Does Torquay need a Mayor.

[arcadia]

No not football. Gordon Oliver is Mayor of Torbay do you think we need a Mayor when you have a council voted in and paid by your council tax to run the town. Nick Bye was Mayor a couple of years ago and for the younger person he had a plan to modernise the town the older element voted him out because they did not like change. This Mayor Gordon Oliver has spent your money £20,000 on a tree. What I would like to know is did you vote for either of these men to do this job and do you think we need one. It would be nice to here opinions of normal people with a view on this and use you vote when the time comes.

[ferrarilover]

Having a Mayor is lovely, but their position needs to be ceremonial rather than authoritative. Wheel him out for Scout jambourees and village fêtes, but leave the decision making to the people qualified and able so to do.

The pineapple is nice, just a shame that the Torbay area to which it leads is a shithole populated almost entirely by absolute ****.

Matt.

[PlainmoorRoar]

But it's basically a Tory politician running torbay he is as out of touch with people in the same way David Cameron is

The tree/ pineapple great idea, torbay is about tourism you've got to make the right impression

Matts right the people who live here want it back to the 1950s 'strolling along the promenade'

The new plan for Carey green looks good to me but there some 1900 people who have signed a petition against it as a peice of grass used by students to litter will be used as a car park!

Something's we don't need like a huge tesco depot near the new tree that's not what we want welcoming people but we need things to attact people, look at the number of empty shops torquay has!

Love the idea for a new outdoor velodrome at Paignton - again a unique plan - like to see the ideas about renovating goodrington come true too. A proper sport and lesuire complex! Torbay needs a 50m pool!

Bit off topic but seeing this things on the herald express website annoys me

[chunkygull]

No we dont need a mayor, waste of bloody money.

I am sure during the "Mayorol election" our current Mayor said if he was elected he would do the job on a greatly reduced salary and near the end of his term he would work on getting the position anulled and there would not be another mayor.

[Gullscorer]

Directly elected mayors operate in a system which is not as democratic as it pretends to be. It's autocratic and ultimately more likely to be expensive and wasteful of public money. Imagine having a directly elected Prime Minister who would also take over the role of the Monarch as Head of State, appoint his/her own Cabinet, would have no proper accountability and would not be subject to the checks and approvals of ordinary members of Parliament. For local directly elected mayors there is, I believe, some kind of ministerial watchdog system in place, whose effectiveness is questionable. In practice the system opens up the threat of an elected dictatorship, benevolent but wasteful at best, despotic and corrupt at worst. Better to have the traditional system of elected councillors appointing the Mayor, and save all that money wasted on additional and unnecessary elections. (Not that traditional councils never wasted money, but that's another story).

[Gullscorer]

Some comments here on the current mayoral system: http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/H ... story.html

[AustrianAndyGull]

Megolomaniac jobsworths who revel in wearing clothes like King Henry the 8th. Lots of them also suffer hyperhidrosis I've no doubt due to their gluttonous lifestyles and staggering girths.