I confess to having something of a soft spot for the Peanuts comic strips. 

The late Charles M Schulz managed to combine sharp observational humour, an element of zaniness (think Snoopy fighting the Red Baron), but also the merest undertones of melancholy and human frailty. 

Nowhere was the last more in evidence than in the occasional vigils of Charlie Brown waiting next to his mailbox for a letter from the little red-haired girl. It never arrived.

Sigh.

In recent months, I've been channelling my inner Charlie Brown. But it's not a letter I've been pining to receive. It's an apology. Or even just an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and a 'cross my heart and hope to die' style faux pledge to do better in future.

Yet Queenie Dawson clearly does not do 'soz notes', no matter how wrongly she has acted.  

Not just for me, you understand. In fact, this isn't about me at all. Not really. I want it for you. Yes, you – all of you. But especially for Father Derek, the scribbler extraordinaire of this parish magazine. 

Dawson has long rap sheet.

With a charge sheet that would make the prisoner Charles Bronson blush, Queenie has been found out, held up to scrutiny and generally ridiculed for the many things she has said and written that are just not true.

Most recently, Queenie has been found guilty as charged of breaching no fewer than three parts of the code of conduct for councillors after making scurrilous and defamatory comments about Father Derek in a report to Gordon 'Jilted John' Macleod's piratical ship (aka Hadleigh Town Council).

At least Charles Bronson bothers to turn up to his parole hearings. Queenie, on the other hand, was a no-show and a no-comment at the meeting called to investigate her behaviour.

But now she has been asked to write a letter of apology – and one not using crayons or ChatGPT - to Father Derek, albeit one approved by some legal grand fromage at Babergh.

This is a cop out, being a little like getting an invigilator to complete the exam paper of a particularly disruptive pupil.

It would be much fairer if Father Derek was offered a choice as to how Queenie might be expected to display her contrition, whether genuine or not.

I'm opting for the medium of interpretive dance. There is something wonderfully enticing about the prospect of Queenie channelling her inner Salome by performing the dance of the seven lies whilst demanding the head of Generalissimo Ward, leader of benighted Babergh, from an intoxicated with lust, Alan 'Bolter' Ferguson, who just happens to be Queenie's close political chum and fellow Conservative candidate in the forthcoming elections. 

Fraser failed to get pot holes filled in (Picture: Nub News)

(The other is Mick 'Macadam' Fraser, who in his role as our county councillor is spending his time earnestly failing to find funding to fill in all the potholes on the town's roads – again!). 

Bolter Ferguson, you may recall, was the last Tory to say untruths about Father Derek, but he had the sense – thanks to the threat of legal action – to retract, apologise and donate to a local charity.

It will be fascinating to see if Queenie complies. The whole local government standards system seems in recent years to have been defanged of any real bite.

The sanctions for non-compliance are virtually, if not actually, zero. Senior staff at Babergh just seem to shrug their shoulders and look to the skies in despair. 

Just consider Jilted John Macleod's ever so butch two-fingered response to the code of conduct recommendations into Astroturf Beggerow's conflict of interest over his support for the football club's mismeasured and failed bid for a 3G pitch. 'Ignore it and carry on as you are' was the basic message.

The result, to quote Cole Porter, is that anything goes. Probity in public life among many of Hadleigh's elected representatives appears to be an optional extra, a lifestyle choice, something they'll consider if it suits their mood at the time.

With the official system of checks and balances so clearly ineffectual, the only remaining non-legal sanction faced by this coterie of councillors is you, the electorate.

I have little time or knowledge of party politics. But I do know that Queenie, Bolter, and Macadam are worried about what might happen on the 4th of May, given the state of national opinion polls.

Without the overt Conservative association attached to his name, Jilted John probably feels less threatened. Probably. But possibly unwisely. 

But all this is up to you, dear readers. Just what calibre of people who purport to speak for our fine town is down to each and every one of you.

As Charlie Brown once said: "Life has no remote, get up and change it yourself."

Hadleigh councillor made false, derogatory and offensive statement