It has been a little while since I have posted about my pet horror, the
Standards Board for England so here is one for the road:

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Let's hear it for South Hams

At last one group of councillors has had the courage to rise in revolt
against the way our local democracy is being destroyed by John
Prescott's Code of Conduct for councillors, enforced by council
"monitoring officers" and the Standards Board for England.

Last Thursday, Trevor Pennington, a Conservative member of South Hams
council in Devon, proposed a motion that encompassed almost every
aspect of this "reign of terror" on which I have recently been
reporting.

Councillor Pennington began by inviting his colleagues to deplore the
code and the entire system imposed by Mr Prescott's Local Government
Act 2000.

In particular, he identified the "pernicious" principle of "prejudicial
interest", which "makes it an offence for an elected councillor to
represent the views of his constituents" in any instance where the
councillor has already declared a view before the meeting, even though
this may have been why he or she was elected.

The motion went on to point out how Mr Prescott's new system is
poisoning local democracy and ruining councillors' lives by encouraging
a plethora of "malicious, vexatious and ill-informed complaints".

It deplored the conferring of arbitrary powers on unelected officials
such as "over-zealous monitoring officers", and called on Mr Prescott
to review the entire system.

In particular, the motion asked him to abolish the offence of
"prejudicial interest", which prevents councillors from exercising
their democratic rights.

Despite a plea from the council's monitoring officer that the motion
should be watered down, it was overwhelmingly carried, by 29 votes to
four. All the Conservative and Labour members voted for it. Only the
Lib Dems voted against or abstained.

Recalling the words of Bishop Latimer, "We shall this day light such a
candle in England as I trust by God's grace shall never be put out", I
trust that councillors across the land will be inspired to follow South
Hams's shining example.

Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/02/nbook02.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/02/ixhome.html