With the season of goodwill upon us, many are busy tracking Santa’s progress, ready to entice him with a carrot, mince pies and a drink, and excited by high hopes of getting what we think we deserve.

But while we are getting merry, enjoying office parties and reflecting on how lucky we all are to be overpaid, underworked and under-taxed, it is easy to forget the plight of those less fortunate — such as our local politicians, many of whom are soon to be abolished.

Like turkeys voting for Christmas, Westminster Labour and Surrey Conservative leaderships have managed to accidentally combine forces to impose upon us a hasty pilot of a new game of Monopoly called Local Government Reorganisation (LGR). It is all about building houses and hotels, of course, along with arguments over cheating.

Surrey is among the first lucky areas being forced to play, losing its 11 district councils to form two — East and West Surrey — unitary councils, with elections scheduled for next May. A Surrey Strategic Authority will probably follow later.

It is too scary to detail now because, like the worst Christmas dinner nightmare, it is half-baked and hard to swallow — and because no one knows what they are doing, or even where our new West Surrey Council will meet. What we do know is that LGR means managing with a third of the current number of district and county councillors. But will it save money? We know reindeer can fly — but can pigs?

Worse still, the national parties are now in full election mode, stuffing leaflets, newspapers and social media with political make-believe. Farnham Residents generally prefer to get on with the real work rather than respond to every silly jibe being bandied about, but one particular folly does deserve correcting, if only for its mirth value — so please forgive me.

In her recent opinion piece in the Herald - Has Waverley lost its political compass? - our friend Cllr Jane Austin (Conservative, Bramley) attributed Farnham Residents’ success to “the absence of electoral competition” due to cooperation with Compass — the organisation of Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green Party members that promotes electoral agreements to defeat the Conservatives.

Funnily enough, Compass did try to claim our 2017 Surrey election successes as their own — despite standing candidates against us. Election results since then confirm that one or more of the Compass parties has contested every Surrey and Waverley election in Farnham, except for just one ward in 2023.

It is hardly our fault that other parties have far more difficulty finding people to stand for them than we do. Indeed, the Conservatives often resort to using “paper candidates”, many of them from other towns with no will or expectation of serving, to feign competition and democratic choice.

Funnier still, Cllr Austin actually stood in the Liverpool Riverside constituency at the last general election. We love her dearly, but people in glass houses…

She also criticises us for the “disruption caused by the Farnham Infrastructure Programme”, even though its sole decision-maker — who sidestepped the originally promised provision of detailed modelling and the need for “alternative routes first” — is her party’s Surrey leader.

So, with everything that is going on, we should thank her for giving residents something laughable to enjoy, and we would like to wish everyone a fun Christmas — even if you are not sure what to believe.

Cllr Jerry Hyman, Waverley member for Farnham Firgrove Ward and founder of Farnham Residents.