Lord Bonkers' Diary: Has the ALDC Gone Too Far?

Lord Bonkers tackles his readers' problems.

I am currently caught on the horns of a particularly thorny dilemma. ALDC tells me leaflets have to look just so. However, our local riso wrangler tells me there is “too much black”. Which of these party institutions is correct? – Anxious of Notts.

The Association of Liberal Councillors, as I still like to think of it, is in many ways a victim of its own success. Once a bastion of sturdy provincials with a healthy disrespect for the party’s nobs and bigwigs (its very name was enough to make little Steel gibber), it has lately become rather a part of the establishment itself; and it has to be admitted that it has not always managed this transition gracefully.

Fair-minded critics will agree that the burning in Hebden Bridge marketplace of those activists who insisted on pasting up their Focuses with a Pritt Stick rather than Cow Gum was right and necessary, but I have been less happy with some of the ALC’s decisions since then. In retrospect, the rot set in when it issued those stick-on beards for every deliverer and canvasser to wear.

Therefore, Anxious, I should counsel you to Do Your Own Thing and listen to your local risosmith. If anyone from Hebden Bridge complains, refer him to me. I shall Have It Out next time I am in the vicinity to bathe in the Spring of Eternal Life that bubbles from the hillside above the Birchcliffe Centre.

Earlier this week

• Introduction to my problem page