The answer is neither and both.

It depends on the issue, and in some measure on the strength of local opinion.

You will find me sometimes in the front line with the progressives and sometimes in the last ditch with the die-hards.

I was with the Labour left on the bombing of Iraq.

But I joined the majority of Conservatives, as well as 15 Labour MPs and three Liberal Democrats, in opposing the lowering of the age of consent for homosexuals.

I know I am old-fashioned on this, but I am concerned that the re-writing of the law - despite the safeguards included in it - could turn it into a predators' charter.

I am sure that my vote reflected the opinion of the great majority of people in our part of Cheshire - but not of course all.

Those whom I dismayed, and who wished the age of consent to be reduced evenly to 16, had the satisfaction of knowing that the numbers were on their side in the House of Commons, if not in the country at large.

And this is but the start of a long campaign.

Demands will grow for an age of consent of 14, or even lower.

You know where your present MP stands on the issue.

You have an equal right to know the views of those who will seek to succeed him.

I SPENT part of last weekend with Paddy Ashdown.

No, I have not defected from the Independent path and fallen into the Liberal Democrat camp.

We were speaking at an event in Somerset in aid of Hope and Homes for Children, of which we are both patrons.

This extraordinary charity, which builds orphanages in war zones and which I accidentally helped to launch, has also benefited recently from the splendid fund-raising activities of Rotarians in Knutsford and Wilmslow.

It is one of Rotary's designated charities.

Mr Ashdown and I didn't talk politics of course (or not much - you know what MPs are like!) but he seemed to me like a man with a great weight lifted from him.

He has taken the Liberal Democrats a long way.

But there is hardly a more burdensome job in politics than that of the leader of any party.

It's a bit like being a medieval monarch, with the barons and courtiers circling and seething, vowing their loyalty but eyeing your crown for size.

Being the leader of a party of one is a great deal easier.

I haven't had a falling out with myself yet.

A politician's resignation has another advantage; it allows him to read his obituary notices without the inconvenience of having to die first.

O

NLY three things are certain in the Tatton constituency - death, taxes and disputes about planning permission.

These seem to be fiercer in Macclesfield than Vale Royal.

It may be chance, but I suspect that personalities also have something to do with it.

Surely the most vexatious of all is the row about the future of the Prospect House Hotel in Great Warford.

For most of the past 10 years it has been a battle royal between Macclesfield Council and the hotel's owners, Mark and Lesley Wheetman.

Shades of my former life, one day last month I was assigned to the Prospect House as a sort of one-man peace-keeping force, at the request of both sides, as council officials came to measure a recent unauthorised addition to the building.

At least the peace was kept.

But the dispute is not over, and I suspect that some of the outbuildings are high on the council's target list for retributive demolition by a firm of contractors with former SAS connections.

In planning terms, the plain of Cheshire is a war zone waiting to happen.

It would help, I think, if the planning regulations were seen to be fairly framed and fairly applied.

But they are not.

A respected borough councillor - a Tory, as it happens - describes them as 'rich man's law'.

Big developers and wealthy individuals, with the best consultants and lawyers that money can buy, can apply repeatedly for planning permissions and carry the cost of losing on appeal.

The little people, including most council taxpayers, have no such advantages.

But one thing they can do is to unite.

They are doing so successfully in Lostock Gralam, in Vale Royal, where they are defeating an outrageous plan to concrete over the village's last open farmland and turn it into a distribution warehouse.

The people of Little Leigh are similarly banding together to resist a scheme for a turkey factory, which would gobble up a vital part of their village.

That campaign continues.

So does the battle of the people of Pickmere to prevent a development of 47 new houses, which would turn a quiet Cheshire community into a sort of mini-metropolis. Many residents have written to me about last month's remarkable planning meeting in Macclesfield.

The chief planning officer recommended the approval of the project, but the elected representatives overruled him by 21 votes to 9.

A motion to refuse it outright was moved and seconded, but he persuaded them to delay their decision in case it were to be challenged on appeal, although, considering the sheer scale of the thing, this should not be a difficult case for the council's lawyers to argue.

To many of those who wrote to me, these strange procedures raised an important question.

Just who runs Macclesfield Borough Council?

Is it the elected representatives, with the support and advice of their officers?

Or is it the officers, whom no one elected to anything?

I have a certain sympathy for the chief planning officer, Mr Peter Yates. He has been around for a long time. He is the principal defender of the Cheshire Green Belt. (The Pickmere project, incidentally, lies just outside it.)

He and his staff have a history of being threatened by frustrated developers.

But there is surely an issue of democracy here.

We cannot exclude the hereditary peerage from Westminster, only to allow a baronial fiefdom to flourish in Town Hall.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.