Two councillors left the Tory group recently. Brian Mosdell left them, but will sit as an independent Conservative for the remainder of this Council. Not sure what that is all about, but I suspect it is something to do with Deborah and I giving him our Labour place on the Planning Committee after his own group turfed him off for being independent thinking. Neither Deborah nor I are that interested in the Planning Ctte. So it was a thank you to Brian to let him have our place in return for all the excellent work he did on the Scrutiny Committee when I was Chair and he was a challenging, but fair minded, Tory member of the committee - in the minority. Interestingly the now Tory-dictated Scrutiny Ctte seems no nearer being effective after my resignation last May, with its latest monthly 'informal' meeting cancelled yesterday.
Today we learnt that Julian Whittaker is standing down from the Council with immediate effect, for career reasons. The reason is really sad as Julian is one of the younger councillors, and one of the few who is still a wage-earner. But with demands on councillors for increasing daytime commitment (whatever happened to mainly evening meetings?), he was always going to find it harder. I lost very narrowly to Julian (32 votes) in an April 2003 by-election in Newport North - just days after the US tanks rolled into Baghdad. The by-election was caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor, Tony Tiltman, and we will be looking to get this ward back, especially since Julian's majority over us was only 56 in May 2005. This ward is a usually a straight Labour-Tory fight.
Whilst being a bit soft on Tories, it makes me realise that many of the local Tory group are decent, 'one nation' Tories. Shame about the leadership caucus of about five - what I call the nasty Tory tendency !
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Any chance that Ken Pearson could contest this ward? His wit is sorely missed in County Hall and he would do a good job for the voters! Here's hoping
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