Editor’s Pick of the Week: Ripon pips Harrogate in Tesco war and Killinghall Borehole Water, anyone?

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Harrogate waits 20 years for a Tesco supermarket and, just as it’s on the verge of opening, Ripon gets one off the ground in the space of four months.

There was high excitement at Thursday morning’s opening, and fevered discussion about what impact it will have on other supermarkets in the city.

Tesco told us Yorkshire Vet TV star Peter Wright would perform opening duties, then said they’d been a “bit of miscommunication” around which Yorkshire Vet was attending, and actually it would be Julian Norton. However, he was nowhere to be seen when the ribbon was cut.

If that weren’t enough excitement for one day, the Ure Bank by-election then kept the city’s political beasts awake long after the hornblower set the nightly watch.

Independent Sherrie Hunt was eventually declared the winner — a result that could have significant town hall repercussions. I caught a glimpse of Sherrie watching a recent city council meeting that descended into tears and tantrums and wondered why anyone would want to give up their time to be part of this.

The brutal nature of politics was also on show in Parliament this week, when a Labour minister replied to a question from the permanently furrowed brow of Ripon and Skipton Conservative MP Julian Smith on the rising cost of the A59 Kex Gill road realignment by offering to give Tory-run North Yorkshire Council a lesson on “how to deliver the scheme within the funding elements provided”. Ouch.

The council has upset a few people in Harrogate in recent years with the not-universally-loved Station Gateway scheme. So you might think the ruling Conservative councillors would be keen to build bridges, but this week senior Tory Councillor Simon Myers, who lives near Skipton, launched a broadside at Harrogate campaigners who are trying to halt it.

Harrogate Spring Water, which could also do with mending bridges with the community following its plans to expand its factory and fell 500 trees, plans to use a new borehole in, er, Killinghall. Water will be pumped to its factory on Harlow Moor Road three miles away through a pipeline. Killinghall Borehole Water, anyone? It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Finally, the nation’s love for Sara Cox continues. She achieved the twin feat of raising £11.5 million for Children in Need and “binning off” Harrogate mayor Chris Aldred during her 135-mile run last week. This week she apologised for snubbing the mayor, who hoped to run alongside her when she passed through Beckwithshaw. Cllr Aldred took it in good spirit and posed with Pudsey bear instead.