The Mayor of Marlborough is threatening councillor David Dew with disciplinary action because he said this in a letter to the editor of the Marlborough Express-

most councillors would not support him (Mr. Dew) in keeping rates to zero, because they were too weak. They were “not prepared to bite the bullet” and “want to carry on spending a bit like the Titanic wanted a speed record”, he said. He told the Express that apart from himself, Jamie Arbuckle and Geoff Evans, other councillors liked spending ratepayers’ money, and thought rates came out of “thin air”.

To me those statements have the ring of truth to them. The Mayor said on Friday he was considering taking disciplinary action if it was found Cr Dew had breached the council’s code of conduct with his comments. I say good on you Mr. Dew. If you need to build up public support for your position by writing letters to newspapers then that’s fine with me, and so it should be with anyone who cares for freedom of political expression.

I’ll bet if it was a letter calling for more expenditure on some silly intrusive officious interfering scheme it wouldn’t have raised a ripple.

Source.