Rowland Taylor's Ghost: Dignity and credibility of wannabe Hadleigh royalty, or rather the lack of

By Derek Davis

24th Feb 2022 | Local News

It's time for a little parlour game. Admittedly, in my earthly existence, we never had parlours. But I get the gist of these new-fangled spaces and their associated amusements. They are predecessors to the even more contemporary escape rooms. Or do I mean panic rooms? Or possibly S&M dungeons?

Whatever, here are the rules and regs: I think of a person and you have to guess who it is as I reveal some characteristics associated with them.

Do shout out your ideas: A bit fast and loose with the facts.

Not a stickler for nailed down numbers.

Convenient forgetfulness.

Struggles to be a team player

An eccentric approach to public appearances.

A tangible whiff of superiority.

Any clues? You're not far off if you suggested Boris Johnson, Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. The wilder-at-heart among you, or perhaps those regular customers of Hadleigh's growing narcotics cottage industries, might have plumped for Lucretia Borgia, the Willem Dafoe character in Mr Bean's Holiday or even the big-headed Queen of Hearts as played by the otherwise adorable Miss Helena Bonham-Carter.

Yet all are wrong, although the person in question is certainly becoming rather dictatorial and monarchical in bearing.

They all relate to allegations about the behaviour of Queenie Dawson, one of Hadleigh's district councillors and the satrap of Babergh's public realm functions.

When Queenie was forced onto Generalissimo Ward's senior team because of his ill-evidenced plans to reduce free parking, your spiritual correspondent was rather pleased by her role in seemingly shooting that particular policy fox.

But Queenie's reputation has taken something of a battering ever since and I'm worried that unless she puts her tiara straight it is the people of Hadleigh that will suffer.

Firstly, she persuaded some hard-pressed council flunky to take down the banners on the Magdalen Road car park railings that were advertising the Friday market and whichever foodbank doesn't use garish orange in its branding.

Secondly, there was Bogygate as Queenie chomped on her own hardened snot in full Zoom view during a live Council meeting. Let her eat cake by all means, but not that stuff.

And now, according to Hadleigh Nub News, she's been found wanting on some of the very basics as to what builds trust between a councillor and her electorate.

At a recent Hadleigh town Council, itself hardly a paragon of a well-run democratic institution, Queenie placed herself on a tumbril and proceeded to do wheelies on the approach to her own guillotining.

The charge sheet is that she stands accused of misleading the town council at its November meeting. Her accusers say that she misrepresented Babergh's car parking finances, appeared unaware of its role in promoting cycling in the district and airily claimed she had a departmental budget of £6.7m when no such allocation exists.

Queenie hinted that she had no idea as to the existence of a letter from Generalissimo, who after all is her leader, to the Town Council factually correcting her boobs.

She did, however, feel emboldened to patronise the financial acuity of a town councillor, who just happens to have run a successful business for longer than Queenie has probably resided in our town.

Evading opportunities to set the record straight in December and January, Queenie went all secret squirrel, explaining that she had been advised not to show up then, but wouldn't say who was whispering sweet stupidities like that into her shell-like.

And in a final bizarre twist she decided to bust any coalition-building to help protect Hadleigh's free car parking, by insisting that Holbrook's car park was being subsidised by this town's residents. Except, Holbrook hasn't got a Babergh car park.

Attentive readers will have noticed that I've referenced two mammals in this article. If Queenie doesn't get her act together, Hadleigh's reputation will soon be as flat as the flattest hedgehog on the bypass.

Be less regal, Queenie and more realistic, there's a good thing.

Dawson misled Hadleigh public

     

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