King of the Trolley

I am pleased to report that our very own Director of Paperclips might soon be Cllr Paperclips, after his triumph of tonight's Tonbrige branch local government selection meeting. Gordon Brown may well have gone "from Stalin to Mr Bean" but he was trumped tonight by Jon Botten's own personal journey: "From Tea Boy to Trolley Dolley".

Never before at a branch selection meeting has there been such a passionate display of trolley rage; he had clearly done his homework. Apparently there is a trolley dumped somewhere in the UK every 42 seconds. Retrieving abandoned trolleys cost Council Tax payers £32 million pa. And did you know, if you stacked all the abandoned trolleys end to end, the stack would be taller than Canary Wharf. So great and detailed was his knowledge I have visions of him reading past editions of "Abandoned Trolley Weekly" under the duvet with a torch.  Whether any of these statistics are true, who can tell; he could have been plucking figures from thin air and saying them with such authority that no-one could possibly challenge him. I wonder where he learnt that trick!

Like a demented Dale Winton on Supermarket Sweep; cometh the hour cometh the man. And this was indeed his finest hour.  Judy Garland may have sung The Trolley Song but this was his own tune: The Abandoned Trolley Swansong. As he spoke I could see the campaign ahead; pictures of Action Team Leader Botten dragging trolleys out of the River Medway, abandoned trolley petitions and countless photographs of a miserable-faced Jon Botten pointing at abandoned trolleys like a LibDem would point at a broken lamp or pothole.