SHOULD we be wringing our hands over the fact that no one party holds sway over Worcestershire County Council?

I think not. However, the success of the Independent Kidderminster Hospital Health Concern lobby is not entirely good news.

Before people in Wyre Forest fashion voodoo dolls of me and reach for the heftiest pin available, I should start by saying that their capture of six seats last week was a flickering beacon in an otherwise dreary political landscape.

But what was less attractive about the election count was the prospect of the balance of power now being held by a group of people whose primary inspiration - the zealous desire to restore acute services to Kidderminster General Hospital - had nothing to do with Worcestershire County Council.

I don't relish the thought of IKHHC having the power to veto, say, education budgets or road maintenance programmes.

The hospital campaigners are doubtless worthy-minded people, but some of them are novices when it comes to county council matters.

And, by virtue of their drive to save the "blue light" services at Kidderminster, their political outlook is parochial.

They will soon lose sympathy among the folk in the southern part of the county should they throw their weight around.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have been left bruised after being given the Wyre Forest shock treatment.

The former suffered the loss of several seats, while the latter felt deprived of a win it had been expecting for months.

However, it's possible to run a county council with no one in overall control, as has happened in Gloucestershire for years. And it makes the situation rather less stale for outsiders.

Rather than outcomes of debates being obvious in advance, there should in future be a little tension about how councillors will vote - and even who will act as chairman of a meeting. In short, it smacks of democracy.

If only national politics could be as interesting as Worcestershire County Council.

Now there's a depressing thought.