Since the disappearance of local award winning Cock-Waver extraordinaire Cllr Larry Hackman the town has found itself without a Self-Promotion Champion.

All that changed this week as part-time army chef and bean-counting councillor Harry “R” Rogerson whipped his metaphorical manhood out and gave it a good wave, announcing “THE CINEMA IS A DAMN GOOD IDEA, IT’S NOT MINE, BUT IT MIGHT BE IF IT DOESN’T FAIL. I DON’T KNOW WHY IT’S A GOOD IDEA BUT I KNOW IT’S A GOOD IDEA BECAUSE MARCEL, HACKMAN AND THE OTHERS TOLD ME. THEY ALSO SAID I COULD BE THE SPOKESBLOKE. SEE, I TOLD YOU I WAS WELL IMPORTANT!”

The Citizen asked Cllr Rogerson for his observations on the socio-economic chance for the cinema’s survival based on the local demographic. “YOU FRICKIN’ WHAT?” observed the councillor. “ALL I FUCKIN KNOW IS THAT I CAN GET DOWN THERE WITH THE MISSUS ON SATURDAY NIGHT, HAVE GOOD BEVVY, WATCH A RIGHT GOOD TEAR UP WITH CHUCK NORRIS IN THE PICTURES AND HAVE A RUCK UP THE ROSE AFTER!”

The Citizen is keen to promote the work of good honest cock-wavers like Cllr Rogerson and will be following his exploits closely.

Parking on the Market Square has been suspended for the weekend to allow for the time wasting SunFest, also known as the August Festival, Summer Festival or Sort-Of Carnival, to take place.

Residents of the further reaches of the town were enraged. “If I want to go into town I should bloody well be able to,” spluttered Belland Hill man Maurice Lichen, a 32-year-old IT professional who has recently moved to the estate. “I always park in the Market Square as it’s impossible to spend more than an hour in town, and I should be able to do that whenever I bloody well want to.”

Eaton Socon mum of two Lisa Aston, 24, said she had planned to take her three-year-old twins to Costa Coffee, despite the fact they are far too young for caffeine, and was unable to. “I don’t actually drive,” said Aston, unemployed, of Jellicoe Place, “but I was still annoyed that if I could then I wouldn’t be able to park.”

Conveniently forgetting that there are plenty of other car parks and that parking is only suspended for the weekend, councillor Graham Wellington-Boot railed against the organisers. “Businesses in the town are sure to go into liquidation at the rate of one every 33 minutes because of this,” the councillor spat. “Clearly those of us who organised SunFest are to blame.”

Other councillors were so conflicted that they were unable to comment on the issue, but as usual it seems they’re sitting on both sides of the fence simultaneously, and fiercely blaming each other.

It’s thought that approximately seventeen people will attend the free event on the Market Square, fifteen of which will have got lost looking for non-existent toilets.

Only Militant Steve van der Whitevanman and Conservative opponent Harry “R” Rogerson had anything new to say, with the rest of the councillors harping on about community centres in Eynesbury.

St Neots heads to the polls today to elect town councillors and to take part in the Alternative Vote referendum.

“Unfortunately,” said Militant Steve, “the rest of the candidates in St Neots seem to have disappeared. Should be another resounding success for the Lib Dems!”

The Citizen does not support any political party, but thinks you should probably vote Lib Dem for town council, even if it’s just because they’re quite good at making sure we pay less tax than Huntingdon or St Ives.

Vote Yes to AV. You know, just to see if it works. It’ll be a giggle.

All lame attempts to increase the profile of the product and the latest ruse by genial local councillor Steve van der Whitevanman to attract some much needed pre-election publicity.

Councillor van der Whiteveanman has re-branded himself a militant promising that if it ever became necessary he would stick a traffic cone on top of his head, in defiance of the law, to stop someone parking there!

Shock-waves of disgust have literally rippled at a snails pace throughout a single internet forum thread.

“WHAT A FUCKIN’ DISGRACE!” screamed fellow candidate Harry “R” Rogerson.

“I CAN’T FUCKIN’ BELIEVE THAT A LOCAL COUNCILLOR IS ADOPTING THIS ANTI-SOCIAL HOODIE BEHAVIOUR JUST SO HE CAN PARK HIS GEE WHIZZ OUTSIDE HIS FLAT. THE ARMY WOULDN’T HAVE STOOD FOR THAT AND THEY HAD TANKS! Did you know I was in the army?”

“Militant” Steve, as Cllr van der Whitevanman now wants to be known, was unrepentant.

“Call me militant! Please? Oh go on, just once. I’ll buy you a sweetie. Alright if you call me militant I promise I’ll get the town fence painted and and…and er I’ll do something else equally radical.”

The Citizen fully expects the next few days to produce some equally bizarre behaviour from all local candidates as polling gets nearer.

Gordon was elected councillor for the Westside ward eighteen months ago, after promising every street in her area different improvements, ranging from traffic calming to shiny pound coins.

But in the last year, council attendance figures show that Gordon only turned up once, and the council admits that this record could be due to an accident.

“I’m chuffed to bits,” said rival Julia Wayward. “This pretend councillor has claimed the equivalent of over a grand an hour… I wish I was paid that much!”

The district council was red-faced this morning, and it was nothing to do with the red face someone had painted on the front of Pathfinder House. Spokesman Dean Dexter said, “We’re upset that we managed to have a made-up person representing an entire section of the best part of the best town in the District, and we won’t stand for these ghost-councillors ever again!”

Eaton Socon residents were vague about why they had voted for a non-entity. “I thought she’d come round and promised that all the houses in the street would be 20% bigger,” said Lady Way lady Lou Lady, 52. “Obviously I just imagined it.”

Cllr Wayward said that she would happily pick up the slack left by Gordon’s departure. “It’s typical of these Tories really,” she said. “They promise the earth then vanish into thin air – and in this case are even made out of it!”

The Citizen tried to reach cllr Gordon for comment, but then realised that most mediums were slightly fraudulent, and frankly we’d rather spend the £15 fee on some fried chicken and beer.

We are, after all, from St Neots.

Within minutes of the first cloud looming into view over St Neots, cllr King Cooper of Priory Park ward was on to the Citizen to blame Tory Paul Marcel. “It’s just not on,” said Cooper, “it was lovely and sunny yesterday and now it’s all cloudy. Probably the Tories’ fault!”

Marcel, meanwhile, and colleague Larry Hackman, were quick to point the finger squarely at self-styled Eynesbury activists Steve van der Whitevanman and Terrence Dougall. “I thought summer had come,” said award-winning councillor Hackman, “and then it went cloudy and there was a little bit of rain. You don’t expect it, do you? Liberal wankers.”

A spokesman for the Met office said that he wasn’t sure why everyone was so taken aback. “Honestly, we have 24 hours of sunshine and everyone gets the SPF50 out. It’s still officially winter until the 23rd, and even then it’s only spring, so it’ll rain even more. Stop looking so shocked.”

The Citizen reported on the merger last month, with councillors Marcel and van der Whitevanman getting all excited about the prospect of ‘taking over’ their lazy counterparts in the other towns.

However, during discussions on what to call the new town, things turned ugly. “We’d previously agreed to call in St Huntingives,” said councillor Marcel, “despite having an underhanded scheme to leave the historical name of St Neots intact. After all, St Ives and Huntingdon are just made-up names as far as I’m concerned.”

Matters came to a head when Huntingdon councillor Susan Mulligatawny refused to sign an accord stating that the river Great Ouse, which runs through all three towns, belonged to the largest of the three alone. “Everyone has equal rights to this waterway,” said Mulligatawny, “and mayor Gordon Wicksteed has no right to demand a new tax for each litre flowing through Huntingdon. I told him to fuck off! His town doesn’t have ‘shire’ written after it does it?”

The group of St Neots councillors then walked out of negotiations. “They have no clue about how to behave when someone better than you is offering to take away your woes,” said cllr van der Whitevanman. “The only thing I’m worried about now is our cinema – we might actually have to build one, instead of just claiming that Huntingdons is in St Neots.”

Residents again had mixed emotions. “It’s a shame really,” said Andrew Morson of Avenue Road. “As a lover of gyratory systems, I was looking forward to improved access to the ring road. Now I guess that’s just another dream I’ll never realise.” Brenda McShaw, on the other hand, was delighted. “I moved to St Neots years ago to get away from the fucking Oxmoor,” said Ms. Mcshaw, who lives in Milton Avenue, “and I don’t want to be subsumed into some horrible soulless estate without even moving – thank you very much!”

The council said it was looking into alternative mergers, with Bedford and Cambourne considered likely targets. “There is however a town called Eynesbury in Australia,” said Terrence Dougall, “and if we can build some sort of rubber busway and claim it belongs to us we’ll all have much lovlier weather.” A team of councillors will visit this month on a nine-week jolly fact-finding mission and report back as soon as the sunburn dies down.

When visiting the Lille suburb, councillors noted that the accident rate on the French roundabouts is considerably lower than our own.

This was attributed to the fact that French traffic takes an anticlockwise route around them. As a result, St Neots roundabouts will now function in an anti clockwise mode.

Although there may be a slight spike in incidents as drivers adapt to the new system, it is anticipated that, in the long run, this will lead to a significant improvement in road safety.

“This is a brilliant idea,” said councillor King Cooper, “and I can’t wait to see it kick in!”

Also, it has been noted that there is still a considerable amount of “whizzing through town” going on. So it is planned implement the French “Priorite Adroit” system, where traffic joining the road has priority over that on it. Councillor Bream said “It will enhance our quality of life, every drive will feel like a continental holiday.”

Representative Mick Hallit from the road haulage association said the plans were “ducking quackers” (or something like that.)

Those interested in finding out more about the town Faches Thumesnil can go to the twinning website, where there is a picture of St Neots church… hmmm.

The Government was last week voting on a referendum to change the system for general elections to AV, where votes for the least-popular candidate are divided up amongst the higher scorers, and repeated until there is a winner.

But council leader Julia Wayward said the council felt this was unfair, and would not be following it for local elections. “No-one is really that bothered about council elections, apart from councillors themselves,” said Wayward, “so we’ll be launching our new vote system immediately.”

The scheme involves recording news coverage in the Hunts Post-it, News & Something, Cambridge Evening News and the Citizen. The winner for each ward will be the one with the most column inches.

Wayward explained, “Anyone not appearing will not gain a place on the council. It’s much fairer this way, as people will already recognise the councillors from reading about their whingeing, moaning and cock-waving in the papers.”

The new system will also cost a lot less, unlike the national AV system which has been estimated at £32RM (Rowley Millions), as there will be no need to actually open any polling stations or distribute voter registration cards.

It is thought that after the next by-elections, St Neots will only have five councillors – Wayward, Paul Marcel, Derek Miles, Steve van der Whitevanman and Terrence Dougall. Cllr Bob Farms, of mystery parish Eynesbury Hardwick, was said to also be considering a return to town. “I’m delighted,” said cllr Marcel. “Now we don’t have to worry about listening to people at all – just carry on filling up the letters pages and posing with chimneys. This’ll be awesome.”

The Citizen reported how councillors Dougall and van der Whitevanman had been sent to Cairo to try to help Mubarak pacify his angry subjects with their Fences for All campaign. The famous Lib Dem duo returned to town on Sunday morning, with onlookers claiming that Dougall had a new, mystery houseguest.

“Hosni Mubarak is definitely in Sharm el-Sheik, and not Terrence’s back bedroom,” said van der Whitevanman. “He has also not been offered leadership of the town council, and councillor Marcel has certainly not been asked to stand for the vacant presidency in Egypt.”