Owen’s Mayor Making was a lot more fun and a lot more Lyme!

THEY should have called it the Mayor Mating, but then I suppose that might have given some people the wrong idea.

Yet in truth it was very matey in the Guildhall last Wednesday, when the room was packed with the biggest gathering of, dare I say it, Old Lyme since they stopped doing jumble sales at the Church Hall. 

The chamber was stuffed with locals, everybody trying not to do little glee hops, and a grin so big on the face of deputy mayor Michaela Ellis that if it had got any wider her head would have fallen off. 

You know like in those old Hammer horror films when at the end the villagers all gather raucously in the pub, everybody rosy-cheeked and wassailing because the Curse of the Mummy is lifted? It was like that.

I’ve been to other Mayor Makings and they’ve seemed a bit like going to school; a bit serious, a bit more proper. But when they made up Owen Lovell as mayor on Wednesday it was a lot more fun and a lot more Lyme.

For starters, there was the outfit. Although she was rather fetching in the mayor’s robes, being so tiny, Sally Holman always looked like she’d been caught playing in her mum’s dressing-up box.

In contrast, when Owen made his happy appearance in the white gloves and Nelson hat, I thought it was Ronnie Barker rehearsing for the Christmas panto. 

And well done him for grinning through it. Who cares if the tailor who said “one size fits all” sold us a kipper, how very Old Lyme is it to have a mayor who can do pomp without pomposity?

I’m not suggesting that Owen will not take his new and greatly-deserved promotion seriously – I was a teenager in Lyme when he was a local bobby, I know very well how seriously Owen can take things – it’s just that he made Mayor Making rather jolly.

Like the moment when he suddenly stopped the proceedings “for a top-up”. 

That’s what he said. Making his very first pronouncement as mayor, Owen rose to say “we’re just going to stop for a top-up”.

A top up? We were only two toasts in, but as only Lyme could deem that eleven toasts are entirely necessary for a sober occasion, everybody was knocking it back like there was no tomorrow.  

“Only Lyme”, the phrase kept coming back to me all evening. Where else, for instance, would anyone [Pip Evans] hilariously propose the toast to the town in the style of Bob Monkhouse, saying that he’d checked the toilet paper in the loo because he didn’t want anyone going home with his name on their bottom.

Where else would a senior councillor [Daryl Turner] respond to Pip’s toast by reciting a self-penned poem the length of “The Faerie Queene”, based on Baz Luhrmann’s spoken word song “Everybody’s Free”? In my day, Owen would have had you cuffed and drug-tested for behaviour like that.

And yet, Daryl’s epic toast was perfect for its honest sentimentality which we all share.

“Be kind to your town, or you’ll miss it when it’s gone,” he said. “Don’t mess too much with your town, because when you need her, she’ll be there.”

Lyme, Daryl had said several hundred stanzas earlier, was “the greatest place you’ll ever know”. Pip had made the same point – “nothing raises your heart more than that view of the Bay” – and it was echoed too in a theme which ran through all of the toasts of Cheryl Reynolds, Michaela, Anita Williams, Chezzie Evans, John Wright, John Broom and Dave Cozens.

And that theme was pride; a pride in how Elliott Herbert’s team of hard-grafting council boys keep Lyme looking beautiful, a pride in our history and a pride in our spirit.

And it was very good to see that pride back in The Guildhall.

“Chivalry and order has returned to the town again,” said Owen, articulating the relief of everyone.

“There will be differences of opinion ahead, but there will be harmony after the storm.”

And as he heavily hinted that the Skatepark is going to happen, the new team is off to a flying start. Long may the new popularity continue. 

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Money is God in ‘beautiful game’

I WORKED in football publishing in the dim and distant past and met many of my boyhood heroes. 

And whilst I loved rubbing shoulders with some of the game’s top players, doing business with professional football clubs was not a pleasurable experience. Quite the opposite,  in fact.

I soon came to realised that football stopped being “a beautiful game” many years ago. Money was - and is - the God and the least important people in the game are the supporters.

No one connected with the game at grass roots level were a bit surprised when FIFA imploded with the news that several top officials had been arrested by the FBI after a wide-ranging investigation into corruption at the very top. 

The sums involved are obscene – but much about the way the sport we love is administered is obscene.

One wonders how badly behaved a player has to be before he gets banned for life. If eating an opponent didn’t bring a lifetime ban, what will?

Whilst headlines about the obnoxious head of FIFA Sepp Blater were breaking all over the world, down at the new Chard Road football ground in Axminster chairman Ray Self and his team were putting the finishing touches to their new ground in readiness for next season .

This is where the true game is at its best. In Crewkerne, they’ve worked their socks off for new facilities in recent times and in Ilminster the same it about to happen. 

Football lives in its truest fashion at local level where securing funding of relatively small sums to allow young people to play in a secure and enjoyable environment is often an exercise akin to hari-kari.

Axminster got their ground by doing an astute bit of business with a property developer, although it was a lot more complicated and stressful than anticipated. A fraction of the bungs and bribes dished out to and by the so-called leaders of our game could make such a difference. 

But who wants their tainted millions?

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60 SECOND INTERVIEW: Steph Garner (Bridport Music)

STEPH Garner and her husband Piers have been at the helm of Bridport Music for the last 35 years. Born in Kent, Mrs Garner, 57, grew up in Southampton and lived in Scotland for five years before moving on to study biology at Sheffield University. Married in 1980, the couple have three children, all of whom now live away from home but regularly return to the area. Bridport Music has become a focal point of the town’s thriving arts community, and its annual Record Store Day celebrations in April attract visitors from across the South West.

WHEN did you first move to the area?

I moved here in 1980 when I married Piers, who had by then been managing the shop - then called Bridport Record Centre - for a year. Prior to that I had been conducting a wildlife survey on the grounds of Warwickshire College of Agriculture with another graduate.

WHAT do you like most about Bridport? 

The town has a great atmosphere, especially on sunny market days. It's the ideal combination of coast, countryside and interesting shops.  I can't imagine not living here now.

HOW did Bridport Music come about?

I've been a partner in the business for about 30 years. The business was started by our brother-in-law in 1976 (we think) at the premises he then owned - H. E. Bell, a general store located further down South Street. So we're coming up for a big anniversary next year!

DO you have a background in music? 

I have no musical background at all but I’ve always loved listening to music and watching bands live. I listen to BBC Radio 6Music as much as possible - it's the best place to hear new music.

WHAT was the first record you bought?

It was either Deep Purple’s ‘Black Night’ or Dave Edmunds’ ‘I Hear You Knocking’, both on seven inch vinyl of course.

RECORD Store Day has proved a very successful event over the last few years. Why do you think it's so important that vinyl lives on?

You are more likely to listen to a whole album properly all the way through on vinyl, which is most likely what the artist intended you to do - those that put out the physical product anyway. The sound quality is much better than on MP3s too.

BRIDPORT has a thriving arts community. Why do you think its independent venues and shops have been able to survive, unlike other towns in the South West?

We have weathered several recessions by a combination of ‘hanging on in there’ and diversifying. We've gone from selling just vinyl, cassettes and videos to CDs too and now musical instruments, radios, music books and related accessories. Stocktaking is certainly a challenge! It's hard work but we love what we do and it's our living.

WILL we see you on the festival circuit this year, or will you be watching from in front of the TV?

Sadly we are unable to get away from the shop to go to festivals so TV it is! We used to be able to get Sunday tickets for Glastonbury but that's almost impossible now.

DO you have any life lessons that you stick to?

If I have a particularly daunting task or problem ahead of me I don't try to tackle it all in one go. I nibble away at it until when I absolutely have to complete or solve it I've almost done it and it doesn't seem so bad after all. Like this interview - it's taken me three attempts!

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Magna Carta: a work still in progress? 

JUNE 19th is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Not the first, nor most important, nor most admirably unselfish, and certainly not the last of the battles to put legal restraint around centralised power, it has become, over time and in many parts of the world, a symbol and reference point for the rights of the governed. A little celebration is due.

It’s worth asking how well we live up to what Magna Carta represents. Historians, lawyers and politicians don’t always agree on what that is. So to celebrate, try your own definition. My starter for ten? “Magna Carta stands against a minority ruling in its own interests while excluding others.” 

Being among the world’s fortunate few inhabiting an elective democracy, we naturally ask “So what’s a minority?” – a question best examined at the familiar, local level. Lyme Regis, while no doubt a democracy, isn’t currently elective, so our closest example is West Dorset District Council.

97,731 votes across the district at the recent council election were shared like this: Conservative 45 per cent, Liberal Democrat 30 per cent, Green 13 per cent, Labour eight per cent, UKIP three per cent, independent two per cent. That looks like six differently-sized minorities.

What happened to those votes when they turned into councillors? Thirty Conservative councillors (71 per cent), 12 Liberal Democrats (29 per cent), none others. That looks like a hefty majority, with one minority, while four other groups – together embodying a quarter of all votes – are cast into outer darkness, sharing that gloomy region with 21,912 people, another 28 per cent of the electorate, who chose not to vote.

The council’s alchemy goes beyond turning six minorities into King John Conservatives faced by Baronial Lib Dems. Lest the latter re-enact June 1215, the magic majority is made exclusive by gathering power into a cabinet of seven Conservatives.

With any centralised control, those not in the centre feel excluded. Yet West Dorset’s cabinet firmly shuts out councillors representing over half the votes.  

This may please some local Conservative electors. On reflection, though, they might think, for example, of like-minded Londoners whose Conservative votes last year brought them nothing in Haringey (Labour 48, Lib Dem nine) or Islington (Labour 47, Green one). Some sympathy for such fellow voters? Perhaps, therefore, a little understanding for those friends and neighbours here who gave 55 per cent of votes to others than a Conservative candidate?

An energetic challenge to West Dorset’s cabinet system comes from the non-party-political Public First group, part of its campaign for local democracy. Of 501 attenders at its public meetings in Dorchester and Bridport earlier this year, just four voted against replacing the cabinet arrangement with the committee system used until 2007. This more democratic  structure would give all 42 councillors a role in policy-making. The official response so far has been the classic one: ignore the groundswell and don’t deal with the arguments. Perhaps some Barons-in-Arms are needed. 

West Dorset could, and should, scrap its cabinet tomorrow. But the deeper problem is our ‘winner takes all’ electoral system which, locally and nationally, strengthens the powerful and weakens the powerless.

Government should be for the good of all, not a vehicle for the wishes of the ‘winners’. Politics, Geoffrey Mann recently wrote in this paper, is “conversation and negotiation” rather than “dominance and control.” Replace ‘politics’ with ‘democracy’ or ‘government’ and he’s still correct. 

The general election results undermine “conversation and negotiation.” Post-election maps show swathes of Conservative and SNP territory, blobs of Labour strongholds, Lib Dem fingerholds, scatterings of Welsh and Irish interests, a solitary UKIP flag-bearer. 

Fractured nation?

These maps suggest a fractured nation. But people living in each part of the map incline, in differing proportions, to the values of all parties and none. Across the land we have more in common than the maps pretend. Government should foster what we share, not what separates us. 

Our new Conservative government has a majority of MPs, just as its West Dorset counterpart has a majority of councillors. But the voting patterns in both cases tell a subtler, more complicated story, one that heirs to Magna Carta should respect.

Unfortunately, politicians mostly behave as if the maps, not the votes, tell the truth. The district’s cabinet system is one symptom. Another is the rejoicing among many Conservatives that, unconstrained by coalition, they can forge ahead with a manifesto  supported by around 11.3 million people – just 37 per cent of the votes cast and 24 per cent of the 46.4 million eligible to vote. Ignoring minorities and disenchanting non-voters (28 per cent locally, 34 per cent nationally) damages social cohesion, whether in Dorset or nationally. Such ‘forging ahead’ will mean one thing: a real, not just a pictorial, fracturing of the United Kingdom – led, but not ended, by Scotland. 

Electing our representatives should do two things. It should enable us all, not just those in the 100 or so constituencies (out of 650) that aren’t ‘safe’ seats, to know that our vote counts. And it should produce fair, proportional government. Anyone valuing the continued unity of the kingdom should see in this the only way to stop it breaking up. Yet of those who argued against Scottish independence, both Conservative and Labour parties oppose a proportional system of election. That is astonishing logical confusion (or putting party before country).    

A recipe for chaos? The last century saw several capable minority and coalition governments; our recent coalition governed without falling over. Germany hasn’t done too badly with proportional representation and routine coalitions (plus national reunification along the way, while we carelessly contemplate separation). 

Nothing would get done? Not true, though government-by-negotiation might mercifully think more and do less. The Poll Tax and the Iraq War came from governments that didn’t stop long enough to listen or to think.

Listening and thinking in West Dorset needs its own Magna Carta. Public First is calling for a local referendum on the cabinet system, which by law must be held if five per cent of the district’s electorate sign the petition and the result is verified. Go, not to Runnymede, but to www.publicfirstgroup.co.uk

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Good to keep some of our old traditions

BY the time most of you read this a new mayor will be installed in a colourful and sometimes confusing ceremony which goes back hundreds of years – mayor-making. 

It’s recognised as one of the principal dates in Lyme’s civic calendar and I hope that will always be the case.

I am not opposed to change - there’s been a great deal of that in recent times in the Guildhall - but I think it is good that some of our old traditions live on as they do in most historic towns, especially those with royal approval, up and down the country.

Councillor Owen Lovell and his wife Christine, having already served two terms as the town’s First Citizens, are being officially installed tonight (Wednesday) and I have no doubt they will be just as popular as they wore the chains in the early 1990s and over the Millennium period.

The coming year will be a challenging one for the new unelected council and Owen will need all his wide experience in local government to restore the town’s pride in its council.  I have no doubt that he will do so.

The council has to get itself up to a full complement of 14 members through co-option and that process will happen over the next few weeks. There’s talk of reducing the council numbers to 12 but I would not advocate that in this first year.  There is much to do.

The skatepark issue has already emerged as one possible area of conflict and a letter from Daryl Turner in this week’s View From throws some interesting light on the difficulties of finally delivering this project.  

But I have no doubt this will be resolved in due course and the young people of the town will get their skatepark after 40 years of debate and argument.

I haven’t attended a mayor-making ceremony for some years. My presence in recent times would have been hypocritical in the extreme in view of the ill-feeling which exists between the now infamous “Gang of Five” and this newspaper.

But Owen has kindly asked me to propose the toast to the town, which I am pleased to accept, and my daughter Francesca will also be speaking in reply to the toast to the press, which was abandoned last year to ensure the event went off without too much aggravation. 

Former journalist David Cozens MBE is also on the toast list. Three reporters speaking at one event? It might be overkill.

I cannot tell you what I’m planning to say because I don’t know. I never do until I stand up. 

I’m firmly in the school of the late Albert Lane, former town clerk, Alderman and Freeman of the Borough, who once told me: “If it’s not worth remembering, it’s certainly not worth saying.”

Another bank closure a blow to the elderly of Lyme

THE closure of the NatWest branch in Lyme Regis, whilst not entirely unexpected, has come as a shock to many in Lyme Regis, coming so close on the back of the demise of HSBC in the town.

We all know that banking is not what it was. When I first started work the local bank manager was one of the key movers and shakers in the town, a highly respected individual who played a prominent role in the community.

Do you know who your bank manager is today? I don’t. The thing that gets me about banks is that it seems the longer you are with them the poorer they treat you.  

In most businesses you look after your longest customers - but not in banking where the holy grail is new customers. Bankers are now salesmen.

Of course, the internet has made a huge impact on the number of people who actually walk into a bank these days. Like many others, I do all my banking online and use a cash point. But there is great suspicion in Lyme about the statement from NatWest that they Lyme branch only had 53 regular customers a week.

NatWest customers are told they will still be able to use facilities at the post office but there’s been a question mark hanging over the post office in Broad Street for some time, so how long will that last?

Internet banking is not an option for many elderly people who still value the personal service that the bank offers.

I always found the staff at NatWest extremely polite and co-operative and they will be missed by the elderly who relied on their advice and assistance.

It wasn’t so long ago that Lyme Regis Town Council shifted their allegiance from Lloyds Bank to NatWest, and it was where the council’s valuable trinkets - the maces and mayor’s chain, worth a considerable sum - were kept in the bank vaults.

Will the council now have to go to Axminster or Bridport every time there’s a civic event - or will they return to Lloyds? 

WHILST FIFA was proving that football at the top is corrupt to the core (as if we didn’t know), Lyme Regis Football Club was celebrating another ground-breaking season, proving that football is only “a beautiful” game at grass roots level.

FIFA generates millions through the World Cup but, disgracefully, very little of it trickles down to amateur football.

Meanwhile, up at the golf club, Lyme Regis FC, one of the town’s oldest organisations, celebrated promotion in its first season in senior football.

It was rowdy as always but inspiring as well,  encapsulated by making former captain Martin Rowe , one of local sports’ most endearing characters, a life member. Much deserved.

As we say, once a Seasider always a Seasider!

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Not so artful traffic dodger

ALREADY traffic is beginning to choke the life out of Weymouth, clogged by an influx of summer visitors.

Even cunning old hands like myself are getting caught out.

The recent Bank Holiday saw me working on one side of town with my next job on the other side of town, but I reasoned that the seafront King Street area would be gridlocked, so decided to travel a little further round in order to ensure I got to my next job on time.

I planned to drive away from the town centre up Dorchester Road and then loop round the 

relief road to Southill and on to my job instead of taking the much shorter road down King Street, over the Swannery Bridge and on to Southill. I should have known the gods were watching.

My little smirk at the obvious Greenhill queue I was dodging must have enraged them because I was barely able to get as far as Spa Road before I joined my first traffic jam, halted by a queue trying to get to the Manor Roundabout junction.

Spa Road seemed jammed as well, so I grimly ground on, finally getting on to the relief road at about 1mph. It stayed like that all the way to Southill where I dodged away, leaving behind me a queue of at least a mile and a half.

An hour later I had no choice but to join the queue into town for my last jobs, fuming at the way traffic lights did nothing to ease congestion. Their cycle clearly hadn’t been adjusted and non-existent traffic on empty junctions was still being given time to come across even though there was nothing there!

Visitors unaware of our prized new traffic system could be seen choosing one lane only to produce horror-stricken faces as they realised they were in the wrong one. Their attempts to switch saw them caught between two lanes, jamming the system up even further.

Similar scenes happened with the first May Bank Holiday, they happened again here and all this before the school holidays even start. The originators of this system have a lot to answer for... but then they mostly live in Dorchester!

Civilised decision-making

IT was high noon, the stakes were on the table and a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

But this was no scene from a spaghetti western, no dramatic Las Vegas casino clip from a Hollywood blockbuster... it was far more serious than that.

This was a Conservative confrontation, a tense Tory tustle for leadership of the party on Weymouth & Portland council.

In the blue corner was Councillor Ian ‘Diamond Jack’ Bruce and in the... er... other blue corner was Councillor Kevin ‘Full House’ Brookes. Only one of them would walk away from this.

The niceties of voting had been observed, but this had left party faithful with a problem since it didn’t take a Returning Officer to work out that it was a tie, each having polled five votes.

What to do? Well clearly there was only one decent thing left to do in the complicated tradition of local politics... they tossed a coin.

Mr Brookes called heads, the fifty pence piece they were using landed on tails and so Mr Bruce is now leader of the Conservative group on the council, telling The View that he always knew his double tailed coin would come in useful!

But he is not the first to risk all on the toss of a coin.

Years ago there was a borough council election to be councillor for Wyke Regis which produced a too-close-to-call result between incumbent Arthur Sheppard and challenger Doug Hollings.

They held a recount and couldn’t be separated and then a second recount in an incredibly tense atmosphere and still there was nothing to choose between them, so they agreed to decide the result on the toss of a coin.

Now at the time, Mr Sheppard was also deputy mayor and was just a few days away from assuming the full office of mayor... but he lost the toss and with it his council seat and his chance to be mayor. 

Who said local politics was boring?!

Rover comes home

A PORTLAND man’s love affair with one car makes unbelievable reading.

More than a decade ago he really fancied a specialist Rover, but it would have cost £28,000, which he couldn’t afford.

Then there was a financial crash which saw vehicle prices plummet and he was able to pick up the vehicle of his dreams brand new for £10,500... only for him to worry when prices fell even further!

Things did pick up and a couple of years later he sold his beloved car and was delighted to get back virtually what he’d originally paid for it.

He kept in touch and, when the car recently came on the market, he bought it back for barely £1,000!

The deal got even better because the previous owner mistakenly thought the clutch was going and paid for a brand new one to be installed at no small expense.

The icing on the cake was that, even after more than a dozen years of use, the car barely had 60,000 miles on the clock.

The man proudly pointed out his beloved vehicle in a Portland car park and told me he was delighted to be reunited with his old car at so little expense and with it in such good condition. I’ll bet he was!

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Ruffling Tory feathers...

EAST Devon’s ebullient leader Paul Diviani, my spies at Knowle informed me this week, has been boasting about how the “bias” local press got it wrong in the local elections.

For “bias local press” read Pulman’s View for none of the other local papers rarely if ever offer an opinion on local government affairs in East Devon.

That being the case, Cllr Diviani is wide of the mark. At no time did we predict the result of the election; all we did was to draw attention to   increasing dissatisfaction with local government among the electorate which I firmly put down to the arrogance of some of the council’s senior members.

And whilst the Tories were returned with a comfortable majority, as expected and indeed stated in this column, a total of 16 seats went to independents, the biggest number since local government was reorganised in 1974.

I have been labelled by some of the ruling Conservatives as a left wing agitator because I had the temerity to welcome a challenge to the Tories. Well, it may interest them to know that I have voted Tory all my life (no one who reads this column will be too shocked to read that) - but I live across the border in West Dorset.

All the Tory big hitters were returned in East Devon but they will find it less comfortable to rule supreme with more independents sitting alongside them.

We’ve also taken some stick from East Devon constituent Conservatives who remain with a healthy majority because we were allegedly rooting for Independent Claire Wright. 

At no time did we advise our readers to vote for Claire but we did hail her success in polling 13,000-plus votes with no party machinery behind her as a terrific result. And we stand by that. It was, of course, the best performance by far in the country by a true independent.

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