Best Wishes to my Reader this New Year’s eve, for now we all live in interesting times.

THE PARLIAMENTARY BY ELECTION JANUARY 13th. 2011
When Mr. Phil Woolas the former Member of Parliament for Oldham East and Saddleworth, a sometime Immigration Minister, lost in part his High Court Appeal against the earlier decisions of an Election Court which stripped him of his Parliamentary seat; it reminded me of a not dissimilar occurrence in one of the old Hindon Borough seats. Following the 1697 Election, the two defeated candidates George Morley, and Robert Hyde of Dinton petitioned concerning
‘Several indirect and unlawful practices at and before the election’. There is no accessible record of the outcome of that petition, however Hyde, the son of the then Bishop of Salisbury, did twice serve as one of that Potwalloper Borough’s two Members. Maybe Robert Hyde’s wife put him up to petitioning, as she was of my own belligerent ‘stock’.

VACANCY ON PARISH COUNCIL.
Or such was declared to be the case according to the last Minutes published on the Tisbury Parish Council Web Site. Has one read of this vacancy in the pages of Focus the ‘Community’ Magazine? Quite right that one awaits the right person for the job, for there needs to be a good excuse for not co-opting the wrong one.

AMALGAMATION OF TISBURY’S TWO PARISHES.
One was advised that the real reason that West Tisbury has no wish to amalgamate with Tisbury Parish is that it has no wish to pay its fair share of the conjoined Parishes’ Precept. Not for one moment had it occurred to me that West Tisbury’s motivation was mere financial evasiveness, surely such can not be the case ? A suggestion was made that if West Tisbury had no wish to amalgamate with Tisbury, then maybe Upper Chicksgrove might aid and abet West Tisbury, by seeking to come under West Tisbury’s care and protection. A suggestion that caused some merriment at a local pre-Christmas Party. It was however suggested that as Upper Chicksgrove is some two miles to the East of Tisbury High Street, then maybe it might better, were it to reunite with Lower Chicksgrove in the Parish of Sutton Mandeville.

It is as great a nonsense for Upper Chicksgrove to be part of Tisbury Parish as it is for West Tisbury not to be a part of it. January 2011 is as good a time as any to try and precipitate, either if not both matters.

COMPOSTING SCHEME.
Last month one had the opportunity to discuss the demise of Leominster Allotment Composting Facility, with the Leominster Allotment Holders Committee in session at its local teashop. It had trashed their ‘Composting Scheme’on the basis that it just didn’t work in practice. Those thrifty Herefordshire People having had the good sense to test the viability of the project were able to abandon it, without loss of face or Public Money. Heaven only knows how much money Tisbury Parish Council has expended on its Composting Scheme since its 2009/10 accounts were posted on the Parish Council Web Site.
PLEASE MAY THIS NONSENSE BE ABANDONED ?
I do not know which Councillors propagated the idea in the first place, but it seems as ill conceived an idea, as was that proposal to buy that piece of waste ground for £40,000. Desirable as such schemes may at first seem to be, are not our Community Charges already high enough without Parish Councillors dreaming up schemes they have no remit to deliver. Its remarkable that anyone should have thought either idea a ‘Goer’ in the first place.

Our Parish Council’s deference to local Traders bemuses me, because the majority of us are not local Trades Persons. Furthermore their right to vote ‘Per Se’ was abolished many years back.

New Year Riddle
‘ What is the difference between our Parish Council and its Chamber of Trade ?’
Friday, 31 December 2010. reference lower picture Madeleine is still missing.