Yes, RIP Jeff Osborn.
Ever since I became a district councillor for part of Westbury in 2003, it was obvious to me that all who took part at district level regarded Jeff as THE heavy weight LibDem councillor for Trowbridge and beyond ... regardless of who actually was the LibDem group leader at the district council.
His very long service at town, district and county (then unitary, when the latter two merged in 2009) level and his full time attention to the job meant that he kept everyone on their toes, even his own party and certainly anyone else if he disagreed with them.
In recent years at the unitary Wiltshire Council, he served as a very active and certainly the most vocal member of, and as deputy leader of, the Independent Group and numerous other LibDems followed him into the Independent Group including his wife, Helen.
He always had some sort of word to say to me at any time, usually some sort of encouragement or perhaps criticism if I fell short of his standards for full time dedication to the job (I think a back bench unitary councillor's job is roughly half time, not full time). It was only this year, starting straight after Christmas, that he started saying complimentary things to me as he had read about some of my career background online and the jobs I had held in the past.
He will certainly be missed by those who knew him well, and there are many. My thoughts are with his wife, Helen, who is also in RUH anyway and actually is rather poorly herself, and his children and other family plus his many thousands of friends and supporters.
