There has been a recent change in the rules about what local councillors may or may not do. Christopher Booker details one of the effects in his column today. To explain this for American readers, the councillors under discussion are similar to the City or County Supervisors in the US. The rules about conflict of interest are now so stupidly convoluted that:

Members of South Cambridgeshire district council, for instance, have recently been told by their “monitoring officer”, Chris Taylor, that they may be disqualified from discussing the siting of a mobile phone mast if they themselves use a mobile phone. Neither may they pronounce on a park-and-ride scheme if they drive a car; nor speak out against a proposed wind farm if they have previously made known their doubts about wind power.

and

Mr Taylor has now set out his guidelines in a memorandum, including the suggestion that members with a mobile phone may consider themselves ineligible to discuss the siting of phone masts (this he equated with using influence to get a relative on to the housing list). So convoluted are these guidelines that councillors are more baffled than ever as to what they can or cannot say, although it appears that Mr Taylor is arguing that they must remain “open-minded” even on issues on which they campaigned for election.

Such a joyous democracy we’re building over here in Europe isn’t it?