Last Friday I was all enthused about e-democracy having found a website where I could find all my councillors by typing in my postcode. This I did. Then I emailed them all (three of them) with four questions relating to major road works which has shut a main road in and out of town (thus creating extra traffic all over the place).

And I wait and wait. Now, my enthusiasm for e-democracy is beginning to wane fairly quickly. Not only have I had no response, I got no feedback from the website to say my messages have been received or have been read or anything. Also - no feedback on when I might get a response. In the meantime, huge influx of traffic into our street because of what most locals percieve as the indifference / stupidity of the local planning department which has allowed the construction of a small block of flats to cause chaos for weeks on end. (Incidentally no-one who is affected by this has had any notification from the council).

I wait to be pleasantly surprised by a constructive resolution to this - but suspect I wait in vain. In the meantime, I hear people in my area say ‘what’s the point? no one listens anyway’.