History will remember my declaration day

I HAVE finally signed my declaration of acceptance of office, and it is a day which will be remembered in history.
At the same time as I was starting my political career at the Deane House, Tony Blair was announcing he was quitting as Prime Minister.
Needless to say, my news was promptly buried under the weight of media coverage of the Prime Minister’s announcement.
Other than a couple of small lines of print in the Somerset County Gazette and the Wellington Weekly News, I suspect my election has so far gone unnoticed by the big wide world.
I notice the County Gazette’s latest attempt to be seen as trendy is to report the news on its website in Polish, and I can’t help wondering if they have covered my story in this section.
I’ve searched for ‘Typowy Anglik Cierń jest wybierany’ but not yet found it, so probably not.
Presumably, the Gazette will also soon have Portugese, Bulgarian, and Romanian sections in order to fully reflect the extent to which Tony Blair’s EU-loving Government has undermined the ability of English citizens to find work in their own country.
A day after signing my declaration, I attended what was called a ‘Welcome Day’ at the Deane House.
It could have been titled a ‘Serves You Right Day’, after we were deluged with presentations, paperwork, and statistics in a marathon session – all this on top of the numerous email reports I have been receiving.
My briefcase was so full of paperwork by the end of the day that I could hardly close it and carry it back to the car.
I have quickly decided that one of the important skills in being a successful councillor is not going to be deciding what to read, but deciding what not to read.
With a day job to do as well, it is not humanly possible to get through everything that is presented to you.
I am not the fastest of readers at the best of times, and have been known to take the best part of a year to read a paperback.
It is going to be a case of feeling my way gently, starting with my choices of the panels on which to serve.
I will be deliberately restricting my choices to two panels, and only stretching to a third if absolutely necessary.
And I am ruling out the planning committee as I appreciate how much time commitment is needed to do this role justice – more time than I have available.
I have already received notice of four planning applications which have been submitted in my ward in my first few days in office, on top of actively investigating the circumstances of a particularly controversial application for gipsy pitches.
Being a planning committee member could be a full-time job in its own right and I will be full of admiration for anybody who serves on it.