Summer tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime. And the living is easy. Or at least it is if your “job” is covering Wymondham Town Council meetings, with full council meetings lasting as little as 11 minutes since TCW’s last instalment in May.

And in a vain attempt to match the supernova of fresh ideas and Change^TM beaming out of Kett’s Park, TCW is trying something new this month, with an all-new quarterly roundup format.

It's all part of a brand new making writing this column less time consuming sustainability strategy.

Wynterfest Sacked Off

In August, the Town Council ruled out stepping in to organise the popular annual town centre Xmas event, Wynterfest, after the volunteers it had previously been left to, dropped out.

The Council has however allocated £1000 towards a small, light switching on event that would “not allow commercialism to take over”.

Gawd bless us. Every one of us.

Council Cover Up

Many thanks to the plentiful users on Wymondham's social media groups, who have started doing TCW's job for him. In August, they were quick to point out the irony of the Town Council launching a new ‘Visit Wymondham’ scheme for tourism and then immediately covering up one of our best landmarks, the Market Cross, with ugly fencing and scaffolding.

Following the golden rule of British politics (that everything is politicians' fault), the lack of joined up thinking from councillors can't blemish an otherwise impressive piece of work by Wymondham's 'Town Coordinator', though.

The employee, whose tourism/trade boosting role was conceived and recruited by the previous Town Council, has put together a comprehensive new website and social media account aimed at encouraging both visitors and residents into town, to shop and spend money.

For the Mayor of Wymondham, Suzanne Nuri-Nixon (Lib Dem), the move marks the latest step on a journey that initially saw her take to Wymondham Magazine in 2021 to bemoan a similar sounding local shopping website, proposed by Tory-led South Norfolk Council, as "lacking imagination" and "barking up the wrong tree". "Why are we selling Wymondham to Wymondham?" the column pondered critically.

Dear oh dear. Must have been the wrong people suggesting it at the time or something.

Witt’s Start

Wymondham Magazine secured even more representation on the Town Council in July, with Steve Witt (Lib Dem) winning a two horse race by-election, to become the latest in a long line of our contributors to take their place on the authority.

It's enough to make TCW wonder which of the magazine's regular writers will stand for election next...

In The Duck House

TCW notes that Town Councillors have voted to start paying themselves expenses for ‘new duties performed outside the parish’.

You know the sort of thing. Attending Cobra meetings and representing Wymondham at G7 summits.

The proposer, Cllr Dave Roberts (Lib Dem), worried the costs of driving to Broadland Business Park for town centre improvement meetings could be a barrier to less well-off people becoming councillors, declaring with trademark understatement that this risked creating an ‘EQUALITY BLACK HOLE’.

Crumbs.

Fortunately, the Clerk managed to fill the EQUALITY BLACK HOLE^TM immediately when he pointed out that all councillors were already entitled to claim expenses for such things - but no one ever really had.

The proposal was voted through for good measure nonetheless by Greens: Joe & Paul Barrett, Labour: Lowell Doheny, and Lib Dems: Joy Batley, Julian Fulcher, Annette James, Lucy Nixon, Suzanne Nuri-Nixon and Dave Roberts.

Spot the difference!

June saw a bumpy start for the Town Council’s relaunched printed newsletter, which is available for residents to collect at Wymondham Library and various other points around town.

While the new council's previous effort at a newsletter managed to print the contact details of 11 people who were no longer councillors, this attempt got the email address of every district councillor wrong, giving them as ending .co.uk rather than gov.uk.

Whoopsie poodle. The perils of print. You never find typos in Windham Magazine.

Labour councillors had previously raised concerns about ‘a clear potential for bias’ with the taxpayer funded publication, which was supposed to be party neutral.

But TCW is sure they'll be thoroughly reassured by the newsletter's centrefold, subtly laid out in resplendent Lib Dem orange, with 5 of the 6 images featuring the party's councillors (the sixth was of the Market Cross).

Tough luck chaps. It's always the winners that get to write the history.

With the contents also overlapping with recent party election leaflets, TCW's decided to launch a brand-new Spot The Difference reader competition.

Send any differences you can spot above to beatspayingforelectionleaflets@wymondhammagazine.co.uk.