IT'S incredible to Spectator that John Weighell, a seasoned campaigner at all three levels of local government, should profess to be puzzled as to why a committee system adopted by his own town council at Bedale has backfired so dismally.

The answer is staring him in the face, but the leading advocate of the committee system who has now been forced to backtrack on this parochial example of administrative tinkering did not identify it in such plain terms on Monday.

Spectator will do it for him. As has been said before in this column, whether it be a committee or a council meeting, the burghers of Bedale should just cut the cackle, take a firm grip on the arms of the chair and get on with their business in a manner more professional than that of folk randomly talking at cross purposes in somebody's parlour.

Much the same was understandably said by resigning member Mike Batty, although Spectator's mole cynically suspects that the former Sheffield City Council warrior's real motive for jacking it in stemmed from the fact that he couldn't get his own way in such matters as the controversial use of proceeds from car boot sales towards maintenance of Bedale Hall park.

Has nobody from Bedale visited Northallerton, where the town council operates a virtually identical system yet seems to conclude its business in about half the time and achieve far more?

A new advocate

A CHURCHMAN, not an obviously political placeman, is to chair a new-look Countryside Agency. The Rev Stuart Burgess, a Methodist minister and former chairman of York and Hull Methodist district and Methodist president, is to be the Government's new "rural advocate".

Now there's a refreshing change in appointments, and Dr Burgess plans to take rural concerns "to the heart of Government".

The new-look agency, due to be established by April 1 next year - and Spectator hopes the date is not ominous - will begin its life in London but will move to an "economically lagging rural area", so that it can better understand the needs of the disadvantaged.

Maybe Dr Burgess will advocate the agency's relocation northward, but nothing is said about it bringing jobs with it. No rural area will want it if all it brings is previously southern-based civil servants ready to push house prices further out of the reach of the rural young.