PRIVATELY he may consider his former colleague Kit Owen did nothing wrong but publicly Fenland Council Leader Alan Melton is adding some size 12s to a conduct committee finding.

PRIVATELY he may consider his former colleague Kit Owen did nothing wrong but publicly Fenland Council Leader Alan Melton is adding some size 12s to a conduct committee finding.

That his peers decided Cllr Owen had suffered enough over his foolish- but innocent- internet search on a council owned computer that unleashed a virus and an avalanche of adult porn is no longer enough.

Cllr Melton has suspended him from the Tory group.

That others were before the conduct committee – not least the leader himself who received an admonishment for using the word ‘tosser’ in a conversation with a Whittlesey school boy- is beside the point seemingly.

Ironically it has been Cllr Melton these past months who has bleated to all and sundry about the unfairness of the new standards regime at Fenland Hall.

And it has been Cllr Melton who has talked of rushing off to see Government Minister Eric Pickles to get it all changed.

It is also Cllr Melton who, we believed, had understood the mitigating circumstances of Cllr Owen and felt the conduct committee ruling should be sufficient.

Cllr Owen is banned until April when the Tory group will discuss it and no doubt those who sought such ‘punishment’ will delight in having brought it about.

Had Cllr Owen dropped his computer into the river and put forward a defence of being mugged he would have claimed off the council’s insurance and we would be none the wiser.

That he made an innocent mistake which he owned up to is costing him dear.

That we also now have the unedifying spectacle of councillors emailing each other and claiming to be outraged by the incident is extraordinary. Had they shown half as much enthusiasm for something really important (Moy Park shedding jobs? Core Strategy? Boarded up businesses?) that might have endeared them more to the electorate.