It’s budget time again and we are being treated to a stream of seminars and consultations, together with mind-numbing quantities of financial management-speak including funding gaps, service pressures, budget modelling tools and aggregate external finance (AEF). Having spent the past thirty years as a journalist and councillor trying to get my head round this stuff,... Read More »
About six months ago, I noticed quite a lot of PCC council house tenants were posting comments on the Pembrokeshire Council Watch Facebook page. The tenants were wondering why electricians from as far afield as Manchester and Glasgow were turning up on their doorsteps to conduct safety tests on their wiring circuits. Many of the... Read More »
In my previous post, I gave an account of Pembrokeshire County Council’s governance and audit committee meeting on 10 September 2024 during which its new chairman, Dr Norma Barry, prevented Cllr Jacob Williams and myself from questioning the officers and members the committee had called before it to give evidence. That meant that a series... Read More »
If you want to understand how the establishment engineer their trademark cover-ups, you won’t find a better tutorial than the webcast of the extraordinary meeting of Pembrokeshire County Council’s governance and audit committee on September 10 2024. Weeks earlier, at its May 8 extraordinary meeting, the committee resolved to exercise one of its more potent... Read More »
There was an interesting little spat at last week’s full council meeting when Leader, Cllr Jon Harvey, attacked Cllr Huw Murphy for his about face on the second homes council tax. The Leader reminded Cllr Murphy that, the last time this matter had been debated, he had proposed a 200% premium and now here he... Read More »
Way back in February 2014, Pembrokeshire County Council handed Dyfed-Powys Police (DPP) a thick dossier of evidence detailing various apparently fraudulent transactions in the Pembroke Dock Commercial Property Grants Scheme (CPGS) where large amounts of grant money had been paid out for work that wasn’t eligible for grant aid, or, in many cases, simply hadn’t... Read More »
email: oldgrumpy.mike@gmail.com One of my few claims to fame is that I was born in the little Cumbrian town of Wigton at almost the same time as the famous novelist and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, aka Lord Bragg of Wigton. Indeed Melvyn and I started at the primary school at the same time, passed our 11+... Read More »
PCC has issued a press release announcing a new e-bike scheme for Tenby, Haverfordwest and Fishguard and Goodwick. Cllr Rhys Sinnett has been appointed as front man for the project – some people will stop at nothing to get their name in the paper. It’s all based on the false belief that there’s no such... Read More »
For those who like round numbers, I am pleased to report that counsel’s opinion on the grants fraud in Pembroke Dock that recently landed on PCC’s desk is dated 12 December 2023, exactly ten years to the day from the infamous council meeting during which I was branded a liar by sundry members of the... Read More »
It was way back in 2013 that I first wrote about anomalies in the Heritage Lottery Initiative (HRI) and Commercial Property Grant Schemes (CPGS) in Pembroke Dock. And after I put down a Notice of Motion calling for elected members to be allowed access to information on these dubious grants, PCC mounted a spirited cover-up... Read More »
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