When I first arrived in Hove almost half a century ago, I was amazed at the way the town was run.

Only one of the 36 councillors was under 50 years old and several were so ancient that they were noticeably senile.

Elections usually took place in only half the wards because the opposition could not always be bothered to contest the seats.

Some Tories were on the council for the whole of their political careers without ever facing a challenge.

There were no Liberal councillors and only two Socialists, who were elected intermittently for the Knoll ward. One was indistinguishable from the Tories and the other, a retired window cleaner, had never been the same since suffering a fall.

Among his many mistakes was constantly confusing me with my brother, at that time an active Marxist in the local Labour party.

Much more numerous and far less predictable were the renegade Tories who had fallen out many years ago with the party over arcane issues which had long been forgotten.

A few masqueraded as independents in Hangleton while another group in Wish ward called themselves ratepayers.

If the aim of the notoriously parsimonious ruling group was to reduce spending to nothing, the ratepayers wanted to go further than that.

Typical of the authority’s meanness was the annual decision to refuse a grant of £200 to the Brighton Philharmonic Society, even though a third of its members lived in Hove.

Meetings were held, appropriately enough, in the museum since the old town hall had been destroyed by fire in 1966. They seldom lasted long and the record was a shade under 15 minutes.

More than once a councillor died during the debates, one having bored himself to death during a speech on local government reorganisation.

Much to my surprise, the meeting was not abandoned. Tea was taken early and it continued as before.

Decision-making was appalling. This was a council that considered demolishing Brunswick Square and putting a car park beneath it.

Hove wanted to plonk an ugly library in St Ann’s Well Gardens. It proposed a toilet block in historic Palmira Square. It even wanted to pull down the handsome Adelaide ramps until outraged conservationists called a town poll and halted it.

But the worst decision of all was selling some of the museum treasures which were temporarily in store, even though many had been given to the town.

Eventually mean old Hove spent more than £2 million on building a vast new town hall, so much larger than the old one that several nearby houses had to be demolished to make way for it.

This was because in reforms of 1973 Hove fancied it would become the centre of a new authority stretching from the Adur to the Ouse, but that never came to pass.

Instead Hove swallowed neighbouring Portslade and got rid of many old councillors and officials who had done so much damage in the past.

It had been a government for the half-dead by the half-dead and few mourned its demise.