Cllr Simon Button

I've been meaning to post this for a while but I kept looking at it hoping I'd imagined it. This is a scan of the front-page article of a local town council newsletter. It's the "winter 2010" issue and was delivered in mid-November.



The article complains that nobody has come forward to help Cllr Button to organise a local Fun Day. In many ways it's like every other self-important council newsletter you ever read. The bit that stands out, though, is the second paragraph on the second column, reproduced here verbatim:

"It is very sad these days that the old Winston Churchill philosophy still stands - "So much is owed by so many to so few". It seems that everybody wants these events, but nobody is prepared to help out. How sad!"

Yes, Councillor Simon Button draws a parallel between the organising of a tiny local "Fun Day" which entertains a few people for an afternoon and raises a small amount of cash for local charities... and the ultimate sacrifice made by thousands of soldiers in WWII as they fought, with their lives, to save not just the UK but the whole of Europe from the Nazi regime.

I'm not big on the politics of war but even I'd consider that kind of comparison both inappropriate and grossly offensive, especially when written for publication by a town council and even more especially when aired in November, at a time when the nation honours those who died.