It’s my last day at the Mercury today, then I’m off to London, where I’ve got some interesting stuff lined up. But wherever my career eventually takes me, I’ll always feel proud to have worked for the best local newspaper in the country.

The Mercury has a great editor in Richard Bettsworth who rightly believes that the role of a newspaper is to hold those in power to account. The Mercury isn’t the arm of a council press office, as some local papers elsewhere in the country have sadly become.

Politicians don’t get favours, stories aren’t spiked because they don’t fit the editor’s worldview, and reporters are encouraged to dig for the truth behind the spin.

Anyone who tries to obstruct our attempts to accurately report Leicestershire life is politely told: “Sorry, this is what we do.”

A couple of years ago – while some editors were still so scared of the internet that they banned their reporters from blogging or using Twitter – senior Mercury staff were actively encouraging reporters to jump on board.

It was my use of Twitter and this very blog that has made being political correspondent at the Mercury so rewarding.

You, the readers, gave me ideas, tip-offs and gossip. I turned these into stories, then got instant feedback and follow-up ideas from you all. It felt like I had a team of hundreds working alongside me.

Finally – a word on the last-minute news of my departure. When I handed in my notice a few weeks ago, I considered mentioning it on Twitter. But then I was given some sage advice; when politicians know that you’re not sticking around for much longer, the juicy stories can suddenly dry up.

Hopefully, by keeping my impending exit quiet I’ve managed to squeeze every last drop from some of our more loquacious politicos.

Anyway, thanks again for all of your help over the past two and a half years.

David

Nick Rushton and Joe Orson have both made it through to the final stage in the race to become the Conservative Party’s nominee for police commissioner.

Rushton’s seen as such a cert for the nomination that he once used a council meeting to taunt Jewel Miah over his failed attempt to get the Labour nomination.

Given the massive Tory-voting donut around the city, the successful candidate will be big favourite for the £70,000-a-year gig. Drinks are on you, Nick.

Also, if he wins he’ll have to stand down as deputy leader of Leicestershire County Council, so that’s one less candidate for the top County Hall job if Parsons is ousted.

Registered Tory party members will get the final say on the police commissioner candidate when they vote on May 26. A lesson in democracy to the Labour party, which saw a group of apparatchiks hand-pick their chosen one.

Part of my Saturday political column was chopped to make way for an advert, so I’ve published the rest below:

“The tables were turned this week when someone lodged a Freedom of Information request about me.

I send out scores of them every year to public bodies across the land, but it’s the first time I’ve ever been the subject of one.

It relates to the leaked standards watchdog report about Lord Mayor Rob Wann’s cancelled parking tickets, which was on the front page of the Mercury last month.

The request reads: “Leicester City Council leaks like a sieve! Obviously your standards committee members leaked the Rob Wann report. This is outrageous! Please let me see copies of any emails, letters or any correspondence between the Rob Wann investigation standards committee councillors and David MacLean of the Leicester Mercury. We need to know who leaked the report.”

The exchanges will eventually be published on the council website. But unlike many politicians who fear openness and transparency, I’m quite relaxed about my email dealings with any of the councillors being made public.

You’ll see the time I cursed my luck when one councillor told me about a juicy row that went on at a meeting I’d chosen not to attend.

You’ll see a few invites to the pub which I’d issued to local politicians for a catch-up and a chat about local issues.

And you’ll probably see several frantic emails which I often have to send to unreachable councillors as deadline approaches, pleading: “Call me ASAP.”

Sadly for the curious member of the public who submitted this request, the source of the leak won’t be revealed even if they request copies of my dealings with every public official in our city.

And that’s because the biggest scoops are always leaked in person.”

Cabinet members were ready to resign if he didn’t. Backbenchers were twitchy about a drawn-out expenses probe in the run-up to an election. The finishing touches we’re being put to his political obituary.

Following the Mercury’s 10am news conference we cleared the front page and two pages inside, poised for a resignation statement. I combed the archive as I prepared a colour piece on his political career. A photographer was on standby to get a snap of him leaving County Hall.

A cabinet meeting took place behind closed doors in the morning. Then, at 3pm he faced his group.

Usually a fairly short affair, this one lasted for an hour and a half. “He’s gone,” one opposition politico said as he looked at his watch. A mischievous Lib Dem had printed out a message on A4 paper which read: Position Vacant, Apply Within. He planned to pin it to Parsons’ office door.

The meeting was later painted as an unthreatening affair – a chance for Tory councillors to throw their weight behind a trusted leader. But the atmosphere afterwards didn’t suggest that.

As members emerged many kept their heads bowed, avoiding eye-contact with the press. Parsons remained inside the room. Some members hugged him.

As he left he said he was heading to his office for ten minutes. He looked shaken and exhausted.

Eventually he emerged with deputy Nick Rushton in tow, plus a handful of other loyal troops. He said he would be cooperating with the investigation, planned stay on and clear his name, and had his party’s full support.

The cabinet members who’d been ready to resign just hours earlier had been squared, at least temporarily.

East Midlands MEP Roger Helmer has been dragging out the will-he won’t-he saga of whether he’ll resign for several weeks now.

He had originally announced his intention to resign in December 2011, but delayed it when it became unclear who he’d be replaced by.

I suspect our readers are rather bored of the whole issue, which is why my last update on the story ended up on the no-man’s-land of page 12 in the Mercury.

What Roger may be pleased to know is that there could be one unexpected benefit of his stand against the “leftish Europhile eco-friendly metrosexual” bogeyman.

Bell Pottinger director Daniel Hamilton reports that MEPs are entitled to a higher rate of pension after 12 years, six months and one day in the job.

For MEPs elected in 1999 – such as Roger – that milestone was passed earlier this month.

• An awkward acronym? Check
• An amazing truism? Check
• The word ‘major’ in the intro? Check
• News hook is an “official launch”? Check
• 600 word release that’ll be used as a nib, at most? Check

Hold the front page, boss, because five “research clusters” from well-known European regions such as Aquitaine and Molise will be teaming up with researchers in Leicester to come up with one of those “green traffic management systems”.

The council press office went wild and capped-up the entire project acronym – THE ISSUE – which is the ‘Transport Health Environment – Intelligent Solutions Sustaining Urban Economies’ to your man on the street.

In a moment of press office magic we’re helpfully told that “local partners will be working in partnership”.

And the whole thing is funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme, which “promotes knowledge exchange and joint working”. Obviously.

The note to editors offering “further media opportunities” is, shall we say, ambitious…

And so we bid farewell to County Hall spin doctor Paul Masterman.

The £7,500-a-month PR guru left Leicestershire County Council last month.

Paul has long been a hot topic on this blog. His employers Westco had teamed-up with Leicestershire County Council in 2010 to find a candidate to head-up the slimmed-down communications and press team at county hall. No-one was ever interviewed for the job, which attracted 40 applications, and Westco were signed up for further £10,000-a-month stints to run the council communications team.

Opposition councillors say upwards of £100,000 has been wasted on the whole process at a time when the authority is making cuts to services.

Despite only meeting Paul once, he certainly left an impression. He once blocked me on Twitter after I mentioned a BBC report.

The report said that he was suspended during a disciplinary investigation at a previous council after it was discovered he’d attempted to influence a BBC online poll regarding a council merger.

You can’t keep a good man down, though. He’s now appeared, in the same role, up the road at Staffordshire County Council.

Remember this post?

It shows Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman and some of his associates being lavished with praise by city Labour politicians for helping with the election campaign in May.

They included Leicester East MP Keith Vaz, Jon Ashworth, who later that day was declared the new Leicester South MP, and Sir Peter Soulsby who was later voted in as elected mayor. Several of Labour’s city councillors are in attendance.

When I first highlighted this video in the summer I had to dance around Mr Rahman’s background.

I can be slightly more blunt this morning. The PCC has ruled that describing him as an “extremist-backed” politician, with “close links” to an extremist Islamic organisation, is “not misleading”. He denies the links.

Ask your local Labour politician whether they were aware of these claims when he joined them on the campaign trail…