilege will be short lived unless others join her at meetings and demand answers to procedural matters which at present go unchallenged.
She confesses to not liking the cabinet system at all and says we are ill-served by it, the Forest cabinet in particular being 'immensely arrogant'.
"I notice they have already started to call themselves 'senior members'," she said. "This is quite dangerous. They seem to have forgotten that they are elected members just like their other colleagues."