Set record straight

In North Somerset Council's own paper North Somerset Life, Cllr Ashton expressed delight on the three-star rating for Adult Social Services and the equally good report for Children and Young People's Services. He implied that these results were due to the period of Conservative control from May last year. I too am delighted with these results. However, to set the record straight, these inspections covered the year from summer 2006 to summer 2007, most of it under the joint Liberal Democrat and Labour Executive and Cllr Ashton should have made this clear. Of course all good work builds on what goes before, and the present excellent results reflect the efforts of staff and councillors from all parties over previous years. In the four years from May 2003 to May 2007 the council had no overall political majority and this produced several different Executives - joint Conservative and Liberal Democrat for two-and-a-half years, then Liberal Democrats alone for 11 months before the final seven months of joint Liberal Democrat and Labour. I understand that North Somerset Life is not allowed to promote any political party since it is funded by North Somerset Council, and so I wrote to North Somerset Life to point this out. I have just heard that Cllr Ashton will not allow my letter to be printed. This is disappointing since North Somerset Life is supposed to speak for the whole council and not just the Conservatives.Cllr Deborah Yamanaka - Liberal Democrat group leader for North Somerset.