THE Source loves a good rumour, and the corridors of gloom are full of chatter that a Worcester city councillor fancies contesting a parliamentary seat.

Coun Matthew Lamb, Labour’s cabinet member for cleaner and greener (bin collections and parks, in plain English) is believed to be eyeing up the party’s nomination for Wyre Forest at the general election.

And who could blame the high-flying college lecturer for wanting to leap onto the gravy train, sorry, the House of Commons, especially with all this talk of an 11 per cent pay rise for our irrepressible MPs?

Within Labour circles, Wyre Forest is seen as a good constituency to give an ambitious, prospective MP a dry-run in the expectation that if defeat comes, they can be ‘promoted’ to a seat with a greater chance of victory.

Labour lost the seat back in 2001 and in the last general election polled a miserable 7,298 votes, just 14 per cent of the total share available.

But Labour will hope that if Coun Lamb does become the candidate, his longevity for the party fares better than their chosen one in 2005, Marc Bayliss.

Coun Bayliss ended up so wound-up over the growth of all-women shortlists, he ended up quitting the party altogether in 2011, before joining the Tories.

Will this new fairytale have a happier ending?

* CHRIS Bocock, chief executive at Malvern Hills District Council, was asked to list 10 things he wants to do before death, and includes assembling a rare “herd of sheep” as one.

That’s no way to talk about your current crop of councillors!

* WORCESTER MP Robin Walker has finally joined Twitter this week, caving in to the inevitable after showing total resistance to join his tech-hungry colleagues. This is what we in the media call a u-turn.

* POLITICAL literature gets posted to us all the time, and one particularly exciting glossy publication caught the eye this week.

The first ever edition of the Parliamentary Review arrived at WN towers, a 60-page glossy detailing the region’s key political developments over the last year.

But The Source wonders exactly when this expensive brochure was published, as the section on Worcestershire County Council proudly talks about a 4,000 strong workforce.

The true figure, of course, is now 3,600 and is falling at such a rapid rate that it will plunge below 3,000 by the time £98m is slashed from the budget by 2017.