Worrying about the attack of the Clones

"First" is a publication sent to councillors on a weekly basis by the Local Government Association. I quite like it as it's a good way to learn about what other councillors are up to.

This week there's a story headed "Parties responsible for candidate clones" - with the content berating all parties for the fact that the majority of councillors are male, white and over-55.

Apparently this is the fault of the parties, and the problem is with the selection process. I think this is quite far from the truth. The idea suggests that the selection process should concern itself with getting different kinds of people to stand as councillors, and this is not right.

The selection process should exist to vet and approve those who come forward - and from my experience there is nothing in this process that discourages or prevents many different groups of people from getting involved.

The idea that we should chase people and encourage them to get involved to broaden the demographic of our candidates is daft. We need proactive, confident people to be councillors - not someone that's not that keen to do the job and easily persuaded or steam rollered into doing things.