Tony Watkins

It was a convenient myth to blame Tony for Peter’s gabion walling not going ahead, when it was presumably Doug Armstrong who pulled the plug on the project.

The popular joke is that architects choose products not for their design excellence but rather for the quality of the lunch provided by the sales rep. Such bribery is completely unacceptable at a national level, but common enough in local government.

Doug had just accepted the C&R nomination for the Super City, and he must have been aware that the media would be looking at him a little more closely.

He had been lavishly hosted in Canada by Peter and Christine, and the gabion walling was going to look to the media like a response to bribery, even if this smell of corruption was entirely incorrect.

It was better to pull the plug rather than risk a safe nomination for a safe seat. Politics is the art of survival, and history is crowded with friends who have been sacrificed when they seemed to be becoming a liability.