Titbits – Full Stops

◆ Despite hanging up his political cleats, ex-councillor and keen cyclist Vincent Stops can’t stop himself from getting involved in a social media spat.

Hackney’s former planning committee chair took umbrage at a local cycling campaign’s alternative designs for Pembury Circus, saying they “take bicycles and run them round on the pavement”.

Cyclists pointed out that a cycle track can’t be on the pavement, because it would then be a cycle track.

It reminded Titbits of a photo taken last year that showed Mr Stops riding along Lea Bridge Road.

Was he on the cycle track or the pavement? Neither actually – he was on the road!

◆ Next on Stops’ watchlist was Green councillor Alastair Binnie-Lubbock, who he criticised for “waving a flag” during a recent pensions committee meeting when the subject of divestment came up.

“Grandstanding,” said Stops.

Cllr Binnie-Lubbock later revealed that Stops had put in a code of conduct complaint against him that was thrown out. The Green councillor asked Stops: “So you’re saying the pensions committee has no trigger when it comes to the ethics of the investments it stewards? Do you think Islington and Waltham Forest [councils] are breaking the law too?”

“If they are doing what you suggest, then probably,” Stops replied.

Binnie-Lubbock responded: “I look forward to you submitting code of conduct complaints against those Labour councillors too. I assume they’ll go nowhere either.”

“I am not a lawyer,” Stops confessed. “My complaint against your conduct was about your dishonesty and lack of integrity.”

“So I assume you seriously believe the Labour councillors in those boroughs are being dishonest and lack integrity,” said Binnie-Lubbock. “Or maybe councillors who are pursuing divestment are honestly trying to do all they can to halt a genocide, because that’s what their integrity demands.”

“I don’t know the circumstances,” Stops admitted. “Perhaps they got harangued by Greens?”

“There are no Green councillors in Waltham Forest (yet),” Binnie-Lubbock replied.

And that was the end of that!