One of the last duties of the outgoing Mayor is to thank people who have contributed a lot to Abingdon. The outgoing Mayor, Councillor Monica Lovatt, is seen here presenting one of the Mayoral awards.
Councillor Samantha Bowring was elected as the new Mayor for the year 2013/14.
In any normal year the outgoing Deputy Mayor, Andrew Todd, seen beside her, would have become Mayor. But two by-elections last week have changed the make up of a very tight council.
Samantha is seen here with her daughter, who will be one of her escorts, and the new Deputy Mayor Angela Lawrence.
Mr Malcolm Hill, the mace bearer, is seen with them.
Marvellous news! Glad to see the longest standing councillor has finally been made mayor after the Conservatives tried to turn it round for their own ends. Good luck, Sam – we have every faith in you!
So good to see the traditional way of selecting our mayor restored. It should never have been changed for party political reasons – the foundation of Abingdon is its traditions. Let’s hope the Town Council continues to see sense and put the town’s assets (heritage and tradition) above politics.
Congratulations Sam and Angela, two dedicated, long serving councillors. Oldtimerx2 – You are right, Abingdon has some great traditions such as the bun throwing and its morris men both of which can be traced back a few hundred years but theres alot of talk on here about this “tradition” of whos next in line to be mayor. I’m not so sure this can be traced back much further than a decade. Maybe i just dont understand what its all about as there seems to be alot of people who share your opinion. Maybe someone can clear this up for me?
So the “longest standing councillor” gets to be mayor….?!? That really is from the elfin’ safety hi viz tabard everyone gets a prize for turning up school of thinking… They could at least settle it with a few rounds of “scissors, paper, stone” for a bit of excitement.
so the councillors decided that they were above democracy, ignored the voters choice and gave the position to who they liked instead? – that’s not a good thing.
Ummm Rudi, I was at the meeting last night and nobody decided they were “above democracy”. the council – elected by the voters – held a vote and more of them voted for Samantha than voted for Andrew.
Andrew was a good deputy mayor, and I am sure that eventually his time will come. Hopefully now the tradition will be re-established that folks only get to serve as mayor once, which will allow it to rotate around the council.
Anyway, thanks to Monica and Andrew for a very creditable mayoral year 2012-2013, and best wishes to Samantha and Angela for the coming year.
Native & rudi – the tradition of the longest serving councillor who has not yet been Mayor goes back many, many decades. It is a very effective way of ensuring that the Mayor, who is meant to be the civic representative of the whole town and not an executive role, is above party politics.
What was also good to see is that now the numbers on the council are more balanced, with 10 Con, 9 LD, 1 Ind and 1 Lab, the parties have come to an agreement to work together for the town, sharing the Chair and Vice-Chair positions on the committees etc.
I am hopeful that this means they will be able to take important projects like the Guildhall forward together without them becoming political footballs.
“You cannot fight against years of tradition”.
I always said local council should be a-political, all councilors working together for the good of the Town/ {or County/District}..but the political party that holds the most clout, usually gets their say in the proceedings
I don’t think us voters have any say in the Mayor making.
Congratulations to Samantha and Angela, hopefully see you at the White Horse Phab Club, “Mayors Challenge”..
Col.
(Club Secretary)
I’m still not sure what the traditional part is? Is it that councilors arent allowed to be mayor more than once? Or simply that whoever has been on board the longest and hasnt been mayor before gets the job? And are we talking tradition since the town council was established in the 70’s or since the town has had a mayor? Or is it just a case of if we say it often enough people will start to believe it?
It was a tradition that got changed just before the last election to prefer consecutive, service which is interesting as the previous town council did a less than poor job were all lib dem.
Whilst the lib dems would like to play this political card I’m sure if the boot was on the other foot they would have taken it.
There is a good bunch if councillors working well together in a finally improving town.
I am sure Sam will enjoy being mayor and do a good job.
99% of avid onions could not give to hoots how the mayor is chosen so long as they do a good job.
Oh and the last mayor had 10 years of service under her belt so if we look at the real long standing tradition she was perfectly eligible to be mayor last year and no tradition was broken.
So if James is correct the lib dems altered the rules to ensure Mrs fawcett would be their candidate in case the writer of this blog continued the trend in Abingdon of deputy mayors losing the election before they could have become mayor. On the basis of long service not continuous Angela must be ahead of a significant group of the lib dems and most conservatives in terms of length of service. Also if talking about tradition – most just people would let the deputy mayor take office – lets not polioticise the mayor- well done Sam, everything you complained about in 2011 you did last night. Oh and by the way how on earth did Abingdon elect a mayor who is supposed to represent Abingdon a lib dem candidate in Bicester? Helped I suppose by the councillor from Caldecott who lives in long furlong.
David,
A good mayor should be able to serve more than one term regardless of rules, Monica has been a good mayor as would Peter if his health had allowed him too. Your party has allowed rule changes voted in when you had a majority to dictate who should be mayor yet your own rule ( allowing deputy mayor to be elected) would mean Andrew should be mayor. Oh yes and the councillor who was able to vote Sam in got less this time round than the 3rd placed candidate in peachcroft in 2011, the winner wasn’t the lie dem but the I stayed at home and couldn’t care less party and helped by a councillor living in long furlong proclaiming to represent Caldecott,
Dear me Chris, do calm down.
When the Conservatives dropped the traditional approach two years ago and elected Mike Badcock they were explicit that they were doing it for political reasons. Their stated view was the Mayor should be supportive of the administration and that that was more important than the traditional role of representing the whole town.
Last year they changed their arguments to suit their nomination of Monica Lovatt and argued that, in fact, she should be elected on the basis of long service.
And now that they have lost their majority, they complain that the other parties are not sticking with the tradition of the Deputy Mayor becoming Mayor? Seriously? You can’t decide to overturn one tradition and then complain that another is being ditched.
Most people seem to be pleased that we are returning to the traditional, and I hope that the new spirit of cooperation between the two main parties on the town means that these arguments will become less important.
By the way, my wife’s name is Samantha Bowring, not ‘Mrs Fawcett’.
I think the conclusion is that its not really a tradition and only a handful of people really care.
The execution of mayordom is what matters and I am sure Sam and then Angela will be superb.
Indeed. Monica was a very good mayor, bringing her own character to the office. I am sure that Sam will do that too and continue the only tradition that really matters – mayors doing their best for the town.
Night night, one and all.
Neil – i’d appreciate it if you didn’t imply that the Guildhall has been or would have become a political football. As you are aware i have been chairing this project for over a year now and have worked hard to ensure that we develop this project to best benefit the people of abingdon. There has been strong cooperation across the political groups on this project (and in fact on many activities in the town council) and very little dissent. In fact the only topic i can remember any real issue around was the colour of done curtains!
I wish you well on the county council and I’m sure sam will do a good job as mayor but please don’t suggest there are problems where none exist.
Well said James so it is upto the council to elect the best person to serve the town, not next in line, Wantage have had the same mayor and deputy for the last two/three years and I don’t hear complaints
Hi Iain,
I certainly wasn’t trying to imply that the Guildhall had been a political football. I know that you personally have been very careful to promote it in a non-partisan way.
I am personally very much in favour of the project moving forward and know that there has been all party support for it. There was also a lot of vocal support for it from residents while I was canvassing along with a lot of questions about how it would work, the funding etc.
My comment referred to what might happen in the future and I would stick by the view that agreeing a cooperative approach to running the Town Council reduces the chances of projects becoming a political football in the future.
Some of you colleagues did, of course, promote the Guildhall project very heavily as a Conservative led project in their recent election literature.
Chris,
The long-standing tradition in Abingdon is that the most senior councillor who has not yet been Mayor gets the job. That worked well for many decades and enables the Mayor to be above party politics and to be seen to represent the whole town.
At various points you seem to have argued that the Mayor should be chosen on the basis that they are a) ‘the best person for the job’, without defining what this means, b) supportive of the current administration, or, c) the current Deputy Mayor.
Which if these do you actually believe?
If (a), what criteria do you think they should judge against?
Tradition for a few decades Neil but for a few hundred years before that it wasn’t unheard of for some councillors to be mayor up to eight times and some for two or three years in a row. I’m not saying that the recent way of doing things is wrong im just not sure wether we should be calling it one of our towns tradition’s and therefore using that title as an excuse for doing it that way.
Don’t our elected representatives realise how undignified this sort of exchange makes them seem? I know that one or two of these posts are by non-councillors and there is some un pleasant and inaccurate mud-slinging in them – but if you stand for public office sadly this is part of the price you pay. Better to keep a dignified silence than demean yourself by joining in.
Thank you, another Abingdon. A timely word.
Hi another abingdonian,
It’s tricky isn’t it.
If people sling mud and it doesn’t get rebutted, does it stick?
If we do rebut it, do we look ‘undignified’? Does it matter if we do? Personally appearing ‘dignified’ has never been a big objective of mine!
When I post here I generally try and argue the point, rather than the person. The other councillors that engage here generally do the same. I often find it quite useful to read other councillors’ perspectives.
Much has been written on this blog about tradition and rule changes – it may be useful to look at a letter written in 2011 by 17 Past Mayors (drawn from all three political parties) – see
http://www.heraldseries.co.uk/news/opinion/letters/9038126.Saddened/
which made the point that the choice of Mayor should not be in the gift of a small number of party loyalists.
By the way, it is my understanding that the only impact of the rule changes made in 2010/11 was to recognise the past service of people who were re-elected to the town council after a break – the main beneficiary in 2011 would have been Monica Lovatt.
Oldtimerx2 the rule change was to have preference to consecutive service, past service was always recognised.
My tip to any political side who doesn’t want things to not go their way after an ellection is to not make a massive mess of the town when they have complete control of the council.
James – I suspect no party ever intends to ‘make a massive mess of the town’ when they have control. I’m sure the Conservatives didn’t over the last two years before they lost control last Thursday and I’m sure the Lib Dems didn’t when they ran the council up to May 2011, or the Tories before them up to May 1995.
In reality there is a lot more agreement than disagreement on most of the key town issues. For example I’m sure Lib Dem councillors will support carrying on with the Guidhall project broadly in line with the progress so far, just as the Conservatives were happy to carry on with projects like the Museum and the refurbishment of the precinct which were initiated when the Lib Dems were in control.
Although there is often a lot of argument around some differences in approach, there’s actually a lot of common ground.
there are so few jobs about because women don’t know there place in life.The country is fckd up becus of this