There have certainly been some interesting articles in the Daily and online over the last few weeks, heading into the local government election.

For what it’s worth, here is my take on a few of the goings-on.

Yes, I have already made of few comments previously but a few Saturdays ago I was inspired to have another crack after reading the Style Magazine with my morning cup of tea.

There was an interview with local MP Fiona Simpson which highlighted a few things for me.

Before I go on I should point out that I am fairly apolitical.

Over the years I have voted Labor, Liberal, National, Democrats (after I met Natasha) and even Greens, so despite what some people may think there is no political motivation behind what I write. But back to Fiona.

I have heard people, at times, call her naïve etc but in my view, she is maturing into a really good politician for this area and the state.

So it was with interest that I read about her views on certain things the other day, and what came jumping out of the pages was that she cares about what she does.

Now why I mention this is because the same week I was reading about Fiona, there was a fair bit of hoo-ha going on about the local council election.

Chris Cummins springs to mind with what happened the other week with his failed phone call with a local radio station while they had the two mayors debating.

The call was supposed to be about him running for mayor but Chris running for mayor and getting in is as about as likely as my golf handicap getting under 20.

It wreaked of a set-up, but in my mind it was quite clever and I presumed, at the time, he was just testing the water for a tilt at division 3 where there is a pretty hot field.

Since then, he has confirmed he will be standing in division 3.

While I found those goings-on quite entertaining, what I didn’t enjoy was the Tom Hulett v The Dickson Clan bullying allegations.

The question I ask is: why do voters put up with such behaviour and keep voting for people that have got a lot more on their agenda than helping the community at large?

I should declare I am no fan of Steve Dickson, while he was in council or as a state politician, particularly when the Liberals had their leadership spill. But hey, that is just my opinion.

So when his “youngen” was virtually handed down the family seat I probably wasn’t that thrilled about it.

But as time has gone by he seems to have handled the job pretty well, apart from his attack on mayor Joe Natoli, which a cynic would say was a pretty good ventriloquist act from the old man.

But no one deserves what Big Tom has been handing out. Not so much the tactics, which I suppose is the way politicians work, but the fact that it highlighted the schoolyard behaviour of 10-year-olds... and bad ones at that.

In a time when voters should be looking for the best person to represent their area, as well as the best person to put on the board of an amalgamated council on it’s maiden voyage, we have a big kid picking on a little kid, encouraging him to not come out and play.

The old “my father is tougher than your father” tactic.

Really, what are we prepared to put up with?

What chance has the new mayor got, whoever he is, if he has to try and control those on the board rather than getting on with the job, which will be enormous in itself.

The mayoral race is another interesting contest which, at the time of writing, has been fought reasonably fairly by what seem to be two pretty good blokes.

If I was a bookmaker right now I would say Bob was favourite, which is quite ironic considering some Noosa residents and the glitterati group loosely called “Save Noosa we think we are special” think the rest of us are covered in spiders.

So my advice to all candidates is to take a leaf out of Fiona Simpson’s book and with your every breath try and do what is right for the community you represent and play with a straight bat.

Do that and you can’t really go wrong.

And nor can the voters.