News has reached me that Cllr Brian Hall's solicitors are "finalising"
a claim against me in respect of allegedly defamatory comments
that appeared in my Old Grumpy column in the Mercury.
As the offending article was published in March 2000, this claim
promises to be a mighty impressive document.
At least, it is to be hoped that after a 19-month gestation they
don't bring forth a mouse.
As you might imagine, Old Grumpy has not been idle during this
protracted phoney war.
I have been taking a keen interest in Cllr Hall's affairs with
a view to going fully armed into our eventual courtroom confrontation.
So, last
week, when I arrived at Pier House, Pembroke Dock, to conduct
my annual trawl through the council's books, my first port of
call was the file on members' expenses.
Inspection of Cllr Hall's claims yielded several eye-catching
items, including a trip to Cardiff on 6 December last year for
which he claimed 360 miles, which, if correct, would put the Welsh
capital on the outskirts of Stoke on Trent.
Then there is his practice, when travelling from his Pembroke
Dock base to Carmarthen, of going by way of Haverfordwest on both
legs of the journey.
I counted 30 occasions when this double detour was the chosen
route, costing the council some £400 in extra mileage and
toll payments.
Perhaps the council might consider buying him a decent road map
for Christmas.
But what really fascinated me was Cllr Hall's movements on 31
January and 1 February 2001.
On 31 January he left Pembroke Dock at 8.30 am bound for London
(via Haverfordwest, of course)
The reason for this trip to the metropolis was to attend a bash
in the House of Commons as a representative of the Mid and West
Wales Fire Authority, of which he is a member.
He booked in at the Jarvis International Hotel in Hyde Park, before
making his way to the Palace of Westminster.
The House of Commons do started at 5pm and went on to 8.30 with
the last hour and a half being devoted to drinks on the terrace
overlooking the Thames.
All I know about Cllr Hall's extra-parliamentary activities on
that night is that he claimed £44 in respect of three taxi
rides; £51 for expenditure in the Mandarin Kitchen; and
ran up phone charges of £8.40 at his hotel, including one
costing £5.50 timed at 11.23.
The following morning he pointed his 2.3 litre Mercedes towards
the west, and home a round trip of 520 miles.
According to his expense claim, at 2pm on the same day he was
back in Pembroke Dock and climbing into the Merc to drive to Swansea
to attend a meeting of the South Wales Integrated Transport Consortium
(SWITCH).
He must have been a bit pressed for time because, for once, he
headed straight up the A477 to St Clears.
On the way back from Swansea, his expense claim reveals, he did
make the detour through Haverfordwest arriving home in Pembroke
Dock at 5.45.
By now you will be asking the same question as me: why didn't
he call in at Swansea on the way back from London, saving himself
all that stressful driving and the taxpayers 130 miles at 48.5p
(£62.40)?
Well, I suppose, the most obvious explanation is that he had some
urgent business to attend to which required his presence in Pembroke
Dock.
At this point I must digress and say that I had no idea that the
success of my five-year campaign, to require councillors to produce
receipts to justify their subsistence claims, would produce such
wholly agreeable results.
In this case, these receipts - the products of that wonder of
modern technology, the electronic till - provide a detailed picture
of Cllr Hall's whereabouts on February 1st.
Firstly, the credit card receipt attached to his hotel bill is
timed at 10.13am on February 1, leaving only three and three-quarter
hours to get from Hyde Park to Pembroke Dock (via Haverfordwest)
by 2.00pm.
By the time he crossed the Severn Bridge (at 12.56 according to
the ticket in his file) he had just over an hour left to complete
140 miles.
It appears that, once back on Welsh soil, Cllr Hall started to
feel a bit peckish and pulled into the First Motorway Service
Station, near Chepstow, where he tucked into a "Large Fizz"
and a "Daily Spec[ial]" cost £7.18.
According to the receipt this meal was paid for at 13.08 (eight
minutes past one) and, as it is a self-service facility, it still
had to be eaten.
So, we can conclude that, unless he had access to Alwyn Luke's
Tardis, the probability of Cllr Hall setting off from Pembroke
Dock at 2.00pm that day, to attend a meeting in Swansea, is somewhere
between nil and vanishing point.
I can't wait to see him in the witness box.
And to think that February 1st is my birthday.
How very thoughtful!
I have received some interesting intelligence from a mole,
with contacts in the Independent Political (sic) Group, following
my revelation in last week's column that Cllr Mark Edwards had
been called before The Leader, Cllr Maurice Hughes, to explain
why he was backing a referendum for an elected mayor, contrary
to official party policy.
My mole tells me that, originally, Cllr Edwards was to have faced
a three-man Inquisition comprising The Leader, his deputy Cllr
John Allen-Mirehouse (the Laird of Angle) and Brian "Rottweiler"
Hall.
It appears that news reached these tinpot Torquemadas that if
they tried to bully and intimidate the councillor known as Chicken
Eddie (after the Fish and Chip emporium he owns, opposite County
Hall) they might find themselves in the pit with a fully spurred
fighting cock.
Or, to press the poultry metaphor to its limits, he would tell
them to stick their Independent Political (sic) Group up their
duck-runs.
That would have created a lot of publicity, which, given the public's
affection for those who are prepared to stand up to control freaks
(Ken Livingston, Rhodri Morgan) would not have reflected well
on the Independents.
In short, to be seen to be twisting Chicken Eddie's arm would
have the press sniping at them, which could cook their electoral
goose. Or, to put it another way, the idea of subjecting the mild-mannered
member for Prendergast to the third degree was a bit of a turkey.
(That's enough Christmas dinners. Ed)
My information is that the leader quailed at this possibility
and decided to have an informal man-to-man chat with Cllr Edwards
to sort out their differences.
At this point my mole becomes a bit vague.
He tells me that, while the Laird and 'Rottweiler' were not at
the meeting, he has evidence that a third person was present.
This person, he assures me, was "a senior County Council
officer", though he declines to be more specific.
Naturally, being a keen student of the Kremlinology of County
Hall, I have my own hunch about the identity of this mysterious
third person, but, knowing how much the apparatchiks in the Lubianca
on Cleddau would welcome the chance to "sue the arse off
me", as one of them once, graphically, put it, I will, for
the moment, keep my thoughts to myself.
However, I am in no doubt about the broad reliability of my mole's
information.
So, why would a "senior County Council officer" be taking
an interest in this internal "party" spat?
And, even more important, why should the taxpayer be paying for
the involvement of a civil servant, who is, according to the law,
supposed to be above politics?
Well, the answer to the first question is really rather simple:
the Chief Officers Management Board (COMB) knows that an elected
Mayor, with a county-wide mandate, would destroy the absolute
power that they now enjoy as a result of their hold over their
puppets in the Independent Political (sic) Group.
That is why one wag has suggested that COMB stands for "Control
Over Maurice's Boys".
The answer to the second question is simpler still and is to be
found in Lord Acton's famous dictum: "All power corrupts
and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
When you have absolute power you don't have to worry about trivialities
like constitutional principles and the rule of law.
Transport Secretary Steven Byers has said that the, now, notorious
e-mail sent by his chief spin-doctor, Jo Moore, within an hour
of the second plane hitting the World Trade Centre, was "a
terrible error of judgement".
Complete lack of judgement, if you ask me, coupled with cold-blooded
cynicism and a total lack of basic human decency.
Blairite MP Stephen Pound came on the Today programme one morning
last week to defend la Moore.
He excused her behaviour by suggesting that when she sent the
offending e-mail she had no idea of the seriousness of the attack
in New York.
Well, she may not have realised that the building was about to
collapse resulting in a death toll of thousands but surely she
had the imagination to see that hundreds had already perished
in the initial impacts.
In any case, an hour after the second impact, the flames were
consuming the upper floors of the towers and people were making
the awful decision to jump rather than face incineration.
When another Blairite loyalist, Ben Bradshaw MP, tried to run
the Pound defence past the Any Questions audience on Friday night,
he was, I am pleased to say, greeted by hoots of derision and
gasps of disbelief.
Thankfully, there are plenty of people in the Labour Party, including
several Cabinet ministers, whose sense of what is moral and decent
has not been corrupted by the pursuit of power and the smart money
says that Ms Moore's days are numbered.
I also read that the spread betting companies are offering quite
attractive odds to anyone who wishes to have a punt on Mr Byers
surviving beyond Christmas.
Ms Moore also stands accused of lying to a Sunday Times journalist.
Apparently, David Parsley, of the paper's business staff received
a tip off that the Government was about to put Railtrack into
receivership.
Mr Parsley rang Jo Moore to check the veracity of the story.
At first she refused to answer his questions but when he told
her the paper was going to print the story anyway she retorted:
"If you run that you will look like a f***ing idiot".
This is a classic example of the spin-doctor's art of avoiding
the direct lie.
Old Grumpy remembers the day when one of my moles in County Hall
contacted me to say that a member of staff in the finance department
had been arrested in connection with a payroll fraud.
I rang the press office to check the story out.
About half an hour later a junior spin-doctor, who has since left
the authority, rang back to say that he had made enquiries in
the finance department but had drawn a blank.
Note: this is not a denial of the truth of the story, merely an
attempt to give the impression that it is not true.
"Can you give me some more details?" he asked.
I must say I saw through this ruse straight away.
If someone had indeed been arrested then why would I have more
details than the finance department?
His game was to find out how much I knew so that a calculation
could be made as to the chances of fobbing (fibbing?) me off.
"Oh well", I said, "if they don't know about it,
it can't be true." Adding, "Can you put your denial
in writing and I will write a piece along the lines ' Council
denies payroll fraud rumours'".
Faced with the prospect of having to commit a lie to paper, it
was not long before he was back on the phone to tell me that he
had now discovered that the story was true after all.