My apologies again There are two sides to the angry exchanges at the packed precept meeting in January in Easton.

I’ve already made a very public apology – it’s now an appropriate time to reiterate that apology and give the other side of the story.

My ‘shut it!’ was not challenging barracking from members of the public, though they were not giving my colleague Cllr Rod Wild anything like a ‘fair hearing’ as he sought to explain the proposed precept rise for 2014/15.

It was a direct response to a man directly in front of me mouthing ‘we’re going to get you’ and simultaneously making a very obvious gesture to slit my throat.

Like John Prescott who was spattered with egg several years back and responded accordingly with a right jab, I wasn’t going to accept such a blatant threat smilingly.

This man’s gesture was clearly witnessed by Cllr Ray Nowak behind me and frankly the man ought to have been asked to leave.

By then a public meeting that had been called by the town council to inform and debate our proposed precept rise had turned into mob rule, orchestrated by the knee-jerk Facebook campaigners and their allies, high profile island politicians, keen to exploit this opportunity for ‘legging up’ May’s elections. It was impulsive of me to have told the man who persisted in telling me the above error of my ways, to ‘go forth and multiply’.

However, my dad, a Church of England minister, would have regarded my use of the Anglo Saxon vernacular in a church as no more heinous than swearing at the No 1 bus stop in Easton Square.

At £14.83 for Band D in 2012/13, Portland had the lowest precept in Britain. Our proposed rise would merely have brought this council into line with Bridport, Dorchester and Blandford – that’s all.

RICHARD DENTON-WHITE

Fortuneswell

Portland