email: oldgrumpy.mike@virgin.net
On 30 September I sent the following email to the County Council's Economic Development Department.
I have recently received a letter from the Audit Commission in Wales regarding a complaint I made about £51expenses claimed by Cllr Brian Hall in respect of a meal purchased at the Mandarin Kitchen Queensway London on 31 January 2001[While on a trip to the House of Commons to attend a Fire Service reception].
With regard to this claim, the auditor says: "Cllr Hall claimed £51 for a meal at the Mandarin Kitchen. The Council inform me that this 'represents the reimbursement of reasonable expenses incurred related to the provision of hospitality in pursuing an inward investment opportunity for the Council and the payment is not therefore the Dinner allowance under the Members' Allowance Scheme.' "
Are you able to tell me:
(a) the name of the company/individual who Cllr Hall was pursuing;
(b) was this meeting arranged beforehand by your department;
(c) whether Cllr Hall reported the outcome of this meeting to your department;
(d) did Cllr Hall's pursuit of this inward investment opportunity lead to any positive results;
(e) is it usual for members to undertake such duties.Your department will, no doubt, have a file on this particular "inward investment opportunity" and I would be grateful if you could let me know when it will be convenient for me to come into County Hall to inspect it.
On 14 October I received the following reply.
just to let you know that your E mail is receiving attention and I shall respond very shortly.Since then - silence.
'Shortly' is defined in my dictionary as 'soon'
Presumably, 'very shortly' = 'very soon'
Not that it matters too much because I fully expect to be told, as I and others have been in the past, that I have failed to establish my "need to know" this information.
I will return to "need to know" next week when I intend to discuss the Notice of Motion I have submitted requiring disclosure of the statement given to the police on the council's (our?) behalf, by the Director of Finance Mr Mark Lewis, regarding Cllr Brian Hall's claim for travelling expenses on the day after he ate the Chinese (see The Time Lord).
Flawed opinions During a general discussion/debate in the County Hall tea room, on the wisdom, or otherwise, of hunting/smoking/smacking bans, one of my fellow councillors told us that opinion polls in Scotland showed that 70% of the electorate were in favour of the prohibition of smoking in enclosed public spaces.
This, I think, was supposed to be the knockdown argument.
However, the only things that opinion polls and election results tell us is what people think.
They tell us nothing about what is, and isn't, true.
If you assert that what the people believe is the final arbiter, then, logically, you have to be against the Euro and pro-hanging.
While it would be perfectly consistent to take the view that you will always follow public opinion, it is not an infallible or reliable guide to what is right.
One problem is that public opinion can change, but the truth doesn't.
A few hundred years ago, the vast majority believed that the Sun went round the Earth.
But as we now know they were wrong because the truth is that the Earth has always gone round the Sun.
Even expert opinion is unreliable.
If you had polled a hundred of the world's leading physicists in the late 1800s they would have all agreed that matter can neither be created nor destroyed (The Law of Conservation of Matter).
Along came Einstein with E=MC squared, followed a few years later by the atom bomb, and the Law of Conservation of Matter was blown clean out of the water.
If none of that convinces you, I would point out that Hitler and his allies won an election in November 1933 with 93% of the vote.
Can all those Germans have been wrong?
You bet!
And Hitler proves another very important point: being elected doesn't necessarily make you a democrat.
It's all in the genes Two stories, both loosely linked to the theory of evolution, caught my eye in last Sunday's newspapers.
The first, under the headline " 'God gene' discovered by scientists..." recorded that researchers in America (where else?) had isolated a gene that gives those who possess it the capacity to believe in God.
If this is true, it is compelling evidence for the non-existence of a loving God because, surely, no such Deity would condemn a section of His creation to the fires of Hell merely on the outcome of a genetic lottery.
The second story concerned a 'kiss and tell' book by a former lover of Senator John Kerry in which it is claimed that the defeated Presidential candidate was "like a caveman in the bedroom."
Even leaving aside the fact that caves didn't have bedrooms, this is an unlikely story because, from what we know of those brutish, far off days, it seems probable that our cavemen ancestors were too busy with hunter-gathering and predator-avoidance strategies to have much time for the long nights of passion that the description of Sen Kerry's bedroom activities would suggest.
What needs to be remembered is that, in those ancient, pre-historic times, sexual intercourse was an extremely dangerous activity because while your attention was concentrated elsewhere some dirty big lion was likely to take the opportunity to creep up behind and have you for lunch.
So, the quicker you could get the job done, the better.
And, of course, that is why all the higher animals do it the way they do.
That way, if some predator does come along and spoil the fun, it is the expendable males that get the chop while the females can escape with only their dignity at risk.
Some species of birds have taken this strategy to extremes by decking the males out in garishly coloured feathers in order to encourage what is known as "asymmetric prey-selection".
For much the same reason, it is usually male humans that fight wars.
This may seem unfair but, just remember, it used to be a jungle out there.
Dismasted Last week I wrote about the attempts of certain Cabinet members to have a planning application for a telecommunications mast near Uzmaston refused.
This despite the planning officer's advice that not only would the applicants almost certainly succeed on appeal but that there was a strong likelihood that the council would also have to pay their costs.
As I pointed out, if the planning officer is correct, it means we will end up with the mast and a bill for costs and for what benefit.
Quite by chance, three mast applications were approved last week by no less an authority than the Court of Appeal.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to get hold of the full report but, according to the BBC website Mr Justice Laws, giving the judgment of the Court, said: "It remains central government's responsibility to decide what measures are necessary to protect public health."
I take this to mean that, provided that emissions from the masts under consideration are within government guidelines, they should, all other planning conditions being met, be approved.
Mr Justice Laws also said that 'perceived health concerns' should only be taken into account in exceptional circumstances.
In the meantime, all the opponents of these masts can do is put pressure on their MPs to tighten up the rules on their location.
Judging by the number of protesters at last week's planning meeting, there could be an opening for a political party that campaigns to outlaw mobile phones altogether.
Now, that would be progress.
Prevention is better than cure On Monday I attended a seminar in County Hall on the "Health, Social Care and Well-being strategy." where the assembled councillors were told that the latest thinking on health emphasises the promotion of wellness rather than the treatment of illness.
If people can be persuaded to lead healthy lifestyles, the experts told us, then the need for medical treatment, and the unsustainable strain that that puts on NHS resources, can be avoided.
I must admit this sounds rather like the health strategy adopted by my grandmother who was a great believer in the the theory that "prevention is better than cure", though it is hard to believe it can be that simple.
Whenever I went to stay with my her, the first thing she would do was to dose me with syrup of figs and a worming tablet.
This was preventative medicine at its purest because this treatment was meted out regardless of whether you had worms or suffered from constipation.
The only concession to the harshness of this enforced medication was that the small green worming tablet (I think they were originally intended for the dog) was concealed in a spoonful of jam.
Thereafter, every day started with dollops of Crooks' emulsion; cod liver oil and malt; and rose hip syrup, administered, presumably, to counter the possible adverse effects of the regular breakfast of bacon, sausages, black pudding, eggs and bread, all fried in the best beef dripping.
They were butchers, you see.
My mother seems to have inherited this passion for preventive medicine because, at the first sign of a cold, my brother and I would be sent off to school with our upper bodies swathed in strips of blanket soaked in goose grease.
And she wondered why we had no friends!
But I digress.
A chap from the WLGA, their health specialist, no less, informed us that the councillors' role in all this was to provide "community leadership".
This is a fine sounding idea except that nobody could offer a comprehensible definition of what it meant.
I did manage to establish that it didn't mean that I would be expected to wander around Hakin encouraging my constituents to take more exercise; eat less fat; give up smoking; or drink no more than two glasses of red wine per day.
This was something of a relief because, knowing some of the people who live in that part of Milford Haven, I would be more than likely be told, with every justification, to bugger off and mind my own business.
Of course there is no denying that the County Council is involved in a thousand and one ways, from rubbish collection, through accident prevention, to food safety, in protecting and promoting the health a well-being of the people.
What I can't understand is why all these routine activities have to be glorified as a strategy.
And the other thing that bothers me is the ease with which information can slide into propaganda, and encouragement into browbeating.
I am all for people adopting healthy lifestyles even if it's not something I practice myself.
But, as John Reed said in Parliament today, ultimately these are matters for the individual to decide.
email: oldgrumpy.mike@virgin.net