LE FIN DE SIECLE.

What Joyous news, it is ELECTION TIDE for both Tisbury Parish Councils; and for the election of TWO Salisbury District Councillors, each of whom will bear equal responsibility for Tisbury and Fovant Wards; doing so Jointly and Severally, not each for his/her own part, to misquote the wording once to be found on a
‘Lloyds of London’ Insurance Policy.

Not entirely sure whether Tisbury is to have but eleven Parish Councillors, or our previous fifteen. Nomination forms will soon become available for the proposed May 3rd Election Day. PLEASE MAY WE HAVE AN ELECTION. No one has been elected to Tisbury Parish Council , by exercise of the Public Franchise, for twelve long years.

When there have been occasional vacancies each has been filled by cooption. On one occasion three candidates were selected as an entirety, rather than each being subjected to an individual vote in Council. At other times if there have been more than one applicant and but the single vacancy. The unsuccessful Candidate/s, all of whom ‘are thanked for their interest and would have made an excellent Councillor’ later have been allowed seemingly to fall by the wayside.

NOW is the time to GIVE IT ANOTHER GO. Get a Nomination paper, have it signed by a handful of supporters, and send it in to the Returning Officer. There is no egg on ones face if one doesn’t get elected, should it go to an election. However if you don’t have a go, don’t complain too much, about this that or the other afterwards. If you wish to stand, please be sure to hand your nomination paper in, in good time. Four years ago two Parish Councillors names had to be added to the nomination list after it was posted in the Village. All were ‘returned’ unopposed. Have we not had some sixteen plus co-options since then? I lost count a while ago.

I recall a personal comment to me from a gentleman who ‘noticed that I hadn’t offered my services’. Whilst another one time Parish Councillor wrote to me along the lines of ‘picking up the baton and….’. Well I last did so on the day Mrs Thatcher was elected to the Office of Prime Minister, but her ‘Frontmen’, had the baton off me in her wake. Maybe had it seemed appropriate to pick it up again, it would have been better to have done so when I first came to live here over a quarter of a century ago. In a rather old fashioned way I thought then that it would be presumptuous to attempt to become a District Councillor immediately after ones arrival. One should not let such sentiment influence standing for election to the Parish Council if your interest lies therein. Being a Councillor is giving worthwhile, under valued Public Service.

As for me, I am far too old to be allowed out on my own, but only gradually got so. J.B.P.