The excellent website Y Cneifiwr, which keeps a close eye on our neighbours in Carmarthenshire County Council (CCC), has an interesting post dated 22 August 2014.
It concerns an email sent to the WLGA panel looking into governance arrangements in CCC.

The author is Sir David Lewis, a lay member of the council’s audit committee, who has a CV even more impressive than that of Pembrokeshire’s former audit committee chairman Mr John Evans MBE who resigned for reasons that are set out in a letter on that other website.

The similarities between the two men’s views of their respective councils is striking, though I would have to say that Sir David’s criticisms are expressed in rather more colourful language.

According the Cneifiwr, the letter runs to two pages and is explosive.

In it Sir David says that: “The governance of the Council is in disarray and not fit for purpose”.

And with respect to the values of “openness and transparency, honesty and integrity, tolerance and respect, and equality and fairness,” he concludes: “In recent years these values have evidently not been applied or followed”.

Old Grumpy recommends you read the whole thing because it could well have been written about the situation here in Pembrokeshire.

As Cneifiwr observes, these criticisms, by someone as distinguished as Sir David (and, I would suggest, our own Mr John Evans) cannot be dismissed with council’s standard response that they are the work of “a scurrilous representative of a tiny minority of malcontents determined to run the council down.”

But there are still those in Pembrokeshire who still see things like that.

I was recently in a conversation with an IPPG ultra-loyalist – actually it was more of harangue – who claimed that certain websites and a particular newspaper were dragging PCC’s name through the mud.

It seems that these people have such limited intellectual horizons that they cannot contemplate the possibility that anything that challenges their own narrow prejudices might be true.

“You shouldn’t shoot the messenger” I suggested, to which came the reply that we should all be working together for the good of Pembrokeshire. If I hear that expression again, I shall scream.

That we should all be working together for the good of Pembrokeshire is a truism, but what these IPPG yes-persons fail to understand is that members can have honest differences about what is good and what isn’t.
Indeed, such differences, and the debates by which they are resolved, are the bedrock of any well-functioning democracy.
What they mean by “working together” is that we should all follow the IPPG’s chosen path, and anyone who refuses to do so is clearly a wrong ‘un.

In even more unpleasant regimes than that which currently holds sway in county hall, such dissidents are branded enemies of the people and sent off to re-education camps, or worse.

The advent of the Herald and of course that other website, has helped to shine light into some very murky corners of the Kremlin and I suspect some of these IPPG placemen are taking serious flak whenever they venture out into the street.
I look forward to the day – now less than three years hence – when I can refer to them, if I bother to mention them at all, as ex Cllr this and ex Cllr that.

Another development that has helped the cause is the webcasting of meetings.
Not only has it let the public to see exactly what goes on, but it also allows nerds like me to accurately reproduce what is said.
For instance, here is Cllr Johnny Allen-Mirehouse on the subject of Pembroke Dock property grants at the council meeting on December 12 last:

“I don’t think he [Cllr Stoddart] has yet produced any actual facts. And facts is what we need to go on”
“But I do say he should not continue with his policy of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.”

As I pointed out previously, I had already put a mass of facts on my website, but here are a few more for Squirehouse to mull over between now and the next meeting of the audit committee:

1) The audit committee, of which he is a member, will soon be considering a report from the council’s internal audit service which upholds almost all of my criticisms of the unprofessional way these grants have been administered.

2) The council is being forced to repay a large sum (believed to be in excess of £150,000) to the Wales European Funding Office (WEFO) in respect of monies paid out to Mr Cathal McCosker and companies he controls for work that was either ineligible for grant aid, or simply never done.

3) The council has sent an extensive dossier to the police containing details of alleged improper payments.

For a taste of some of the facts the dossier contains he might try The roof… [August 3].

4) Cllr David Pugh, the Cabinet member who oversaw this expensive fiasco, is still trousering his £15,000-a-year SRA.

5) No disciplinary action has been taken against the officer(s) who signed off the irregular claims referred to in The roof…

6) The independent lay chairman of the audit committee has resigned claiming that he had come to realise that his vision when he first joined the committee was “no longer aligned to the appetite for change held by the Authority.” i.e. he had bumped up against the forces of reaction personified by Cllr Johnny himself.

My advice to Cllr Johnny and the rest of the IPPG placemen is to give the scientific method a try.

In simple terms, this holds that if facts and theory are at odds, it is the theory that is flawed, not the facts.

…and half-truths

August is known as the silly season – that time of year when, because the politicians are on their hols, the newspapers have to fill their pages with made-up stories.

This differs from the rest of the year when they fill their pages with the politicians’ made up stories.

Politicians are, generally speaking, a pretty dull, not to say dim, bunch so, if it’s entertainment you’re after, newspapers are much better value in August than at any other time.
Of course, the silly season abounds with rumour and speculation, but, as these are far more interesting than boring old facts, you get far more for your 50p in the dog of days of summer.
With that in mind I offer the following.

A mole tells me there is a good deal of consternation in the ranks of the IPPG about a story that appeared on that other website about the party’s secret(?) group meeting held at the Archive Centre in Prendergast on Monday 18 August.

I must say it is not just the IPPG leadership that is consternated – much more of this and in 15-20 years time the young upstart could be challenging my position as the Premier County’s premier political website.

By some miracle of modern technology, the Pentlepoir pensmith was able to publish a detailed account of this meeting a little more than two hours after it ended.

First thoughts were that he had a mole at the meeting, but some members of the IPPG’s intelligentsia – not a crowded field – calculated that an old-fashioned mole could not have provided such a detailed account in the short time available.

I am told that they are now coming round to believing that he may have the place bugged.

First thoughts were to hold these not-so-secret meetings at a more secure location.

Cllr Huw George suggested Mynachlog-Ddu common common, where they could assemble around the stone erected to commemorate the Welsh poet Waldo Williams. He cited the excellent road communications in that part of the county, but when someone raised the spectre of standing knee-deep in snow in December the idea was quietly dropped.

Other venues discussed were the attic at Coronation School Pembroke Dock (Jamie Adams) but when spiders and bats were mentioned several members (not all of them women) objected strongly.

David Pugh promoted the area at the back of Paul Sartori’s shop in Pembroke Dock which he described as “most of the retail space” but when it was pointed out that it was only eight feet square and someone muttered “Black Hole of Calcutta” that idea was also quietly shelved.

Cllr Brian Hall vetoed the proposal to use Cllr David Simpson’s canal boat moored on the Grand Union somewhere near Stoke on Trent when one of the more scrupulous members of the IPPG drew attention to the fact that party meetings were not “approved duties” for the purpose of claiming travelling expenses.

And Cllr Hall’s offer of the use of his Tardis also failed to find favour when one member said he had a date with the dentist that day and didn’t think: “I was stuck in a time warp somewhere between the Severn Bridge and Penllergaer” was the sort of excuse that might convince the tooth-puller to forgo the £15 charge for a missed appointment.

Eventually one of the more alert members pointed out that, although the promotion of Cllr Bob Summons to the cabinet was ostensibly for the purpose of overseeing the planning system, everyone knew that his real role, as befits a former policeman, was as the IPPG’s head of security.

“Why don’t we get him to sweep the room for listening devices before the meeting?” This bright spark asked.

So, if you see a stocky middle-aged man with some fancy-looking electronic gear hanging round the archive building in Prendergast on the eve of the next council meeting, you will know it is Bob the Bug-buster at work.

As I said at the beginning, it is the silly season and none of the above is necessarily untrue, or vice versa.