Remember Brenda?
Brenda – like Madonna and Prince, she doesn’t need a surname – went viral on social media for her response to news of another general election in 2017.
“Honestly, I can’t stand this,” she told the BBC News’ vox pop crew. “There’s too much politics going on at the moment.”
I think I know how she feels.
This month marks the first anniversary of Perth and Kinross Council’s Tory-led administration.
Leaders can celebrate some notable achievements from the last 12 months, including a hugely successful Winter Festival, the relaunch of Perth Theatre and the opening of Beales department store at the old McEwens site, as well as significant progress on Bertha Park and the Cross Tay Link Road.
But it has also been a very bumpy ride, not least because of the arrest and subsequent resignation of one Tory councillor last year and the sad death of council leader Ian Campbell in February.
Both of these events led to by-elections for the Highland and Perth City South wards, meaning that councillors have effectively been in full campaign mode since September.
On his appointment during the first weeks of the administration, provost Dennis Melloy — a very popular choice amongst all parties — made a plea to keep politics out of the council chamber.
“Party politics and point scoring have no place in this council,” he said a year ago this week.
It’s fair to say that the vast majority of councillors have stood by that, but there have been a few occasions where politics has crept back in causing tempers to flare up. With a by-election looming, the budget meeting in February was seized by some as an opportunity to put the boot into national party politics and on a few occasions came close to personal insults.
I sometimes wonder how all of this helps us to evolve as a species.
More depressingly, the Courier office in Perth was recently copied into an email sent to a veteran councillor from someone claiming to be a future candidate for a main political party.
He disagreed with the councillors’ views on a local issue and made a derogatory remark about his age.
When the councillor responded that he might want to rethink his approach if he wants a future in politics, the sender replied along the lines: “Well, it hasn’t done Donald Trump any harm.”
Hopefully, now that the by-elections are behind us, things at Perth and Kinross Council can settle down and leaders will finally be able to focus on their plans for the future.
