It was sad to read that Mike Bawden is to step down from the borough council after so many years.

I first knew Mike when we were both personnel managers in the long departed (and now mostly forgotten) Plessey Company, he at Semiconductors and me at Interconnect.

Then a bit later we found ourselves on different sides of the then Thamesdown Borough Council chamber.

I then left the area for 30 years or so and have recently returned and yes, Mike is still going strong, well… perhaps slowing down a bit like all us old ’uns! Unless you’ve led this life you can have no idea of the 24/7 nature of the role.

While you may be out shopping with your other half, at the football, the gym, the pub, the cinema, the betting office, walking Lydiard Park or just chilling in front of the TV, Mike would have been in Euclid Street or in committees, or in his locality with residents. And it doesn’t even make you popular! Half your people don’t like you for political reasons and the half that do you often upset with essential management decisions which can frequently fly in the face of local interest groups.

Mike and I have never been on the same political team, but one has to admire someone who has spent pretty much his whole adult life in working hard to help our local government do the best job it can. People like him are becoming pretty rare, although the Labour side does have one or two as well.

I’m no supporter of the House of Lords, largely irrelevant and completely over stuffed (700/800 now?) with failed businessmen, clapped out bureaucrats, and party donors. However if we must have a small revising chamber, we could do worse than populating it with people like Mike, bringing a lifetime’s experience of how things actually are on the ground.

John Stooke, Havisham Drive, Swindon