Bob Price: Changes are ‘bonkers’

10:30am Saturday 10th November 2012 in News

OXON: Oxford City Council leader Bob Price has branded “bonkers” a Government move to make it easier to sack local authorities’ chief executives.

But the Government is looking at a system where chief executives could be dismissed on a vote by a full council meeting.

The dismissal of the chief executive of a council can currently only be done by appointing an independent person to review the case.

But Mr Price said yesterday: “I think it is a completely bonkers idea.

“The role of councillors is not to manage the implementation of policy but to set the framework.”

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Comments(7)

Andrew:Oxford says...
11:13am Sat 10 Nov 12

I thought it was the role of councillors to act in the best interests of the residents the city.

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mytaxes says...
4:20pm Sat 10 Nov 12

Obviously not according to Mr. Price

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DoctorBob says...
12:11am Sun 11 Nov 12

When are the government going to make it easier to get rid of them?

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Myron Blatz says...
6:28am Sun 11 Nov 12

Right-on, Andrew! It is outrageous that Labour's Cllr Price should think CEOs and other senior management public employeess should not be held publically accountable - otherwise it might be seen as Labour being in support of the political appointment of local government employees? Labour Group may currently have 'control' of City Council, but may I remind Cllr Price that the reason Labour lost control of Parliament in 2010 was because the UK is not run as a one-party, communist style dictatorship, but a multi-choice democracy where a 'rainbow' of ideals and beliefs are allowed to co-exist in the name of freedom - that same freedom for which so many have fought and died for, and which we celebrate on the 11th day of November each year. That very same freedom which even today, many one-party dominated countries would deny their peoples, and which so disasterously formed the cornerstone to communist-style socialism for many east european countries before and especially after World War Two. After all, Cllr Price, the last thing we need as we come up to elections for a Police Commissioner, and next year the revised boundary County Council elections, is any political party or local government management team which sounds like it might run an autocratic dictatorship, comrade ........

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Geoff Roberts says...
12:39pm Sun 11 Nov 12

Bob Price's comments appear undemocratic and I'm not sure that he knows what councillors are supposed to do. Mind you, I'm not sure I do either any more. I can't work out if my councillor I was talking to is City or County, Labour or a Liberal Democrat any more (he appears on the Oxfordshire County Council Liberal Democrats web site with no reference to Labour yet he's on the County Council web site as a Labour county councillor and then also listed as the City councillor elsewhere including in the Oxford Mail).

There's nothing comradely about this Labour administration! They are potentially a centre right administration which is into the authoritarian axis.

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Geoff Roberts says...
12:43pm Sun 11 Nov 12

This stuff about Labour and Communism reminds me of Americans calling Obama a Socialist. He's not, the majority of his voting record shows him to be on the right, not on the left! He's pro business over people, as is our City and County Council, as was the last few Labour governments and all the Tory governments and this coalition. We have no left in the major parties. Sure, many grass roots members are on the left but they are Communists, if they were they'd have joined one of the Communist parties instead!

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Myron Blatz says...
10:29pm Sun 11 Nov 12

Oxford Labour group in the same latrine as the Tories? Now there's a thought, Geoff - do you think Bob Price would agree?

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