Last week County Council Leader Maurice Hughes launched a savage
personal attack on Tory group leader Phil Llewellyn, the thrust
of which was that Councillor Llewellyn was unfit to be the mayor
of Pembrokeshire.
As work has barely started on the mammoth task of collecting the
8800 signatures required to force a referendum on whether or not
the electorate want a mayor, this seems like an extreme example
of getting your retaliation in first.
To Old Grumpy this smacks of panic, brought on by the realisation
that, if there is an election, Councillor Hughes and his Independent
cronies will not be able to drum up enough support to land the
top job. They will, to coin a phrase, be "yesterday's men
".
In any case, for Councillor's Hughes to attack someone else's
suitability for the post shows a breathtaking amount of brass
neck.
He, you may remember, is the man who claimed £360 subsistence
for a trip to Eastbourne in June 1997, though the Council had
actually paid his hotel bill in advance.
I discovered this false claim when inspecting the council's 1997/98
accounts in October 1998 some 15 months after the £360 had
been paid.
When I tackled Councillor Hughes about this he told me he thought
he was entitled to the payment for being away from home.
Despite the fact that the signed declaration on his expense claim
states: " I have necessarily incurred expenditure and subsistence
for the purpose of enabling me to perform approved duties as a
member of Pembrokeshire County Council. I have actually paid the
fares and made the other authorised payment shown ", I believed
he had made an honest mistake.
In October 1999, when I inspected the authority's accounts for
the year 1998/1999, I realise that my faith in him had been misplaced.
There, on the file, was a letter dated 27th April 1998 addressed
to Councillor Hughes' home, informing him that to £218 downward
adjustment was being made to a claim he had recently submitted.
My subsequent enquiries revealed that this deduction was in respect
of a three-day RoSPA conference in Cardiff for which Councillor
Hughes claimed £72 per night subsistence even though the
council had already paid the hotel bill.
So, when he told me in October 1998 that he thought he was entitled
to claim for the Eastbourne trip he had already been informed,
six months earlier in April 1998, that such claims were inadmissible.
Furthermore, he had hung onto to the Eastbourne cash for six months
after he was told that it was not a valid claim and, so far as
I know, would still be hanging on to it had I not uncovered the
evidence.
All this was faithfully recorded in my Old Grumpy column in the
Mercury on 12th November 1999.
The following week the Western Telegraph took up the story, pointing
out that he had retained the £360 despite having previously
been "warned" by the Council for wrongly claiming £218.13.
This brought a furious response from Councillor Hughes we threatened
to sue the Telegraph unless they apologised.
" I repeat my demand that you print a correction and full
apology with equal prominence in the next edition of your newspaper.
I require the right to approve the wording of the correction and
apology ''.
Failing this, Councillor Hughes thundered, '' I shall have no
alternative but to take the matter further ''.
As regular readers will know, I am no great fan of the Western
Telegraph, but I have nothing but admiration for the masterly
way David Evans, the publisher, dealt with this barbarian at his
gate.
One plank of Councillor Hughes defence was that he had "
no recollection '' of ever receiving the letter informing him
of the invalid claim for £218.
Mr Evans sent him a copy, which I had obtained during the public
audit, together with a letter which said: " I am concerned
that the implication from your remarks is that the council may
have placed letters on file, addressed to you at your home, but
about which you know nothing ''.
Back came a letter from Cllr Hughes in which he said: "with
regard to the letter from the County Council, dated 27th April
1998, I repeat that they have no recollection of having received
a letter''.
Perhaps it will be helpful if I tell you what the letter said:
" Dear Councillor Hughes, I refer to your recent telephone
conversation with Darryl Thomas in connection with the RoSPA conference
and confirm the following adjustment will be made in May 1998.
Reclaim £218.13. Add two evening meals £7.64 ''.
Presumably, Councillor Hughes couldn't recollect Darryl Thomas'
phone call either.
Old Grumpy has been taken to task by e-mailer for a "
display of blatant sexism '' in a piece I wrote a couple of weeks
ago.
In what was intended to be a joke, I said that COMB, which is
generally taken to stand for the county council's Chief Officer's
Management Board, actually means Control Over Maurice's Boys -
Maurice [Hughes] been the leader of the Independent Political
(sic) Group on the county council.
The point being that, when COMB says jump, the vast majority of
the so-called Independents ask: " how high? '' though I am
told some more robust spirits have been heard to mutter: "
which hoop? ''.
But, as my e-mailer points out, there are three women members
of the Independent Political (sic) group and they are excluded
by the tag '' Maurice's Boys ".
" It is totally unacceptable in these inclusive times'',
my correspondent writes, '' that women should be discriminated
against by this use of gender-specific language ''.
Point taken!
How about: Control Over Maurice's Bozos?
At long last a rational debate is getting under way about the
virtues or otherwise of organic food.
To date, organic food has been regarded as an unmitigated good
thing like motherhood and apple pie.
But some scientists are now questioning the most cherished assumption
about organic food: that it is more nutritious than the bog-standard
stuff most of us eat.
Be that as it may, what is undeniable is that organic food is
vastly more expensive than ordinary products, which puts it out
of the reach of the poor
Organic chickens and eggs in Tesco are three times the price of
their intensively produced equivalents.
It would seem to follow that either the costs of production are
correspondingly higher, or that the squeaky-clean Greens are ripping
off the gullible folk who have swallowed the Soil Association's
propaganda.