Telford & Wrekin Council send a “free” newspaper round to houses and businesses in the borough eight times a year.  It’s an opportunity for the council to tell us all how fabulous they are and to splash the EU flag around on every other page while they tell us about the tiny percentage of our forced EU contributions we have been given back in the form of grants to the borough.

The August edition has an absolutely priceless article written by someone at Telford & Wrekin Council which has recently signed the borough up to the West Midlands city region (now known as the Birmingham, Coventry and Black Country City Region) without any public consultation or a referendum – both of which they have actively refused to provide.

LOCAL Democracy Week, running from Monday 16th October until Friday 20th October, is a very special time both nationally and locally as it’s during this week that democracy, participation and active involvement is celebrated.

What is democracy?
A democracy is when people are able to play a part in decision making and vote for people to represent their views and opinions. In a democracy there is debate and discussion before decisions are made and people are encouraged to be actively involved in their community.

Since Local Democracy Week started in 1997, councils in England and Wales have held over 2,000 events ranging from Question Time to Mayor for the Day, I’m a Councillor Get Me Out Of Here and Political Speed Dating. Last year more than 300 councils took part in Local Democracy Week.

The Local Democracy Campaign 2006 aims to:

• make councils more relevant and useful to young people
• encourage young people to ‘take part: take power’
• make Local Democracy Week bigger and better than before
• increase councillor involvement in citizenship teaching in schools
• get councils to devolve power, wherever appropriate, to local people

The theme for this year is “Take Part:Take Power!” and we are inviting young people from across the borough to “Take Part!” in lots of fun events during this week to celebrate their active involvement within the local area.

Young people will also be encouraged to “Take Power!” by sharing their thoughts and feelings about issues that affect them with local decision makers from across the borough. LDW 2006 is being jointly organised by the Borough’s Children & Young People’s Active Involvement Service and Legal and Democratic Services.

For the record, I phoned Legal and Democratic Services at Telford & Wrekin Council after reading this and asked if this applied to the city region. It doesn’t.