Old Grumpy was disappointed that the local press wasn't represented
at last week's meeting of the county council's standards committee
where Cllr Wyn Evans (IPG) was found guilty of breaching the Code
of Conduct by speaking in favour of a friend's planning application
(Overtrained)
Too busy tracking down someone who was having his head shaved
for charity and regurgitating county council press releases, I
would guess.
In a healthy democracy, there is a constant tension between those
who hold power and those whose task is to stop them abusing it.
Among the latter are the opposition, of which I am proud to be
a member, and the media.
The media plays a very important part in this process because
it has the ability to inform the public of what is going on.
At a national level, despite occasional excesses, the press and
broadcasting media do a first rate job of drawing attention to
abuses of power by the ruling classes.
Can you imagine any of the daily papers failing to inform its
readers about a case where a member of the governing party had
lied to investigators during the course of an inquiry.
In "1984", Winston Smith had the task of rewriting history
at the Ministry of Truth.
This involved going through old documents expunging facts that
the regime found inconvenient.
Think how much trouble might have been saved had these facts not
been allowed to become history in the first place.
Nothing about this matter has yet appeared on the WT's website
and I await tomorrow's edition with interest.
Any newspaper that took its democratic duty seriously might
also draw its readers' attention to the fact that two out of the
six members of the county council's standards committee - Cllrs
Robin Evans and Leslie Raymond - are members of the same political
group (IPG) as Cllr Wyn Evans.
As I pointed out last week, in his report the Ombudsman stated:
"The provisions of the code of conduct relating to the declaration
of interests are designed to secure public confidence in the decisions
taken by council by avoiding not just the reality of bias, but
also the appearance of potential bias (my emphasis) on
the part of members taking those decisions."
I can hardly think that that having two fellow party members on
the panel adjudicating breaches of the Code of Conduct satisfies
these conditions especially the bit about "the appearance
of potential bias".
After the standards committee had decided that Cllr Wyn Evans
had breached the code it then had to decide what punishment, if
any, to impose.
The possibilities ranged from no further action, through formal
censure, to up to six months suspension.
During this phase of the proceedings, Cllr Robin Evans asked "the
defendant" if he would agree to having "one-to-one training"
with the Monitoring Officer.
Naturally, Cllr Wyn Evans was keen on this idea, though I suspect
he would have agreed to display his bum in Burtons' window if
it meant avoiding suspension.
In any case, I hardly think members of the tribunal should be
seeking the defendants approval for whatever punishment is to
be meted out.
Cllr Raymond's contribution was even more bizarre.
He pointed out that the application site was not in Cllr Wyn Evans
ward and the reason he had spoken out on the issue was because
the local member was the applicant's brother-in-law who clearly
had a declarable interest in the matter.
So what?
A couple of years ago, I put down a Notice of Motion calling for
the replacement of these politicos on the standards committee
with people from outside the council.
Of course, I was accused of impugning the integrity of the two
members concerned when what I was doing was questioning the integrity
of the process, especially with regard to the public's perception
of bias.
But, as you can imagine, such fine distinctions are beyond the
grasp of members of the Independent Political (sic) Group.
The Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times"
is particularly apt during the present financial meltdown.
Where will it all end I ask myself, as events that seemed incredible
only yesterday become today's commonplace.
We have now reached the stage where even countries are going bust.
Unfortunately, government attempts to address the crisis only
seem to make things worse.
Take, for instance, the perfectly reasonable proposal that the
state should recapitalise the banks by purchasing preference shares.
Such a move would dilute (devalue) the holdings of he present
shareholders and, once news leaked out that the government and
the big banks were in discussions, it was inevitable that there
would be a wholesale flight from bank shares as investors looked
to dump their soon to be devalued stock.
That, of course, put further pressure on the banks by closing
off the option of raising capital by means of a rights issue.
It has just been announced on the radio that the Chancellor is
to fill the hole in the banks' balance sheets by shovelling in
£50 billion of taxpayers money.
While that might provide some temporary respite, it must be remembered
that the infill material has been excavated from the rather large
crater that is the public finances.
In the fullness of time, that hole will have to be filled by either
tax increases, or public spending cuts, or both.
To compound the problem, these efforts to repair the public finances
will take place against a background of falling economic growth
because, while government intervention might keep the banking
system afloat it will be a long time before it is restored to
full seaworthiness.
As old Adam Smith observed, economic phenomena are closely interconnected.
The problem is that the links are not always obvious and action
in one area can have unforeseen effects elsewhere.
So expect more examples of the law of unintended consequences
as the financial system tries to unwind the excesses of the past
ten years in the days and weeks ahead.
And there is always the nightmare scenario that, despite this
massive injection of taxpayers money, the banks will still go
down.
As a pessimist (defined as an optimist with experience), I do
not discount that possibility.
My grammar correspondent Isa Pedant has drawn my attention
to the "Pembrokeshire Association of Local Councils (sic)
Diary." which includes "Entry's (sic) for date 10/25/2008".
Right number of apostrophes - pity they're in the wrong place.
I approach this subject with some caution because Isa (shouldn't
that be I'sa) has, on several occasions, e-mailed to point out
my own infelicities in this respect.
I e-mail back to explain that I was off school with measles when
we did apostrophes, though after I cited chicken pox (commas)
mumps (spelling) and a shoulder dislocated playing rugby (split
infinitives) he replied, with just a hint of sarcasm: "It
seems you were a rather delicate child".
However, since leaving school I have made strenuous efforts, in
the name of lifelong learning, to master the apostrophe, and I
now consider myself something of an authority on the subject.
I even know the difference between its and it's.
So much so that I am prepared to take issue with my treasured
copy of Fowler which includes a section on the greengrocers'
apostrophe in which he gives apple's, cauli's and cabbage's as
examples of this common grammatical monstrosity.
Fowler also says that it is correct to use an apostrophe to indicate
that a word has been truncated, though he concedes that it is
no longer necessary to use the form 'phone, to denote that tele
has been omitted from the front of the word, or 'cello [violoncello]
because these have now been accepted as words in their own right.
On this reckoning cauli's is correct because the apostrophe replaces
flower, and, for the same reason, pot's and tom's are perfectly
grammatical.
And please don't e-mail to point out that there shouldn't be an
apostrophe in the heading on this piece.
I was just checking that you were still awake.
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