Word reaches Old Grumpy that, at last week’s planning committee, Mr Keith Bradney, an objector to Cllr Johnny Allen-Mirehouse’s plans to stick five giant wind turbines on the Angle peninsula, began to read an extract from Johnny’s election address.
Unfortunately, before he could tell the full story, Mr Bradney was interrupted by the council’s acting head of legal services Claire Incledon
Mrs Incledon was quite right to bring this to halt because what Johnny had to say in his election blurb had nothing to do with the planning merits of the case.
However, my curiosity aroused, I decided to consult Grumpette’s carefully preserved archives where I found Squirehouse telling the voters of Angle and Hundleton: “We love our County of Pembrokeshire too much to spoil her. The important Tourist industry depends on our beaches, cliffs, fields and woods…”
And: “We must not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
Though to be fair to Johnny (an activity that takes an almost superhuman act of self-denial) he also said: “BUT we must have jobs – we cannot eat the view. We CAN have both the beauty of Pembrokeshire and well-paid jobs by careful planning and sensible policies…” [Johnny’s emphasis throughout]
So he will have no complaints that the planning committee carefully applied these “sensible policies” and rejected his five 100 metre high windmills.
While I was in the election addresses library, I decided to see if there were any other gems worthy of recycling and came across this from Cllr Sue Perkins: “I will always keep my word. People know that I am on their side when I am at county hall. Candidates who stand as ‘Independent’ rarely are. After the last election [2008] all but four ‘Independents’ joined the ruling group to get power.”
And elsewhere: “Independents are often lazy, they never change and they never challenge.”
Who would have thought that, less than a month after stuffing these leaflets through the letterboxes in Llanion, True-blue Sue would be found sitting on the IPPG benches surrounded by this bunch of bone-idle, reactionary power-junkies?
No doubt the £15,000 SRA she gets for being in the Cabinet helps temper her distress at having to keep such disreputable company, though whether she should go out of her way to confirm the truth of that old adage “There’s no zealot like a convert” is another matter.
I should in fairness point out that this distaste for ‘Independents’ might have been due to the fact that her opponent at the 2012 election was one Peter Kraus (Independent).
The extraordinary council meeting on Thursday, called to debate the future of secondary education in the north of the county, promises to be a fiery affair.
The most controversial proposal is the closure of Ysgol Dewi Sant, which has brought forth an avalanche of protest from the St Davids peninsula.
Members have been warned by the council’s monitoring officer that if they prejudge the issue they may need to declare an interest and withdraw from the meeting.
Shades of the St Valentines Day massacre last year when Kerr QC was drafted in to torpedo Paul Miller’s attempt to initiate disciplinary proceedings against chief executive Bryn Parry-Jones.
So I won’t be expressing any opinion one way or another ahead of the meeting.
At least there will be a debate, thanks to the efforts of Grumpette who pushed through a notice of motion last May which removed school reorganisation from the hands of Cabinet and placed it with full council.
So councillors from the St Davids area will have a chance to put their case, rather than have the officers’ recommendation rubber stamped by the collection of yes-men and women who populate the Cabinet.
Old Grumpy has experiences of these school reorganisation plans, none of which have done much to bolster my faith in democracy, Pembrokeshire-style.
One of the things to be wary of is figures for future school numbers which are often no more than guesswork masquerading as fact.
Back in 2010, I was a governor at Hakin Infants when it was proposed that it should be merged with Hakin Junior to form Hakin Community school.
Part of the justification for this was a steep fall in projected school numbers.
These were reported to Cabinet as follows:
Total capacity of the two schools 254 – surplus places in brackets.
2010 – 240 (14)
2011 – 244 (10)
2012 – 231 (23)
2013 – 212 (42)
2014 – 206 (48)
By the time we got to September 2013 – when the proposal was to amalgamate Hakin Community school with Hubberston VC – Hakin Community School’s numbers had undergone a dramatic transformation.
2010 – 267
2011 – 282
2012 – 288
2013 – 298
2014 – 309
As can be seen, the number on the roll in 2014 is exactly 50% greater than was projected as recently as 2010.
So the lesson is not to place too much faith in these numbers which are little more than educated guesswork – and not terribly well-educated at that.
Members would be well advised to be on the lookout for policy-led evidence making. For instance, how was the figure of £21 million for the repair and maintenance of the four existing secondary schools arrived at?
Sounds like something that might have been worked out on the back of that brown envelope that was left on the passenger seat of the council’s limo sent to pick up Kerr QC from Port Talbot station.