Tension isn't bad

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Collegiality is not like other relationships.":

11:47.... Yes, this tension always has been there. In the 20 years I have lived here, there has NEVER been a council that got along. I used to have a weekly social engagement with a councillor from a number of terms ago (late 90's) and he said that "everyone on council are nice people - alone and outside the building. Get them in that room and they become monsters."

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The last three years  have been nothing like the previous sixteen when there was a particular strain of 
mean spirit within Coumcil.

Man's inhumanity to man was  never so prevalent.

Politics atracts a varietty of personalities.

None are shy and retiring.

The late Dick  politician Illingworth used to say... " you don't have to be crazy but it helps"

It also  helps  to have a sense of the ridiculous. 

Politicians are often ridiculous. Being  people , it's hard to see how that can be avoided.

To be without humour  is to be without  judgement.

It is to be without discernment.

It is to be mean,meaner and meanest.

A recent comment reminded me of something this Council reversed at the beginning of the term. 

An earlier Council had honoured the sitting Mayor John West by allowing  a  major right of way to bear his name.

Several years later, a Councillor, Nigel Keane, who had run  and lost for Mayor moved to have the street renamed. The motion lost but it had enough support to get on the table.

During a later term, Kean tried again. Only this time  he moved to give the town hall parking lot a street name , in order  to have West's name  removed from town hall stationery.

 The second time. he accomplished his objective with the same seconder .

Every street in my neghborhood  is named after a Councillor of the day when the homes were built . I doubt many  current residents are aware of the fact.

New streets must be named.

One name  is as good as another.

But it takes  a particularly hostile individual to move to remove an honour bestowed  years before.

John West  was a colleague at the table when  Coumcillor  Kean did  the dirty.

Kean was  three times a candidate for Mayor without success.

West  won the  honour three times.

Naked hatred is  never pleasing to witness. It usually indicates something meaner and
nastier below.

In politics ,it  has no curb appeal.

Heaven help us all when it gains supremacy and assumes authority.

It has not reared its  ugly head  during  the current term.