There have been calls for Ledbury Town Council to call a truce. I support this.
 
The first step would be for the Council to rescind its illegal 'banning' of two innocent councillors who were wrongly accused of bullying and harassing staff.
 
At its May '17 meeting, LTC voted to continue to sanction Andrew Harrison and Liz Harvey, preventing them from fulfilling their duties as elected councillors, and writing once again to every local organisation to explain why. No evidence of wrong-doing was presented to councillors. It was simply an extension of the previous year's sanctions against them.
 
Just two days before, Harrison and Harvey had been found innocent of all the damaging accusations of staff bullying and harassment after an independent investigation by the county's chief legal officer. 
 
Not only this but Herefordshire Council had written to the council to say that the sanctions against them were unlawful, they were acting ultra vires.
 
Harrison and Harvey are not bullies. They are innocent. The campaign against them has caused great distress, and potentially damaged their professional reputations.
 
This is not a silly little tit-for-tat argument: people's reputations are being trashed, their mental health damaged, their livelihoods and well-being ruined. Should they just say, oh well, let's move on now? Or do they, in the interests of genuine reconciliation, at least expect that matters are put right, and that steps are taken to ensure the wrongs don't happen again?
 
When a very serious miscarriage of justice has occurred, whose effects are still in force, can it be right that we simply leave the past behind? For the two injured parties, and all those decent people who espouse fairness and truthfulness, the past is still happening, horribly so. How can there be reconciliation while this calumny is allowed to continue?
 
LTC must rescind all its sanctions against Andrew and Liz (for they are innocent). Then all the parties involved - including the town council staff - must come together and listen to each other with the genuine aim of charting a way forward that will enable everyone to begin working productively for Ledbury.

​There's an old Arabian adage that the camel's humble plea to let him just put his nose into the tent must be refused at all costs because it will be his shoulders next, and then his great hump-backed, stinking body. And then everything will be ruined.
 
The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform. That much at least has been realised by the little gang lounging on Ledbury Town Council's couch of luxury and incest.
 
In this way, the scandal of the wife-beating ex-mayor, Martin Eager has been scrupulously managed. Initial support from his cheerleaders evaporated and in the interests of stability, he was told at a morning meeting in the town council offices that his time was up. Fair play, they spat him out a like a rancid mouthful.
 
Barging his way through the throng of shoppers around the Tuesday market that dreary morning, Eager knocked an elderly lady out of the way in his haste to get home.  Storming up the Homend, his face was wild with rage. A couple of sharp-suited men with calm expressions, assumed to be lawyers, emerged from the Church Lane offices soon after; good work chaps - would that be about a grand?
 
The morning's drama wasn't quite ended. Former mayor Debbie Baker troubled herself to put the frighteners on a local resident who was gathering names under the Market House to request a parish meeting to discuss 'Eager's suitability for mayor'.  
 
'What you are doing is illegal,' she said darkly. 'You should be very afraid around here you know'. What could she mean?
 
Once the parish meeting had been requested, the Town Council went silent. Then, at the last possible moment, the town clerk, Karen Mitchell wrote to the dozens of signatories to say that the 'in view of Councillor Martin Eager's resignation from the position of Town Mayor, the meeting will not be convened'.
 
Move along now. Nothing to see here.
 
Except the parish meeting went ahead anyway, convened by local residents within the legal framework, attracting a crowd of over sixty people. It was a long discussion, characterised by restraint, intelligence, and the passing of several important resolutions.
 
Town councillors were futilely invited to attend and explain their reasons for proposing, seconding and voting for Martin Eager's mayoral ascension.  It made for a forlorn scene to see the empty chairs, each of them occupied by their grimacing mug-shots taken from the council's web site, helpfully enlarged and mounted by a professional well-wisher. 
 
Five of the decent ones attended, Liz Harvey, Andrew Warmington, Nina Shields, Nick Morris and Harrison Wilce. For the record, three apologised: Andrew Harrison, Jayne Roberts and Noel Roberts. The rest had been instructed to keep away. It was considered that silence would be the best strategy. The hoo-hah over Eager was said to be a lot of hot steam, nothing will happen, it'll blow over and there'll be a show of support at the next town council meeting. I quote. 
 
One of the things that most rankled the public at the meeting is the clandestine manner in which the town's mayor is decided. An inner circle of the gang goes into conclave and decides who it shall be. Then there is a nomination and their councillor acolytes are expected to vote in the approved way. Who knows, it might be them that get lucky next year?
 
There is no pitch for the job, no hustings, no discussion or debate. The process is neatly packaged and skillfully streamlined. This "democratic" process would gladden the heart of any old revolutionary apparatchik in Maoist China or the old Soviet Union.
 
Among other sensible suggestions, local electors proposed that an alternative, more transparent process be adopted, that nominations for mayor be lodged a week or two before the council vote, so that nominees' credentials can be considered.
 
At last week's town council meeting, this suggestion was decried out of hand. Duly, the election went ahead. Annette Crowe nominated her best friend Elaine Fieldhouse. There were other good nominations, but Fieldhouse clinched the vote as was foregone.
 
The evening before you see, under the cover of a (closed) Neighbourhood Plan meeting, Fieldhouse had been anointed. Present behind the locked doors were cllrs Crowe, Manns, Barnes, Eager and a few friends, plus the town clerk, Karen Mitchell.
 
When I alluded to this discussion during the ensuing 'public participation' segment of the council meeting, there was uproar, as apoplectic councillors, including the new mayor, once again unbuttoned their dignity in a screeching onslaught.
 
The lady doth protest too much methinks. Could I have touched a raw nerve?
 
It seems now that a ripple of paranoia is lapping over the body-strewn shores of Ledbury Town Council. There are even rumours that that the town council is having the meeting room swept for bugs. 

Rather than imagining themselves in a Bond novel, perhaps they should look a bit closer to home for the source of the leaks, ask themselves if there just might be a well-placed informant in their midst, someone with more conscience than they, who keeps spilling the embarrassing beans.
 
Battered and splattered, the council is now in lock-down and a red flag has been hoisted. There will be no quarter, much less surrender.
 
That bloody camel. Everything was fine until it started poking its nose in. Now there's a bad tempered caravan of them camped outside busy shitting all over the place.
 
Best of luck Elaine.  

At the 2017 annual council meeting, Ledbury Town Council's first act was to elect its new mayor. Could they have they have made a more catastrophic choice?

Martin Eager has been hovering in the wings for a few years now, wondering if his bespattered reputation was sufficiently recovered to make a bid for the top job. His friends on the council thought so. All their efforts to get his picture on the front page of the Ledbury Reporter every month must surely now have borne fruit. 

Given too the crushing political regime, the sense of triumph coming from the silencing of Cllrs Liz Harvey and Andrew Harrison and the general air of invincibility surrounding Barnes, Crowe, Fieldhouse and Baker, surely now was the time?

Wrong. Again. 

Dressed in his best cream linen suit with prepared victory speech tucked in his breast pocket, Martin Eager arrived at the Community Hall in sunny mood. His friends and allies - including council staff - chatted and laughed in a small gaggle. Last year's mayor Debbie Baker, banged her wooden hammer and began. Item one. Election of new mayor. I'd like to propose Cllr Martin Eager. He is a dedicated councillor and works hard for this town. I think he will be an excellent mayor. On cue, Bob Barnes piped up and said firmly, seconded. Is (sic) there any more (sic) nominations, continued Baker. 

There was an astonished silence for a few seconds. The sizeable audience and the out-crowd of councillors, took a collective gulp. Liz Harvey got to her feet and said the words that were bouncing around the room like alpha radiation.

'I'd like to hear from Cllr Eager why he's a suitable candidate for mayor having been a convicted wife beater and a self confessed child abuser...' Ooh, disgusting, out of order completely, that is not necessary, just sit down, not convicted... fellow councillors Bob Barnes, Jean Simpson, Annette Crowe, Elaine Fieldhouse erupted in a chorus of rage. Listen here. 

Then Eager got to his feet and said: 'How low can you stoop? You are the most repulsive, odious individual I've ever met.' There was applause from councillors. 'Just sit down,' he continued, 'you smelly old cow.' The election happened and was followed by more loud clapping.

Just five councillors voted against: Liz Harvey, Andrew Harrison, Nick Morris, Harrison Wilce and Andrew Warmington. (Noel Roberts and Nina Shields were absent).

Thus began Martin Eager's ill-fated mayorship of five days. The public reaction was swift and savage. Within forty-eight hours, two petitions totalling 550 names had called for his resignation while Facebook went nuclear, attracting attention from the national tabloids. (Articles are being withheld because of legal issues, but no doubt they will emerge). 

Local press remained curiously tight-lipped, not a squeak from the Ledbury Reporter until he had resigned on Tuesday. Thanks editor John Wilson for providing such an on-the-pulse independent, local news service that reflects the issues of importance to the Ledbury community etc.

Mayor Eager came and went, but the gang that elected him are still alive and kicking in the Church Street offices of the town council. In recent days there has been frantic activity morning and night. Lawyers in sharp suits have been been coming and going, procured by fellow town councillors, and availing themselves of the town council meeting rooms.

Why all the fuss? As reported previously in this blog, Martin Eager was convicted of assaulting his wife and prosecuted for child molestation. The case collapsed on a technicality and a retrial was aborted due to police doubts that they could marshall sufficient evidence after the collapse of the first trial. The precise circumstances are unknown of course, but it should be remembered that the key witnesses involved were two children and an abused wife. Perhaps they were unwilling to continue their terrifying ordeal.

One thing is certain, Eager was guilty of domestic abuse, while the child molestation case against him remains open. He has not been found not guilty.  At the aborted trial it was reported by the police that the girl said that 'he done disgusting things to her', When arrested, 'he recalled an incident when he had drunk too much wine'. He claimed the children had put their hands into his boxer shorts but he stopped them 'when it went too far'. He assured the mother that it was a stupid incident that had got out of hand'. Eager admitted these things. They were not unproven allegations, they formed part of the evidential base provided by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. It seems doubtful that they were lying.

It now emerges that Eager is intending to pursue action against anyone who repeats these claims. That means he is taking on about ninety-five percent of Ledbury. Good luck Martin.

Now that Eager has resigned from the mayoral role, the council is hoping that they will have drawn the sting on this affair. However it isn't quite ended in my opinion: I want to hear explanations from his council supporters why they think he was an acceptable choice, and why they should continue as town councillors.

I wrote an open letter to town councillors asking them to explain themselves: 

"Dear Councillors
You will by now be aware of the public outrage which has greeted your collective decision to elect Martin Eager as town mayor. It gives absolutely no pleasure to point out to you the damage to the Town Council's credibility and the town’s wider reputation by this election.

It is clear in the minds of most reasonable people that Martin Eager is quite unsuitable to be town mayor. He has a conviction for violent domestic abuse and by his own admission indulged in grossly inappropriate sexual behaviour with two children. It is not libellous to point this out: the testimony at his court appearances is damning. Added to this there are further allegations of even more serious impropriety swirling about the town, which have not been fully investigated. These do not emanate from trouble-makers or gossip mongers, but from the first hand accounts of the alleged victim’s school friends, now adults. I cannot comment on their truthfulness. 

Whatever the truth about Eager's past behaviour, it is a matter of record that he has behaved violently towards his wife, for which he was convicted, and admitted to drunken sexual behaviour with minors.

There are those among you, and others in the town, who take a fairly relaxed view of these felonies it seems. It has been said that Eager's alleged sex crimes were never proved, that he was 'set up' by the children and their mother, that his wife was greedy and cynical, a shameless figure who went about gallivanting while her embarrassed husband stayed at home. In short, she deserved what she got.
I am sickened by these comments. There can be no circumstances where it is acceptable for husbands - or wives - to physically abuse their partners or have children grope their genitals. Victim blaming is a common defense used by abusers to justify their heinous behaviour. Nobody asks or deserves to be battered or molested. If you harbour such thoughts about Eager, that he hasn't done anything seriously wrong or deserves a second chance, then your moral compass is seriously askew, and you too are probably unfit for public service.

The town mayor is the figurehead of the town, a position of honour and prestige. What does it say about Ledbury that we elect someone with a criminal record, let alone someone at the centre of such awful allegations?
How can Eager discharge his duties? Children, vulnerable adults, parents, teachers and women would all have reason to object to, or be fearful of his presence at events and functions. Any decent person would.

Since becoming involved with the town council, I have taken an unhappy interest in Eager's behaviour, and his character. The man is wont to intemperate outbursts and fits of rage when he is crossed. His interpersonal skills are woeful. He has made abusive comments about residents of the town calling them 'pigs'. He has called for civil disobedience and incited people to vandalise public property. Why, even at last week's Annual Town Council meeting, he blurted out that a fellow councillor was a 'smelly old cow'. He is a shameless and vindictive troublemaker with a vicious tongue and a foul temper. Never mind being mayor, this man should not be a councillor. His presence is an insult to the Nolan Principles to which you are all bound as elected members.

Debbie Baker: you proposed Eager for mayor and bear the greatest responsibility for this calamity. Your action has not only brought the town council, and our blameless town into disgrace and disrepute, but you have ruined your personal reputation and brought your mayoral term to a disastrous conclusion. You have also threatened a member of the public who was gathering names to call for a parish meeting. Appealing to your better nature, you must apologise unreservedly, and preferably do the decent thing.

Bob Barnes: you seconded Eager's nomination. You are his friend and ally. You have shown yourself to be a treacherous and sometimes dishonest individual, so nobody is surprised by your actions. You will be judged harshly.

Annette Crowe: you have actively supported Eager's bid for town mayor. Your behaviour is particularly hypocritical. When we were on good speaking terms, you castigated Eager for his sordid past and said that he was unfit for public office. You are an unreliable and untrustworthy person.

Elaine Fieldhouse: along with your friend Annette Crowe, you have been manoeuvring for Eager's election and have done your best to discredit anyone who stands in your way. You have routinely told lies about the conduct of people who challenge you. As a recent arrival in Ledbury Town Council, along with Annette Crowe, you have contributed nothing to the town except to sow discord and foment hatred. Your support of Eager, is of a piece with this.

To the others who voted for Eager who should know better, Jayne Roberts, Keith Francis, Tony Bradford, Andy Manns, shame on you too. Your sheer arrogance in thinking that you could get away with this political dodge, shows you to be as cynical and morally bankrupt as the aforementioned. 

Finally to Jean Simpson and Matthew Eakin, you are new to town affairs and perhaps because of your ignorance and inexperience, can be partially excused for supporting Eager. It behoves you now to distance yourself and admit that you made an error of judgement, and to apologise to your colleagues and those you serve.

Given your tarnished track record over the last two years, I do not expect any of you to behave honourably in this matter. I understand that you are busy behind the scenes trying to shore up Eager's position, calling in legal advice, believing the furore will blow over, putting out scurrilous misinformation about people who cannot accept your actions. It will not work, none of it.

The whole town is united in opposition to Eager, and now to you.

A parish meeting has been called with the requisite number of signatures. The agenda item is to discuss Martin Eager's suitability for mayor of Ledbury. Even if he resigns in the meantime, the meeting will still take place because the citizens of this town demand to hear your reasons for voting for him. We need to understand why you thought it could possibly have been a good idea for him to be nominated, seconded and elected. We need to hear you apologise, and say how you propose to put the matter right.

The moment of reckoning has come.

Finally, thank you to those councillors who stood against Eager's election: Liz Harvey, Nick Morris, Andrew Warmington, Harrison Wilce, Andrew Harrison. If I have forgotten anybody, my apologies. "

Others may wish to send a message to the councillors who voted for Eager too. Here are their council addresses:

dbaker@ledburytowncouncil.gov.uk, rbarnes@ledburytowncouncil.gov.uk, acrowe@ledburytowncouncil.gov.uk, efieldhouse@ledburytowncouncil.gov.uk, jayne.roberts6@gmail.com, tony.bradford@ledburybband.co.uk, kfrancis@ledburytowncouncil.gov.uk, jsimpson@ledburytowncouncil.gov.uk, meakin@ledburytowncouncil.gov.uk, amanns@ledburytowncouncil.gov.uk

Sometimes, it is in the pauses, in the absence of utterance or action, that things are at their clearest.
 
There was a searing moment in last week's town council meeting (18.1.17) when wide eyed Liz Harvey, town and county councillor, looked around with her hands outstretched and asked if anyone was going to answer her questions. The tension and embarrassment in the ensuing silence, as well as the realisation of a long buried truth, froze that crowded room. See 1.07 in the video below.
 
It came down to this. The months and years of bickering and bluster, all the outbursts of anger, the denunciations, the contemptuous asides and tortuous complaints, they were all distilled into a single dizzying moment of collective insight.
 
For Ledbury's troubled Neighbourhood Plan, there seems to be no real reason why things have happened as they have, why money was spent on this or that, why moves were made or not, who was in charge or ultimately should be responsible. At the heart of it all, the project is aimless and inchoate. There is a void. The only imperative is to get the bloody thing done - or be done with the bloody thing. Anything will do.
 
At this special town council meeting to examine progress on the town's Neighbourhood Plan and plot a future course, it was clear that events are unfolding in a way that is dislocated from detailed planning, informed discussion or the application of available professional expertise. There is no project manager it emerges. Financial forecasts of income and expenditure don't exist. Records of key discussions are not being kept. The town council which bears legal and financial responsibility, is in ignorance, nor has it been consulted at critical moments as laid down in its own rules. Nobody is in charge. The buck stops nowhere and with no-one.
 
Most damning of all, Ledbury's residents either do not know about the Neighbourhood Plan and what it means for their future, or don't care. Either way, the efforts at communication and interaction with local people have failed miserably. 
 
Non Erit Sollicitum
 
The evening started well enough. There had been an upbeat and informative progress report from consultant Sally Tagg, followed by an impassioned defence of the project by local resident Phillip Howells. He carefully rebutted criticisms that levels of community engagement were poor, saying that Ledbury's apathy was normal in these situations. Equally, costs were nothing extraordinary, given the complexity of the task, and the size of the town.  He said everything was open, above board and fully accountable. He appealed to commonsense, as a good citizen, an ex-soldier, and a professional. Really?
 
Things began to unravel. There was no round of applause. Liz Harvey got to her feet and after thanking Mrs Tagg and Mr Howells, asked the same questions she had been asking for the last twelve months.
 
The technicalities of planning policy are never rivetting. But the impact of planning decisions on people's lives is immeasurable: where a road should go, whether a view is ruined, if a school is built, or a supermarket allowed. In planning matters there are always winners - usually property developers - and losers, usually the neighbours. We elect local councillors largely to oversee a legal and fair planning process, to call decision-makers to account. In planning matters, scrutiny and 'due process' matter.
 
Over the months and years, Harvey and others (including me) have been branded trouble-makers for asking awkward, potentially embarrassing questions about the way the Neighbourhood Plan was being handled. Nor are the worries and concerns diminishing, but acquiring greater urgency as more money is spent, as the intellectual gaps are widening, and the inconsistencies becoming more egregious.
 
Tempus Fugit
 
And so once again as she ran the script, sought to get answers, the town council hierarchy and their hangers-on, sighed and shifted impatiently. After ten minutes by the clock, the mayor, Debbie Baker had had enough and told Harvey to stop talking as she'd had fifteen minutes 'from what we timed it'.
 
Why had there been a 'call for sites' while a planning appeal for new housing in Ledbury was underway? Did not the NP group think it was a risky move to invite local landowners to offer up their land for building at the same moment as barristers for a predatory development company were arguing the case in a planning court that Herefordshire needed to allow more house-building?
 
Even though there had been a call for development sites, Harvey noted that at least two landowners had been ignored by the Neighbourhood Plan after proposing seemingly viable schemes for housing and transport infrastructure.

Why had housebuilder Bovis been rebuffed when it sought a meeting with the NP group to discuss its plans south of the by-pass? Why had the Neighbourhood Plan not undertaken a public consultation on 'Development Options' as it is required to do in the official guidance? Who is project-managing the process? And so on.
 
Lacunae

New councillor Nina Shields lamented the poor response rates to the costly consultation events overseen by the consultants. Cllr Andrew Warmington wondered why the town council was not being kept better informed. Cllr Nick Morris wanted to know whether the key officer for Neighbourhood Planning at Herefordshire Council was being consulted. Cllr Andrew Harrison asked if the town council could have a monthly financial and project report. Liz Harvey questioned whether the NP group was acting in line with its terms of reference as decided by the Town Council in October 2015, particularly in sanctioning consultation events.
 
Well? Is anyone going to answer my questions, she said again. Silence.

To be continued...

Notes
​Cato the Younger: a fascinating life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Younger

Liz Harvey's written questions on the Neighbourhood Plan to Ledbury mayor, Debbie Baker 20 January 2017. Click file here.

Liz Harvey's covering email to Debbie Baker. Click file here.

Video of LTC meeting, 18 January 2017 to discuss Neighbourhood Plan.

MP for North Herefordshire (including Ledbury), Bill Wiggin is a fascinating individual with strong views and passion for his causes, everything from hunting, smoking and an end to the equality industry. People should get to know their MP better. Here are my impressions.

Some people have the uncanny knack of always being on the wrong side of the argument. Try as they might, they find themselves relentlessly promoting lost causes and shaky enterprises. It must be a frustrating life.
 
Local MP, Bill Wiggin could just be one of those individuals. He is something of a rebel. But not in a good way, if social justice or enlightened values are worth anything at all.
 
According to his carefully crafted Wikipedia entry, 'Wiggin has voted against a blanket ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants, the 2004 Hunting Bill, and some sections of the Prevention of Terrorism bills.'
 
The unfettered right to smoke is a particular hobby-horse of father-of-two Bill. Not only has he has opposed legislation outlawing smoking in cars where children are present, but has also voted against the introduction of plain packaging for tobacco products, a move designed to get rid of the colourful branding that so entices young, impressionable minds.  
 
Bill's St Jude-complex has driven him to tireless advocacy of the repeal of anti-fox-hunting legislation, against the wishes of 84% of the British population. Like all those chasing dogs, he might yet have his day, but it's unlikely.
 
Nor is it just the stupid electorate that Bill disagrees with. He supports the controversial badger cull, in defiance of almost the entire scientific establishment which argues that the programme is futile, cruel and counter-productive.  
 
Values

With that heady mix of contrarian, browbeaten farmer and freewheeling neo-liberal coursing through his veins, Bill arrives at some surprising policy positions. He wishes, for instance, that the UK government would rescind the ban on neonicotinoid insecticides. As a bee-keeper himself and patron of the Herefordshire bee-keepers association, Bill doesn't have any truck with the scientific advice, believing that chemicals of this sort are not responsible for the serious decline in bee populations. He has also been generally lukewarm on measures to tackle climate change, voting against key proposals aiming to reduce carbon emissions. Like Michael Gove, Mr Wiggin is probably tired of experts.
 
Being a staunch traditionalist with a strong interest in country matters, he has never approved of same sex marriage legislation and has opposed every one of its provisions, including preventing members of the armed forces abroad being able to marry. It's jolly bad for morale don't you know.
 
Despite Bill's sincerely-held views, equal marriage was approved by a huge parliamentary majority and by 70% of Britons. Wrong again.
 
Of course he voted to repeal the Human Rights Act, another wretched piece of legislation got up by foreigners to confound us. 

Don't let's get carried away with sympathy for bungling Bill however. He's quite a wealthy chap and has enjoyed sucking on a silver spoon for most of his life. Son of colourful right-wing Tory MP, the late Sir Jerry Wiggin, young William was bundled off to Eton yet did not follow his clever contemporaries like Cameron and Johnson into Cambridge or Oxford, instead enjoying the more modest pleasures of an economics degree at University College, Bangor.
 
Not that a middling university education did him any long term harm. Bill quickly got work as a Trader in Foreign Exchange Options for UBS, an Associate Director of Kleinwort Benson and a manager in the Foreign Exchange department of Commerzbank. A couple of elections later and he was an MP in one of the safest of Conservative seats followed by a spell as a government whip.  You get the idea.
 
He keeps busy. MP work in London and Herefordshire is juggled with running the farm, and his prized herd of Hereford cattle. On the side he picks up a few thousand as a board member of a firm that advises rich people how to run offshore tax-planning schemes. He has also put to good use his know-how gained from steering through Parliament the Welfare Reform Act by advising a company that delivers privatised welfare benefits. True to his principles, Wiggin voted in favour of the £30 a week benefit cut to disabled people, but has declined to explain his reasoning for this.
 
In a pickle

Like his dad, Farmer Bill ploughs his own furrow and doesn't care much for courting popularity, unless it's among his county chums in the Countryside Alliance.  During the MPs expenses furore, Wiggin shrugged off several serious financial scandals which might have finished any lesser gamesman.
 
The Telegraph said: 'Mr Wiggin, a contemporary of David Cameron at Eton, received more than £11,000 in parliamentary expenses to cover interest payments after declaring that his Herefordshire property was his “second home”.'
 
A year later, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon said that “it is more likely than not that Mr Wiggin did claim for expenditure he did not incur, in respect both of telephone services and of service and maintenance.” Humiliatingly, he was ordered to pay back over four thousand pounds and apologise to the House. Then he was sacked from the whip's office.
 
That degree in Economics and trading work in the City clearly hadn't worked its magic in helping Bill address his 'chaotically muddled' finances. He hit the news again that year, when it was discovered that another five grand of his parliamentary expenses had found its way into the coffers of the North Herefordshire Conservative Association. Anyway it was all cleared up eventually, the mess put down to lapses of memory and so forth.
 
This brings us neatly to Bill's erstwhile nemesis Jim Miller, the Leominster town councillor who had exposed him as an alleged fraudster. Bill Wiggin so objected to Mr Miller's intrusions into his private financial affairs that he had the local police pay a home visit, warning him to desist in his 'harassment' of the MP. No charges were brought.
 
Despite the weighty matters of state upon his shoulders, nobody should accuse Mr Wiggin of not attending to the fine detail of constituency business.
 
In Jim Miller's 2010 by-election literature for Leominster Town Council, Bill's dodgy expense claims were given an another unpalatable airing.  To the astonishment of the local community - and national press - the MP wrote to the Returning Officer, Chris Bull, also CEO of Herefordshire Council, claiming that Mr Miller’s campaign flier made “inaccurate or false” statements and asked whether they might be “in contravention of electoral law”. Three days later Miller was disqualified from the election on a technicality (which later proved to be Herefordshire Council's fault). This handed the town council seat to Benson Ferrari, local chairman of the now reviled Conservative Future youth wing. That decision was subsequently overturned in a landmark High Court ruling and Jim joined Leominster Town Council.
 
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Leominster Mayor Richard Westwood said: 'I was just stunned that Wiggin contacted the returning officer... what in god’s name is an MP doing poking his nose into a little parish election? I can’t understand what he thinks he’s up to.' And so it went on for months and years: Big Bill versus Troublesome Jim.
 
Eventually Mr Miller dropped out of the political chase, disgusted, disillusioned and depressed while Wiggin went on to win the next election, everything forgotten it seems.
 
Keeping Active

Bill has recently rekindled his interest in parish politics. During a crowded election hustings in 2015, he took the opportunity to upbraid me for harassing 'his friend' the Ledbury town clerk, Mrs Karen Mitchell. 'It is completely unacceptable to bully a civil servant' he said in stentorian tones to the evident surprise of onlookers. When I politely told him he was talking nonsense, he held up his hands and said 'no excuses' before walking away theatrically. It put me in mind of Meryl Streep's bravura bitch in The Devil Wears Prada: 'that's all'.
 
On election day itself (5 May), he loudly repeated the same accusation to a small group of people outside the polling station at the Ledbury Community Hall. Perturbed by this serious breach of election protocol, I wrote to Wiggin and asked him to explain himself. From whom had he heard that I had bullied the clerk and on what evidence, I asked.
 
Who said politicians are slippery?

​'I am slowly getting used to being talked about, usually without any regard for factual accuracy and I hope the matter is forgotten by everyone quickly', replied Bill emolliently. 'I hope that my [earlier] apology was satisfactory and as for who said what, I would not be able to tell you even if I knew, which happily I don’t.' Tsk. That'll be another memory lapse.
 
Straight talking is good, even in public if need be. And after the Miller affair, it's reassuring to learn that Bill takes a strong line against harassment. Not so impressive is our MP's grasp of important supporting evidence, nor of remembering who are the sources of his intelligence. Let's just put it down to muddle, shall we?

​Despite the confusion and all his other interests, Bill is still finding time to attend to the slow-motion shipwreck unfolding in Ledbury Town Council. According to credible sources, he was seen in conference with Deputy Mayor Elaine Fieldhouse and Cllr Bob Barnes at the town council offices on 7 October 2016. A staff member correctly said that the group could not be disturbed, and that an appointment was needed if anyone needed to talk to Mr Wiggin. A little later Bill popped into the paper shop and in an unguarded moment revealed that he was being briefed about the ongoing crisis in the town council, as well as the staff complaints against Cllrs Harvey and Harrison.

Mum's the word
The curious aspect of this is that everybody involved was subsequently reluctant to confirm that that they had met each other. In a town council meeting, Elaine Fieldhouse denied that she had even spoken to Wiggin beyond saying good morning, and quickly passed the heated frying pan to Mayor Debbie Baker. Equally flustered, Debbie at first said she hadn't met him, and then correcting herself said that she had. 'It was a private matter' apparently.
 
Also tight lipped was Bill Wiggin when asked later what his business was in the Council offices. 'It was a constituency surgery and therefore confidential' he snapped. This is odd. The MP is usually so keen to advertise his wares, but there appears to be no record in his communications activity of this surgery ever having been publicised. No names of constituents are recorded in the Ledbury Town Council visitors book.  Perhaps it was a one-off, specially arranged 'surgery' with selected Ledbury town councillors.
 
What could be so sensitive that local politicians engage in clandestine meetings, and then flatly deny having talked to each other beyond saying hello?
 
I don't like conspiracy theories. I prefer to accept the most obvious solution to a conundrum, Ockham's Razor: put simply, 'when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.'
 
Let's think... Bill Wiggin is advising Ledbury Town Council bosses how to deal with Miller-esque harassment from Harvey and Hadley. Perhaps the police should be contacted. Wait. They already have.
 
At a county conference where cyber-bullying was being examined, a posse of Ledbury town councillors (including Crowe, Fieldhouse, Baker, Eager and Francis) angrily confronted Herefordshire's head of police, Superintendant Sue Thomas, and demanded to know why she had not acted on their complaints about the harassment that was taking place in Ledbury Town Council. It was an embarrassing scene witnessed by scores of local government councillors and officers. Thus having derailed the seminar, Ledbury's contingent stomped out of the conference. Their behaviour was not appreciated.
 
Once again, Bill Wiggin finds himself on the wrong side of the political tracks. As Ledbury Town Council flounders under the weight of its own incompetence, venality and political corruption, in strides 'bungalo' Bill, his Commons nick-name (nothing upstairs, boom-boom).
 
Like the albatross, his appearance at such moments is always a bad sign. It signals impending public outrage, press denunciation and the sure manifestation of an indefensible ethical position. Perhaps I do after all appreciate the Mayor's and her Deputy's caginess about disclosing their chat with him.

A last hoorah?
So to the future. Bill Wiggin's spell as an MP could be drawing to a close. Once again, fate has dealt him a tricky parliamentary hand. The political granite of North Herefordshire has turned to slippery red clay. In the bonfire of the constituencies in which the size of the Commons will be reduced by fifty seats, Bill will be dispossessed. Meanwhile his neighbouring parliamentary colleague in Malvern, Harriett Baldwin, a bright star in the Conservative firmament, looks set to eclipse him and inherit most of the North Herefordshire patch.
 
Enoch Powell said that 'all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure.' In this instance, perhaps the impending boundary reorganisation will be a mercy to Bill: no more kicking against the traces and feeling righteously out of step with mainstream opinion, no more silly form filling, and having to go along with hare-brained political correctness and human rights.
 
In the final reckoning, Bill Wiggin, MP will be remembered as a true staunch conservative, someone who stands by tradition and against the passing whims of fashion. For him, social cohesion is founded on the unshakeable foundations of authority, order and convention. Everybody has their place. England is the finest country in the world. The market knows best. Business should be allowed to get on with business. Less red tape.
 
That is fake news by the way. I don't really know what he stands for, except what I can surmise from his voting record in Parliament and his comments in the media. Even by modern Tory standards, Wiggin junior, like Wiggin senior, looks like a trenchant right-winger. The family resemblance is striking.
 
The main thing is that Bill appears to cleave to the status quo. And why wouldn't he? With his privileged background, good connections, manly bearing and all round decency, life has been good to Bill, no real complaints at all - apart, that is from a few pesky financial rules and irritating individuals who ask too many questions.
 
When he goes, there will be many, particularly those who hanker after a simpler, gentler way of life, who will mourn his passing. Good luck Bill, and farewell!

 
Journalists are getting angry.
 
The government is considering bringing in a new law which makes it much easier for people to take media publishers to court for telling lies, distorting the truth, intruding into grief, breaching privacy and behaving in a generally unethical way, the way that many newspapers do. It is called Section 40.
 
In future, if publishers do not belong to an officially recognised, independent regulator and have refused arbitration with an aggrieved party, then they may be liable for all legal costs, whether they win an ensuing court case, or not. 
 
The measure is designed to make publishers behave themselves by punishing 'newspapers if they force people to use the libel courts without offering a cheaper alternative' according to a BBC report.  It was recommended by Lord Leveson following the hacking enquiry.
 
All kinds of dire predictions are issuing from Britain's less than illustrious 'fourth estate'. Midlands Newsquest (publisher of the Ledbury Reporter), has joined the chorus, calling Section 40 in a recent editorial a 'pernicious and ill-considered piece of legislation'... which 'would cripple the local and regional press. Papers like this could close'.  That would be a shame of course. Any jobs lost are always a cause for sadness.
 
Invoking history, Newsquest's Chief Executive Henry Faure Walker made an impassioned appeal to local readers to lobby politicians on the paper's behalf: 'Our journalism and our newspapers have proudly spoken for our readers since the world’s oldest newspaper, our sister title, the Berrow's Worcester Journal, hit the street in 1690. Now we need our readers to speak up for us.'
 
Sorry, it doesn't wash. With some exceptions, journalists have never been held in such contempt. Even the BBC is tainted. All the lies, and money-grabbing cynicism, the bias, cruelties and fecklessness of Britain's tabloid media in recent decades is catching up with them. Poll organisation Ipsos-Mori found that just 25% of Britons trust journalists to tell the truth. Apart from politicians, they are Britain's most distrusted profession.
 
Here in Ledbury, they are no different it seems. Our local rag is known as the Ledbury Liar/Ledbury Distorter; nor is the soubriquet used affectionately. Week after week, the paper serves up a meagre diet of lightweight human interest stories and a political narrative designed to shore up a sleazy and corrupt status quo.

It isn't only dissident politicians who fear garbled or lop-sided coverage.  At least one community organisation I know of is actively refraining from sending news to the Reporter, preferring publicity through networks it can trust to get basic facts right.
 
Thinking about the lot of provincial journalists who are in constant fear of their jobs, working ever longer hours for less pay, compelled to do anything to stem tumbling profits with a Gradgrind employer snapping at their heels, why should we be surprised by the paucity of any guiding morality in their dealings?
 
Consider the fable of the scorpion and the frog:
 
A scorpion and a frog meet on a river bank. The scorpion which can't swim, asks the frog to carry it to the other side. Afraid of being stung, the frog at first refuses but the scorpion persuades it by claiming that this could never happen since if the frog was harmed, both of them would drown. It's a clever argument.
 
Half way across, the scorpion fatally stings the frog. Why did you do that? cries the frog. The scorpion says it couldn't help itself: 'It's in my nature'.
 
The moral of the story is that those who are fundamentally dangerous are incapable of change. They can never be trusted to behave responsibly, even when it is in their own interests to do so.
 
The tabloid media is often dangerous. They cannot self-regulate. The problem, as noted by a leading academic, is 'with the culture of journalism, in which editors will do anything for a story and reporters will do anything the editor wants'[i].
 
Editors and publishers scream like toddlers about Section 40 as an attack on freedom of expression, their freedom that is to traduce, misrepresent and propagandise on behalf of the Conservative Party, their rich publishers, and worse. They like to see themselves as bastions of transparency and truth, but most, demonstrably are as biased and self-interested as any crooked politician.
 
In the case of local titles like the Ledbury Reporter, its parent company Newsquest has near monopoly coverage of local news - apart from social media (and other online places such as this blog). This puts them in an influential position. They set the tone of local affairs, and create an implicit centre ground for policy and debate.
 
Just like the national media which presents a wildly pro-Conservative agenda, daily hammering anti-refugee, anti-Europe, anti-socialist rhetoric, this is why deviations in the balance of their coverage, of contextual omissions and distortions of who said what really do matter. The consequence is to create a 'new normal', a narrative which subtly upholds a right-wing status quo. You don't have to be a rampant Marxist to recognise how insidiously harmful is their influence on British society.
 
With a circulation of just two thousand four hundred copies, including the few hundred freebies handed out at estate agents, the lowly Ledbury Reporter has a declining readership and a surprisingly low penetration into its population catchment of about twenty thousand adults. Working on ever more tightly squeezed profit margins, it cannot afford to lose even just a few hundred readers.
 
For this reason, weeklies don't usually like to be seen as partisan for fear of alienating sections of their fickle local customer base.  And yet, just like the fabled scorpion, the Ledbury Reporter seems oblivious to these business realities. It can't help itself.
 
A great swathe of the people who buy the Reporter are those same people who vote for people like Liz Harvey, Andrew Warmington and Andrew Harrison, the perennial objects of their insistently negative coverage. These three it will be recalled swept the board at the 2015 elections.  
 
Meanwhile Mr Gary Bills-Geddes' town council sweethearts, his rent-a-gob politicians of choice - Barnes, Eager, Bradford, Baker and Crowe - limped in at the bottom of the poll, successful only because there were insufficient other candidates willing to risk winning a seat in Ledbury's benighted council. For County Council seats, Conservative Debbie Baker was trounced by Andrew Warmington while Liz Harvey blew away Tory veteran Phill Bettington.
 
The Reporter does its best to pander to populist elements in the town by quoting regularly from Voice of Ledbury and dutifully posting its front page there each week. Even so, the 'Born and Bred' brigade continue disinclined to pay their 95 pence for a paper that is seen as mainly Malvern news and gossip.
 
Dying for a leak.
 
Deputy editor John Wilson stands proudly above criticism of his paper and its main journalist Gary Bills-Geddes.
 
When I set out a detailed critique of the paper's recent biased political coverage and its unwillingness to expose a range of serious Council misdemeanors, I was told I had 'very entrenched' views about Ledbury Town Council. 'I am happy' said Wilson, 'that we are adequately and fairly holding Ledbury Town Council to account.'
 
The constant complaint that Gary Bills-Geddes habitually quotes just a favoured few town councillors, but largely ignores others, is repudiated. John Wilson says any apparent prominence for some is because the paper is allowed only to report what is said in meetings; briefings - whether on or off the record - are not covered by legal 'privilege': 'we try to restrict our reports to what is said in the meeting. We have important protection under the law for our reports of public meetings, and it does not apply to things said outside it'. To quote a recent editorial penned by Mr Wilson himself, 'what twaddle!'

Town councillor Andrew Harrison challenged this specious argument by noting that Gary regularly benefits from 'off the record' leaks from his chum Cllr Tony Bradford. Complete with a Trumpesque exclamation mark, Wilson responded by saying 'you too, are free to leak!'. So much for being ethical and transparent.
 
So to recap, if councillors make outrageously controversial statements in meetings (often centring on Bob Barnes), they will be headlined. See 'censorship' debate here and here; 'tolerance' motion here.
 
Grandstanding works.
 
Intelligent, rational, evidence based contributions which explain or contextualise debate from more thoughtful or informed members of the council can expect to be ignored. It's boring. It doesn't fit the narrative.
 
Similarly, councillors who might debunk false or misleading stories will be overlooked, in favour of a cabal of loud mouths and attention seekers who can be relied upon to whistle up a fine political squall when needed. See Armed Police in Ledbury, also here and here.
 
Lastly, Ledbury councillors are encouraged by the local press to leak sensitive or confidential information to the local newspaper.
 
It all points to an editorial team at Newsquest which is ethically no different - no better nor worse - than the tabloid dreadfuls like The Sun, Mail, Express and Star.  They are scorpions. It's in their nature.
 
This is why readers and non-readers of the Ledbury Reporter should respond positively to the Government's Section 40 consultation. Send in your thoughts on media regulation, and while you're at it, copy them to Mr John Wilson (john.wilson@midlands.newsquest.co.uk). Here is the place to do it:
 
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-the-leveson-inquiry-and-its-implementation

[i] Cohen-Almagor (2014), Press Self-regulation in Britain. P21. http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/pdf/Press_Self_Regulation_in_Britain.pdf

In the present febrile climate of suicidal terrorism, readers of Ledbury's local newspaper might have missed a heart beat when they read last week's headline: 'So shocked as armed police guard parades'.
 
News that Ledbury's Remembrance ceremony 'may' have been attended by anti-terror police marksmen was direfully received by town mayor, Debbie Baker: 'I can't tell you how shocked I am... The idea of armed police is mind-boggling. It really is, and it shows the times we are in right now.'
 
Not even faraway Ledbury is safe from the shooters and bombers it seems. As shuddering Cllr Bob Barnes noted: 'We could become a soft target, and where the lone wolves are operating we do not know.'
 
If true, this report would indeed be shocking. Except it wasn't. The only shock was that so much could be made of so little. Exchanging newsworthiness for truthfulness, the story had been confected by local journalist Gary Bills-Geddes. To be 100% clear, there have been no armed police on the streets of Ledbury. The story was a fiction.
 
That Andrew Warmington had attended a West Mercia Police seminar on crime priorities began a flight of journalistic fancy which ended with a front page sensation worthy of a right-wing red-top.
 
'During this seminar,' Andrew later explained, 'the Chief Constable listed seven key concerns in crime terms for the region as a whole, giving them in descending order of importance. In fourth place was terrorism and he told the councillors present that armed police had been on guard at Remembrance Day parades at unspecified places in the region. Next thing I know, this is front page news.'
 
Consistent with the Ledbury Reporter's flourishing 'post-truth' credentials, when challenged, Mr Bills-Geddes excused himself airily: 'Cllr Warmington's report was merely the starting point for a series of questions we've been asking West Mercia police all week.'
 
The police are sensibly reluctant to divulge operationally sensitive information but after days of pestering by the Reporter, finally conceded that 'armed officers were available to be deployed to any incidents in the Ledbury area during Armed Forces Day should they have been required.' They were not required. Ergo, there was no deployment of armed police.
 
Mr B-G said this news arrived after the print deadline. But hey! Why spike a good story by waiting for a fact-check? Come on, there are papers to be flogged.

​May or did: Take your pick.
 
Gary is an experienced wordsmith. In his opening paragraph, he made sure to insert that important little caveat word: may.
 
The Daily Express does this when it runs one of its 'snowstorm Armageddon set to batter Britain' stories. 'Forecasters say the UK could be in for the storm of the century'. It's called wriggle-room. When the snowstorm doesn't materialise, those Express hacks can't be accused of exaggeration or distortion. We didn't say it definitely would, just could, runs the well rehearsed script...
 
Deputy editor of the Ledbury Reporter, John Wilson predictably wriggled in his reply to Cllr Warmington's complaint: 'Our report does not say armed police attended parades in Ledbury'. It says they ‘may’ have. If the police tell us categorically that there were no armed police at either Remembrance Day or Armed Forces Day in Ledbury we will publish it.'
 
That, Mr Wilson is never going to happen, as you well know. The police would never be so irresponsible to confirm or deny to would-be attackers any of their anti-terror manouevres, past or future.
 
Mr Wilson claims his readers are not 'dupes'. Quite so: the troubling question is that if it's on the front page with such an emphatic headline, the hushed seriousness of Gary's copy lending dead weight, bolstered with quotes from the Town Council's would-be top brass, and backed up with a portentous reference to 'talks with police chiefs' (another fiction), why wouldn't readers think it was authentic?  If it wasn't true, or in any way doubtful, the question is: why print it at all?
 
Try the 'duck test': if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
 
Who cares?
 
2016 will be remembered as the year of Post Truth. In the UK, the Brexit campaign was exposed as lying in its claim that millions of Turkish nationals were about to flood into the UK. It promised a weekly £350 million injection into the NHS if we left the EU.  Who cared that none of this was true, except the bleeding heart 'libtards' and 'bremoaners'? After June 16, the material was simply removed from the official Vote Leave web site, and it ceased to exist. There, nothing to see. Donald Trump repeated the trick before the US election with so many falsities it is difficult to know where to start.
 
The Oxford English Dictionary voted 'post-truth' as its Word of the Year. It is defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
 
Back in the seventies, one of my favourite novelists, Muriel Spark, caught the spirit of the post-truth age even before it existed: 'It's not true', says one of her characters in Not To Disturb, 'but that's not to say it isn't right'.
 
What is truth anyway? When I was young and worked in advertising, I had a cigar-chewing old school boss who told me that 'what people believe is as good as the truth.' He was either a cynic or a genius. Or both.
 
Philosophers discuss the nature of truth a great deal. It's called epistemology. What can we ever know for certain? Is there an objective reality out there? If there is, can we ever know it? In the past, scientists would say yes, there are immutable truths and laws that govern nature; now in the realm of quantum mechanics, even they are not so sure. Social scientists are more troubled still by definitive truth claims.
 
Politicians, ideologues, advertisers and some journalists, have snatched the clothes of such sceptical post-modernist thought and refashioned them as propaganda, spin and political smear. It is how you win elections these days - and sell newspapers. You say what you need to.
 
Perhaps 'post-truth' is just a euphemism for lies. Guardian writer, Jonathan Freedland believes so: 'We’ve been calling this “post-truth politics” but I now worry that the phrase is far too gentle, suggesting society has simply reached some new phase in its development. It lets off the guilty too lightly. What Trump is doing is not “engaging in post-truth politics”. He’s lying. Worse still, Trump and those like him not only lie: they imply that the truth doesn’t matter, showing a blithe indifference to whether what they say is grounded in reality or evidence.'
 
Not everyone believes the bullshit - but enough do to stink up the proverbial army blanket. Social psychologists have found that people believe information, however implausible, which confirms their pre-existing world view. Objective evidence, however compelling, which challenges people's existing beliefs tends to be ignored or distrusted. Such confirmation bias distorts all our thinking.
 
It is hard to change people's minds, once they are made up, especially by appealing to rationality. The key is to tap into emotions. The Vote Remain campaign learned this hard lesson to the cost of the UK economy. Faced with a blizzard of technical analysis warning against Brexit, Michael Gove said: 'I think we've had enough of experts'.
 
Easier by far is to reinforce existing prejudices and cherished totems, to stir up latent feelings of fear, anger and frustration. This is why 'take back control' was such a potent campaign message during the referendum among those who already felt left behind, belittled and disregarded by a perceived 'elite'. Trump said 'Let's make America great again', understanding clearly that a great white lumpenprotelariat was similarly angry and aggrieved. These weren't just clever slogans; they were appeals to profound ideological values.

Muriel Spark again had it just right: '“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”' 

Irresponsible
 
And so to Ledbury and its weapons grade Remembrance parade. Why am I expounding on this story?
 
The subtext of the Reporter's news reports and editorials is worth exploring. Are they genuinely bias-free, impartial and objective in their treatment of local political topics as you might expect from a local weekly? Are 'my group', as John Wilson accuses, 'attacking the Ledbury Reporter on baseless of grounds for [our] own purposes'. Is it paranoia? Or is there something more lurking uneasily beneath the surface narrative?
 
Why did they run this story? The generous explanation would be that there was nothing else splashy enough for the front page.
 
Protestations from John Wilson belie this view however. 'We were not sensationalist,' he said angrily, 'we were not alarmist, we informed Ledbury people about something they should know about, and I don’t give a jot if you don’t like the way we have worded it.' Ouch.
 
The point is, it was deliberately crafted. It was something Ledbury should know about - but what exactly?
 
This armed police story is of a piece with Buntingate, another travesty of politically spun misinformation. It is reaching out to the nationalists and nativists in our community, just like the Daily Mail and Breitbart does. It is carefully calibrated to erode our confidence and create fear of the other. The 'lone wolves' we are talking about are not right-wing fanatics like Anders Breivik or Jo Cox's killer, Thomas Mair, but rather the religious extremists who are poisoning our way of life: the Islamists, Jihadis, Moslems. Perhaps they are refugees as Nigel Farage claims.
 
Was the real intention to remind everyone that nothing in our society - even honouring our war dead - is sacred anymore?  That we abandon our traditional ways and our patriotic, conservative leaders at our peril? That we are under attack from hateful, disruptive forces right here in our midst? I may be wrong, but I catch a whiff of town council politics here.
 
If this were an isolated blemish on an otherwise peerless record of editorial integrity, I might be more charitable. Unfortunately the pattern is clear.
 
In this instance the emotive headline, the quotes sought from the rampant thought leaders of Ledbury's patriotic tendency (but not from Cllr Warmington himself), the weasel words and the mashing up of everything red, white and blue, was cynical, mendacious and socially divisive.

This, along with three other propaganda pieces in this week's Reporter (discussion to follow), are dog whistle political stories, oozing with populist venom and surreptitious intent.
 
There are those like Bob Barnes who might be 'reassured' by - or even thrill to - the idea of a paramilitary police force on the blameless streets of our obscure little town.
 
Less comfortable would be any visiting or local Moslem families who might venture to show their faces at a future Remembrance ceremony in our town. If I were them, I would not dare.

 In future, 2016 will not be remembered as just another of Ledbury Town Council's wasted years, but its time of ruin.

Mired by resignations (here and here) and recriminations, the Council has endured months of catatonic inaction interrupted only by a few colourful outbreaks of zombie-style rage. (see Buntingate and Tolerance Motion)
 
All in all, another year of squandered opportunities and thwarted hopes has slipped by in Ledbury, another £300 thousand pounds expended on itself to achieve very little except win notoriety as one of the UK's most dysfunctional town councils.
 
As the New Year beckons, what are the chances of renewal and repair?
 
An investigation into the machinations of Ledbury Town Council is approaching its grimly inevitable conclusion. Of one thing we can be certain: there will be some Ledbury Town Councillors who will face political ruin, personal humiliation, perhaps even criminal investigation.
 
For those vanquished, it will be not such a merry Christmas.  Over the flatulent dregs of the season, all the players in this tragicomedy might at least have time to reflect on their year just gone, the mistakes and misdemeanors, all the recklessness and arrogance, the deceits and distortions.

As the Ghost of Christmas Past icily observed: “No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused”.
 
But before feeling sorrow for their plight, it's as well to reprise what led to this colossal fiasco.
 
Post Truth

The inquiry by Herefordshire Council was prompted by a slew of complaints and counter claims by warring town councillors and residents, so many in fact that an independent team of investigators was enlisted, among them a retired police officer who specialised in anti-corruption and a local government solicitor.
 
At the heart of it all, lay grievances levelled by town council staff members against two councillors - Liz Harvey and Andrew Harrison - for bullying, harassment and intimidation. The Council took these complaints seriously; so much so that it decided to rip up the rule-book and organise its own novel investigation process that would guarantee the outcome it sought.
 
Protesting their innocence, Harvey and Harrison underwent a trial by fire at successive closed council meetings and panels where they were roasted and harried by their haters: Crowe, Barnes, Eager, Roberts (Noel), Fieldhouse, Baker, Francis and Yeoman. Dispensing with all semblance of due process and natural justice, they faced a jury composed of those same hostile councillors with whom they had been battling over openness since the 2015 election.
 
They were of course found guilty as charged. A letter was sent to every local club, group or society in the district denouncing them as heinous bullies. A lawyer might say that this was quite a brave move. The foregone result of the Council's 'internal investigation' was announced at Ledbury's vicious Annual Council Meeting in May 2016 when they were banned from all committees and outside bodies.
 
This has been a war about transparency, accountability, entitlement to power, resistance to change, vested interests, jealousy, political rivalries, personal scores and the fight for civilised human values. Harvey and Harrison were among the progressives, seeking to challenge the Council's habitual secrecy, and the grip of its inner circle of cynical decisionmakers.
 
In that carefree atmosphere of pre-referendum Britain when everyone was tired of  experts, at the dawn of this post-truth era, the Town Council gladly ignored the repeated advice of both Herefordshire Council's legal officer and a leading local government barrister that what they were doing was legally indefensible. Instead they left it in the hands of the Chief Executive of Herefordshire Association of Local Councils to cobble together a process. (Twelve months on, this still hasn't been written down nor adopted officially by LTC in its standing orders).  
 
Connections

It just so happens that this shadowy presence, Mrs Lynda Wilcox, is the wife of Herefordshire Council's Chairman, Cllr Brian Wilcox, freemason, and a leading Conservative and determined political opponent of Cllr Liz Harvey from It's Our County.
 
Armed with her talents, but which do not yet appear to extend to legal expertise, Mrs Wilcox likes to make herself indispensible to parish and town clerks around the county, and in return receives subscriptions to her organisation. She organises training events creatively marketed as 'Wise Owl', 'In the Hot Seat' and 'Information Corner'.
 
Much is made of HALC's 'insurance-backed' advice on its website. This could prove useful in the future if it emerges that incorrect advice has been given to any of its clients. As Mrs Wilcox says in her blurb with no hint of irony, 'Without HALC Clerk cover, your [parish council] could easily act unlawfully.'
 
Just as she could hardly be accused of originality in her marketing, so she would struggle to give the outward appearance of being wholly impartial in her dealings with Ledbury Town Council. Annual subs to HALC pay her wages, while her husband's political group is daily locked in mortal combat with Liz Harvey's. (The Tories have never forgiven Harvey for snatching one of their Ledbury Ward seats in 2010, and then another in 2015. Politics, a dirty game).
 
Liz Harvey argued persuasively that Mrs 'Wise-Owl' Wilcox could not be neutral or objective since it was her contentious advice to the Town Council upon which the dispute mainly centred. Initially, the responsible Council committee accepted this conflict of interest and voted to dispense with her services. But then she was reinstated. Why?
 
Even the (Tory) MP Bill Wiggin was enlisted to the Council's cause with public accusations of bullying and harassment of 'his friend' the Clerk. Uncharitable souls might suspect a political conspiracy.
 
Foreign

Latin and legal scholars will be familiar with the concept of 'nemo judex in causa sua' (nobody should be a judge in their own cause) but such fine sentiments are sadly written in a long dead tongue as far as Ledbury Town Councillors are concerned. It would be almost as unintelligible to them as the lofty words of that most hated foreign body, the European Court of Human Rights: 'everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law'. (Article 6). 
 
So where next? The signs are not encouraging.
 
Either Harvey and Harrison will be found guilty of harassment towards town council staff in which case their involvement with town politics will probably be at an end. Or, if innocent, the Town Council will descend into political meltdown.
 
Sources close to the Mayor suggest that Ledbury Town Council is minded to ignore any findings of Herefordshire Council's investigation. Councillors are already saying in the local press that they have no intention of resigning, even before the report is published. More ominously, the Council's dirty tricks machine appears once again to be cranking into life, a last gasp effort to deflect attention from its own troubles.
 
Priorities

This affair has lasted two years, cost thousands of pounds of public money and wasted prodigious amounts of time in argument and dispute. On top of the four thousand already spent, Ledbury Town Council has laid up a war chest of a further £10 thousand for future legal action, this, at a time of savage local government cutbacks. It is clear where the Council's priorities lie. Itself. 
 
There will not be any winners in this game, only losers, the hapless council tax payers of Ledbury and Herefordshire.
 
At what point will they rise up and call a halt to this madness? Might 2017 finally be the year when democratic values begin to assert themself in our sorely abused community?

What links Ledbury's Voice of Ledbury to the US Presidential election?
In the old days, the simmering jealousies and neighbourhood hatreds of small town life were played out in tea-rooms and in the pub, down at the jam factory or in the post office queue. There were at least rules of the game. You didn't actually insult and abuse people to their faces, unless you wanted a clout in return. Instead you gossiped and whispered, smiled to their face and ran them down behind their back. Happy days.
 
It's all different now. Ledbury's gossip machine stills purrs away in the background spinning stories of illicit liaisons and broken promises. But the go-to place for verbal fisticuffs has to be Facebook, and its evil orphan, the wildly inappropriately titled 'Voice of Ledbury'. Here, two thousand seven hundred people look on in appalled fascination at the antics of a handful of social media headbangers. Such is VoL's noteriety that when there's a good ding-dong, folk claim to settle down at the screen for the evening with wine and nibbles.
 
As I write this, reports are coming in of 'killer clowns' stalking the Deer Park housing estate. Halloween is drawing near. Someone is visiting family and is shocked at the poor state of the town's roads: "my goodness the road through town is in the most awful condition, dips, and lumps and bumps and patches. Is there a plan to re surface?" she asks innocently. Please! Don't get us started on potholes. There's a dog on the loose and dog shit on the cricket field, a lady is advertising her charity fundraiser, there are 'lots of police on the Full Pitcher roundabout and in the Rugby Club, heaven knows what's going on!!', somebody wants a good hairdresser. All the usual surreal random banalities of town life.
 
But Voice of Ledbury isn't really about such endearing topics as these. At its dark, cruel heart, it has an ulterior goal, a political agenda. It claims to speak for the "silent majority" and offer a place 'to give them a voice in the future of Ledbury.' It was set up by a small group of right wing activists, including the current town mayor Debbie Baker. (She jumped ship from UKIP and stood for the Conservatives at the last election, clever. The Tories were delighted to have a foothold in Ledbury's social media universe and a champion of the working class to front them up.)
 
Those few energetic, prolific posters, the founding members of VoL have a distinct and extreme outlook. They are angry, frustrated and aggrieved. They hate Herefordshire Council, the EU, political correctness and being 'belittled' and condescended to, favourite words. They have no faith in the police or mainstream politicians. They are chippy, emotionally sensitive and sense a put-down at a country mile. They hurl abuse and lambast their political enemies with gusto, but shout bully! at the slightest retort. Like rats in a sack, they might serially hate each other, but they hate outsiders more. There aren't many of them, but enough to make a lot of noise.
 
'We know from experience', says VoL's little manifesto, 'that there are a large number of people who, for what ever reasons, will not put forward their concerns and ideas concerning Ledbury. This groups [sic] aims are to engage those people in conversation and find out how we can represent them to the relevant bodies.'

The Silent Majority

Who are these silent majority, and who uses that phrase? Our crooked friend, Richard Nixon famously reached over the heads of the swirling anti-Vietnam movement, the civil rights activists and the druggy counterculture in 1969 to address the great white homeland of the US: 'And so tonight - to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - I ask for your support.' They gave it him. He gave them Watergate.
 
When conservative voices face protest and insurgency, when they sense that things are running out of their control, they often seek to exploit the fears and frustrations of the silent majority.  Cameron did it in the Scottish referendum. 'We’ve heard the noise of the nationalist few, but now it is time for the voices of the silent majority to be heard', he said. Wrong again, he was hoping that same silent majority would vote to stay in the EU.
 
And so to Trump. Rousing the crowd of white, disaffected working class voters in Phoenix Arizona he said: 'The silent majority is back, and we’re going to take our country back'.  Build a wall. Ban Moslems from entering. Put Hillary in jail. Make it ok to "grab pussy".
 
No surprises that UKIP's Nigel Farage has jumped on the Trump bandwagon. At the launch of the referendum he declared, 'for the next three months our national campaign is about being the voice of the people, the silent majority. This is our big chance to deliver a blow to the political class from which they will never recover.'
 
There is a thread that runs through all of these appeals to the silent majority. It is right wing populism. In this skewed world, paranoia is weaponised. They're out to get us. The liberals and the academics, the social workers and the thought police, lefties, the Eurocrats, the Germans and French, the Moslems and Jews, the gay mafia, climate change scientists, traitors, all of them. Let's take back our independence.
 
It's as old as organised politics, the gambit by powerful politicians of mobilising a disaffected, misinformed, reactionary populace against a shadowy elite. Social liberalism is presented as a clever ruse to rip off the long suffering masses. Socrates was condemned by the anti-democrats in ancient Greece for spreading dangerous ideas of freedom among the young. Julius Caesar dismantled the Roman Senate by appealing to the mob and crowned himself Emperor. The Nazis and Italian Fascists did the same brilliantly, of course. Mao unleashed his brutal Cultural Revolution to consolidate his grip and destroy his rivals. Welcome Donald Trump: is he the world's next populist dictator?
 
Even democracy is not exempt from their bile. Three weeks out from the poll, Mr Trump explains that if he loses the Presidential election it will be because Clinton's cronies have rigged it.
 
In a sense of course, the resentments and fears which these demagogues attach themselves to and exploit, have some justification. It's true, people have had enough. The tragic hero of the movie Network, Howard Beale said it a hundred times: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore". Watch this clip.

Plutocracy

The world is and has been ruled for millennia by shadowy elites who respect no national borders, and no conventional moralities: the druids, the family dynasties, the nobility, the church, the generals, the mafia, the bankers, hedge fund managers and transnational companies, the oligarchs and the super-rich (like Donald Trump). They're in it for themselves.
 
Ledbury has also been controlled for a long time by its own elite, the old 'squirearchy' who have not just run all the farms hereabouts, but also are the beating heart of the old county political establishment. They still go hunting, supply the MPs and Lord Lieutenants, own the lands, run the County Councils, and make the money. Meanwhile, Herefordshire has desperately low levels of income, very little social housing, pitiful levels of inward investment and very few new well-paid jobs. Energy poverty and social deprivation are facts of life here. Educational achievement is below average. Young people, especially the bright and ambitious, are moving out, leaving an unsustainable aging population.
 
On first glance, our quality of life might look good. But the unspoilt scenery and touristy towns and villages conceal an underclass of poverty, low aspiration and thwarted hopes.
 
When you keep people down, exploit and degrade them, they get angry, they look for scapegoats, they become putty in a demagogue's sweaty palm.
 
Racist, nationalist, xenophobic, suspicious of education and evidence, Trump's supporters might be bigoted and crude but you have to feel sorry for many of them, as you do some of Nigel Farage's. They have been sold a false prospectus. Trump and Farage are liars and imposters. They are the embodiment of the cynical elite which they continually denounce. But their message is credibly attractive for people who feel angry and left behind.

Nihilism

Ledbury's alt-right attack dogs on VoL, fired up by populist right-wing rhetoric, willingly go along with the conspiracy agenda. They believe their traditional way of life is being snatched away from them by incomers, their jobs by immigrants and their town council by a bunch of egotistical outsiders, selfish meddlers who have no right to express an opinion on the future of the town or to participate in the democratic process. Bizarrely, they would rather the Council be left in its parlous, feeble state, achieving very little for the town, than have it challenged by anyone who isn't of their clan. The Council might be crap. But it's our crap Council.  The boy racers are a menace on our streets, but don't you dare criticise them. They are our boy racers.
 
One of the recently departed town councillors unwittingly summed up the political nihilism that pervades Ledbury's own left-behind communities.  In his resignation letter, Phill Bettington bemoaned the 'unnecessary grief' suffered by town council staff from 'certain' councillors and individuals, but conceded that that 'in their own minds [these councillors] believe they have the town at heart with their own agendas wanting everything done their way under the banners of "Democratic" "Openness".'  You say that like it's a bad thing Phill.
 
Is Mr Bettington really implying that it is better to be done with democracy and transparency in the interests of a happy staff team, a harmonious but ineffectual council, a peaceful little town which comfortably eschews foreigners or outsiders while trumpeting a virulent patriotism? I am reminded of TS Eliot's potent phrase: 'these fragments I have shored against my ruins'.
 
Far from representing the silent majority, the loudest, most rabid elements on Voice of Ledbury are out of step with the modern town. In successive elections, UKIP has been trounced and the increasingly hardline Conservative establishment carpeted, as they will be again in 2019. To the chagrin of Ledbury's old right wing, the town shines a beacon for humanitarian regard towards refugees, comes out against racism and xenophobia, champions sustainable energy, has risen up to hold on to its independent shops and vibrant town centre and is a hotbed of community cooperation. None of these progressive forces have sprung from the Town Council, but rather have flourished despite its sullen, tradition-bound habits and sour attitudes.  
 
The rage of VoL's hard-core and its Town Council accomplices is a cry of desperation for a disappearing world of old fashioned political deference, cultural uniformity, and tribal cohesion. The town is changing beneath their feet.
 
Meanwhile, on Facebook more than two and half thousand reasonable, informed, hard-working people look on with a mixture of amusement and horror at the poisonous discourse which passes for political debate in this town. Perhaps they are the real silent majority?
 

At Ledbury Town Council's Planning Committee meeting on 5 October 2016, I spoke about traffic problems which are not being taken seriously by the Council, despite nearly two years ago having undertaken to give the issue its highest priority.

Most of the councillors sat mute and looking glum; it hasn't been a good few weeks for them. Ever perky Deputy Mayor Elaine Fieldhouse said it wasn't the town council's responsibility to deal with speeding traffic and that the Police were taking this 'very seriously'. She also implied that there wasn't such a problem with speeding as people make out. Chair Andy Manns said he was offended by being blamed for dangerous driving. Watch the video or read the transcript to see what i actually said.

The problem with many of Ledbury's town councillors is that they don't listen. They hear a few words and phrases they don't much like and then leap off into their own prejudiced world of skewed logic, preconceived ideas and distorted perceptions. Blah, blah, I think..., me, me, I, I.

Once more with feeling. Nobody is blaming LTC for speeding traffic. Police enforcement is inadequate. Herefordshire Council don't pay enough attention to Ledbury's traffic issues. AND Ledbury Town Council has a responsibility to plan responses to those facts. Endless whinging won't move things forward. Do something.

Here is the text of my address:

The Council professes to take seriously the concerns of local residents that there is a major problem with speeding traffic, inappropriate parking, congestion, pedestrian safety and disabled access along pavements and across roads. Since I raised this issue in January 2015, nearly two years ago, nothing of any substance appears to have been achieved. There have been sporadic discussions in committee and at PACT meetings, but as usual in Ledbury, no concrete action.
 
LTC has the competence to take hold of its traffic management and do something for the good of residents in the town. Other towns and parishes have this issue at the top of their agenda because they understand that the safety and well-being of residents is their primary responsibility. 
 
We know Ledbury people are hugely bothered by this. It came out at the top of the survey which led to the Town Plan. There are regular letters in the paper. Someone has even written to the Council offering their own money to pay for a traffic survey. In June, there was a horrendous crash on the Southend, where miraculously nobody was seriously hurt. Old and disabled people and parents with kids dodge over the Hereford and Gloucester Roads taking their lives in their hands. The lives of residents of Lower Road are blighted by reckless driving. On Friday and Saturday evenings, the town centre is like a race track as the boy racers rev up for an adrenalin fuelled night tearing in and out of town.
 
So what are you doing? I wrote to the Mayor on 1 June asking for her personally to kick this into touch. What happened? Nothing. No response. No action. She was presumably too busy attending to more important matters like organising parades and opening shops. 
 
And where have you been all this time? Basking in your own importance, spending hours in your talking shops and arguing amongst yourselves while ordinary people out on the street take their chances. 
 
I’m not going to mince my words. This committee and this council cost a great deal of money to keep going - but they are mostly worthless and pitifully ineffectual. How much longer do we have to wait before you manage to do anything useful for this town? If you’re not able or not willing to do something worthwhile, then my advice is this. Please go. And leave it to someone else who is.