TRANSPARENCY is clearly a dirty word to the secretive folk who run Witney Town Council.

Not for the first time, the town’s apparatchiks have slung our reporter out of a crucial meeting to discuss a proposal involving thousands of pounds of taxpayer cash, with little or no explanation.

The vague excuse given this time was that the subject under discussion was of a confidential nature. It later emerged that the underlying reason was the council simply didn’t like previous stories we had run, possibly because they made them look like bumbling fools. No mention of any inaccuracies in our reporting, we note.

In a democracy, that is not a bona fide legal justification for a public body to go into secret session.

We might be more understanding, but this particular council has done this before.

This is Great Britain, not North Korea and the wider public have a right to know what their representatives are doing on their behalf.

The issue they did not want us to report on was the proposed sale of Langdale Hall. It is a sensitive one, but so is the huge £400m Westgate development in Oxford. Press and public alike were welcomed with open arms to hear that plan being approved in Oxford last night.

So what’s the big problem in Witney, other than an outbreak of mass paranoia?

What happened at the town’s council on Monday was an insult to the principles of local government and democratic accountability in the heart of Prime Minister David Cameron’s constituency.

The silly burghers of Witney should be ashamed of themselves today.