Peter Ruffles

@joeholmeswriter Delighted by this news!

Here's why I'm standing...

Clacton, Jaywick & St Osyth deserve better. I won’t sit back. Proud to be selected to stand on 7 May 🗳️ for West Clacton & St Osyth as your @Conservatives Candidate. Local, experienced, and ready to fix the basics, create opportunity, and back our area’s potential. Read more ⬇️

@Joseph_Boam Lucky you, Joseph.We share a privilege.There's such a sense of privilege in serving the same community as our forebears served. It's really special. I have not the slightest difficulty in honouring all others who've served my community well having arrived in it late.But lucky us

🗓 Nearly 10 Months On – Back in May 2025, I was elected County Councillor for Whitwick. Back in June 2025, just one month into the role, I wrote about what it meant to me. Reading that now, what feels like a lifetime ago was only just under ten months. So much has happened since then. It feels less like a year… and more like a decade of experience compressed into one. Back then I wrote about how the role as County Councillor for Whitwick meant more than just the position for ancestral reasons. I have since found many more ancestral destiny’s that align with Whitwick. But below is the story I shared back in June all about the first Boam’s of Whitwick and much more. 👇🏼👇🏼 The name Joseph Boam has been connected to Whitwick for nearly 176 years. I’m proud to carry that name, and even prouder to serve the village my family has called home for generations. The first Joseph Boam to live in Whitwick was Joseph Boam II, born in 1827 in Newhall. He moved to Whitwick in 1851 aged 24 to work in the coal mines, lodging with family friend Abraham Orme. He married Mary Ann Smith in 1854, but heartbreak struck just three years later, Mary Ann died at just 25 while pregnant. On 2nd September 1857, she was buried at St John the Baptist Church in Whitwick with her infant child, who died with her. Her grave still stands today. Joseph later married Ann Aspell, a fellow widow, and together they raised a family, six children including Gideon Boam, my 2nd great grandfather. From the first recorded Joseph in my line, a Joseph Boam born in 1760, the name Joseph carried on again and again, passed down proudly through multiple lines. My 3rd and 4th great grandfathers were both Josephs. So was my great grandfather, Joseph Edward Boam, a pony driver at Whitwick Colliery by age 17, later a Home Guard soldier, milk retailer, haulage contractor and founder of J.E. Boam Haulier Ltd. He also ran G. Boam & Sons Pure Ices, the family Ice Cream business founded by Gideon Boam. Another relative, Joseph Boam (1842–1914), once co-owned the freehold of Whitwick Colliery and helped form the Whitwick Colliery Company Ltd. His father, Henry Boam, was Mayor of Derby in 1895, his brother Cornelius Boam followed as Mayor in 1904. The Boam name and especially the name Joseph, has stood for hard work, resilience, community and enterprise for well over a century. When I first wrote about this back in June, I spoke about pride and destiny. Nearly ten months on, I understand something deeper. Public life tests you. It strips away illusion. It forces you to grow quickly. It is clear that if you throw your self selflessly into public life this is 100% true, it was even more clearer to me that this has always been the case when I read the words of my 2nd great grand-uncle, Albert Briers who was Whitwick County Councillor, elected in 1925. There are moments where you can get caught up in the noise, the pressure, the politics and almost forget something simple but powerful - Are you beginning to see the phenomenal power you have in this world, simply through your existence? - Every one of us stands on foundations laid by those before us. Their sacrifices, their losses, their risks, their faith. When I walk past St John’s and think about that first Joseph Boam arriving here in 1851 with nothing but his labour to offer, it puts everything into perspective. His own eyes looked at some of the very buildings I see today. Nearly ten months in, I’m firmer. More grounded. Wiser to how the world really works. But the optimism is still there, just tempered by experience. Serving as Councillor for Whitwick still means more to me than words can fully express. It is my way of honouring the past while fighting for the future. To all the Joseph Boams before me, this one’s for you. ➡️🤝🏼 — Cllr Joseph Boam County Councillor for Whitwick

@RalphMuncer Christmas good wishes to North Herts, and to its upstanding representative Ralph, from the County town.

Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas!🎄

@RhydianLFrancis I do enjoy the insights you give about Conservative life in territory far from my own, and appreciate the eclectic mix of your posts introduced from time to time. St Fagans, for example. Keep feeding your followers; keep active in your communities.

A good day in Saint Fagans. I believe I was appropriately dressed.

It's taken 82 years, and it wasn't done well, (I was on a train) but ambition now achieved. Hertford born, bred, lived, I've been to the place 10% of our letters used to go before postcodes came. Here they spell with an 'a' and pronounce the 't'. (10% went to Hereford of course)

@PhillipDawson1 @StOlaveHartSt @stgilesfields Shrewd and judicious people at St Olave's!

It was announced this morning that I have been appointed as the next Rector of @StOlaveHartSt Sad to leave @stgilesfields so soon but a great honour and privilege and very excited about this new chapter! Here's a pic of some of the St O's gang from earlier in the year!

@tomoconnor79 Careful Tom! You'll be recruited as a guide if you're not careful!

@PeterRuffles It's on my to-do list!

Hertfordshire? Bank holiday simple trip? Come to Cromer Windmill! Hertfordshire's last windmill. Pics from yesterday as I close after my team's millguide duties; and August Hertfordshire hedgerows on the lanes to the mill. Also open weekend afternoons til end of September.

@flowerpotweller Welcome to the world I inhabited for a long time as a local councillor!

this man’s been digging through the ben archives. i’m impressed.

@CivicHertford @ChrisDay96 @JoshDeanMP @StortfordIndie @I_LOVE_HERTFORD Thank you to Hertford's CivicSociety for taking up this cause after I raised the serious failure of the rail authorities at the Society AGM. A serious shortcoming at busy Hertford North, not just of meeting the expectations of the disability act, but for access for many others.

We have today received an encouraging update from Network Rail regarding access at #Hertford North station.

@matcow7 Big congrats! Not only will you be a fine community representative, but you'll enjoy the opportunities to deliver on detail which seemed to me to be easier at County.

THANK YOU HARPENDEN SOUTH WEST!! It is an honour and a privilege to have been elected as our County Councillor with a majority of 882. Thank you to the 2,365 voters who put your faith in me - I promise I will work hard every day for our community to repay your trust

🎂HERTFORD TOWN | Long-serving volunteer, John Staines, turns 93 on April 5 and his Birthday wish is to see the Division One Central club achieve an attendance of over 1,000 that day. Therefore the club is offering free admission: southern-football-league.co.uk/News/136582/HE… @HertfordTownFC

@JoshDeanMP Ho! Love it! Must check any reply you receive, but it's a shout worth shouting and towns the size of HertfordandStortfordConstituency's are all currently of just about the right size to work as individually identifiable communities of historic and cultural character. Well said!

It was great to contribute to yesterday’s Westminster Hall debate on the cultural heritage of market towns, talking about the fantastic market towns in our constituency. It was a pleasure to share what makes our towns so special and press the Minister on the support this Labour Government is providing to make semi-rural market towns like ours even better places to live, work and learn.

@BenCrystall @JoshDeanMP @networkrail @Bobdeering4 @DisRightsUK Long overdue!

@BenCrystall @JoshDeanMP @networkrail @Bobdeering4 @DisRightsUK And thanks to you all for joining the push for an important development ling overdue at Hertford North. A gem of cross-political party working which brings credit to each and shows our town at its intelligent community best.

Thanks @JoshDeanMP for organising a meeting with @networkrail at #HertfordNorth to discuss the disappointing delay to the platform 1 #lift project. @Bobdeering4 and I fully support a rapid solution & an end to residents struggling with stepped access. #accessibility @DisRightsUK

@WillCalverleyUK @ECCConservative @CCACllrs Big congrats! National news! Enjoy working for your people by employing the best Conservative principles with the local electorate's best interests in mind.

@ECCConservative @CCACllrs

Team #Essex at the Conservative Councillors’ Conference this evening! ⚔️🗳️

@PhillipDawson1 Just the job!

A great privilege to act as Chaplain on Tuesday evening at the Guild of Investment Managers Civic Dinner. My prayer inspired by the wonderful surroundings of The Goldsmiths'​ Company Hall and the aims and objectives of the Guild, is at this link: onebodyonebread.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-grac…

@JoshDeanMP Brilliant! Full credit Josh for using the Hertford role you uniquely have. Warming that the letter you sent, with Conservative Bob Deering and Green Party Ben Crystall, in pursuit of this long battled need, was on Commons headed paper, and now you raise on floor of the House!

At this morning's Transport Questions in the House of Commons, I raised Network Rail's continued delays to the Platform 1 lift at Hertford North. I'm pleased that the Minister agreed to meet with me to discuss how we can push this project forward.

@DwyerMaxwell Not "you're" !! It was after lunch in the Working Men's! I must have meant "Get yourself recognised ..." It's a slow process, of course, getting recognised as loyal to a range of social groups ... but so important for future personal health and prosperity.

@DwyerMaxwell Whatever your destiny, pre-planned or fortuitous, strength in your foundation base is almost essential. Get you're recognised as loyal to as many diverse groups in your community as your daily programme permits. A pub, club, church, residents' assoc, .... whatever. All, if poss