MANY a taxpayer has called the Worcestershire Hub, only to find a less-than thrilled voice on the other end of the line.

Worcester MP Robin Walker can certainly identify with this experience after picking up the phone to speak to the county council’s archives department this week.

In no time at all he managed to get through to staff, only to find the voice on the other end of the line had a sinister sound to it: Councillor Adrian ‘Tory hater’ Gregson, Worcester’s Labour group leader and political arch nemesis.

Unbeknown to Mr Walker, when he isn’t spending his hours cursing the Conservatives’ every move at the Guildhall, Coun Gregson’s day job is with the archives and archaeology team. Mr Walker tells The Source the conversation was genuinely polite.

How lovely...

e IF the debate over a new swimming pool in Worcester has achieved anything so far, it might be the classic one-liners and soundbites filling the corridors of power.

During the last few weeks our politicians have used the phrases “drowning in debt”, “no stone unturned”, “making a splash”, “waves of public support”, “we can’t tread water over this” and even “stuck in the deep end” to describe the city council’s position, proof indeed that this lot do have a sense of humour.

But I sign off with this classic from Councillor Richard Boorn, who must have been thinking about this one for days on end before it was delivered in dead-pan fashion.

“Looking at the report, it’s like we want to go to Las Vegas but can only afford to go to Blackpool,” he said.

It does beg the question, if a new £10.7 million pool is the equivalent of Blackpool, what does that make Sansome Walk – a freezing March weekend in Skegness?

e Talking about invitations one cannot refuse, County Hall leader Adrian Hardman was invited to see David Cameron at Number 10 last week for a chat about troubled families.

In an ironic twist, just as he was heading down the motorway the NSPCC was on the phone to the Worcester News slating the council’s proposal to become the only authority in the UK to charge parents who have children put into care.

Britain’s leading children’s charity was so exasperated, it voiced concerns the policy could result in abuse victims “slipping through the net.”

I bet they had loads to talk about.