Alexander (Sandy) Milne

The pace seems to be picking up regarding Whakatāne's local body elections in October.

I believe there is mounting interest in councillor positions, and I had a chat yesterday with a former MP and well-known Bay of Plenty resident who intends to stand for a former position.  

And it seems likely that there really will be a large field of candidates for the role of mayor.

I trust that all the additional candidates for mayor will not also stand as a councillor.  We surely do not want our elected mayor to spend another three years facing disgruntled losers.

I have had many email and text pings plus phone calls and visits since the Beacon front-page story on my decision to stand as councillor.

Most of the messages were supportive.  Some were querying my sanity for wanting to spend three years attending boring council meetings.

Readers who read the light-hearted encouragement I received in last Friday's Beacon from fellow-Scotsman Dave Stewart should relax. If we are both elected as councillors, we will inject a much-needed Scottish sense of humour and purpose to the proceedings.  

Readers may be heartened to read that I am literally taking serious steps to regain fitness, by climbing at least 200 stairs every day, either those by The Rock, or up the Bird Walk or alternatives.  

I re-iterate that I will, as councillor, intensify my campaign for an acceptable microbiology lab service to replace our present Tauranga-based apology.  We would then see that vital antibiotics prescribing is best-practice and not guesswork as is the case at present.  

I invite councillors to support me in the lab campaign which local doctors invited me to lead 15-years ago.   More on that later.