After a heated debate and an aborted emergency meeting, Aberdeen Council co-leader Councillor Iain Yuill called it 'political point scoring'. However, it has quickly become apparent that Tory leader Rick Brooks was talking a lot of sense when he challenged the SNP-Liberal Democrat leader over the administrations record to date and the Councils legal position with respect to the ill-fated bus gates.

    Refering to the Freedom of Information (FOI) set of emails obtained by the P&J in December, Mr Brooks repeatedly stated that the public perception is that the Council has been 'acting unlawfully' through-out the bus gate trial.

   He said, "an experiment cannot be considered an experiment, if the outcome is already decided before it is completed. Quoting from a 1997 court case that has become a precedent in such Experimental Traffic Regulation Orders (ETRO) legal arguments, the Tory leader left Council offers dumb-founded as they grappled to find a reasonable response to his call to 'scrap' the bus gates.

    With the backing of both the labour party and independent councillors, Mr Brooks boldly proclaimed, "ten thousand comments were given directly to the Council in opposition to the city centre bus gates. Together with the twelve thousand who called for the Common Sense approach we potentially have over twenty-thousand voices objecting to this madness."

      Mr Brooks continued, "How in your right mind did you agree with recommendation to make the bus gates permanent. I know no one who wants these bus gates in the city centre, so why do you?"