Flushed with the success of "Bunting-gate", the Ledbury Reporter has pressed the marketing advantage and launched a fun point of sale promotion. For each copy of the Reporter bought, lucky customers are rewarded with a bag of Tesco jam doughnuts. 

Throwing health concerns to the wind, regional editor of Midlands Newsquest Peter John said: 'This is a great chance for Reporter readers to remember just how good Tesco's doughnuts are.

'People seem to have got out of the habit of buying their weekly doughnuts, even though they are still super-tempting and sweet as ever. It could be the internet that's hitting sales. We hope with a little help from the Reporter's increasing number of readers, that the Tesco doughnut line will be able to get back on its feet. It would be a tragedy to lose this traditional doughy favourite. 

​Mr John added, 'Go on. You know you love them!

Doughnut sales have been falling steadily according to Retail Price Monthly. Health concerns, changing habits and a general belief in the truth is thought to lie behind the decline, according to experts. 

Editors' note: this piece contains flagrant disinformation, made-up comments and a heavily slanted presentation of the facts. Believe nothing you read. 

Local reporter Gary Bills-Geddes must be thrilled that his bunting story hit the populist jackpot - and made the national tabloid press into the bargain. It's not often a part-time weekly newspaper journalist breaks a story which ends up in the Daily Mail. Somebody's got to do it I guess. Mark Twain said 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story'.
 
That Gary deliberately slanted his story for maximum impact is clear. It's what journalists do. Did he and his colleagues though really intend to unleash a true patriots versus foreigners, us and them crusade against dissident town and county councillor Liz Harvey?
 
Comparing Liz Harvey's words with the way it was reported reveals significant discrepancies. Other elements of the story from the brief Town Council discussion were also left out.
 
In the Ledbury Reporter's extensive coverage, five times the word "foreign" was used in the front page splash and related features, even though Liz Harvey did not utter that word once in her brief address to Ledbury Town Council. This is what Mr Bills-Geddes said in the opening sentence of the story: 'A councillor has voted against red, white and blue... because she fears it will upset foreign visitors.' In a photo caption of Bob Barnes the paper said:  'Cllr Liz Harvey claims the patriotic colours could 'unsettle' foreign visitors to the town.' In an editorial, it twice uses the phrase 'unsettle foreign visitors'. There is a What You Say piece; this too opens with the 'unsettling foreign visitors' phrase.
 
Why did the Reporter keep repeating that phrase 'foreign visitors'? Was it designed as a dog whistle to whip up chauvinistic, even racist sentiments?
 
It worked. Small wonder that the baying mob on Voice of Ledbury said that 'foreign visitors' can go jog on, or less polite words to that effect. The flotsam and jetsam of the fascist fringe are so outraged, they plan to demonstrate in Ledbury.
 
When a 'social media frenzy' (the Reporter's words) takes place, it's advisable to check the evidence. What Cllr Harvey actually said was: 'There were quite a few poets who came from Ireland who were on the [Poetry Festival] programme. They were really quite unnerved by the red white and blue and actually wondered whether they’d walked into a sort of National Front area because they were used to that in Ireland.'
 
She went on: 'I like the idea of bunting but ... it might be an opportunity to get some brightly coloured bunting that would look lovely in the middle of town but wouldn’t make people unsettled who come here as visitors'. She was responding to a suggestion from Mayor Annette Crowe that the union jack bunting be left up all summer.
 
From these off the cuff remarks, clearly unacceptable in these days of intolerant jingoism, Liz Harvey has been turned into a right wing hate figure, pilloried and threatened online, and now, outrageously according to Mrs Crowe, the cause of the potential fascist demonstration.
 
The Ledbury Reporter was also very selective in its commentary of the ensuing Council discussion. Cllr Tony Bradford, who normally gets full coverage, spoke out strongly against buying bunting for the Queen and said the money should be spent making a donation to the Ledbury Food Bank. At the other end of the argument, Cllr Jayne Roberts made what appeared to be a typically incoherent racist-xenophobic comment: 'Unfortunately', she said, 'the Moslems that come and visit us, the Irish that come and visit us... I'm afraid, it's our Queen...' When the vote came to buy red, white and blue bunting, seven councillors either voted against or abstained, including the Deputy Mayor, Keith Francis. This was over a third of the Council.
 
None of these 'facts' were reported, just Liz Harvey's words and vote. So much for balanced reporting.
 
By the time the tabloids had the story, it had been mangled into a loonie left councillor wanting to 'BAN' the flag for the Queen's birthday. A flower seller and barman, quite clearly fictional creations, were quoted in the piece.
 
One of the few balanced reactions to this hot-air balloon of political puff came from a contributor to the Facebook 'Voice of Ledbury' discussion (itself instigated by Mr Bills-Geddes). He said:
 
'I cannot believe the negativity directed toward one person who said so little, based upon a few published words from one person who should have known better.
 
'I believe that Gary Bills has caused quite the little race-storm, resulting in a public witch-hint against Cllr Harvey by not just writing an article so everyone could read what she said, but also publishing her picture, so everyone could now SEE who said it. Well done. Great job.

'Being a journalist (and I'm guessing a fairly intelligent person), I am convinced that he must have known that the reaction to his article would end like it has - with VOL going all "if they don't like it here they should just go home" and all that uneducated garbage. To me, this is really bad form.

'Whilst I understand that Cllr Harvey may possibly regret saying what she did, it was only (as I understand it) in reaction to a couple of Irish visitors, who inquired as to the nature of the blue/white/red coloured flags.

'Now, in certain parts of Ireland those colours are considered pretty political, so I can totally understand why they asked, and why she put it to the council.'
 
This gentleman might understand why, in a democratic country, people are permitted to put alternative points of view, but clearly our friends in the media do not.
 
We have been warned. When it comes to the flag, Liz Harvey is correct: it is indubitably used as a symbol of far right resistance.  It also seems these days that we may not question the wisdom of patriotic-nationalist imagery festooning our streets on pain of a reactionary backlash, led by the local paper.
 
You keep your mouth shut and your head down. Here's to the future! To democracy and free-speech! Not.  
 

What was that we were saying about Ledbury, draped in nationalist insignia all summer long, could be mistaken for a centre of far-right activism?
 
It seems our local fascist chapter, the Hereford Patriots is organising a rumble in Ledbury on 21 May. On their special Facebook Group, they say it's a: 'demonstration to demand that Cllr Liz Harvey be sacked for her anti-British, politically correct, offensive comments. Various groups attending. All welcome'. It's been advertised nationally throughout far-right networks. Lots of nice-sounding people are coming to say hello. Groups so far who have rsvp'd include the Midlands Infidels, South Coast Resistance, Pie and Mash Squad ("it's going to be a hoot"), March for England, UK Casuals ("30 game lads waiting"), London Patriots, North East Patriots, South West Infidels, Anti-anti-fascist network. "Real handy crew they are aswell" according to Mr Paul Barber commenting on Facebook.
 
The flag-waving, queen-loving, beer-swilling true patriots are now uniting under a clever little social media codeword: #5W. It stands for Five Words: We Go Where We Want. They say they are 'no longer taking it'.
 
So much for those fabled British values of tolerance, free-speech and respect for others, the Hereford 'patriots' announce: 'Lefties in positions of power who either demand that refugees are put before our people for housing, or who openly attack British ways or patriotism ought to know that we wont (sic) stand for your nonsense and you are going to draw the herd to your town/city'.
 
Herd is a good word for them to use about themselves. It means a collection of animals. They will no doubt be warmly received by some of Ledbury's indigenous racists, right-wingers and raging red-necks.

Will the local 'game lads' who threatened to fire-bomb the half Hungarian family out of the Horsehoe Pub a few years ago because they were flying the Hungarian flag be laying on lashings of half-time lemonade and sandwiches for all their pale-skinned chums?


From Ledbury Town Council a few councillors might also be swelling with patriotic pride as the parade of fluttering red, white and blue flags waves gaily down the Homend in the Spring sunshine. What a delightful tribute to our dear old Monarch and all she stands for. Well done Bob Barnes and Annette Crowe for your inspiring rallying cry last week swaddling yourselves in the Union Jack, sterling work.
 
No article about sincerely felt anti-foreigner sentiment could be complete without nodding in the direction of Cllr Jayne Roberts, veteran Ledbury Town Councillor and ex-Mayor.
 
Contributing at the end of the Council bunting debate (but unreported of course in the Ledbury Reporter) she said: 'Unfortunately, the Moslems who come to visit us, the Irish who come to visit us, I'm afraid, it's our queen'. She didn't get as far as explaining what was unfortunate, apart presumably from being Moslem or Irish.
 
Well known for her intolerance of "the pickers" as she refers to seasonal agricultural workers, Mrs Roberts the other summer had a cheery experience on her way to the office.
 
'Ha ha haygrove artic in hedge at redmarley this morning, wonder what the driver was doing this time?', she quipped on Facebook's Voice of Ledbury (where else?). 'Could it be texting, phoning or eating? this is the second time since xmas that an artic has decided to lie down in the hedge.'
 
While most reasonable people would have stopped to offer assistance and made sure there were no injuries, Mrs Roberts was happy to drive on mirthfully. When she got to work she commented:

'Not surprised as these foreign drivers should not be on our roads as they have no idea how to drive in this country'. What a lovely sentiment.
 
So when all the brave lads arrive in Ledbury, buoyed up with their #5W slogans, they won't be all alone. There will be at least a few people who will welcome their celebration of xenophobic pride. 

When I opened up my copy of the latest Ledbury Reporter and caught site of the front page, I was fortunately at home and able to run to the sink to empty the excessive saliva that had begun pooling in my mouth. While I managed to interrupt an actual attack of sickness, the lingering feeling of queasiness has persisted off and on for several days, every time in fact when I glance at those two faces grinning fatuously like a pair of Britain First supporters.

When every rational line of argument is spent, when you are facing political oblivion or pressure to own up to wrongdoing, when the game is up, there's only one thing for it. Bunting. You know that things have reached the pits when politicians wrap themselves in the flag.
 
Ertswhile enemies now best Council buddies it seems, the two laughing mayors, Mr Barnes and Mrs Crowe, have gone better than this: they have literally swagged and festooned themselves in Union Jacks. If you look carefully on the left side of the picture, you will see that Bob Barnes has got his right hand raised in a diagonal posture which for all the world looks like a fascist salute.  Or is it a raised fist or the Red Hand of Ulster? The mind boggles. Thank god the hand is cropped so we are spared the full horror of the image.
 
Flags are potent symbols. They mean lots of things. They are expressions of pride, as when Mo Farrah won his gold at the London Olympics, or of national celebration for the Queen's jubilee, or of sorrow for the fallen: who can forget the heartbreaking site of a sea of tiny flags at the Normandy commemoration each one representing a life lost in the fight against Nazism?

Or they can be objects of hatred. In Britain, the Union Jack, and more particularly the St George Cross have assumed ugly connotations over the years, unfairly so perhaps. Throughout my youth travelling to and from school in grimy Birmingham, the sight of red, white and blue flags, along with skin-head haircuts provoked in us grammar school boys, a shudder of fear and revulsion. It was the era of the Pub Bombings, and being a catholic school, we were evacuated with bomb threats on a weekly basis, as well as being targets for violence and abuse. At the Longbridge car factory against a back-drop of Union Jacks, there were terrifying mock hangings of Irish men. Anti-Irish hatred was as palpable then as anti-Muslim hatred is now. The flag had been indelibly tainted by the National Front, by extremist politics, by fascism. And I admit, those associations still linger in my mind. The lunatic right continues to appropriate the flag while menacing shoppers on Saturday afternoons and deliberately terrorising BME communities. Across the water, last summer Belfast erupted over the disputed right to fly the Union Jack over City Hall.

I have been driven up the Shankhill Road and visited North Belfast and seen the eerie sight of kirbstones painted red, white and blue, bunting and tattered flags fluttering sadly in the drizzle. In these pitifully deprived neighbourhoods, families save their pennies to have their houses painted from top to bottom as Union Jacks. You'll see a few adolescent boys kicking a can around in the broken glass, perhaps a scrawny dog wandering idly. In such benighted working class communities, tokens of patriotism, unionism, and loyalism, for they are one, are worn defiantly by people against the encroachment of enlightened, secular values, against integration and outsiders, vouchsafed against the decades of hurt and bitterness which has soured their hearts. Something of the same is witnessed in the Republican areas, although without quite the visceral xenophobia of the Loyalist districts.
 
So when Irish visitors, or people from multicultural London or Birmingham, or some black people whose lives have been ravaged by racist thugs brandishing Union flags, when they visit a quaint country town, predominantly a white British town, and see it decked in a profusion of red, white and blue for no apparent reason, they do feel a cultural jolt, a political charge, as do I. It's probably wrong, but there it is. You can't deny your gut instincts. The flag is still controversial. It means something. Is it, as those Irish poets asked, a political statement? Is this a centre for right-wing extremism? They could be forgiven for enquiring, as some of the baying mob against Liz Harvey are undoubtedly motivated by those views. Some of those loud voices on Voice of Ledbury are known right-wing agitators. Perhaps there are one or two of them in Ledbury Town Council judging by the rancid comments of some councillors in recent years.
 
Annette Crowe is outraged at the suggestion that the crass image on the front of the local paper might be seen as a nod to the far right. She asks: 'Any connotation like that, about our town; it's unacceptable. It puts the town in a bad light. Just putting the comments out there is unacceptable.' Is she either extremely naive or is this just more political hay-making, another gambit to get her name in the paper yet again? Is that look of defiant glee genuinely about intense patriotic sentiment or the prosecution of tawdry political opportunism? I hadn't realised that we had disappeared down a worm-hole and wound up in North Korea, where free thought, much less a stated opinion is forbidden.

The Daily Express and Mail, themselves proud fascist sympathisers in the 1930s and still raging against anyone left of Mrs Thatcher, claimed Liz Harvey wanted to 'BAN (their caps) the Union Flag.' Did she really? See the transcript of exactly what she said in the Council meeting here.  More worrying is the fact that Annette Crowe appears keen to ban real concerns people might have about the far right and its imagery permeating our town. Even the mention of it is now 'unacceptable' in Mrs Crowe's dubious judgement.

The question for Mr Barnes and Mrs Crowe is why they would ever think that staring out provocatively draped in rampant nationalist insignia could ever be a good thing, except on a day of national celebration. Even then, good taste surely demands that there are limits. A few 'true patriots' no doubt will be delighted. Most reasonable people will think them tastelessly vulgar. Others with longer memories, finer political sensibilities or first-hand experience of the corrosive effects of nationalist hatred will be disturbed, even worried. 
 
My view, and it's not worth much, is that by all means we should put out the flags and swathe the town in bunting for the old Queen's birthday and 1916 commemoration. Let there be lots of red, white and blue, but there should also, properly be a healthy dose of Commonwealth colour. The 56 nations of the Commonwealth love Elizabeth as much as the Brits; they fought in the First and Second World Wars, one million seven hundred thousand men and women died. Does their contribution, and memory count for nothing in Ledbury?
 
What a kind gesture it would be both to the monarch, and to our friends overseas, that Ledbury celebrates its place in the world and shows that we are not a narrow-minded little town full of patriotic zealots.
 
To Mr B and Mrs C, they should remember Samuel Johnson's words: patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Note: please no comments pulling me up on my use of the Union Jack, rather than the supposedly correct 'Union Flag'. In Britain, it's known universally as the Union Jack whatever the pedantic patriots  say.

News that planning permission has been granted to predatory housing developer Gladman Developments to build 321 houses on green fields to the south of Ledbury has been greeted with dismay and disbelief in the town.

Now a precedent has been set to build beyond Ledbury's southern by-pass, there's nothing to stop other schemes also being given the go-ahead. Already, Bovis has proposed a 625 house estate on land adjoining the Gloucester Road roundabout, up the hill from the Gladman scheme. 

Both of these developments are in addition to the 600 houses proposed in the Council's Core Strategy for north of the viaduct and the 100 houses already granted permission on the Cricket field by the Full Pitcher. 

Ledbury is well on its way to another two thousand houses, despite the Core Strategy proposing only 800 units for the town up to 2030.  

Ledbury Ward Councillor today issued a stinging rebuke for Ledbury Town Council for delaying progress on the Neighbourhood Plan. She said:

"This is a very concerning decision. It makes a nonsense of the effort we have all gone to in shaping the county council’s planning policies for Ledbury and demonstrates the damage that the Town Council has done to the town in dragging its heels for so long on the Neighbourhood Plan.

"There is nothing good about the Gladman development as far as I’m concerned. It detracts from the functionality of our bypass, makes it difficult and dangerous for young people to get to school and to sports facilities on foot and by bike from the site, it damages our landscape setting, it is the first development to actually reduce our sustainability as a community, it brings with it no employment land and it delivers us absolutely nothing in terms of community facilities.

The likelihood is that government changes to the definition of ‘affordable housing’ will mean that only a fraction of the homes which eventually get built will be truly affordable for local people; and the minimum build standards required by council policies mean that the houses will be much more expensive to live in and to heat than need be the case.

In addition it will call into doubt whether the cricket pitch site ever comes forward for development, which in turn will reduce the likelihood that a new cricket facility is built in the town.

I hope the councillors who have deliberately hampered the progress of the Neighbourhood Plan since its inception and have most recently led the scheme to pull the plug on it altogether feel proud of themselves. These councillors have acted selfishly and through their actions have denied the community a voice on the future for Ledbury. In doing so, they have rendered the Neighbourhood Plan all but irrelevant.

I was ashamed to be asked to defend these councillors’ actions to the inspector in the appeal hearing. Dissolving the Neighbourhood Plan working group was a gift to Gladmans. The timing could not have been better for Gladmans and worse for Ledbury.

What many people don’t seem to realise is that the Gladman development will be in addition to the viaduct site, not instead of it. Neither will it reduce in any way the number of houses to be built to the north. Both this sites will come forward before the Neighbourhood Plan is able to wield any influence. It will be down to ward members working with planners to get the best outcomes for the town now.

Heaven only knows what was in the mind of the Mayor when she sanctioned a call for further development sites throughout the town only last month at a cost of a further unbudgeted £5,000 on the Neighbourhood Plan account. How much more development does Cllr Crowe want to see here in Ledbury?

The most ironic part of all this is that these two huge developments will both be approved ahead of the introduction of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) – the government’s new local development tax … so the Town Council won’t get a penny of CIL money from either of these developments … which formed such a large part of their motivation for undertaking Neighbourhood Planning in the first place.

​I hope these councillors see the sense of putting aside their petty interests and small town politics. Ledbury is in peril and I would hope that everyone who cares about the town will start to work for our collective good."
​

People continue to wonder why Ledbury Town Council is sloshing so much public money the way of the Foxley Tagg Partnership.
 
While other places put out a modest press release announcing a ‘call for sites’ as part of their Neighbourhood Plans, Ledbury has commissioned consultants to do this at a cost of five thousand pounds.
 
As one Neighbourhood Plan ‘insider’ commented off the record, it’s money for old rope.
 
The call for sites is understood to be one of the 'tickbox' stages needed to complete a Neighbourhood Plan. Not a legal requirement, it gives local landowners the chance to have any parcels of ground they own considered for building development. This is not a complicated exercise. It might involve a press statement, a press advertisement, even a personal letter to landowners.
 
It requires no specialist expertise nor should it cost five thousand pounds.
 
While members of the community go to Ledbury Town Council cap in hand, and get put through the mill for a few hundred quid to support genuinely worthwhile projects, Mrs Sally Tagg and Co bask in civic munificence, money no object.  How much are we paying her in total? Fifty, sixty thousand pounds?
 
It was a different story last September (2015) when the now disbanded Neighbourhood Plan team of community volunteers (at least three of whom were marketing professionals) sought ‘permission’ to produce a newsletter to publicise the project.
 
Then, under the pretence of cost-cutting and good management, town councillors shaved a miserable few hundred pounds off the newsletter budget. Instead of its being printed as an A3 tabloid newsletter, they stupidly decided it should be half that size, effectively rendering it illegible and from a marketing point of view, hardly fit for purpose.
 
The volunteers dug in and refused to have their names associated with such an exercise in incompetence. The designs went in the bin. It felt like a calculated act of sabotage. All those expressions of wanting ‘good value for council tax payers’ were hollow words.
 
When Mrs Tagg shakes her head and mutters dubiously, that’s not part of the original contract, we’ll need extra money for this or that, the shady powers that be in Ledbury Town Council sit up like a pack of well trained Jack Russells and say how much?
 
I ask once again: why is the Foxley Tagg Partnership being paid so much money for our Neighbourhood Plan?