BARRY VAUGHAN, of West Alvington, nr Kingsbridge, writes: Barry White's concerned letter about only quarterly council meetings, Gazette, July 3, where it is assumed that an emasculation of councillors can be expected to occur on account of proposed sparse meetings, has prompted me to point out that our very own vital news medium for the South Hams, the Kingsbridge & Salcombe Gazette, responsibly printed an important part of the Local Government Act 2000 – 15 years ago! – in clear explanation. This act was inspired and passed by the then bright blue New Labour Blairite government of the day, which at the same time was putting together the most massive master ­computer-controlled national surveillance system any country had embarked upon ever, which was luckily dispersed on account of the general election. It was also centralising just a few new mega-district councils intended to wipe out and replace all county councils from batches of counties and their local councils, rendering journeys to such huge bodies as being impracticable for the ordinary person and threatening the indefinite prolonged bureaucracy endemic of huge offices. This LGA 2000 Act stated that – by this new law – the executive of the council has the power to overrule any decision our ruling local councillors are attempting to present for ­discussion and action, in that the executive takes instructions from Whitehall. Thus, if the government's policies do not concur with local aspirations or campaigns about matters deemed more important than the flower arrangement in roundabouts, or the colour and work on ­public toilets, local councillors' input from residents will be sidelined and vetoes made inadmissible. Thus it would be more accurate to state that a democratic system of decision-making has been replaced by autocratic decree. So democratic grass-roots capability to influence local government has been lost, with voting in local elections now a compliant exercise in nostalgia. Barry – along with others – might like to afford our newspaper a lot more status and credibility, for clearly, as the Magna Carta 800-year celebrations revealed, the national press ensured that all dialogue was confined strictly to a scene of 'everyone having a good time', but was 100 per cent deathly quiet over explaining the ­reasons for the historic event in the first place – I was watching. We are learning nothing useful from national newspapers these days. Seemingly, they are too busy with condemning human rights; sanitising and diverting our attention away from important matters; ­igniting ferocious booyah based on trivia; and wounding without scruples selected ­individuals, all raging up and down from Land's End to Joan O'Groats. Creepy.