Daddy, have you taken your happy pill?

I was returning from a meeting in the city when I spied ahead Steve Morphew with Brian Morey. Perhaps they were furtively discussing the implications of the recent Norwich local elections where Adrian Ramsey’s Green Party overtook my former party as being the largest opposition party. It seems that Labour will continue to lead a minority administration with just 2 seats ahead of the Greens.

How the mighty have fallen; back in 2003 the Lib Dems had 30 seats and now they have 6!

For the first time since I got involved in local politics I actually had a proper chat with Steve. We talked about the old times and about the current situation vis-a-viz the Greens. When I said that the only thing that would tempt me back into local politics was to be on the planning committee again Steve jokingly suggested that I join the Labour Party. Or was he? I remarked that trying to win a seat in Norwich South from the Greens would be a monumental task - certainly in my ward Nelson. If I heard Steve correctly he seemed to indicate that Labour had some secret strategy to oust the Greens from a ward…

I asked Steve if he knew who ‘Comrade’ was. I have come across Comrade on some of the local political blogs. Comrade seems to know me and I’ve been curious to know who he / she is. Comrade it seems has recently defected to the Lib Dems. Steve told me that former Labour councillor Daniel Roper had joined the Lib Dems and was seen canvassing on their behalf. Surely Daniel Roper must be Comrade? I remember Daniel from my councillor days. I never spoke with him but he did have a baby at about the same time as we did and he & I would acknowledge each other across the council chamber by nodding our heads.

While I had the ear of the leader of the council I impressed on him that we needed to do something about the mediocre residential architecture (I’m being too kind with that adjective) that seems to be endemic in Norwich.