March 28 2006
oldgrumpy.mike@virgin.net
Under wraps On Thursday, the county council's senior staff committee will sit down to discuss a report from the Head of Personnel on "Pay Review - Chief Executive."
The first item on the agenda after apologies and previous minutes is to "consider excluding the public from the meeting . . . " because of the business to be discussed "involves the likely disclosure of exempt information", for instance, how much the Chief Executive is paid.
There is a common misconception that this means that the public must be excluded, but the relevant legislation, which is to be found at S 100A of the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985, provides that, when certain defined categories of exempt information are to be discussed, a council (or one of its committees) "... may (my emphasis) by resolution exclude members of the public . . ." .
Equally, the council/committee may decide not to exclude the public if its members think the public interest will be best served by holding the debate in open session.
It seems to me that this is just such a case.
After all, we know how much the Prime Minister; members of his government and senior civil servants are paid, so why should chief executives be any different?
However, the six-member committee is controlled by the Independent Political (sic(k)) Group (IPG) which has four seats - The Leader and three Cabinet members - Cllrs Wildman, Mike Evans and Allen-Mirehouse - all of whom hold their positions (and special responsibility allowances), by virtue of the Leader's patronage.
It also has plenary powers, which, for those not familiar with the jargon, means it can make decisions without reference to anyone else.
Last October, I put forward a notice of motion which would have required senior staff committee decisions on pay to be ratified by full council.
Predictably, the 38 synchronised voters in the IPG voted the proposal down.
The result is that 54 of the 60 county councillors, and, by extension, the people they represent, have no say whatsoever on the salaries of the council's top guns.
And, what's more, the members of the IPG are happy to keep it that way.
It would be interesting to know how the 60 councillors would vote, if given the opportunity
As I have said before, the IPG finds openness and transparency easier to talk about than to practice, so it is a virtual certainty that, when they meet Thursday, they will again opt to go into secret session.
It is to be hoped that the two opposition members will at least make an attempt to force the matter to a vote.
As an elected member, I have been sent details of what is being proposed but, having no immediate ambition to keep company with the sort of undesirables who appear before the standards committee, I am keeping that strictly to myself.
Though, now the actual figures have been broadcast on Radio Pembrokeshire, I am not sure that, given the principles established in the 'Spycatcher' case, divulging information already in the public domain would be an offence.
However, there is information already in the public domain which may help Soduku enthusiasts to fill in the gaps.
1. According to the published accounts for 2004-2005, the council has one employee in the pay bracket £130,000 - £140,000 per annum.
2. When Mr Parry-Jones was engaged ten years ago, his salary was set at £63,000.
3. David Smith, Economics Editor of the Sunday Times, has calculated that compound inflation over this same ten-year period has been less than 30%.
4. The local government employers' website www.lg-employers.gov.uk/conditions/chief contains a table showing that, in 2004, the average salary for chief executives in counties with a population range 250,000 - 499,999 was £123,083, and the maximum £131,218.
5. Pembrokeshire has a population of 115,000.
Of course, the recommendation before Thursday's meeting may be for a pay cut, a pay rise, or a pay standstill.
You will have to factor in your own assumptions about that.
PS I notice the news item about the chief executive's salary has disappeared from the airwaves. Has Radio Pembrokeshire been nobbled? I think we should be told.
It will be interesting to what, if anything appears in the local papers!
I am told by a mole in county hall that the chief executive has been recently been seen driving a "Chelsea Tractor" aka Landrover Discovery.
this has led to the suggestion that he needs a pay rise in order to afford Gordon Brown's £40-a-year hike in the road fund licence.
French revolution In his book "The Rotten Heart of Europe" which deals with the iniquities of the ERM and the Euro, Bernard Connelly points out that France has never produced an economist of any note.
Indeed, according to Connelly, the enarques [graduates of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration] who run France take the view that free market economics is essentially an Anglo-Saxon disease.
As Connelly says: "For them, economics is not only a subject invented and developed by Anglo-Saxons, it is a subject fit only for Anglo-Saxons and their decadent liberal democratic societies. The servants of the enarque state have no need for economics: they have power instead (Connelly's emphasis throughout)".
Connelly was in the perfect position to know about these things because he was the Eurocrat charged with engineering the smooth transition to the single currency.
When he blew the whistle on the project, he was promptly sacked.
Unfortunately, economic reality has a rather inconvenient habit of intruding into even the technocrats' best laid schemes and the French economy is a basket case with low growth and unemployment at 10% - double that rate for the under 25s.
Things have become so serious that Dominique de Villepin, an enarque's enarque, who has risen to be Prime Minister of France without ever having to face an electorate, has decided to try to free up the sclerotic French labour market by bringing in a law that removes employment rights for people under 25 in their first job.
The Anglo-Saxon free market theory that underpins this policy is that employers who cannot shed labour when business is slack are likely to be reluctant to take on workers even when business is booming.
Students and trades unionists see this new law as an attack on the French social model and, in keeping with tradition, have taken to the streets.
On past form, it is only a matter of time before M de Villepin backs down.
However, sooner or later, the French will have to face up to the unpleasant reality that, in this increasingly globalised world, one man's job security is another man's place in the dole queue.
Any port in a storm Last week, I went along to county hall to inspect the file on the sale of the Mine Depot at Blackbridge Milford Haven.
As an ordinary bog standard member, restrictions are placed on what I am allowed to see.
However, there is a wealth of material available and I haven't yet given up hope on seeing the remainder.
Back in June the Cabinet agreed to sell the Mine Depot to an unnamed company (now known to be Haven Facilities Ltd (HFL) which had been incorporated only two weeks earlier) on undisclosed terms that were to be "acceptable to the Director of Development".
Old Grumpy wonders if members of the Cabinet demonstrate the same degree of indifference when disposing of their own assets.
Anyway, news of this cosy deal was leaked to the press, and that prompted another bidder to enter the fray with a bid that was far in excess of anything HFL was prepared to pay.
It was then decided to sell the whole site by way of an informal tender process.
For some reason, after the bids were in, this tender exercise was abandoned and a new one, involving only part of the site, was initiated.
The highest bidder on this second tender process - closing date 7 October 2005 -was Cleddau Enterprises Ltd (CEL) - a consortium of local movers and shakers.
To most people's way of looking at things (tender process - highest bid wins) that should have been the end of the matter.
However, sales of publicly owned land have long been bedeviled by S 123(2) of the Local Government Act 1972 which obliges local authorities to sell for the best consideration (price) that can reasonably be obtained.
So when Milford Haven Port Authority (MHPA) submitted a higher bid the council had no alternative but to consider it.
And, having considered it, the Cabinet decided to accept it.
I attended that Cabinet meeting and the factor that convinced the sceptics to accept this bid was that there was a promise of a container port at the end of it.
The Cabinet was told: "Subsequent to that [second tender process] a formal offer was received from MHPA. Working with HFL they are proposing a major port related facility. Port facilities would provide a long term advantage."
However, when I inspected the file, I discovered that this container port was little more than a gleam in the eye.
On 9 June 2005, HFL wrote to the council outlining its plans for the site.
In the "longer term" these included: "To explore the economic viability of the provision of a container port".
Things seem not to have progressed much during the summer of 2005 because the proposals that accompanied HFL's bid on 7 October included "Explore economic viability of a container port."
There is nothing in the file to indicate that these plans have been firmed up since then and the suspicion remains that the container port is simply a carrot to be dangled in front of the noses of the Cabinet.
Hospital pass I tend not to get involved in matters concerning the health service - after all, there are plenty of people out there campaigning on the issue who know a great deal more about the subject than me.
However, when I heard the latest proposals to emerge from the latest Welsh Assembly; "Designed to Deliver" on Radio Wales this morning, I nearly fell out of bed.
It seems that we are being offered a choice between the awful and the abysmal, though I am not quite sure which of the two crackpot schemes on offer merits which description.
How forcing everyone, except the few who live between Haverfordwest and Carmarthen, to travel an extra 30 miles every time they visit hospital (The super hospital at Whitland) can be thought to be even remotely sustainable, is beyond me.
Nor can I immediately see the attraction in making patients from Pembrokeshire endure a 65 mile round trip to Carmarthen (option 2).
Indeed, the only obvious beneficiaries of these proposed changes are the owners of filling stations and Tory candidates for the Welsh Assembly.
I suspect Dick Parry had a hand in this!
You are what you eat
One of my few concessions to the health fascists who have come to dominate our society is to have kippers for breakfast twice a week.
This is not too much of an imposition because I actually like kippers, though the smell that pervades the house for most of the day is something of a deterrent.
Now I read in the papers that new research has shown that, far from being a panacea, oily fish may actually be bad for you.
So, in future, instead of feeling virtuous when indulging in this "healthy eating" experience, I will be wracked with guilt.
Salvation is at hand, however, because I just heard on the news that oily fish is good for the brain.
If this is so, this week's offering should be of outstandingly high quality because over the past five days I have breakfasted on kippers (twice) and lunched on smoked mackerel (twice) and sardines on toast.
Conversely, if this theory has any validity, readers should be able to make statements about my previous week's diet based on what they read.
As in: "What a load of rubbish! He should lay off the pork pies".
However, a House of Lords debate on culling grey squirrels may point the way to an alternative source of cholesterol-free protein.
According to one of their Lordships, as grey squirrel can be used as a substitute for chicken, hunting them could become a profitable business.
The free market solution, I suppose!
A word of caution, however!
Presumably, if squirrel was ever to replace chicken on the supermarket shelves, it would need to carry the warning: "May contain nuts".
Cheers! Speculation grows in the Westminster village, and further afield, about the likely date of Mr Blair's departure from No 10.
Old Grumpy believes that the 'cash for coronets' affair has much much further to run and that the good ship Blair, already holed below the waterline, will go down before the year is out.
And it is not the Tories; themselves up to their necks in dodgy funding deals, who will launch the torpedoes, but ordinary Labour party members who are becoming increasingly uneasy with their Leader's love affair with big business.
When I mentioned to my socialist friend that I thought Blair would be gone by Christmas, he poo-pooed the idea, so, never afraid to put my money where my mouth is, I bet him a bottle of Chilean Merlot.
And, when I ventured that Mr Blair wouldn't be making the Leader's speech at October's party conference, he generously offered me an eagerly accepted 2:1,
Knowing New Labour's penchant for bending the rules to suit their own ends, I want to put my understanding of the terms of this bet on a formal footing.
Firstly, when the wine is handed over, whichever way it goes, it will be in the form of a gift, not a loan.
Secondly, the wine in question will be of a suitable quality.
No trying to fob me off with inferior bottles of the £2.99.
What we are talking about is my usual tipple - the £3.99, or should that be £4.03 after the unprincipled raid on wine drinkers' wallets in Mr Bown's last appearance as Chancellor (I hope).
oldgrumpy.mike@virgin.net