Who am I?

I am John Porter.

I stood in the  Amber Valley Borough Council election on May 4th 2023 for Labour in Belper East. Thankfully enough people voted for me so I have been elected and will serve until May 2027.

I have to wait to find out which committees I will be appointed to.

Before the May 2023 election I was a councillor for Belper South, Milford & Makeney for both borough and town councils.

I served as Mayor of Belper, 2021 - 2022.

I served on the following committees:

Finance & Governance (AVBC)

Scrutiny (AVBC)

Licensing Board (AVBC)

Finance & Governance (BTC)

Infrastructure (BTC)

Arts & Heritage (BTC)

Strutt Charity (BTC)

I represent Belper Town Council on Derwent Valley Community Rail Group

Between 2019 and 2021 I was the Belper Town Council representative for Belper in Bloom and Blooming Milford.

Independently:

Trustee board member of Derbyshire Community Transport.

Chairperson of Belper Ukraine Refugee Group (BURG)

Chairperson of the John Lockoe (Estates) charity

I best mention it: I am a member of the Labour Party

I stopped regular posting to BelperStuff Blog in 2019 because in May of that year I was elected to both Belper Town Council and Amber Valley Borough Council. It worried me that as this blog was published under a pseudonym it would be politically unfair to keep blogging in the same manner. I slowed right down as soon as I became a candidate.

Other councillors felt free to create posts on social media but as the social media policy of the Labour Party gave strict guidelines to not make personal attacks or spread untruths I chose the safer course of leaving that form of communication well alone. I never responded to criticism of myself because as a public figure people had the right of comment. I just hoped that they themselves would be truthful.

In saying that this blog was anonymous many in the town were well aware that I was the author. I remember Councillor David Taylor approaching me in 2019 at Belper Goes Green when I was there with a stand for NP4B. He wanted to correct me on my assumptions in a blog I had posted. It was a very polite exchange but I realised that I was far from being anonymous. My aim had been to be factual and never invent untruths and that is the same now.

I have now included this "Who am I" page on the blog because two days ago I once again wrote about local issues from a political viewpoint. I consulted the AVBC monitoring officer and informed him of what I was doing and he advised this course of action.

I have made it very clear on this blog that if anyone believes that I have written an untruth or have tried to misrepresent them then they should write to me via the comment facility and I would correct any false statement. To date I see that I received 20 comments in 8 years only one critical. I added comments that were not insulting to other individuals to the relevant posts and moderated the language of a few to not cause offence. Not one comment criticised what I had written. I don't wish to censure comments but if you want to propagate unresearched opinions then go elsewhere.