Thought Vomit #55: ft. Down Town

In a pique of frenzied nothingness, I decided to wander on down to my local council this afternoon. A part of me has been chastising another part of me for its political inactivity, and the two parts are currently blaming one another for the BNP. Yet a third part doesn’t get quite the attention it probably deserves, and is often ridiculed as a bit of a liberal joke.

The South Gloucestershire chamber is a monument to banality, housed as it is in a mid-80s brick building that is so non-descript I’ve already wasted 25 words on it. There is also a faint odour of ear wax. Indifference permeates every pore of every brick, and one final heavy sigh could bring the place crashing down.

This makes it all the more surprising that the bowels of the building play host to a number of exciting human and political dramas. Forget blazing rows about wheelie bins, this is the place where the real decisions are made, and your council tax quids are gobbled up hungrily by masticating local members.

My ward is represented by three councillors, which makes them responsible for sixteen houses each. There’s the Liberal Democrat Shirley Knott, a blue rinsed WI-type, whom our local paper exposed recently as a cat murderer. Apparently she ran over Muggins, and left the scene of the crime, only to be caught on one of the plethora of town centre CCTV cameras.

Then there’s Jess Kidling, a young New Labourite who is married to a recently deselected MP; something to do with expense irregularities apparently. It seems he claimed the interest payments on their second home, even though they don’t own one. Jess has also admitted to an affair with my third councillor, the 68 year old Paul Thutherton, who proudly boasts of desertion from the army.

I didn’t get a chance to confront either of these three about my own problem. My wheelie bin is constantly daubed with chip fat. When I find out who’s doing it, I intend to tut loudly in their face. I fully intended on extending that tuttitude towards these three turds, but they are off on a twinning committee jolly to our sister town of Krockenshieste.

What I did manage to do though was sit in on a council session. It was a rather lively debate too. They were discussing the rabid decline of topiary care on the Gloucester Road roundabout. It turns out the man they had sub-contracted this job to is a notorious pervert, and his bush trimming service isn’t just a euphemism. The final straw came when he planted daffodils in the shape of the word ‘balls’. Strangely nothing was said about the giant cock he mowed into the council lawn.

The chamber passed a majority decision to cancel the contract, and have accepted the tender of another man who I personally know to be a sackload of bastards.

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