AMID the hazy aftermath of Wednesday's refusal of the John Lewis-led retail park, Worcester City Council pulled out all the stops on its Twitter account to spin the best possible PR line - and surely the most optimistic.

"To be clear, Worcester planners have not said no to John Lewis - they've said no to an out-of-town retail development," it said.

And there was me thinking John Lewis had emphatically ruled out investing in the city centre.

* ON that very subject, one notable face absent from the biggest decision facing Worcester in decades was Green Councillor Louis Stephen - but not out of choice.

The city's newest politician was apparently "not allowed to vote" after daring to previously campaign against the Worcester Woods development.

But that campaigning, covered via this very newspaper, took place well before Louis was even elected to the council in the first place.

Does this not set an awkward precedent?

* MANY a commentator has likened the argumentative EU referendum to a train wreck - but Worcester nearly had its own yesterday.

Worcester MP Robin 'Remain' Walker hatched a plan to canvass voters stepping off the platform at Shrub Hill railway station, only to bump into Jim 'Brexit' Carver doing exactly the same thing for the other side.

Let's hope they didn't need a conductor to sort it out.

* OUR tale about Worcester City Council banning outdoor balloon releases travelled so far and wide that it made the pages of The Times, Daily Mirror, Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express - and even a mention on ITV's Good Morning Britain.

There we have it - Helium-induced fame for our new Labour leadership.

* A NEW dawn is breaking today - but not without one final signal that this crazy, joke-clotted EU campaign really did go to the dogs.

At the start of this week a group of volunteers created a marvellous exhibition in Malvern's Library to coincide with Refugee Week, proud as they are about their efforts to bring Syrians into Worcestershire.

But despite planning it for months, by Tuesday they were ordered to take the whole lot down - all because some officials at County Hall deemed it to be potentially startling to those voting in the EU referendum, and therefore in breach of 'purdah' rules.

Never mind the charge that this crackpot move cynically reduces Joe Public, on both sides of the EU debate, to 'village idiot' status, deemed unable to vote freely without being somehow influenced by a simple exhibition.

More succinctly, if you take away the letters u, r and d from 'purdah' you are left with the perfect description of this decision.

Pah!