Look who we bumped into in Queen Street? Former Campbelltown Mayor Les Patterson, looking like he hadn’t changed one bit since he hung up the mayoral robes. Les still works he told us – he’s in the import business – and doing fine. Like most councillors back in the day, Les was a tremendous character known for his practical jokes, including secretly recording conversations he knew would be “lively’’ and then playing them back to his victims. I was one of his victims two or three times. For a few years he had local coppers scratching their heads when he drove past them in a car which had a policeman’s hat decorating the back. And then there was the time when as mayor he held a civic reception for visiting Japanese officials from sister city Koshigaya and there were so many toasts from “Patto” the poor guests could hardly walk after drinking so much sake. Tremendous memories of times which will probably never return; way too politically incorrect, I guess.
Avid readers of the South West Voice may have noticed stories with comments signed off by “Batman’’ in the past few weeks. The comments are reasonable and, from memory, as the moderator of comments, I have knocked back only one from this reader. But anyone who uses “Batman’’ as a screen name might be an interesting person, so if you are reading this, “Batman’’, isn’t time to reveal yourself, at least to me? C’mon, who art though, “Batman’’?
Would you watch a council meeting at home of it were podcast? Presently, unless there’s a big issue on the agenda, very few residents attend Campbelltown or Liverpool council meetings. Liverpool Council recently considered providing podcasts of its meetings but decided in the end against going ahead with it. It’s a pity they didn’t at least have a trial to test the waters.
