SON OF GRIDKNOCKER

Firstly, thanks Jim for sharing with us your (personal) response to Cllr Johnson. Secondly, I agree wholeheartedly with Bio MkII and Bobby: it's an offer that both the main opposition parties should turn down flat. Alan Powers has already commented and the Indies are going to spend the weekend navel-gazing, though I suspect that the opportunity to sit on a well-upholstered mahogany chair and drink tea out of china tea cups (pass the custards creams, Patricia) will be too much for them to resist. We shall see on Monday.

Don't fret Bio - you're safe here amongst old friends and an extremely broad-minded Moderator. But whatever you do, don't post anything spiteful about traffic lights!

Good on yer, King Bobby: creating your own Soverign Wealth Fund. Bet you'll go about it in slightly more financially-ethical ways than Royal Bastards of Scotland, who seem to think that pulling the overdraft plug on vulnerable small businesses and sending them to the wall, is a ready-made receipe for collecting cheap assets! You say you're going for silver or gold, eschewing the possible industrial-archaeological future value of such things as Asda shopping trolleys. You could be right. But can I just put you onto one potential source of an un-excavated Saxon hoard? Saxon Hall, Bullingham: that rather uninspiring giant brick s**** house which the developers of the Saxon Gate housing were forced to put up under one of those S106 so-called 'agreements'. Know it? At first glance looks 21st century, doesn't it? Brick walls, plastic windows, tiled roof. I'm something of a self-taught architectural historian and I can tell you, mate, that that hall is pure Saxon. Original. I'd stake my life on it. So what with it being so close to the Wye and what with the Wye (eventually) leading to the sea, my theory is that there's a huge Saxon hoard buried under that building. Probably right in the middle where that expensive wood strip dance floor is. So what you want to do is this. Wait til the locals hold a knees-up one Saturday evening, go along at locking-up time and bung the caretaker a £2 coin to let you stay the night. Then after he's gone, remove from beneath your old gran's frock the pickaxe you've got secreted about your person and dig the floor up. The whole lot! And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you don't find a Saxon longboat buried underneath, positively laden with gold goblets and gold necklaces and thousands and thousands of gold coins. And at the prow of the boat you should find a life-size effigy of Zsar Zsra Gabor, 'cause its a little known fact that the Saxon warriors venerated Zsar Zsar. Let me know if you want a hand; I'm quite good with a shovel.

A close friend was acting as an IOC Teller at one of the Pontrilas Polling Stations yesterday, quietly confident that Wizard Wonky would win (he'd checked in 12 voters and had 'had the nod' from 10 of them on their way out). Any road up, who should turn up but Cllr Sebastian I'm-really-a-very-superior-being Bowen, who proceeded to give my friend an abrieviated version of his letter in this week's Hereford Journal ("IOC aren't independent at all and did you know they're financed by property developers" etc et-boring-cetra). So my friend just turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Bowen in mid-rant. Serves him right, pompous tw@.

Not just 'working closely together' Councillor; get one or two of them to defect (just like Alan Seldon) to The Only Truly Independent Party In Town!

Hey Flam! Historic win for IOC, pushing the Tories into third place (teach them to use Big Girls Blouse Jesse as their Cheer Leader!). Along with Stuart Broad's dazzling 5 for 65 at The Gabba, this has to be the best news of the week! Well done Wizard Wonky!

Thanks Glenda and Dippy both for your encouraging response, though I accept that a 'coalition of all the talents' is hardly an original idea. I must be careful not to make this read like a party political broadcast on behalfd of the ********** party, but yesterday I was seated next to an extremely well-connected person at a social gathering in Hereford. I asked the person (who has direct links with the Member for South Herefordshire) if they would make a prediction about the Pontrilas by-election result. He/she immediaterly responded by saying: "It's going to be VERY close!". This from someone who wasn't just making an informed guess, but who had in all probability seen a print-out of the previous day's canvassing returns! So my advice to the good folk of Pontrilas who read Hereford Voice: Vote Early and Vote Often!

They seem to be running out of names up at Brockington Towers, if the recent announcement by Council Leader Tony Johnson is anything to go by. He's just picked Cllr Patricia Morgan as his new Deputy, whose previous Cabinet responsibilities included the demanding portfolio of Disused Cemeteries. In September, Cllr Morgan achieved local notoriety by treating Hereford Civic Society to an illustrated talk on rural bus shelters - even though she'd been invited along to discuss the future of Hereford city. When one considers that in the last 30 months Herefordshire Council has had no fewer than three Leaders and as many Deputy Leaders, memories of The Titantic and deckchairs inevitably spring to mind. So, casting aside the mantle of irony (I'm still smarting at being branded a mendacious oddity by the HT's Fiona Phillips), may I make a genuine proposal to Cllr Johnson which, if adopted, could greatly enhance his standing in the eyes of the county's electorate? Councillor: your 8-person Cabinet is, to put it tactfully, somewhat 'under-powered' in terms of commercial expertise and intellectual capacity. But that is not to say that such skills are not available to you in abundance from many of the councillors from the other parties represented on the Council. So why not be bold? Create a new Cabinet, a Cabinet of all the talents - a coalition if you like - for the benefit of the whole county? There is masses of skills and talent out there in the Council Chamber: experts on childcare, economics, housing, inward investment, sustainable transport, planning. But it is being woefully under-used at the moment. This has nothing to do with the diminution of your 'power base' (that will be unaffected); but it has everything to do with representing the interests - free of the shackles of party dogma - of the whole community of Herefordshire.