THEY'VE buried Somerset Council. But left the toes sticking out. Ineptness? Or just another case of future proofing? - writes Cllr Brian Smedley, Leader of Bridgwater Town Council.

When you can’t fund something, you ‘future-proof’ it. That means you do what you can with the funds you’ve got then you leave the rest of the wish list until someone else turns up further down the line who CAN fund it.

And this is exactly what happened at Somerset Council this week.

There just isn’t the money to do what the council wants to do, so it does what it HAS to do (the statutory stuff), then one day in the future someone will solve it.

Probably the incoming Government, of whichever colour red it is.

The Lib Dem Council voted to downsize - the workforce, the delivery, the whole operation - a fitter, leaner council - but they didn’t say what that might really look like.

So, Labour didn’t vote for that, we voted against, and instead demanded that it be scrutinised a bit more.

The Tories didn’t vote for it, but they just abstained.

They’d caused the problem, their government ‘could’ solve it, but chose not to.

Best to abstain.

The Greens spoke passionately against it, but then abstained.

And the three independents voted three different ways.

So, rumours of the death of Somerset are still slightly premature.

At the moment, ‘futureproofing’ means that someone in the future can turn up to the toes of this cryogenically frozen corpse with a set of jump leads.

Meanwhile….’Unitary’ really wasn’t a good idea was it? 

I think everyone realises that now - I’m not saying I told you so, although I did.