A fitting tribute...
Hats off to Levelling Langport magazine which in its latest edition has paid a much-deserved and fitting tribute to Langport Town Councillor Chris Osborne who's resigned after 43 years. The councillor's departure has triggered a local election for his seat which will take place on September 17th. Nomination forms for those standing have to be in by the 20th of this month.
Langport was indeed a very different place when Chris was first elected in the early 70s. The One Stop was called 'VG', Studio 70s was the place to get photographs developed, Cyril Head or Nigel Gratton repaired your TV, we had the most inaccessible doctor's surgery in England: halfway up Langport Hill with pensioners often slipping over and expiring before they even got to the door. There've been other changes too. In the 70s teachers at all local schools could legally hit your children and often did so, the school dentist looked and acted like a Nazi war criminal, there was a police station, we had clean red phone boxes dotted around, you could actually see the numbers on Langport Clock, what's now the ABP abbatoir at Huish was then known as Jotchams and regularly stank the entire place out and...there was also a cool guy racing around in a blue mini van fixing your electrics. Oh for the 70s.
We wish you a happy retirment from council life Mr Osborne and wonder whether some of the current shower on 2015's council will stick at it as long as you did.
Councillor Osborne campaiging on Cocklemoor in 1957, when he told Langporters they'd "never had it so good".
