My website can now be accessed by logging on to www.oldgrumpy.co.uk.
This, you may remember, is the site closed down earlier this year
after the County Council's top PR man, Dai "Spin" Thomas,
wrote to my Service Provider complaining that I had posted "overtly
defamatory and factually inaccurate" comments on the Web
regarding Mr Roger Barrett-Evans' conduct during the Enfield planning.
Significantly, Mr Barrett-Evans has not, himself, got round to
lodging a complaint, never mind serving a writ.
Anyway, I soon had the site up and running again under a new name,
containing exactly the same "overtly defamatory" material.
I even e-mailed the council, giving details of the new domain,
fully expecting them to act again.
But, despite a claim by the monitoring officer in a letter to
the opposition leaders that the council's original action was
all perfectly legal and above board, there has been no further
attempt to close me down.
This seems rather strange!
Here is a site, which, according to the council's chief spin-doctor,
brings senior officers and leading councillors into disrepute
(and by association the authority itself), yet, though they have
a perfectly legal remedy available to them, they do nothing.
A mole tells me that the reason my site continues unmolested is
that leading figures in the council are of the opinion that the
original action was an infringement of my right to free speech
as enshrined in the Human Rights Act and when some of the more
enthusiastic enemies of free expression wanted to mount another
assault they were vetoed from, what my mole described as, "the
very top"
Wouldn't do to admit that publicly, of course, because the council has its reputation for infallibility to protect..
A couple of weeks ago, the Mercury published a letter from
Councillor Brian ''County'' Hall which contained what he no doubt
thought was a devastating riposte to my criticisms of the Independent
Political group's lack of a manifesto.
According to " County " Hall the lack of such a programme
was '' precisely why " the independents won 38 seats at the
last election compared to only 22 gained by the manifesto-toting
political parties.
Does Cllr Hall make up this rubbish himself or does he employ
a spin-doctor?
Logicians have a Latin tag for this particular species of fallacious
reasoning: post hoc ergo propter hoc, which roughly translated
means: because this follows that, that must be the cause of this.
The illustration given in my ancient logic textbook of this particular
fallacy is that of the natives in some African tribes who used
to beat drums during a solar eclipse.
Lo and behold, this has the desired effect to persuading the sun
to emerge from the moon's shadow.
When Western rationalists explained that beating drums is a waste
of energy, because laws discovered by Newton, Kepler, and others,
govern the movement of heavenly bodies, they are met with blank
incomprehension.
" But it's always worked in the past ", the tribesmen
would say.
And it always will, of course, for the tribesmen at least.But
whether the Independent Junta can keep pulling the wool over the
eyes of the Pembrokeshire electorate is another matter.
As the Thoughts of Chairman Hall, who is all set to be a member
of the Cabinet if the Independents get their way, are of some
importance to his potential subjects, I have spent a little time
deconstructing his letter to the Mercury.
His claim that the Independents' electoral success is due to lack
of a manifesto is backed up by the statement: "we owe loyalty
to the people of Pembrokeshire and not to any party or cause''.
With respect, as Councillor Hall is fond if saying during council
debates before proceeding to show complete disrespect for anyone
who dares to disagree with him, this is a piece of platitudinous
rubbish.
"The people'' are not some amorphous lump, but a collection
of individuals each with his or her own aspirations.
Some may want higher taxes and more public spending (the socialists)
and some the opposite (the Tories).
The idea that Councillor Hall and his Independent Group cronies
can be loyal to both at the same time is clearly preposterous.
But this '' loyalty to the people '' stuff is far more sinister
than that because it carries the implication that anyone opposing
the independents is being disloyal to the people.
This is the same totalitarian mindset that caused so much grief
during the century just gone.
Armed with the certainty that you, and you alone, have the people's
interests at heart, it requires no great intellectual leap to
conclude that anyone who stands in your way must be acting in
bad faith. Any criticism is seen as treachery and opposition is
equated with treason.
Fortunately, the independents don't have the power to send their
critics to the Gulag but they, or at least their leading lights,
feel perfectly justified in trying to silence us.
In my case by harassing me with threats of legal action, which
they have no intention of carrying out, and, in the case of opposition
councillors, by the abuse of the power of the chair to curtail
debate whenever awkward questions are asked.
At another point Councillor Hall accuses me of pursuing my own
political agenda.
This is a strange thing for a politician to say, for what is the
point of entering the political arena, aside from self-aggrandisement
and the pursuit of power for its own sake, unless you have some
idea what you want to achieve i.e. an agenda.
Top of my agenda is to see Pembrokeshire County Council run on
proper democratic lines and in accordance with the rule of law.
One of my aims is to see that planning decisions are determined
on the basis of policy and not on how many chums the applicant
has on the committee.
This concept - alien to some on the Independent benches - is known
as justice.
Without that, all boasts about low council tax and coming top
of the cleaning league are nothing more than a " making the
trains run on time ''.
The Internet is truly a wonderful invention.
One day last week I was left in charge of cooking the dinner,
while the family went to the beach.
" That nice tarragon chicken that you make ", was the
suggestion.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find my recipe so I logged on to www.deliaonline.co.uk
in search of guidance. Sure enough, there were the instructions
for tarragon chicken, Delia-style, which differed from my usual
concoction in that it called for the best part of a pint of medium
dry amontillado sherry.
The verdict: " not as nice as usual '', has got me wondering
whether I might have a future writing cookery books.
On the other hand, it might be that polishing off the remainder
of the sherry during the cooking process could have caused temporary
memory loss and the omission of some crucial ingredient.
Still having trouble with my voice recognition software, particularly
when it comes to Councillors' names.
John Allen -Mirehouse keeps coming up as " John alone at
my house '' while Joyce Watson produces "Joys what sauna?
''.
Our beloved leader, Cllr Maurice Hughes, flashes up on the screen
as " callous Maurice is used " (by COMB, presumably)
and Roy Folland as "Roy fallen down" - quite apt when
you consider what he does for a living.
However, there are some things that it seems to know more about
it than it should, because Councillor John Thomas causes it no
problems whatsoever.