Councillor Richard Kingstone needs you to know he’s #standingupfortamworth every now and then. He needs the attention. When he’s not posting about his Great Dane to increase engagement on his page, he’s posting planning updates every Monday that don’t apply to most of the people in the town, and those actually interested could go and look them up. Presumably these aren’t working as well as they could, so Richard has decided to ask his faithful following to fill in a speed survey, so that he can be ‘better informed’.
Richard is at great pains to tell you he’s not collecting your information to spam you, indeed you don’t have to leave an email address if you don’t want to either. If you do, he pinky promises to not email you other than about the speeding issue. So what’s wrong with all this then you may wonder? Well the whole thing is a waste of time, literally just busy work. Richard can’t do anything with the results and more to the point will not. The County Councillor covering his ward is Councillor Robert Pritchard, a man who regular readers will know, Richard detests and succeeded in driving him out of his Borough Council seat he’d worked hard in for 20 years.
For anything useful to come of the speeding survey, Richard would have to get in touch with Councillor Pritchard and share the results and ask for a speed survey to be carried out. Only a County Councillor really has the power to request one and to push any highways improvements needed as a result. Richard is of course just trying as usual, to make it look like he is doing something. As for him being ‘better informed’ it doesn’t take a genius to know there’s speeding issues on a number of roads in Tamworth, because we have our fair share of idiot drivers, and as the patch councillor, he should already know where the hotspots are.
So if you did fill in the survey, well done you, you contributed to Richard’s ego and wasted your time. Although this fanboy Paul Keightley, a huge KingStan wants another tick box, because he likes to show Richard just how devoted he is at every opportunity.
Interestingly, after having stormed off in a huff from being a member of the planning committee last year over Goostrygate he’s back on it. Considering he loved telling his flock that he didn’t see the point in a planning committee if buildings were just going to be knocked down, and that he would be able to ‘make more noise’ about planning applications from outside of it, he has been quick to about turn. It was of course the usual Kingstone ‘look at me’ brand of bullshit.
The first planning meeting of the municipal year is Wednesday the 5th June at 6pm and will be chaired for the first time by Labour Councillor Lee Wood, who was recently overlooked for a cabinet position in favour of a complete newcomer. Which will be very interesting to watch indeed. Wood has as much charisma and intelligence as a twig. Given the interest surrounding the two applications on the bill, the college demolition and Ron Brown’s favourite planning project the Moor Lane development, we suspect there will be a lot of public there. Will he cope we wonder.
