Evil Twins

Councillors in the Hertfordshire town of Bishop's Stortford have provided yet another example of the Conservative approach to community relations and international amity by sending "polite" letters to Villiers-sur-Marne and Friedberg, the town's twins among the Euro-wogs, formally breaking off the relationship. Town-twinning began more than a century ago in this country, but it took off after the Second World War as a means of "promoting reconciliation and healing wartime divisions", and the vice-chair of the twinning association claims that "you learn about the way people live"; so it is easy to see why the Conservatives might not care very much for the idea. The last survivor of the Liberal Democrats' filleting at the local elections opposed the Conservatives' only-child motion, for which one spiritual heir of Disraeli duly repaid him with expectable sledgehammer charm. "It's nice to see that they [the Lib Dems] have their finger on the pulse," said the council leader, a party colleague of Eric Pickles, Twizzler Lansley, George the Progressively Regressive and the rest of that awfully in-touch crowd at Westminster. "People are losing their jobs in this town and all they care about is twinning."