THEY say that if you want a friend in politics, buy a dog.

I have been very grateful for the undying loyalty of Archie the Jack Russell this week as my team got a kicking at the borough election.

All that work and worn shoe leather and we only came second!

I really do worry about the state of politics in Rossendale.

The ruling elite in London don’t give a fig for the local activists and, truth be told, we are really too small to be a borough in our own right.

Before we know it, I suspect we will have been merged with another local authority.

I just hope it will be Bury, not Burnley or Hyndburn.

The only way for us to save ourselves is to have councillors from all sides who have a plan and are prepared to work hard to achieve it and share it with the electorate.

It is simply no good being a councillor who turns out after tea to play at ‘mini Westminster’s’.

At borough level party politics shouldn’t really come into it.

I am beginning to wonder what Lancashire County Council is up to.

There is still a lot of our money pouring into the black hole that is County Hall and too little into Rossendale.

Driving up the big pothole that was once Peel Street is my barometer of how well the county council is doing.

If it gets much worse, cars will have to be left at the bottom and Sherpa’s employed to guide us to the top.

If Rossendale were a little bigger I would be advocating a directly elected Mayor and would certainly throw my hat into the ring.

Now there’s a thought!

Which brings me to AV. I voted YES, but it seems everyone else decided NO.

This really is a tragedy.

Anyone who I could get to listen to me on the subject was converted to YES.

But, at the end of the day, the NO lot ran a better campaign.

Even I didn’t really want to be on the same side as Nick Clegg.

Anyway I’m always banging on about our great democracy and to paraphrase Dick Tuck, one of my political heroes, “the people have spoken, the cheeky monkeys”!

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