With reference to last week’s post a reader known only as Les comments on that other website:
On another subject – once again Old Grumpy publicly calls Cllr Adams a liar. To me this is, or should be serious.
Surely Cllr Adams should now as a matter of honour challenge this or accept that Cllr Stoddart is correct.
Les is surely right that this is, or should be serious.
Deliberately misleading council by giving a false account of what he had seen on his visit to the attic at Coronation School should be a resigning offence in any properly functioning democracy especially as the motive was to call into question the integrity of another member.
But this is Pembrokeshire County Council, where normal democratic standards do not hold sway.
As it happens, this issue was debated in the council chamber during a no confidence motion in the Leader at an extraordinary meeting of council on 12 September 2014 when the minutes record:
“Councillor Stoddart stated that the Leader and Councillor Pugh had lied to Council in respect of their inspection of the roof at Coronation School; that all Cabinet Members had been aware of the position and yet none had the courage to challenge it. He further stated that lying to the Chamber was crossing a red line; and that Councillors Pugh and Adams had conspired to cover up the Council’s ineptitude in the matter.”
“Councillor Lloyd considered that the Council could not be run by Councillor Adams in a proper manner and he further considered that the present situation would continue under his leadership.”
“Councillor Jacob Williams then summed up and, in doing so, he disagreed with the comments previously made about the views of the Pembrokeshire people. He stated that the people of Pembrokeshire expected certain standards and that lying in the Chamber was unacceptable, as Members needed to trust what people said. He urged Members to consider the views of the people they represented when taking the vote.”
One of Cllr Adams’ key defenders was Cllr Rev Huw George who gave a brief biography of the leader, including his footballing career with Solva, before declaring that he was “Pembrokeshire through and through”.
It was noticeable that Cllr George made no attempt to challenge the charge that Adams had borne false witness with regard to his visit to the roof space.
There was a recorded vote which the IPPG won by 29-20 with Cllr Myles Pepper the only ruling group member to break ranks.
However that was more than cancelled out when one unaffiliated member, Cllr Phil Kidney, expressed support for the Leader and another, Cllr Mike Evans – usually a stickler for constitutional propriety – abstained.
The minutes record that: “Councillor M Pepper advised the meeting that he was in support of the motion [of no confidence] given the remarks of Councillors Lloyd and Stoddart.”
However, it should be noted that, just over a year later, when Cllr Adams came waving a fifteen grand SRA, the saintly member for Fishguard was more than happy to take a seat on the cabinet gravy train.
While that abandonment of principle may be understandable for someone who belongs to an oxymoronic independent political group, it is surely inconceivable that, following his scathing attack on the leader during the no confidence debate, there is any truth in the persistent rumour that Cllr David Lloyd (unaffiliated) is being lined up for a cabinet post.
I have been reading some papers on the internet which cast light on what happened when Cllrs Adams and Pugh visited Coronation School.
First we had what psychologists call “confirmation bias” – the tendency to seek out evidence that supports our prior conclusions.
This is sometimes referred to as “cherry-picking” and it is a disease we all suffer from to some extent.
This is the reason socialists read the Guardian and conservatives the Daily Telegraph: to reinforce their prejudices.
So when the quantity surveyor told them that the whole of the roof had been reslated, and produced letters from the builder and roofing contractor to that effect, they believed him for no better reason than they wanted to.
So blinded were they that it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that these three might have a vested interest in peddling this myth.
When it gets really dangerous is when “confirmation bias” matures into “noble cause corruption”.
That is when you become so certain that you are right that you make things up to support your case.
So, instead of simply repeating what they had been told, which would have made them guilty of nothing more serious than naivety, they decided to embellish the story with a false account of what they had actually seen.
And uttering false statements knowing them to be untrue is commonly known as lying.