BLESS him! When Ian Whitburn reminds us (following the Tory party's success in the recent county council election with 'less than 15 per cent of Micheldean's electoral vote') that 'apathy prevails' he's only stating the blindingly obvious.

Our politicians, having forfeited their accountability (nationally to Brussels where 80 per cent of UK law originates and locally to Westminster which controls 80 per cent of local expenditure) to merely maintain the illusion of power.

Power without responsibility, as Stanley Baldwin once reminded us, is 'the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.'  

And now (without the money to afford let alone enjoy the alleged benefits of our post-democratic market economy) we're forced to conclude, like Lord Chesterfield, that 'the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous and the expense damnable.'

But for those constituents who did find themselves motivated enough to attend the Forest of Dean District Council Cinderford Northern Quarter development planning meeting (and then wise enough to rise above the politburo overtones of Councillor Burford's declaration that 'the plan is going ahead at the will of the council') the only question to ask security was whether it should be the 'endangered species' of 'Forest Champion' Andrew Gardiner, Councillor Jackie Fraser and their constituency 'congregation' who should feel threatened and not, as was recently reported, one of the council's 'high priests' who'd apparently fled the chamber on an earlier occasion.

Forget The Pride and the Passion the air in Coleford's district council chamber was sufficiently thick with high priest/priestess hubris and congregation passion to make the cannon fire in the 1957 film seem by comparison positively friendly.

As platitudes ('We live in a democracy', 'we can now progress the regeneration of the Northern Quarter') tumbled forth from the councillors' 'whipped' support for 'progress' at any cost, one wondered what John Bunyan's pilgrim might have thought of this vanity fair, this environmental regress, and the corporate abuse of our honourable Forest Champion.

Meanwhile, in the country at large a curious apathy seems to stalk the land. A cynical disillusionment with party politics which threatens our belief in God and the common good, and which will only be worsened by any party leader misguided enough to choose to 'do deals with the Devil.'

– John Muir, Newnham.