SON OF GRIDKNOCKER

Perhaps I should also have observed that Station Approach is really such a naff name for this pointless £25M urban link road to nowhere. In recognition of a lifetime's service to Herefordshire Council (and as one councillor who vociferously opposed its building), why not name it GLENDA POWELL HIGHWAY?

I admire Mrs Hey's enthusiasm - and the optimism of the HiB volunteers - though I fear this small pavement-level flower bed will be filled with discarded cans and condoms by Christmas. What is needed (and at £25,000,000 surely HC'S budget could have stood it) is for the entire length of Station Approach , all the way from Commercial Road to Edgar Street, to be lined with trees: professionally planted and securely staked, in state-of-the-art tree cages, regularly watered and maintained.

The Westminster rumour mill is suggesting that even though there is still almost a fortnight before the official announcement of the result of the Tory Leadership election, BoJo is already drawing up a list of his Cabinet. With hook-nosed Hammond in a sulk and dreaming of continuing his snoozes in the House of Lords, who will be the porcine one’s Chancellor? The smart money is on Johnson’s campaign chairman, Ian Duncan Who – guaranteed to make as big a Horlicks of the economy as he did of our benefits payment system. The other key ‘Prime Ministerial preferment’ must surely be for BoJo’s chief Vote Rigger, Gavin Williamson. The former fireplace salesman yearns to return to the Defence Ministry, following his banishment by Mrs May for leaking State secrets. Six months on the Naughty Step is surely an adequate punishment, Gav has told Boris. Really? What about poor old John Profumo – virtually caught in flagrento delicto with the lovely Christine Keeler, who was also sharing her bed with an attaché from the Russian Embassy? Profumo was to spend 12 years in the wilderness, working as a charity worker, before he was accepted back into society.

Flamin’ Ada. Not only has Mr Blobby had to hire creepy Steve Bannon’s 2-i-c as his Organiser (“just make sure the security guys around you are multi-ethnic. Makes good global TV.”) but he’s drafted in Ian Duncan Who as the campaign’s chairman. Things must be looking pretty desperate in model bus-maker’s BoJo’s Command HQ. ANYONE BUT BORIS

Thanks Meg. I know you are someone who has recently (possibly even currently) had close contact with the wonderful staff who keep Britain's NHS running - despite the current national vacancy tally of 100,000. Last Saturday, at a session at Hereford County Hospital, I had a fascinating conversation with an experienced Staff Nurse. When I brought up the prospect of Bojo's bizarre suggestion that the NHS might be 'sold off' to the US, she shook her head in horror - as if I'd suggested that we should pawn the Crown Jewels to help pay for all those air-conditioned football stadiums that are being built in Quatar. ANYONE BUT BORIS

Classic news item from the ‘You Couldn’t Make It Up’ website: the Daily Telegraph sagely decided to take a telephone canvass poll of all Tory councillors in England and Wales over last weekend, asking them whether they felt Mr Blobby was still the right man for No 10, after that Friday night altercation. Sixty-one per cent did. Well what a surprise!

Tory Minister Mark Field physically assaults a peaceful female protester handing out leaflets at the Mansion House, on the spurious grounds that "she may have been armed" (despite the fact that she was wearing a Greenpeace sash). Twenty-four hours later the police are summoned to Mr Blobby's London home because a 'domestic incident', which the gaffe-prone Leader-in-Waiting declines to discuss with the party faithful on the stage of Birmingham's Symphony Hall on Saturday night. ANYONE BUT BORIS

Rory Stewart’s surprise elimination from Wednesday’s round in the Tory Leadership contest was achieved by what can only be described as vote rigging. As many as five staunch Boris supporters (hopeful of preferment in his government) were persuaded by one of his henchmen to temporarily ‘lend’ their support to Savid (my Dad was a bus driver) Javid. Javid duly moved up and young Rory was shafted. They don’t call ‘em The Nasty Party for nothing!

According to statistics held by the House of Commons Library (an information source which I’m prepared to believe), the Tory Party had 124,000 paid up members in March last year, compared with Labour’s half-million plus. Yet BBC bulletins today, reporting on the race for No 10, are saying that 160,000 ballot papers are about to be posted out to the Nasty Party’s membership. A 25% hike – even allowing for the Boris Factor (or, as others see it ‘The Elephant in the Room’) does seem quite extraordinary. ANYONE BUT BORIS

Have any other VOICE members noticed the uncanny resemblance between Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt and the vile Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad? In fact, has anyone ever seen them in the same room together?

Eat your hearts out David Owen, Woy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and that other bloke who never spoke. It took aeons of navel-gazing to form the SDP, yet it burnt out (or was sold off to the FibDems) after only 7 years. Nigel Farrage has every reason to look as pleased as Punch. In just six weeks he invented a manifesto-free party, he didn’t get distracted by tiresome details like members’ subs, he got ‘egged’ by a well-aimed banana and caramel milkshake, and one third of all those who bothered to turn out to vote in last Thursday’s pointless EU elections now think he’s the next Messiah.

One omission from the excellent list of lies which Megi brought us (above), is the £1-billion bung which Mrs May conveniently conjured up from that non-existent Money Tree growing in the back garden on 10 Downing Street to keep the Ulster Flat Earth & Anti-Abortionist Party on side.

It’s going to be a two-horse race – and both of them are clapped out nags only good for pulling Steptoe and Son’s rag and bone cart. The candidate who has major media backing undoubtedly has the high ground. So no prizes for guessing which candidate the Barclay brothers’ Daily Torygraph will be putting its weight behind. And with his wife employed as the paper’s highest-paid columnist (now that Ross-on-Wye resident Quentin Letts has gone), the Daily Mail will have to be Gurning Gove’s cheerleader. Did anyone else spot Mrs May’s remark at the end of her resignation address about not being the last woman Prime Minister? Was this, I wonder, a subtle hint that her vote in the leadership election with be going to Penny Mordaunt, who she recently appointed in succession to the hapless Gavin ‘Private Pike’ Williamson? And the least-likely contender to make it onto the members’ ballot papers? The self-important Sajid Javid. As veteran columnist Polly Toynbee observed in Saturday’s Graun, people are tired of hearing his: “My dad was a bus driver” story.

Regardless of ones political affiliations, it is bad enough to have one Prime Minister walking into the job without any sort of public mandate, but it looks ominously like history will be repeating itself again in 2019. ANYONE BUT BORIS