Back in December, I reported on Cllr David Pugh’s speech to council in which he accused me of lying about the grants awarded to Cathal McCosker for several properties in Pembroke Dock.
Accompanied by the Leader, Cllr Jamie Adams, Pugh had been on a “fact-finding” mission to Pembroke Dock and had returned with proof certain that everything I had ever said about these grants was wrong.
Not wrong because I was mistaken, but as a result of “deliberate untruths”.
As you can imagine, this didn’t go down very well, so I set about untangling what had actually transpired during our intrepid pair’s tour of Pembroke Dock.
Cllr Pugh’s story quickly began to unravel when I proved that the “third side elevation” at No. 25 Dimond Street was a figment of his imagination.
An “unreserved apology” soon followed, though it was somewhat sullied by his insistence that I should admit that almost everything else I had said was untrue.
This included my claim that the the £52,000 supposedly spent on refurbishing the interior of No 29 Dimond Street (Paul Sartori) was way in excess of what it had actually cost.
He countered that “most of the retail space” at Paul Sartori was given over to an area for storage and cleaning clothes and that, had I “bothered to walk to the back of the shop”, I could have avoided making patently false statements about the property.
When I visited the premises the following day, I discovered that “most” was a partitioned-off area which made up less than 15% of the total.
I emailed Cllr Pugh drawing attention to this, but he replied that he didn’t wish to “continue the dialogue”.
And who can blame him?
I also found out that, when Pugh and Adams visited Paul Sartori, the shop was shut, so not only did they not bother to walk to the back of the shop, but were reduced to peering through the window.
It also came to light that our two fearless investigators were accompanied on this trip by the council officer who oversees these projects and that Cllr Pugh was merely repeating what he had been told.
So I wrote to the Director of Development Dr Steven Jones asking that he make enquiries of the project officer with a view to finding out why Cllr Pugh’s account was so wide of the mark.
This is his reply:
“I would also confirm that I have spoken with [the project officer] who advised that, whilst he has not seen Cllr Pugh’s statement, he stands by the comments he made during the site visit although he noted that the visit included a number of properties and that it was, in his view, entirely possible that some of the specific references could have been lost in translation.”
Ah, the art of the entirely possible!
However, as almost everything is entirely possible, it would be a mistake to rule out, entirely, the possibility that not everything the project officer told Cllr Pugh was entirely accurate.