Editor's Pick of the Week: Pee, poo and parliamentary punch-ups

We try to raise a chuckle in this column, but no look back on this week’s news would be complete without starting with our investigation into the director of a Harrogate firm, which boasted of £17.5 million deals to build armoured vehicles for Ukraine. It’s an extraordinary read.

We’ve also investigated ambulance response times and the success or otherwise of the two new Tesco supermarkets in Ripon and Harrogate this week. Look for another in-depth piece on Harrogate Convention Centre on Monday. So, plenty of serious business. Fortunately, politics has a habit of providing its own entertainment.

Harrogate and Knaresborough’s Liberal Democrat MP, Tom Gordon, provoked a spat with his predecessor, Andrew Jones, by publishing figures suggesting he was the more active speaker in Parliament. Mr Jones accused his successor of wasting time “talking about talking”, before countering with their respective voting records.

It was one of a flurry of Tory stories this week, as the party emerged from its lengthy post-general election slumber with the May 2027 North Yorkshire Council elections looming. It unveiled the combative Graham Swift and Jonathan Shrago among its candidates. The political temperature, it seems, is rising — or at least the party has located the thermostat.

But for truly combative councillors, you need to go to Ripon, where free and frank discussion is something of a local speciality. Councillors can scent blood after Yorkshire Water agreed to attend a meeting to respond to a motion saying children should be able to paddle in water “free from pee and poo”. Whoever the company sends will earn their money that night. It should at least spare councillors the usual business of knocking lumps out of one another.

On a less turbulent note, there was a proposal this week to restore a direct bus service between Ripon and Scarborough. A reminder that local politics can occasionally be about getting people from A to B, rather than getting them at each other’s throats.

Harrogate Town’s takeover was finally announced this week, weeks after everyone knew about it. Manager Simon Weaver, previously under his owner-father’s protective wing, now co-owns the club himself. “Just when you thought his job couldn’t get any more secure,” noted one observer.

The Weaver dynasty still has some way to go to match the Whitakers, who have dominated showjumping for four generations. The newest star, from Birstwith, has just won the supreme pony award at the Horse of the Year show, and we spoke with her and her parents this week. Can you name a more successful sporting family?

Finally, Simon Armitage’s poem Balancing Act faces an uncertain future at Brimham Rocks. Inscribed on two stone pillars, it invites us to look beyond what appears solid and permanent. Now, in a deliciously unhelpful twist, its planning permission has expired. Even poetry about permanence, it seems, is subject to the passage of time — and the planning system.

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