The Mayors new robes

This has got a few people fired up. The anti-establishment Liberal Democrats have gone down the road of being part of the establishment by endorsing the tradition of the Town Mayor having mayoral robes and a hat. There is some law behind this. The Town Council was a Parish Council to start with. The law allowed the Parish Council to use the term Town Council as an alternative. With the change of name came one extra provision and that is a Town Council can decide to have a Mayor. There are a few Town Councils that don't have Mayors and are quite happy with a Chairman.

So the Town Council doesn't have to be called a Town Council. The Town Council doesn't have to have a Town Mayor and a Town Mayor doesn't need to have robes! So the question is why?

Town Mayors and other civics dignatories tend to meet at civic occasions. The other Town Mayors turn up in their finery and the one from St Neots turns up in his best suit. As a member of a crowd of Town Mayors our Mayor looks decidedly plain. Having these mayoral robes is part of keeping up with the other Town Councils and is the politics of envy. What St Neots Town Council should be doing is looking at the what St Neots needs and not keeping up other Town Councils.

If SNTC wants to promote civic pride why not start with regaining Quality Town status which the Town Council lost. If that is too hard why not just get the website up to date. Far easier to spend a bit of money on a bit of finery than do something to fix what is wrong with the Town Council.