Leaving the details of this aside, I am getting fed up of hearing about secret ballots to remove someone. I will never be a Gordon Brown supporter, but one Labour MP was talking about holding a secret ballot to decide his fate. How gutless is that? What happened to going on record and having the backbone to defend your viewpoint? It is cowardly, hiding in the shadows. Just as this case is.

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I imagine that the secret ballot was standard protocol.

“ousted the leader who took them to a landslide victory”

I thought that Conservative Party Agents / Campaign Managers masterminded the campaign!

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Ah well, all good things come to an end, eh Mr Pate?

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I hope that woman who tried to close down my daughters school goes too!

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Re. No.6. “Pate was led like a lamb to the slaughter by the old chief of the council and has now been hung out to dry.” It was the of course the Conservative controlled Shropshire County Council Councillors who voted at a special meeting in November 2007 to proceed to Unitary. If anyone was hung out to dry it was the poor Council taxpayers of Shrewsbury and Atcham who stumped up over £300,000 to fund the foolhardy efforts of the SABC Councillors and the then Chief Executive in pursuing a doomed course of opposition to Unitary through the Judicial Review process, the High Court and then the Court of Appeal.

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good riddance

we said we were against Unitary Council and he refused to listen – im only sorry the people of albrighton did not punish him harder at the ballot box, now the conservatives have done the right thing and got rid of this man who is out of touch with the people

now lets get on with making the council answerable to the people, more customer focused and more priority for rural areas who want locally delivered services and a sense of personal contact with their council, not via a call centre

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im glad because if he led shropshrie county council he deserves to go – they are so out of touch spending all their money on strategies and policies when the people want basic services like weekly refuse and more grass cutting and the like

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This man rightly got his “come uppance”. He well knew he was rocking the boat when he gave his support to some of the more controversial issues. Local Conservatives, again rightly can show that they can be just as ruthless as the national lot. Cameron has let it be known that anyone who rocks the boat is “out” and there are a number of corpses to show for it.
Oh! that this Labour lot was just as positive, if they were we would not still have this Clown still “ruling” us like the potentate that he thinks himself to be.
Hit the ground running Keith.

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Harry, rightly you have picked up an interesting point, I first heard the term “regicide” used by our new Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, MP for West Hull on Sunday in “The Politics Show”. When asked if he intended to stand for PM in place of Gordon Brown, he replied to the effect, “neither I or the party are going to commit regicide”.
Having heard it used in this context I gained the impression that MPs and Ministers regarded Brown as a “potentate”.
That is why I used this term in my comment at 15 above.
I must admit to raised eye-brows when I heard Johnson use it. We are still left wondering I suppose, but it’s possible that is what Brown aspires to before he finishes.

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good riddance to the despot who abolished our local councils against the will of the people expressed in a referendum

you tories have no right to slag of brown on the european treaty referendum because you ignored referedums in shrewsbury and south shropshrie and bridgnorth which said NO to centralisation

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The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Lets give it a couple of years before we get too ecstatic about Cllr Barrow

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glad they got rid of him – he was out of touch – people want localism in this day and age – local people running local services in local councils, not Labour style regional assemblies and centralised super sized unitary councils covering such big areas

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its good to have a new start to make this feel less like Shropshire County Council just taking over the districts

seems like the district of oswestry just took over the County instead!

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and the rest oap – we need to sort out the bus passes for the elderly too which liberal south shropshrie district council ran well but scrooge like shropshire county council under pate made it difficult for us older folk to get around

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agree with the early points Reg/Rex = monarch

Uk/Shropshire = democracy (allegedly!)

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good riddance to shropshire county council and its old leader

lets hope this brings some of the dynamism of local district councils into the shire hall

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thats great to get rid of Pate because he was behind the incinerator, my concern if as Eva (26) says barrow is going after rural votes is that he will be sticking all the bad stuff in the towns, that worries me, i hope cllr barrow will realise how dangerous, expensive and unpopular the incinerator proposal is and make sure its not imposed on Shrewsbury.

You have a chance now cllr barrow, to change past policy, and save the tax payer money and win votes by ditching the dirty incinerator

Dont let us down, Shrewsbury makes up half the population of voters remember!

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if only the labour cabinet could do the same

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Great timing by the plotters.. and they didn’t just think about it “overnight” or “over the last week”. Knife proof vest to protect from one’s own team required.

They should remember that there are difficult financial times ahead and difficult decisions. Pate’s time may end up being seen as a golden period in which local services were relatively well funded and seen by outsiders as being amongst the best in the country.

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glad he’s gone – get a yonger generation in – some with new ideas like cameron, green modern conservatives not the old school lot

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