Featured: Plaque Unveilied

Mayor Cllr Mike Deacon unveiling the plaque with Mayoress, Anne Deacon, the Chair of Felixstowe Society, Phillip Johns, and Gillian Bober, President of the East of England Co-operative Society.

Contrary to the headlines in Coastline recently (“Conservatives win District by-elections”) the Conservatives did not actually win any seats. They retained three seats, a District seat in Witnesham and District and Town seats in Woodbridge, the latter with reduced majorities. The only party who actually WON a seat were the Liberal Democrats, when Caroline Page took the Woodbridge Riverside County Council seat from the Conservatives after Ben Redsall resigned. Caroline will make an excellent County Councillor. Shortly before her election, she cycled from Lands End to John O Groats to raise money for Epilepsy Action so you can see that she has lots of energy enabling her to work hard for the people of Woodbridge and of Suffolk.

Talking of the County Council, they seem to be living in a different world from the rest of us. First of all we have the Chief Executive having to be slapped on the wrist for advertising for a diary secretary (at a salary of £20,000 a year) when she already has a PA, and then we are told that they spent £16,000 on an advertisement telling other Local Authorities how wonderful they are . Now we learn that the County are going to spend up to £400,000 of taxpayer’s money on psychotherapy for their staff. It seems that they feel the staff need training sessions on “leadership, personal resilience and change management”. Now who was it that used to send people for “re-training” when they didn’t agree with the party line? China was it, or Russia? Or was it Pol Pot in Cambodia? (That’s a joke guys!)

Hello! Is there anybody there? We need to be finding ways to save money, not spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on unnecessary psycho-babble and massaging our egos

Pam Dangerfield