LOOKING through the minutes of the full council meeting of July 26 in order to refresh my memory (I watched eagerly from the public gallery, but have since been through an intense week at RAF Shawbury and forgotten most of it) I noticed something new.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that it happened, I saw it happen, I just didn’t hear the wording Cllr Stamp gave to the petition he handed on behalf of residents:

Councillor Stamp presented a petition from 26 residents requesting that the Council make Westerham Close, Twydall, a residents only parking zone.

Something clicked in the back of my mind – where had I seen that road name before? And then, like a slippery wet fish, it hit me – and a sharp twang of disgust throbbed through my veins.

Instinctively, I dived for the poorly-designed Liberal Democrat Twydall Focus leaflet (more on that later) which had found its way through my letterbox only two days before and re-read the footer on the back page. I gupled – I was right.

It seems that the Liberal Democrats are solely in Politics for themselves, as the resident of 4 Westerham Close, Twydall (just two roads down from me) is one Councillor Maureen Ruparel, of the Liberal Democrats.

Talk about gross self-interest! It made me physically sick to think that, of all the roads in Twydall which could benefit from residents-only parking, the Liberal Democrats should focus on one in which one of their Councillors lives.

I had to ask myself if the close even needed residents-only parking, so I took a diversion whilst cycling earlier today and took this photograph:

This was taken during the hours in which resident-only parking would take effect – and as you can see, there seems to be very little need for residents-only parking compared to, say, Lynsted Road (the next road up):

From where I stood this morning, the only thing Westerham Close needed was for someone to come along and resurface the road – and that would have been a legitimate reason to petition.

However, the petition submitted reeks of nothing but self-interested rubbish, born out of one Councillor’s hate of someone having parked outside her house, despite the fact that there are quite clearly (as shown in the picture) other parking spaces available.

I would hope that the Head of Traffic Management would see sense and reject this absurd request – and instead spend the money on other roads more in need of residents-only parking.