Councillor Malise Graham Leader Melton Borough Council.

Let us start with the Pork Pie Seat, in Nottingham Street, Melton Mowbray

This scheme originated in 2005 when I gave a talk at a local high school as part of Local Democracy Week and asked youngsters what they thought Melton needed.  Andrew Colmer, designer,  asked at that time ‘why the town centre didn't have a pork pie-shaped seat in it’ and I thought, well, why doesn't it?   This is a great success story of turning a young person’s idea into reality with the help of partnership funding.                   

My typical day…

I wake at 5.45 with the Radio 4 farming programme.  The Melton Cattle Market is an important part of our rural Borough but with the current state of livestock farming and as the owner of a small hill farm, I am in a deep depression before my daily fix of the Today Programme.  I usually feel better when I have heard John Humphrys mercilessly attack some politician and feel that however badly I am doing my job, there is always someone else having a harder time.

After letting out the hens and taking the two dogs, Digby and Binker (named after Christopher Robin’s imaginary friend) for a walk, breakfast consists of an egg, as long as they are not off the lay and a cup of tea for my caffeine fix. I know that council sandwiches, biscuits and endless cups of tea are all I will have to sustain me for the rest of the day.

I live ten miles from Melton Mowbray and use the time, there and back to catch up with my four daughters or my mother.  When talking to officers it is so easy to forget that they are not sitting there, like me, with nothing else to do but chat!

The morning meetings are usually about even more Government initiatives for example LAAs, Community partnerships, concessionary fares etc. that we are supposed to implement with no extra funding.  Meetings come in two forms and they are designed to suit the two types of Councillors.  The ones that spend time talking about strategies, protocols and if possible a few tick a box questionnaires in fact anything to avoid making a decision. These meetings are the epitome of what I believe is wrong in local government – “Paralysis by Analysis”.

The afternoon meetings are those really constructive ones where you see a problem for example with grounds maintenance or a personnel issue and ‘zap it.’  My wife, Pamela and I ran our own small manufacturing business for 26 years, this taught me that by just changing clothes you moved seamlessly from being the one with a broom to impersonating a multi-national salesman.  It is these problem solving meetings that I get satisfaction from.

The afternoon can end with a Local Strategic Partnership meeting with the PCT  about encouraging healthy eating and is usually followed by more sandwiches before an evening policy meeting.

Filing is done under days of the week and papers are put in the brief case for the next day.  If papers do not fit neatly into this system they are usually lost forever in a black hole of boxes and will get neatly stamped with muddy paw marks before contributing to our very impressive recycling rates or aiding a good bonfire.

My wife and I eat after I return from these meetings and so one has learnt to be polite about burnt offerings that are produced on the basis that, as I left the house, my last words were “I won’t be late, tonight’s meeting should not take too long!”

Finally fortified by whisky, I check the e-mails, trying to remember to start with the latest, these normally tell you to ignore the ones sent earlier in the day.  I do this before going to bed so that the recipient sees the time and is under the false impression that I am working late into the night.