I would be the first to admit that I am a miserable failure when it comes to serving on 'the chain gang' - the disrespectful term used by some about the round of civic dinners put on by town mayors. I am not comfortable with either ceremony or ladies in hats. Every time an invitation comes for a civic dinner, I refer it to my deputy (with the exception of invitations from Todmorden. This is because Mike, Town Mayor of Tod, puts on family-friendly, unfussy events).
On the other hand, I love meeting business people and voluntary groups. And I also like determining the council's agenda.
There are two areas of work that I have been quietly promoting, which I hope will benefit people.
The first is the town council's involvement in the rail franchise process which is about choosing the next company to run our railway. We have taken submissions from the Sustainable Transport Group and Mytholmroyd Station Partnership and are making representations that underline the key points that they are making about the service, ticketing and rolling stock.
The second is Mayors for Peace. I've written about this elsewhere, but to cut a long story short about 6000 Mayors, Lord Mayors, Provosts, Burgermeisters, Maires etc etc support a campaign for an international convention to eliminate all nuclear weapons. I am amongst them. We also want to promote peace as a value. There are two events over the next week when I will be trying to do this and you can come along to both: on Monday 30 March at 12.30, I will be delivering my talk about the local anti-war movement in 1914-15 and on Wednesday 1 April at 7.30pm, I want the town council to reaffirm its membership of Mayors for Peace. If you are reading this before then and support my campaign, please come along to the talk and/or the council meeting.
Thirdly, also on Wednesday night in the council meeting, I hope the town council will support my proposal to submit further particulars of our opposition to the Sainsbury's development on Valley Road on traffic grounds. For a long time, I have been proposing that the focus should be on developing the legal grounds for opposition. With an appeal based on written submissions, this is how the matter will ultimately be determined, so it is important to get it right.
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