Carwyn embraces the Big Society

The Guardian reports that the Welsh Government and some Labour and Tory councils are preparing to fund food banks run by charities (usually religious groups) as a way of tackling cuts next year to the Social Fund (see story here).

Families facing extreme hardship who would previously have been able to apply for emergency aid to buy food, pay for fuel, etc. will instead be sent along to local voluntary groups.

Carmarthenshire County Council has been steadily moving down this route for some time. Former leader Meryl Gravell made no secret of her support for the "Big Society" as a way of reducing pressure on council budgets. Then as now Labour was in coalition with Meryl's Independents, and now that Carwyn Jones has apparently seen the light, we can expect an acceleration of religious outsourcing.

This week Ellen ap Gwynn, Plaid leader of Ceredigion, tweeted the link to the Guardian piece, an action which neatly encapsulated the differing attitudes of these neighbouring authorities on at least two levels. After all Kevin Madge, who believes that Twitter is dangerous, has consistently supported Big Society outsourcing in Carmarthenshire.

Not all voluntary groups are religious, of course, but certainly in Wales Christian groups play a very large role. The problem for government and the rest of us is how to tell the good ones from the others. Which ones can be trusted to give a decent, reliable service free from abuse, discrimination and other malpractice?

And there are just so many churches, sects, groups - whatever you want to call them. No matter how loopy or extreme, every Christian group describes itself as "mainstream". The Catholics, the Anglicans, the Methodists, the Independents, the Baptists, the Seventh Day Adventists, Pentecostalists and all of the many others claim to be mainstream, even though they are worlds apart in practice and belief.

The Catholics are pretty mainstream, but as an organisation the church has an appalling record of paedophile priests, cover-ups, sadistic nuns and monks entrusted with caring for children and vulnerable adults, financial scandals and breathtaking bigotry from members of the hierarchy. If you think that is all a thing of the past, take a look at the press in mainland Europe.

At the other end of the spectrum we have well-attested examples of brain-washing, psychological manipulation, financial scandals, fraudulent spiritual "healers", homophobia, ill-treatment of women, ostracisation, and so on.

Of course, mixed in with all this are countless decent church members, but the rotten apples are always there, and comings and goings mean that church membership is constantly changing. How is a council supposed to monitor that across every church or group it may be in partnership with?

As observers of this whacky scene know, many of these religious groups also have a chameleon like expertise when it comes to PR and media management. When Mercy Ministries came under fire for its emphasis on demonic possession, the organisation blandly announced that it was withdrawing the offending manuals and replacing them with new ones. The manuals remain secret.

And what are the motives of all of these voluntary groups? For the majority of rank and file members and volunteers it may be compassion, duty or love of humanity. But the suspicion always remains, particularly among the evangelical groups, that winning new recruits, "saving souls" or whatever you want to call it is what drives much of this activity, particularly in the higher levels of these organisations.

Last year Carmarthenshire County Council organised a Christmas toy box appeal. The council, police and other public bodies collected toys which were then passed on to a group which included three fundamentalist evangelical churches. Under the Equalities Act 2010 it should probably have carried out a kind of risk assessment to ensure that the churches would not discriminate or abuse their position. From a Freedom of Information request earlier this year we know that no such assessment was carried out.

The council is also, as we know, an enthusiastic supporter of Towy Community Church, and much praise has been lavished on the church's schemes for a food bank, furniture recycling centre and debt counselling service. Just as with the toyboxes, the council should almost certainly have carried out an assessment under the Equalities Act before committing almost £1.5m of public money to the church's schemes. It didn't.

The church's plans for the former St Ivel creamery in Johnstown include what the architects describe as a suite of counselling and therapy rooms. Therapy? Counselling?

The debt counselling plans help cast light on likely motivation. As this blog has asked before, what was wrong with existing voluntary groups, including the CAB (desperate for volunteers by the way) that made the church want to set up its own separate service? Why didn't it encourage its members to go along and join CAB instead?

As Caebrwyn discovered, Towy Community Church will be offering this service in partnership with a group called Christians Against Poverty which ran into a spot of bother with the national umbrella group Advice UK because its methods were "incompatible" with those of other Advice UK members (see article here). In plain terms, the Christian group saw debt counselling as an opportunity to evangelise.

Some councillors in Carmarthenshire appear to think that just because an organisation describes itself as Christian, that is good enough. Just close your eyes, and hope for the best.

Let's hope that the Welsh Government and our councils take a long, hard look at what they are getting themselves into before they dismantle care services and hand them over to these eager volunteers.

Sbam yn Gymraeg

Fel pawb arall dw i'n hen gyfarwydd ag e-byst o Nigeria (Mrs Ojebiwa requests urgent reply) a'r banciau (Upgrade your Halifx Online Banking Account Now!), ond ces i e-bost gan "Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru" yr wythnos hon. Oeddwn i wedi ennill y set gyfan?

Nac o'n. Agorais i'r e-bost, ac wele, dim byd ond dolen gyda'r gair brazil ynddi. Sbam gyda feirws, mae'n debyg. A sbam deallus mewn ffordd, achos fy mod i'n defnyddio'r geiriadur.

Oes rhywun arall wedi cael rhywbeth tebyg? Oes rhywun wedi hacio i mewn i'r system?

What's not in the papers this week - Updated

Update 24 August

In striking contrast to our local newspaper, the London-based Guardian has published an obituary of the late Eileen Beasley written by her grandson, Cynog Prys. You can read it here.

Eileen was a remarkable and brave woman, and we owe her a debt of gratitude. Heddwch i'w llwch. May she rest in peace.

*****************************************

If asked, most of the dwindling number of people who buy a local paper would say that they buy it in order to keep up with the local news. In the case of the Carmarthen Journal there must be other reasons for forking out 65p.

Despite recent changes to its personnel, the paper's editorial policy towards the county council appears still to be a case of only printing what County Hall tells it to print.

Last week we had a big feature celebrating the St Catherine's Walk shopping centre, complete with some rather dubious facts and figures courtesy of the council's press office.

This week, readers of the Teifi Valley edition will have been pleased to see a picture of pupils of Ysgol Gyfun Emlyn celebrating their A Level results. What readers who rely on the Carmarthen Journal for their news would not know is that the school has been experiencing a difficult time since the publication of a very critical Estyn report earlier this summer. The headmaster left, and it is unlikely that there will be a replacement until early next year. Not long after the report was published, a packed emergency meeting was held at the school to explain to concerned parents what was happening.

Of course, this did not reflect well on Carmarthenshire County Council or its Education Department which has been accused of starving the school of funding and resources.

None of this appeared in the Journal, although the Cambrian News, which normally ignores this southern extremity of its patch, ran a lengthy and dramatic report on the affair.

Last week the Western Mail picked up an important story about the long running dispute between Carmarthenshire's chief executive, Mark James, and Councillor Siân Caiach. Mr James had bombarded the Public Services Ombudsman with complaints alleging that Cllr Caiach had breached the councillors code of conduct. The ombudsman dismissed every single complaint and had some important things to say about freedom of speech.

The Journal appears not to have noticed, just as it also failed to spot news about another controversy involving the council and the ombudsman in a case involving planning enforcement, a blacklisting by the council of an elderly couple and a libel suit.

It is probably a fair bet that many of the readers of the Journal are mature in years and that they would have been saddened to hear of the death of Mrs Eileen Beasley, one of the most remarkable women in the county's history. The story of Trefor and Eileen Beasley's campaign may even have interested younger readers and others who had never heard of them.

The Journal remained silent on this, and its sister paper in Llanelli managed only a paltry 10 lines.

It is also a fair bet that many of the Journal's readers will have been at some stage in their lives to the Elli Theatre in Llanelli; they may also have been interested to hear about Brynaman Lido, built by miners in the 1930s and now, like the theatre, being shut for good by the council. Both stories made it on to BBC radio but failed to find space in the Journal.

On the other hand readers were treated to a story about a collection of local photographs, accompanied by a black and white photograph of Meryl Gravell's wedding.

Next week: Pam Palmer's holiday snaps: 1966 - Caravanning in Grimsby.

Strictly come developing

No, it's not Anne Widdecombe

For reasons we can only guess at, Carmarthenshire County Council has gone very quiet about Dai Greene, but a new love affair appears to be blossoming with someone who has a full head of hair and lots of gold.

Robbie Savage and a business partner recently received outline planning permission for a hotel at Meryl's favourite race course just down the road from her home in Trimsaran. The twinkle-toed former football player and several other notables, including planning consultant Stuart Owen, have now been shown around the Hub in Llanelli and given the run-down on the council's on-going development projects.

Mr Owen will be familiar to observers of the Carmarthenshire planning scene for his involvement in many of the county's more interesting planning applications, including a bitterly contested, controversial housing development at Waungilwen near Drefach Felindre. Councillors initially rejected that application, but miraculously overturned their own decision a few months later.

The council press release breathlessly tells us that Town Centre Manager Andrew Shufflebotham was on hand during the visit to outline the projects the county council is involved with.

Mr Shufflebotham said: “We have £60m in investment coming together. There is the £4m investment in the Library, the cinema in East Gate where the Odeon has bought the interest and it could become their flagship in the region, there’s Nando’s, and a brand new theatre at Y Ffwrnes. Town centres have to change and become more leisure oriented and 24/7.”

On the same day that the press office churned this out, Llanelli residents learned that the council's Grade II listed, art deco Elli Theatre is being axed. Presumably it was not sufficiently leisure oriented and 24/7. Why waste money in restoring this relic of days gone by when mega contracts could be awarded to a developer for a brand new theatre?

Also today listeners to Radio Cymru would have heard Llanelli councillors saying that parts of the town are becoming "like an open prison" (story in Welsh here from the BBC), but the press office was unable to find space to cover that news item.

Robbie hinted that another possible project will be a care village on part of the 18 acre site behind the planned hotel.

All of which will be a stone's throw from a mammoth executive housing development. Readers interested in local history may wish to peruse some back numbers from Caebrwyn's catalogue, beginning here.

Parts of Llanelli may be turning into an open prison, but there will definitely not be any riff-raff in Tre-Meryl.

A tale of two towns

The council headquarters of Carmarthenshire and neighbouring Ceredigion neatly symbolise the radically different cultures of the two local authorities.

The ancient town of Carmarthen is dominated by the former prison which now houses the county council. High on a bluff overlooking the old river meadows, now partly covered by a sprawling and incredibly ugly retail park, glowers the granite bulk of County Hall, protected from the rest of the town by the largely fake turrets and walls of the old castle. Visitors are greeted by a uniformed attendant who operates a traffic barrier before they enter the gloomy building. Parked in special reserved spaces in front of the building are various shiny black BMWs and Mercedes.

Members of the public who want to observe a public meeting are made to go through an intimidating, Kafka-esque procedure involving reading statements and filling out forms with personal details, including their home address, before being escorted to the public gallery that smells of BO, boiled cabbage and mildew. There they are locked in with only a partial view of the chamber below, and the heat is often stifling.

By contrast, visitors to the Penmorfa headquarters of Ceredigion County Council in Aberaeron will find a pleasant, modern building by the sea. There are no security guards, and the grounds are open. Visitors arriving by car can just drive up and park, and there are no heavy-handed entry procedures.

In Carmarthen the centre of gravity has now shifted away from the old heart of the town to a shiny new shopping mall; the American term seems appropriate here. The Carmarthen Journal devoted a big spread to praising St Catherine's Walk this week, reporting that the last two empty units have just been taken. The gushing prose and the figures quoted, courtesy presumably of the council press office, painted a picture of phenomenal success and a town swimming against the tide of decline.

Perhaps there is something in all of this, but the boarded up shops in the old town centre tell a different story.

As luck would have it, I reluctantly had to pay a visit to St Catherine's Walk late in the morning on Thursday. It was one of those days when the sun shines one minute and it is overcast and dull the next, with the occasional shower thrown in. A day in mid-August at the height of the tourist season when you might have expected lots of visitors "from away" to be indulging in a bit of retail therapy.

After all, we've now got Miss Selfridge, Debenhams, Top Shop, Pizza Express, Orange, a Harvester "restaurant" and all the other shops you would expect to find in a shopping mall in Essex, Manchester, Hull or Croydon. Home from home for the visitors.

For all those grumpy old men who loathe shopping, Cneifiwr can at least report that going into Debenhams is not painful. In fact, it was like a retail version of the Marie Celeste. A determined male shopper could be in and out of there in less than 10 minutes, wife's present gift wrapped as well.

The rest of the shops did not seem to be any busier either as Cneifiwr sped towards the market hall for a haircut (£8 and no appointment needed). Followed by a Cwtsh Bach breakfast, including mug of milky coffee, for £3.60.

The Market Hall was quite busy, and this part of the development at least seems to be a success and feels as though it is a part of the town rather than an alien graft.

According to the advertising feature article in the Journal, 7.4 million people visited St Catherine's Walk last year, and the place is attracting visitors from a 60-mile radius.

I did hear a Brummie and an American accent during my visit, so perhaps it should read 2,000 mile radius, but I somehow doubt that 7,399,999 other people have traipsed through the sterile concrete, glass and stone precinct in the last year. That's more than the entire population of the town every day. Or two and a half times the entire population of Wales every year. Bollocks.

To the right of the Journal puff was a timeline giving the history of the St Catherine's Walk development. This told a rather different story of protests and legal battles, big developers, bloody-minded councils and little people. It even included a subversive reference to Simons Group, the East Anglian developers whose advertising material features council chief executive Mark James, a customer of theirs when he was running Boston Borough Council.

At one point in the saga, townspeople were planning to hold a referendum on the proposed closure of St Catherine Street. Naturally, the council was opposed to any such exercise in consulting the people of Carmarthen. Eventually, after legal proceedings and months of stand-off, the council blinked.

A couple of miles away on the other side of Carmarthen, the council is now determinedly pushing through plans for a huge extension of the town in what is known as the Carmarthen West Planning Brief, with 1,200 houses. Huge questions remain over who will pay for the infrastructure, including a £4.5 million link road, and there is fierce opposition from the town and its elected representatives once again.

As usual, then, this is a story of confrontation, top-down "we know what's best for you" government, big business and wrecking of an ancient landscape and the identity of the oldest town in Wales.

Over in Cardigan, another ancient town, work has finally begun on restoring the castle. The County Council bought the historic pile and sold it to a trust formed by local people for £1. When the work is complete, the  heart of the town will be transformed, with facilities including attractive grounds, a Welsh language centre (imagine that, people of Carmarthen!), a cafe and a venue for weddings, conferences, etc.

The project is being run entirely by local volunteers, and it is a true community project involving people from all sorts of backgrounds, unlike Carmarthenshire County Council's evangelical bowling alley.

Just round the corner from the castle is another site called Pwllhai. This was formerly the home of the farmers' cooperative and was acquired a couple of years ago by another community group who managed to raise enough money to buy it and save it from a commercial property developer.

The Pwllhai site is large, and includes a number of buildings and two car parks. It now houses a veterinary practice, a local produce market, an eco shop, a museum of agricultural and maritime artifacts and a family centre.

The local produce market is currently held once a week, and there are usually two local farmers selling meat (including lots of old-fashioned and unusual cuts), people selling bread, cakes, eggs, fruit, vegetables, cheese, excellent takeaway food and shellfish. Most of the stallholders are Welsh-speaking, and all are local.

The museum is quirky and great fun. It is run by a few volunteers who are not much younger than their exhibits. I recently went in (entry is free) to have a look, and asked about an ancient copper basin. This simple question kicked off a really entertaining half hour of reminiscence about slaughtering pigs and brewing beer.

The family centre is a drop-in for young mums (and a few dads) with small children where the children can play safely and the parents can relax a bit and socialise. It also runs courses, including one designed to introduce young parents and children to basic, everyday Welsh.

The car parks not only provide much needed additional parking in the town, but they are deliberately cheaper than council provided parking, with charges starting at just 30p. This is because the 4CG, the group which runs the site, feels strongly that high parking charges are driving people out of town centres.

Now 4CG (Cymdeithas Cynnal a Chefnogi Cefn Gwlad) has launched a new project to raise enough money to buy the town's former police station and court house. If it goes anything like the Pwllhai venture, the organisers will succeed in raising money from private well wishers around the world. You can check out their website (English only, unfortunately) here.

All of this is being driven by local people, rather than the county council, although it is true to say that the council has been cooperative and helpful.

Cardigan has more than its fair share of social problems, and Ceredigion County Council is by no means  perfect, but the contrast with dictatorial and arrogant Carmarthenshire is striking.

Next time you go to Cardigan, drop in at Pwllhai (markets every Thursday) and have a look.

Carmarthenshire: it's complaints galore!

County Hall in Carmarthen may have resembled Sleeping Beauty's castle ever since the local government elections in May, with activity mainly confined to PR stunts such as the Executive Board's big day out in Ammanford and embarrassing attempts to use Olympic hurdler Dai Greene as a mascot, but the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales has found that the council has been keeping him busier than ever.

First we had a damning report from the Ombudsman into a case involving the council's planning department. As is usual in these cases, the Ombudsman sought a meeting with the council's Chief Executive as he was putting the report together, but his requests went unanswered. Perhaps the council's most senior officer (renumeration of almost £210,000 in 2011-12) was simply too busy with diary entries such as posing for a photograph to appear on the front page of the council's propaganda sheet, Carmarthenshire News.

Space in the Chief Executive's diary was presumably found, however, for a meeting with members of the legal profession who have been instructed by the council to challenge the Ombudsman's report in the courts.

There may also have been other meetings with learned counsel to discuss an action for defamation brought by the couple whose complaint was the subject of the Ombudsman's report. The couple were understandably less than pleased to find that they had been placed under special measures and branded "persistent complainants" by the council without being told what was being done to them.

Also placed under special measures by the Chief Executive were Councillors Siân Caiach and Arthur Davies who were banned last year from asking questions of any of the council's battalion of highly paid officers apart from the Chief Executive himself.

The two councillors also had a couple of motions critical of the council leadership vetoed by the Chief Executive. To prevent this sort of impertinence from happening again, the council's leadership then pushed through a change to the constitution requiring a minimum of seven signatures on a notice of motion (no other council has such a high barrier). Even if the requisite number of signatures could be collected, the Chief Executive retains powers to veto undesirable motions, just in case.

While all this was going on, the Chief Executive submitted a veritable snowstorm of complaints against Cllr Caiach to the Ombudsman alleging various breaches of the Councillors Code of Conduct.

You can read details of the complaints and the Ombudsman's dismissal of all of them over on Caebrwyn's blog here, as well as this piece in the Western Mail.

One of the cast of characters with a walk-on part in this unfolding drama is the council's chief press officer. The press office's way with words and its unfortunate history of attributing words spoken by one person to someone else has been noted before. On this occasion it appears that words spoken by a BBC journalist quoting Cllr Caiach were somehow taken out of context and made the subject of a complaint against Cllr Caiach.

The Ombudsman's report suggests that the Chief Executive should endeavour to be less sensitive to criticism, and his findings are a landmark in protecting rights of freedom of expression and open political debate in local government.

The council has said that it is studying the Ombudsman's report, and no doubt there will be more consultations with lawyers in County Hall to see whether there is scope for another legal challenge.

Meanwhile the convoluted libel case involving the Chief Executive and fellow blogger Caebrwyn grinds on, with costs escalating for each month that passes. It is understood that Mr James's London legal team recently ventured out to the windswept wastes that lie beyond the M25 and spent a day closeted in County Hall to discuss the case. For anyone who has ever forked out for an hour of air time with a London barrister, the thought of the cost of transporting a whole posse from London to Carmarthen for a day (and most likely overnight stays) will make their eyes water.

The case is still four months away from getting to court, but parts of it hinge on the sensitivities of Mr James, who it seems was particularly distressed by a reference in the offending blog to a character from a popular children's story. It is also understood that sensitivities may have been upset when Caebrwyn was less than ecstatic at the news that Mr James had been appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire early this year.

A small digression here in order to educate my readership on the role of Lord Lieutenants (apparently that is the correct plural). Apart from wearing fancy dress and clanking around with swords at council annual general meetings, these relics also play a key role in advising the Queen (or rather a committee of worthies in Whitehall) on the suitability of people who have been nominated for gongs and appointments to non-existent posts in non-existent institutions. So now we know who to blame thank.

But back to the Ombudsman.

Among the welter of complaints, writs, judicial reviews and reports, Cneifiwr understands that the Ombudsman was recently asked to look into the circumstances of a meeting of the council's Executive Board in January of this year.

Not on the published agenda, but discussed and approved nonetheless was a report recommending that the Council provide the Chief Executive with an indemnity to fund both the defence of an action for libel being brought by Caebrwyn and an action against the blogger.

The minutes of the meeting record that such an item was discussed (and of course approved), although a public interest exemption was slapped on the whole affair, and the public was allowed to know only that an indemnity had been granted to an officer because of "exceptional circumstances".

It also appeared from the minutes that no declarations of interest were made, and that the officer concerned (it is reasonable to assume that this was the Chief Executive) remained present in the meeting while the report was presented and approved, even though he had a direct personal interest in the outcome.

Any councillors who acted in this way would most likely have found themselves accused of serious breach of the Councillors Code of Conduct and hauled up before a tribunal.

But council officers are different, and are subject to a different code. The well-meaning officials who drew up the Officers Code of Conduct almost certainly never envisaged that a council would blaze the sort of trail that Carmarthenshire is determinedly going down.

The Officers Code of Conduct envisages that there may be occasions when an officer should declare an interest, and it says that in such cases the officer should inform a more senior officer. What happens when the officer is the most senior officer is not explained. Presumably in such cases, the Chief Executive is expected to talk to himself.

In order to make a complaint to the Public Services Ombudsman, members of the public have to satisfy the Ombudsman that they have exhausted the complaints procedure of the relevant authority first.

You can bet on all sorts of things these days, but it is unlikely that Ladbrokes would have been willing to accept a bet that such a complaint to Carmarthenshire County Council would be rejected.

Just as complainants first have to exhaust the council's internal procedure, the Ombudsman also tells would-be complainers that he is powerless to investigate complaints against individual officers. No matter what they are alleged to have done, they may not be investigated by the Ombudsman.

Complainants may, however, make a complaint against a council as a whole, but then the Ombudsman may only investigate complaints in which a member of the public has suffered personal loss or injustice. Complaints against a council for failing its wider duties to the public are not part of the brief.

Of course this public spirited individual was doomed to failure from the beginning, because even if all of the other hurdles had successfully been negotiated (even Dai Greene would have struggled), the complainant would still have had to prove that the chief executive's presence at the meeting where his personal indemnity was discussed and approved had somehow been improper or resulted in maladministration. And since the meeting was held in behind closed doors, subject to a public interest exemption and recorded only in a brief written minute, such proof would have been rather hard to come by.

In other words, the council is adamant that there was nothing wrong about the January meeting, the Ombudsman is powerless to investigate, and the system ensures that officers are wrapped in cotton wool.

To end, here's a thought about the Councillors Code of Conduct, which is primarily concerned with ensuring that councillors should not behave in such a way as to bring their office or council into disrepute.

Carmarthenshire County Council certainly has a reputation. It has recently been the subject of several damning reports from the Ombudsman. It has been the subject of some hair-raising BBC documentaries. Stories of its shortcomings have been covered in the Western Mail, UK Press Gazette and other publications (although not in our muzzled local newspapers). And of course Carmarthenshire is becoming a regular feature in Private Eye's "Rotten Boroughs" column.

It seems our council is doing a pretty good job of dragging the county's reputation through the mud without any help from Cllr Caiach.

Llaeth ac atebion di-ddal

Un o ardaloedd mwyaf blaengar Cymru o ran cynhyrchu llaeth yw Sir Gaerfyrddin, ac felly mae dyfydol ein parlyrau godro'n bwysig iawn i'r economi leol.

Yn ôl y Carmarthen Journal, mae NFU Cymru wedi ysgrifennu i bob un o'r awdurdodau lleol yng Nghymru i ofyn a ydyn nhw'n talu pris teg am eu llaeth.

Fel mae'n digwydd, dywedodd arweinydd y Cyngor Sir, Kevin Madge a'i ddirpwy arweinydd Pam Palmer mewn datganiad diweddar bod croeso i unrhywun gysylltu unrhywbryd "os gallwn ni helpu fel Cyngor" i sicrhau prisiau teg i ffermwyr llaeth.

Dywedodd llefarydd dros y Cyngor bod yr awdurdod yn gwario rhyw £108,000 bob blwyddyn ar gynnyrch llaeth, gan osgoi ateb cwestiwn NFU Cymru a ydy'r Cyngor yn talu pris teg am laeth.

Mae Cyngor Sir Gâr yn prynu ei holl stwff gwyn yn lleol, meddai, gan ychwanegu mai R&A Pontarddulais, Ddol-Fach Llanelli a Jones & Davies Llandysul yw cyflenwyr cynhyrchion llaeth iddo.


Cyfanwerthwr ffrwythau a llysiau yw Jones a Davies, ac nid yw Llandysul na Phontarddulais yn Sir Gaerfyrddin am wn i. O diar.

The WLGA: A peculiar kind of democracy

As we go about our daily lives, it is fair to say that very few people in Wales will ever think about the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) or even know what it is. Should we even care?

The WLGA is one of those official bodies which, unseen and unheard by most of us, goes about making decisions and expressing its views on all sorts of matters to central government and in Europe, and what it does and says affects us all.


The role of the WLGA is to represent the 22 local authorities in Wales, and it says that its primary aims are "to promote better local government and its reputation and to support authorities in the development of policies and priorities which will improve public services and democracy".

The inclusion of the word reputation in the WLGA's mission statement tells us that the spin doctors and PR merchants can't be far away in this organisation.

The four Welsh police authorities, three national parks and three fire and rescue authorities are associate members, and rather like one of those Russian dolls, the WLGA is also a member of the Local Government Association for England and Wales.

The WLGA has a chief executive, an 8-member senior management team, a secretariat, a Council, a Coordinating Committee and a Management Sub-Committee. It has regional coordinators, a head of communications and, rather bizarrely, a "Marketing and Events Officer". And lots more besides.

The whole thing is naturally financed by the taxpayer, although the WLGA's commitment to open and transparent government does not seem to extend to telling us what it costs us or how many people it employs. It is possible that this information exists somewhere, but the WLGA's own website appears to have nothing to say on this tawdry subject.

In this post-Blair, free-market age of collaboration and cross-sector cooperation, the WLGA is also proud to tell us that its has two commercial sponsors in the form of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Risk Management Partners. What form that sponsorship takes from these two firms who both derive a lot of business from our councils, we are not told. At least MacDonalds and Coca Cola don't make an appearance.

The website contains copies of lots of documentation on all sorts of matters, and there is no doubt that it does perform some important functions. In a country with a highly fragmented local government system (the 22 county and county borough councils, 3 national parks, etc.), there is certainly a case for having a body which can help pool resources and coordinate activities, but the WLGA's activities extend far beyond best practice in mending potholes.

Unlike most people in Wales, for example, the WLGA thinks (a recent press release tells us) that council newspapers are a very good thing indeed, and that they provide "vital information". Perhaps some of them do, although residents of Carmarthenshire may be forgiven for wondering how vital the latest musings of Kevin Madge or the children's pages of Carmarthenshire News actually are. Could we really survive without them?

For those of you who cannot wait for the next edition of Carmarthenshire News, Cneifiwr can confidently predict that one of the items which will be given prominence is the election of Kevin Madge to the prestigious post of deputy presiding officer of the WLGA.

The word election in the context of local government conjours up images of people dutifully traipsing down to their nearest polling station to cast a vote, but this election was a rather more exclusive affair.

The WLGA's council currently has 68 members. The members themselves are councillors from across Wales, and should therefore represent some kind of cross-section of political opinion in Wales, you might think.

Not a bit of it.

47 of the 68 members* are Labour councillors, including our own Kevin Madge and one of his two deputies, Tegwen Devichand. That is a whisker under 70% of the council's membership.

14 further members (20%) of the council describe themselves as "Independent", including Carmarthenshire's other deputy leader, Pam Palmer, and Cllr Mair Stephens.

Plaid Cymru have just 3 members (4%), and the Tories have 4 (6%). There are no LibDems or members of any other groups.

Labour certainly did well in the May council elections in Wales, but they got nowhere near 70% of the vote (they won 47% of the seats contested, and their share of the vote was probably somewhat lower than that). In Carmarthenshire 74% of those who voted did not vote for a Labour candidate, but we still got a Labour leader.

With that thunderous mandate from the people of Carmarthenshire, Kev has gone on to become number two in the WLGA's political pecking order and speak on behalf of local government in Wales as a whole.

To the people of Wales we in Carmarthenshire can only say sorry. We didn't mean to, honest!

* The WLGA's website says that the council has 79 members, but only 68 are listed. The members are all drawn from the ruling groups of the various councils, which means that opposition councillors are excluded.

That's democracy for you!

Leanne and language teaching

Update 17 August 2012
Leighton Andrews, Minister for Education and Skills, has been in touch (see comments) to say that he launched a task and finish group last month to review the teaching of Welsh as a second language in July. The Minister's statement can be found here.

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With three years to go before the next Westminster elections and four years until the next Assembly elections, it is difficult for any opposition politician or party to make a mark, but one of the strengths of Plaid  is that it works like a greenhouse for the generation of new ideas, and one recent example of this was the party's proposals for a radical overhaul of language teaching in Wales (here).

Perhaps I should begin by explaining that I spent quite a few years working in different European countries, including quite long spells in Sweden and Switzerland, and so languages have been an important part of my working life. My children have also benefited, even if they did not always appreciate their irregular verbs, and the older ones have found that being able to speak more than one language has helped them get good jobs.

Partly because English is introduced at an early stage in Swedish schools, and partly because Swedish TV carries so many programmes in English with Swedish subtitles, most Swedes have a good command of English; but not all. Certainly if you live in the country, it will not be long before you realise that you need Swedish if you want to make everyday life a little easier and more enjoyable.

And at work you will find that people give you a honeymoon period when they will speak English to you, but that pretty soon you will be expected to learn their language.

In most of the larger European countries, learning the language is even more a matter of survival.

Switzerland has some interesting parallels with Wales as a place where more than one language is spoken. In German-speaking Switzerland everybody speaks one of the Swiss German dialects (there are lots of them, and some are difficult even for the Swiss to understand) at home and at work. The differences between the Swiss German varieties and the sort of German spoken in neighbouring Germany and Austria are huge, to the point where most Germans simply cannot understand what their neighbours are saying most of the time.

To give you an idea, let's just take one simple sentence: "he was there":

Standard German: Er war da.

Zürich German: Der isch dääte gsi.


Swiss German is not usually written, except in text messages and the social media. Otherwise, people use standard German when they write.

Swiss schools teach standard German, although even then Switzerland has its own take on the language, with quite a lot of different vocabulary to German as spoken north of the border. After school, the use of the standard language is pretty much confined to newspapers, television news broadcasts and books.

If you don't read or write very much after leaving school, the chances are that you will have a passive understanding of the spoken standard language, but not much more.

In the case of young immigrants in particular, it is common to find people who are fluent in Swiss German but with next to no ability in the standard language. An English colleague of mine who had moved with his family to Switzerland at the age of 18 spoke Swiss German at work and with his wife and children at home, but was unable to read or write standard German or understand much of it. And as he said himself, after 30 years of not speaking his mother tongue, his English had become "time warped".

There are some close parallels here to the Welsh language, where many speakers will switch to English rather than tackle the written language. Like Switzerland, we also have quite marked differences in dialect, and most children from Welsh-speaking families find that there is quite a difference between the language they use at home and the sort of Welsh they encounter at school.

There is also a parallel between Switzerland and Wales when it comes to learning German or Welsh as a second language. Children from French and Italian speaking areas learn the standard form of the language, only to find when they have mastered it that they cannot understand the language which people actually speak in places like Basel, Bern and Zürich.

Increasingly also, schools in Switzerland are dropping "Swiss" languages as compulsory second languages in favour of English, which means that it is not unusual to find younger people from, say, Geneva and Bern communicating with each other through English.

In the same way, adults who have beavered away at Welsh for Adults courses for years often struggle to understand what people are saying in the pub or in the shops, and if that was not disheartening enough, when they manage to force out a sentence, they are likely to be told in English,  "We don't speak like that".

All of which brings us back squarely to Plaid's recent announcement.

Crucially the announcement recognises that our schools are failing when it comes to teaching Welsh as a second language in most parts of Wales (the smaller primary schools are the execption). Far too many young people are emerging from school after years of Welsh lessons unable to use the language. In some cases that I have seen, and bearing in mind that this is in one of the heartlands of the language where you can hear the language being spoken everywhere, people in their late teens and early twenties are leaving school with scarcely any more Welsh than their counterparts in Kent.

What the hell has been going on in their Welsh periods for the last 10 years?

Does it matter? Yes, of course it does for a whole host of reasons, not least for prospects of finding a job locally. Anyone wanting to find work locally in a shop, cafe, care home or many other local businesses will find that an ability to speak Welsh is a real advantage.

Tackling the teaching of Welsh in schools, and also teaching Welsh to adults, should be the first priority of our government simply because the infrastructure and human capital is, by and large, already in place.

The fundamental question Leighton Andrews and the educational establishment need to ask is, what is the purpose of teaching Welsh as a second language? Are we setting out to produce people who may one day succeed Dylan Iorwerth as Prifardd or who can churn out correctly mutated official documents? Or are we trying to give young people the skills to integrate with first language speakers socially and at work?

If it is the latter, there needs to be a dramatic shift in schools and adult learning away from an insistence on formal varieties of the language to getting children and adults from non-Welsh speaking homes to the point where they can speak natural and informal Welsh. Even if that means accepting that Fi moyn and Car fi are OK.

We can be sure that Dylan Iorwerth did not compose cynghanedd or mutate correctly 100% of the time when he was a child. Those are skills he developed as he grew up, and in the same way schools and adult classes can introduce more formal language once learners have gained the ability to speak Welsh informally.

Teaching languages other than Welsh and English in Wales poses greater problems, largely because of the British legacy of neglect of modern languages. The reality is that there are simply not enough teachers out there with the skills to make a "big bang" change possible. But that does not mean that we cannot make a start.

A lot could be learned from the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland. The Swedish minority in Finland is small and concentrated in a few areas of the country. Children have Swedish as their first language but have to learn Finnish, which is linguistically about as far removed from Swedish as Arabic, at school. They have to become bilingual because the size of the Swedish minority in mainland Finland makes Finnish essential for everyday life. But they also have to learn English as a third language, and most of the more able children will go on to learn a fourth European language as well.

A check on the Pisa tables will show that Finland is doing a great job in education, incidentally.

Leanne Wood has asked Cefin Campbell, who is one of the leading authorities on language planning in Wales, to report back with recommendations, including a new language academy. Significantly, she is adamant that any new policy must be a national policy, and not left to local authorities if it is to succeed.

My one plea to Cefin Campbell here would be to ensure that any national policy allows diversity to avoid a situation where all schools in Wales taught just one foreign language.

What we need is an education system which can produce future generations in which people are fluent in Welsh, English and at least one of several other languages, with the choice of a third language being based on the following criteria:

• The economic importance of the third language. Since the vast bulk of our trade is with Europe, European languages should be the default, with Mandarin as an exception. That means German, French, Italian and Spanish primarily.
• The availability of teaching staff and materials across the school system. There is no point in introducing primary school children to, say, Spanish only to switch to another language at secondary level.

It would be a great waste of opportunity if the system were allowed to take a path of least resistance and fall back into ruling out languages considered to be "difficult" such as German, and opting for Spanish instead, although at least initially we have to recognise that there will be skills shortages in some languages.

The Welsh Government recently announced that it will be carrying out a review of Welsh for Adults teaching, and Leighton Andrews is one of the few government ministers who is not rigidly tribal Labour and prepared to challenge orthodoxies. Let's hope he is listening to what Cefin Campbell has to say.

In the meantime it is good to see Plaid continuing to bring new ideas to the table and set the agenda.

Geiriau gwag a drysau agored

Mae Cyngor Sir Gâr yn awyddus iawn i bwysleisio bod yna fwy i Sir Gaerfyrddin na Llanelli, Caerfyrddin a Rhydaman. Pam Palmer, un o ddau ddirpwy arweinydd y Cyngor, fydd yn achub Cwmsgwt a phob cymuned arall ma's yn y stics.

Sut? Trwy gau'r holl ysgolion bach hen ffasiwn yn y pentrefi a chodi archfarchnadoedd yn ein trefi bach. Yn ôl y Cyngor, mae yna le i dair archfarchnad yng Nghastell Newydd Emlyn (1,500 o drigolion) a Sainsbury's enfawr yn Llandeilo. Yn anffodus, mae Llywodraeth Cymru wedi hwpo'i thrwyn mewn yn achos Llandeilo a phenderfynu craffu'r cynlluniau.

Wedi darllen The Daily Mail, daeth Pam i'r casgliad yr wythnos hon nad yw'r ffermwyr yn gwbl hapus i gynhyrchu llaeth ar golled.

Dyma oedd cyfle PR, er gwaetha'r ffaith bod y ffermwyr yn protestio ers mis Mehefin. Felly, datganiad i'r wasg amdani. Uniaith Saesneg, wrth gwrs, ond mae'r hambons yn gallu darllen iaith y Cyngor, on'd ydyn nhw?

Mae'n bwysig i'r ffermwyr gael pris teg am eu llaeth, meddai Pam. Ychwanegodd Kevin Madge, arweinydd y Cyngor:

"We are committed to our farmers in Carmarthenshire and to sustain the jobs they create in the countryside that we are so proud of. We are available to see anyone at any time if there is anything we can do as a council to help.”

Sebon pur gan nad oes fawr ddim y gall y Cyngor ei wneud i effeithio pris llaeth.

Y mae gweithredu a PR, y ddau hyn. A'r mwyaf o'r rhain yw PR.

Scams - Mrs M and the iPhone

A brief diversion from this blog's usual diet of council matters to describe a sophisticated scam carried out on Mrs M, a local woman who is a retired school teacher.

 

Mrs M received an iPhone4 from Dialaphone (special delivery) and because there was no way she had ordered such a thing, was beginning to think someone had kindly sent her a present until she noticed the direct debit mandate for £41 a month made out in her name but from a bank account she does not possess.  The documentation was in Mrs M's name, with her correct address, her date of birth but an incorrect phone number.  

 

It took an Internet search to track down a telephone number for Dialaphone, and she eventually got through to their customer services where she was told that she was the fourth person the adviser had spoken to this week to whom the same thing had happened.  The adviser said she would send a prepaid label to return it via the post office, but warned that Mrs M that she would get a telephone call from a scammer saying that she had been sent the phone by mistake and a courier would collect it from her home.

Sure enough, within minutes a very dodgy sounding individual with a West African accent rang her saying that he was from Dialaphone, that their computer system had crashed and that she had been sent the phone by mistake.  Mrs M played an Oscar-winning performance as a confused Welsh pensioner, and the Nigerian caller got fed up in the end and said he'd have to speak to his "manager". 

Mrs M then had another phone call from a different dodgy sounding individual with a similar accent who went through the same performance saying he was from Dialaphone. Mrs M, who was enjoying herself by now, told the caller that she did not know anyone in Darlington.

"No, Dialaphone" - "What, Darlington?  But I don't know anyone from Darlington".  She was having a lovely time.  The caller eventually told Mrs M that she was on their database and that a courier would collect the iPhone.

Next morning someone dressed in a Parcelforce jacket, but driving an anonymous white van came to collect the phone.  He didn't seem too pleased when Mrs M told him she had already sent it back via the post office.  The pre-paid label arrived the next day and she duly returned the phone and thought that was the end of the matter.

A few days later Mrs M received a letter from Vodaphone thanking her for choosing their service and confirming her direct debit instructions for a Halifax bank account; Mrs M does not bank with the Halifax.  She then made more phone calls and discovered that a contract had been set up by Dialaphone but had since been cancelled. She is still waiting for written confirmation of that.

Yesterday Mrs M had yet another phone call from a somewhat more articulate Nigerian saying that he knew she had signed for the phone and someone would be coming to collect it.  Her response was
"Tough - I've already sent it back to Dialaphone and I know exactly what your game is," and put the phone down. 

The fraudsters met their match in Mrs M, who is rather smarter than they are, but it is worrying to think that other victims would be left having to pay for a phone they didn't have. 

John Jenkins

Ychydig o eiriau am yr anffodus John Jenkins, cynghorydd ar gyfer Elli yn nhre'r Sosban, sydd bellach mewn helbul oherwydd sylwadau amhriodol am buteiniaid a "kiddy fiddlers" ar Twitter. Tipyn o gymeriad i rai, mae'n debyg, twpsyn llwyr i'r lleill.

Y gwir yw bod cryn dipyn o hanes gan John Jenkins yn hynny o beth. Bu rhaid iddo roi'r ffidil yn y to fel ymgeisydd swyddogol y Toriaid ddwywaith yn 2003 a 2007 oherwydd sylwadau cas am bobl hoyw: am y tro cyntaf fel ymgeisydd i'r Cynulliad, ac am yr ail dro fel ymgeisydd Gorllewin Caerfyrddin a De Sir Benfro mewn etholiad i San Steffan.

Mae hynny'n dweud llawer mwy am gyflwr y Ceidwadwyr yng Nghymru na dim byd arall.

Yn ôl y sôn, rhywun o'r Blaid Lafur wnaeth gwyno i'r Ombwdsman y tro hwn. Os yw hynny yn wir, mae Llafur Sir Gâr wedi anghofio'n llwyr am Shahid Hussein, ei ymgeisydd dros Lanaman a ddaeth i'r amlwg oherwydd ei gyfraniadau lliwgar ar Twitter ym mis Ebrill.

Ymddiheurodd Hussein, a bu hynny yn ddigon i Kevin Madge, arweinydd Llafur Sir Gâr. Ychwanegodd Kev, "I have pointed out to him that Twitter is dangerous and it's not something I support. I don't use it and I do not want any of our political candidates to use it - it's only young people and not a good thing to use for politics".

Gall cyllyll cegin fod yn beryglus yn nwylo twpsyn, wrth gwrs, ond mae'r rhan fwyaf o bobl yn eu defnyddio i dorri winwns.

Council goes Dai Greenetastic

The track and field events get underway in London today, and Dai Greene, the Llanelli hurdler, has a good chance of picking up a medal. Fingers crossed that all his training and dedication pay off.

Whatever happens, we can be sure that Dai's every move will be covered in depth by the BBC, BBC Wales, Llanelli Star, Carmarthen Journal, Western Mail and all the rest. That is their job, after all.

Most people would think that councils mend the roads, run schools, collect the rubbish and provide social services. A little boring, perhaps, but these are vital services for all of us. And it's what we pay our council tax for.

Carmarthenshire County Council takes a different view. It would rather not do all of the mundane things councils are expected to do, and is busy cutting and outsourcing some of its traditional services so that it can concentrate on more interesting and innovative activities, such as public relations.

Last year it spent over £630,000 on its press office and "direct communications", including its own newspaper, Carmarthenshire News (now including a fun page for the kiddies). It is also the only council in Wales, and possibly in the UK, to have its own PR agency, SirGarPR.

In the run-up to the track and field events, the press office in County Hall has been busy with a string of Dai Greene stories. Beginning weeks ago, these have included guff about a council-run competition at the Elli shopping centre and Llanelli Market, where council officers have been hiding a cardboard cutout of the athlete and encouraging shoppers to find it:

Spot Dai Greene - join the fun and help find him!
Jump up and down for Dai Greene
Find Dai Greene - join the fun and help find him! 
Five-a-Dai-Greene - join the fun and help find him!

As excitement mounts, the council is now running stories including,

Dai Greene's Village Pub Hot-Spot on Race Finals Night

The landlord has arranged a Dai Greene buffet, we are told, and the great man's Mum and Dad are regulars.

Last year the council's ministry of spin won an award at one of those incestuous industry-insider events for its PR. You have to wonder what the competition was like when you read the stuff County Hall is churning out. Here is a selection of award winning clichés, and punctuation and spelling mistakes taken from that story:

Pubs are hostelries. The landlord and landlady are mine hosts. Radio Five is homing in on the pub for a live broadcast that will be filled with Dai Greens (sic) fans in an outbreak of Dai Greene fever.

The landlady is quoted at some length (the dodgy punctuation was not hers):

It is strange how we are all feeling the tension and yet from what we see of Dai he is as cool as a cucumber. It’s fingers, toes and everything else crossed Dai wins an Olympic gold to eclipse everything else he has achieved, European, World gold medallist and not forgetting Carmarthenshire Sportsman of the year three years on the trot.

Perhaps she really did say all of that, including the final reference to the council's own award ceremonies that most people have never heard of. Or perhaps it was another of those lapses where the press office attributes words spoken by Person A (in this case a press officer perhaps) to Person B. Caebrwyn has spotted a few of these gems.


For all those who were not aware that the council runs its own annual award ceremonies, the press office followed up the pub story two days later on 2 August:

Allison off to roar support for Dai Greene

Who is Allison? Allison, it turns out, is County Personality Awards Organiser, and she has been very lucky indeed to obtain a ticket for the final in London. Let's hope she paid for the ticket herself.

Although Dai has won the council's award for Sports Personality of the Year in three successive years, the story tells us that his hectic schedule has meant that he has never managed to find time to attend the ceremony.

In other Dai Greene news, the council has also interviewed his parents:

One Day You Will Be Known As Dai Greene's Dad

We can look forward to lots more like this over the next week.


Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, the council has issued another story to celebrate the fact that parents, governors and children objecting to the closure of Ysgol Pantycelyn in Llandovery lost an appeal to secure a judicial review of the council's decision.

Or as the council sees it, "The delay upon the authority’s secondary education transformation proposals in the Dinefwr area of Carmarthenshire, due to the bringing forward of the claim for Judicial Review, has caused particular distress to parents, pupils, governors, staff and other stakeholders as a result of  the uncertainty it has caused."

Strangely, the press office did not find time to report on the distress felt by parents, governors, pupils, etc. in Newcastle Emlyn when they read Estyn's highly critical report on Ysgol Gyfun Emlyn a few weeks ago, although it did run a story headlined Education in Carmarthenshire is Good.
 
Which just goes to show why that PR award was so richly deserved.

Creative accountancy for Council's propaganda newspaper

Following on from yesterday's post, it is good to see that more voices are being raised questioning the dubious accounting practices in County Hall.

The following is a press release issued on 13 July by Rhodri Glyn Thomas, our Plaid Assembly Member. He is spot on.

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Local Assembly Member Rhodri Glyn Thomas has accused Carmarthenshire County Council of ‘creative accountancy’ having received information that the local authority does not keep separate records of internal and external advertising income for the publication of the county’s propaganda paper, Carmarthenshire News.

 

The Plaid Cymru AM stated that as the publication is loaded with advertisements for services the local authority provides, his office submitted the Freedom of Information request to see how much was being taken from one council budget to pay for another.

  

In response to Plaid Cymru’s FoI request, the local authority confirmed it does not distinguish between internal and external sums received for advertisements in the publication.  Mr. Thomas said the council’s suggestion of only paying £5,000 per edition is disingenuous and says the Council could be paying anything up to £23,000 per edition.

 

Rhodri Glyn Thomas said:

 

“Carmarthenshire News is now a joint publication on behalf of public service providers in the county such as the Police, Fire Service, Health Board, Trinity St. David and Coleg Sir Gar, to name but a few.  The newspaper is an extended version of the Council’s previous ‘Community News’ publication.

 

“My concern is extremely simple – The County Council says it receives £18,000 in advertising and sponsorship revenue per edition but it has since told me it cannot distinguish between adverts that are paid for internally and externally.  The county newspaper is loaded with adverts which the local authority itself provides.  So how much of that £18,000 is from coming within the council’s taxpayer-funded budgets?

 

“The Council has also told me it would be impossible to look back to previous years and assess the costs of internal adverts as it would involve going through every edition.  Sadly the Council has not kept a copy of them.  Either the Council doesn’t want to admit how much of taxpayers’ money is actually being put into these publications or it has serious problems with its financial management.

 

“The County Council could be paying anything up to £23,000 for each edition - that's upto £138,000 a year.  For it to suggest the net cost to the taxpayer is just £5,000 per edition is disingenuous and smacks of creative accountancy. 

 

“It’s about time the local authority scrapped its propaganda publication and got behind our existing very important local newspapers which have their own editorial control and have served our communities well for many years”.

 

ENDS

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Fog on the Towy and some Democratic Discharge

The recently published agreement between Carmarthenshire's ruling Labour and Independent groups claims that they will be "open and transparent in everything we do", a claim which seasoned observers of goings on in the County Gaol on the Towy would regard as a dramatic change of policy if true. Indeed, if anything, the powers-that-be are now rowing determinedly in the opposite direction.

One of the council's main shop windows for the public is its website, and this blog has moaned before about the tangled mess of dead-ends, broken links and vanishing data. Within the last few weeks, for example, information on the expense claims submitted by individual councillors has been taken down. Councillors' registers of interests have never been published on the website, but are kept under lock and key with inspection only by prior appointment. There was, however, once a link which at least told you of the existence of this sacred register. Not any more.

A determined citizen who has failed to locate any of this information may be feeling a little frustrated at this point. Surely, councils are obliged by law to make some or all of this information available, aren't they?

Oh, look, here's a promising link entitled "Code of Practice on Public Access to Information". Click, and oh dear, access denied.

Cneifiwr and several other public spirited citizens were therefore not brimming with optimism when they arrived at County Hall today to exercise their right to inspect the council's accounts.

We were ushered in by two very friendly and sympathetic members of staff who, it emerged, had been given strict instructions from on high not to let us leave with any meaningful information on any of the areas of interest we had been asked to list prior to our visit. Certainly no information was to be provided electronically, and some reports could not be made available full stop. The cost for others would be 15p per page.

On the table in front of us were two ring binders of service codes, cost centre codes and account numbers.

The service codes are the highest level category in this hierarchy, and some actually correspond to services you or I may recognise, such as "mobile libraries" or "commercial property". Others are so opaque that it is anybody's guess what lies behind them: "Director's Services", "Corporate Management", that sort of thing.

The numbers range from just a few thousands to hundreds of millions, and the same applies to the cost centre codes, where armchair auditors can expect to find a lot more opaque terms. One of these is "democratic recharge".

Our friendly officer explained that this was a recharge to reflect the time spent by senior officers and others in meetings and, ho-hum, stuff like that. Some of these meetings must be extremely long, because the recharges can run to many tens of thousands of pounds.

But that's not all.

Take that mysterious entry "Director's Services" again. At a guess, this had something to do with education, but there was nothing to indicate what this activity was all about. Costs were duly entered, and totted up, from memory, to about £260,000, only to be reversed down to the last penny by two items headed "Director's Recharge" and "Democratic Recharge". So the project, whatever it was, miraculously cost nothing at all.

On other areas of spending, the documents were commendably clear. If you want to know what services such as Day Care Centres for the Elderly, museums or libraries (mobile or otherwise) are costing, it's there in black and white. These are, of course, all areas that are up for the chop.

When it comes to activities which are closer to the hearts of the council's top brass, such as the propaganda sheet dished out under the title Carmarthenshire News or any of the pet "regeneration" projects, down comes the fog.

Carmarthenshire News is, claims the council, very nearly self-financing. How they arrive at that conclusion is another mystery. Costs for the rag are lumped in with various other items of expenditure under headings such as "Press" and "Direct Communications", but it was, we were told, impossible to break down the costs.

And surprise, surprise, the hefty entries for expenditure from the departments concerned are zeroed out by an elaborate web of recharges, democratic or otherwise. On one reading at one point in the accounts, Pravda even appears to be making a profit.

All I can tell you is that spending on direct communications and press amounted to £637,661 and 4 pence. This is not one of the areas earmarked for cuts.

The Welsh Government is on the warpath against council newspapers, we are told in the Western Mail. Let's just hope that when the boys from Cardiff come to County Hall in Carmarthen to ask about Carmarthenshire News, they are armed with a search warrant.

One old chestnut, the money guzzling golf club at Garnant (home of our beloved leader Kev), makes a surprise appearance, with net expenditure totalling £152,000 against a budgeted £89,600. Buried somewhere deep in another part of the accounts was also a lumpy sum for meals and refreshments at the same golf course.

The council is of course now paying a company to take this particular white elephant off our hands for a few years.

Loans to the National Botanic Gardens and the Scarlets in Llanelli also show up, and the figures match the sums reported in the press. No trace could be found, however, of the £20,000 grant recently given to Scarlets to help it to employ a top notch retired rugby player  management specialist to drum up more business for Parc y Scarlets as a venue for bar mitzvahs, gay weddings and sheepdog trials.

Another mysterious entry for "commercial loans" recorded interest income of just 1 pence. Possibly one of those loans to persons "known to the officers" a la Llangennech business park. Who knows?

Also completely absent was any reference to our latest upcoming attraction, the evangelical bowling alley. We know that this has received very nearly £1.5 million from County Hall in loans, grants, peppercorn leases, etc., but not a whisper appears in the accounts.

According to both the council and the church, the site at Johnstown is a hive of activity, with hundreds of thousands of pounds of work being carried out by volunteers. Nearby residents and passersby believe the volunteers may be oompa loompas, because from the outside nothing whatsoever appears to have happened.

There is more exciting news on this project too, with a contract having been awarded (here) to Pembrokeshire Design Ltd in Milford Haven. Phase II of the project will include counselling/therapy rooms and a "multi-purpose conference centre", an innovative new dictionary definition of "church".

So why not enjoy a spot of bowling before your exorcism therapy?

But that's enough projects for one day.

Interestingly, the School Meals Service broke even, with sales of £4.12 million running well ahead of the budget forecast. Only as recently as January the council was proposing to increase school dinner charges yet again to make them probably the most expensive in Wales. Fortunately someone remembered that an election was looming, so the plan was quietly dropped.


On our way out, our friendly officer said that very few people came to inspect the accounts nowadays, and that freedom of information requests had largely superseded this ancient democratic ritual. I think we can all understand why now.

Emerging blinking into the daylight, it was good to see that the VIP car park, empty when we arrived, was now filled once more with top of the range black BMWs and Mercedes. Kev, Pam, the rest of the Executive Board and assorted senior officers were back from their big day out in Ammanford.

With the cats once more in residence, it was time for the mice to leave.

If I can face it, more accounting news to come.

A shocking question

When the new (or not so new) Labour-Independent coalition was returned in May's council elections, Kevin Madge justified increasing the size of the Executive Board to 10 members on the basis that they have such a big workload. Much was also made of the appointment of Pam Palmer, leader of the Independent faction, as board member with responsibility for rural affairs as well as Deputy Leader (in Kev's slimline, budget conscious new council we now need two deputies as well).

Since that little burst of activity, the Council has taken on the appearance of the castle in Sleeping Beauty, with almost no signs of life apart from the relentless flow of press releases from one of the turrets about dog mess and litter.

Pam's rural affairs brief consists of three objectives:

• Keep Bwcabus running
• Phone BT to ask them to increase the availability of broadband
• Something about keeping young people in the farming industry by finding them alternative employment elsewhere (I know, I don't get that either)

Now, amid all the doom and gloom and Olympimania, we have what seems (must check the small print though) to be some genuinely good news. The Welsh Government has announced a £425 million deal with BT to roll out the next generation of superfast broadband across Wales by the end of 2015.

That leaves Pam with just the buses and the young farmers.

In the Partnership Agreement between Labour and Pam's depleted Independent group, we read "we are anxious not to waste local taxpayer’s (sic) money with frivolous or perceived populist ideas", words almost certainly penned by Pam herself.


As always, Cneifiwr would like to be helpful and constructive, so he wonders whether Pam will agree to forgo part of her £31,120 p.a. special responsibility allowance to fund the filming of council meetings now that her workload has been so dramatically lightened?


Indeed, perhaps she would like to demonstrate that she really means business about not wasting taxpayers' money by giving up her SRA and seat on the Board. A move which would definitely be popular as opposed to populist.

Pam Pam?

Dyma newyddion da:

Mae’r Prif Weinidog Carwyn Jones wedi cyhoeddi manylion bargen newydd â BT gyda’r amcan fydd 96 y cant o gartrefi a busnesau Cymru yn gallu manteisio ar Band Eang y Genhedlaeth Nesaf erbyn diwedd 2015.

Maen nhw am fuddsoddi £425 miliwn i fewn i band eang trwy Gymru, yn ôl y datganiad. Wow.

Bydd sawl pentref a chartref diarffordd yn Sir Gaerfyrddin wrth eu boddau'n clywed y newyddion. Rhyfedd dweud felly, mai un o blaenoriaethau newydd ein Cyngor Sir dros y pum mlynedd nesaf yw gwella mynediad i'r band eang mewn ardaloedd gwledig.

Pam Palmer, arweinydd yr Annibynwyr swyddogol, fydd yn gyfrifol am hynny yn ôl y cytundeb rhwng Llafur a'r Annibynwyr, ond mae'r datganiad gan y Llywodraeth yng Nghaerdydd yn golygu nad oes fawr o ddim i'w wneud ar lefel y Cyngor Sir bellach.

Yn ogystal â cheibio'r ffyrdd a gosod ceblau ym Mhentrecagal a Chilycwm, mae cyfrifoldebau Pam fel Dirpwy Arweinydd (Materion Cymunedol a Gwledig) yn cynnwys Bwcabus (gwasanaeth bws) a "chadw pobl ifainc yn y diwydiant amaethyddol trwy eu helpu i ddatblygu...cyfleoedd gwaith amgen."

Wedi colli un o'i phrif raisons d'être, mi fydd gan Pam dipyn o amser sbâr nawr, mae'n debyg. Tybed, a fyddai hi'n fodlon rhoi rhan o'i lwfans (£31,120 y flwyddyn) i ariannu ffilmio cyfarfodydd y cyngor? Neu, sibrydwch y peth yn dawel, mae yna le i ofyn a oes wir angen Pam o gwbl. Dyna gwestiwn brawychus.

Blaenoriaethau Cyngor Sir Gâr

Mae'r Cyngor Sir wedi cyhoeddi dogfen o dan y teitl "Cytundeb Partneriaeth rhwng y Blaid Lafur a'r Grŵp Annibynnol Gweithio gyda'n gilydd i greu gwell Sir Gaerfyrddin" (dogfen uniaith Saesneg, wrth gwrs). Wel, rhan ohoni a bod yn fanwl gywir, gan fod y cymalau sy'n disgrifio sut yn union y bydd y ddwy blaid yn cydweithio yn gyfrinachol.

"Trafodir" y cytundeb cyn cael ei dderbyn yn unfrydol gan y Bwrdd Gweithreddol mewn cyfarfod ddydd Llun nesaf.

Heb roi unrhyw ffigyrau na thargedau pendant, mae'r cytundeb yn mynd ati i ddisgrifio gweithgareddau a blaenoriaethau'r cyngor, gan gynnwys hamdden a moderneiddio addysg (h.y. cau mwy o ysgolion bach), Bwcabus a band llydan. Mae yna sôn am adfywio a'r amgylchedd, diogelu plant ac hybu twristiaeth, sbwriel a gofal cymdeithasol.

Ond nid oes yr un gair am y Gymraeg. Yn nunlle. Dim byd. Nada. Rien o gwbl.

Dim ond dweud.

Pam, Partnership and Participation

Apart from approving free parking for a limited period in Ammanford (a proposal which has been criticised by the town's traders for its lack of common sense), the meeting of the County Council's Executive Board next week will also "consider" a partnership agreement between the Labour Party and the Independent bloc which together run the council in coalition.


The agenda for the meeting tells us that it was Labour leader Kevin Madge who wanted the agreement with the Independents to be approved by the Executive Board, although in reality it was hammered out and agreed after the elections in May. There is no legal requirement for it to be approved by the governing Executive Board (the people who hammered out the agreement in the first place), and nobody is going to stand up and say it should be scrapped at next week's meeting.

Another PR exercise, then, and any members of the public and hapless reporters present can look forward to another lengthy and incoherent speech from Kev as he tries to persuade us that his new administration is the best thing since sliced bread.

Probably the only flicker of interest in any of this will be the behaviour of Pam Palmer, leader of the Independent bloc. Will she manage to summon up even a tiny bit of enthusiasm for playing second fiddle to the lacklustre Kev, or will she repeat her performance from the June AGM, where she appeared to be munching on a wasp sandwich?

Whatever else you say about Pam, nobody has ever accused her of being a good actress.

The document which has been published on the council's website is a fairly lengthy list of tired and vague "promises" without a single measurable target or any numbers. Here are two taken at random,
 

We will continue to review all spending annually as part of an efficiency programme so as to prioritise resources where they are most needed and to minimise rises in Council Tax. 

We will continue to review our portfolio of land and buildings, as part of our Asset Management Strategy, to reduce unnecessary costs and generate capital receipts to contribute to our investment programmes in education, housing and elsewhere.

All councils have to do these things, so it's a bit like the postman telling you in excited terms that he will continue to deliver letters.

Of all of the priorities and activities listed, the Welsh language does not warrant a single mention anywhere.

The document is also only a part of the overall agreement between Kev and Pam. Not for public viewing are the interesting bits. We know, for example, that the agreement will run initially for one year, at which point it will be reviewed.

What is the review mechanism, and what will be the criteria used? Given that the new administration won't really get into its stride until the autumn, almost half of the first year will have gone before the coalition actually gets down to work. There won't be much to go on, will there?

And whose idea was it to restrict the agreement to one year initially? Was it at Labour's insistence, or was it put in by the Independents? And why?

The full agreement also sets out the nuts and bolts of who gets which portfolio, and the division of spoils between the two parties. Why can't we be allowed to see that?

We are left with Motherhood and Apple Pie, but Kev and Pam are not keen to tell us how many mothers or how many apple pies. Or when.

As Caebrwyn has pointed out, the document indicates that the council may get around to trialling filming and webcasting of council meetings. This is couched in such grudging and resentful terms, that you can almost hear Pam's voice on the dictaphone:

"we are anxious not to waste local taxpayer’s money with frivolous or perceived populist ideas."

(Not my use of the apostrophe, by the way. It's safe to assume that there is more than one taxpayer in the county). 

The section which deals with this begins with the claim, "We will ensure that the council is open and transparent in everything we do." This from the very same people who slapped a public interest exemption on a proposal to transfer responsibility for a few public toilets from the county council to community councils last year. Not to mention the constant tweaking of the council's constitution to increase the powers of the executive at the expense of the ordinary councillors, the opposition and the public.

The agreement expresses the hope that more people will come along to watch council meetings. That would be wonderful, so how might that goal be achieved? Here are some suggestions:

• Get rid of the intimidating and intrusive entry procedures which the council placed on the public wishing to attend meetings last year. Re-open the side door to allow people to enter and leave the public gallery at their convenience.
• Give the gallery a lick of paint and remove all of the laminated notices banning this, that and everything else.
• Hold meetings of the full council in the evening for the convenience of the voters rather than the officers and those elderly councillors who are tucked up in bed by 9p.m.
• Give ordinary councillors a slot to raise matters which concern them and their voters. This could be done by ballot, with say half an hour allotted once a month. Let's have at least one small part of the agenda which is not controlled and stage managed.
• Encourage more members of the public to come in and raise their questions and concerns. The existing rules are far too restrictive and intimidating. And while you are at it, give the public a right of reply in these sessions.
• But perhaps most important of all, just once in a while show that public concerns and consultations are listened to and can really change things. For all of the statutory consultations, panels and other paraphernalia, the overriding impression that the public has is that they are wasting their time because the relevant decisions have already been taken. And they are right to suspect that. 

Tacked on at the end of the document, probably at Pam's insistence to create a platform for her new-found role of saviour of the county's rural areas, is a short section dealing with the bits of Carmarthenshire which are not Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. 


This tells us that the council will seek to "protect and where possible improve rural bus services". It also wants to work with BT and others to help improve broadband provision. Presumably that is distinct from the major project recently announced by the Welsh Government and BT.


Finally, Pam wants to help farmers diversify with particular emphasis on "retaining young people in the farming industry by helping them to develop alternative sources of income and alternative employment opportunities".


Err, right. Isn't that what Margaret Thatcher did to the mining industry?


 

Back to School

The PR exercise which is Carmarthenshire County Council's next Executive Board meeting in Ammanford will "consider" the closure of Ysgol Gynradd Brechfa. In case anyone in Brechfa is still hoping that the Board will actually debate the issue and come to a decision in Ammanford Town Hall, the reality is that the decision to close was taken long ago.

The brief report recommending closure would have been drawn up and checked by well paid officers in the council's Education Service, and it is a reasonable bet that many of the children in Brechfa could have done a better job.

Here are just a few examples taken from the document, which runs to about 25 lines of text:

".. of a statutory notice immediately following the end of the formal consultation phase to implement by the proposal by the end of the Summer Term 2013..."

"By the end of the Summer Term, 2012, pupil numbers at the school is projected to have declined to 14. With no evident prospect of improvement in the foreseeable future. The school therefore have 64% surplus places."

You get the picture. At least Spell Checker prevented any spelling mishaps.

The report is available in English only, as is usual in Carmarthenshire. Anyone who loves the Welsh language can at least take comfort in the thought that yr hen iaith was spared the indignity of what was inflicted on it in the Welsh version of the agenda for the Ammanford meeting:

8. ail gam cynllun rheoli’r traethlin.

9. meysydd parcio stryd y gwynt, stryd y neuadd a'r baltic, rhydaman - parc yn rhad ac am ddim.

10. penodi llywodraethwyr a.ll.

11. cytundeb partneriaeth rhwng y blaid lafur a'r grŴp annibynnol "gweithio gyda'n gilydd i greu gwell sir gaerfyrddin".

Jesus wept. The children of Brechfa could certainly teach the officers how to use capital letters, for a start.

And to think the authors of this crap are responsible for our education system.

Dyfed Powys Police Commissioner - the Tory story

Carmarthenshire's Tories are few in number, as we saw in the recent county council elections where they polled just 2%, but they would nevertheless make an interesting study for any sociologists.

They fall into two broad types. First we have a smattering of home-grown talent who would mostly describe themselves as businessmen. Then we have the rather more exotic imports who actually run the flea circus. These include a cast of characters, mainly in their 30s, who could have stepped straight out of the pages of old works of fiction. We have, for example, a huntin', shootin', fishin' would-be local squire and London lawyer; a Violet Elizabeth Bott ("I'll thcweam and thcweam until I'm thick"); and now, in the shape of Christopher Salmon, a man who bears a resemblance to characters from the pages of Boy's Own Paper.

Chris Salmon will be standing as Conservative and Unionist Party candidate in the elections for Police Commissioner of Dyfed Powys Police in November, elections that nobody really wants.

Every cloud has a silver lining, they say, so perhaps we should look on the bright side and be thankful that the Tories will not be fielding John Davies, the former leader of Pembrokeshire Council. Mr Davies wisely stepped down from his previous role just before the brown stuff really hit the fan in Haverfordwest, and his keen sense of self-preservation ensured that he withdrew quietly from the Tory selection process when it became clear that he was on to a loser.

So who is Chris Salmon, I hear you ask.

He tells us that he grew up in a farming family in the old county of Radnorshire. Unlike some of his Tory chums, he is not keen to tell us where he went to school, but it probably was not the local comprehensive.
From those humble beginnings, he went to Oxford (not mentioned on his campaign site) and from there to Sandhurst. He served as an army officer for 4 years until 2007 in the Rifles.

Since then, his career becomes a little more foggy. His website tells us, in the past tense, that he "has worked" in business, while the Daily Telegraph describes him as a consultant.

In his army days, Mr Salmon served in various places, including a spell in the inglorious British occupation of Basra in Iraq.

To be fair, Mr Salmon is not proud of the British record in Iraq, as he told Conservative Home. People who argued about the legality of the war were missing the point, he said. What mattered most was reform of the British armed forces. Risks needed to be taken, and reputations put on the line (and lots more in the same platitudinous vein). Something needs to change, he opines, but somehow can't quite put his finger on what that something is.

Basra taught the Brits no end of a lesson, he tells us historically, as indeed did the Boer War. Here the Oxford Modern History and Economics graduate gets himself in a bit of a tangle.

The Boer War "foreshadowed much that was to come - barbed wire, trenches, repeat fire rifles...", he tells us. He could have added that the British also came up with the innovative idea of concentration camps in which half of the Afrikaner child population died from malnutrition and disease, along with thousands of women, Africans and other non-whites. He also thinks that this happened in 1910.


If you are casting around for numbers to make up a pub quiz team, it might be better to leave young Chris on the bench.

In the 2010 general election he stood in Llanelli and polled 5,381 votes (14.4% of the votes cast), coming a rather distant third.

In the run-up to the election, Chris Salmon ran a reasonably active campaign. He popped up in Kidwelly, for example, to give his backing to the group fighting the Coedbach biomass plant. The Coedbach group, whose prominent supporters include Meryl Gravell, has an amazing record of objecting to anything that smacks of alternative energy. Back in Llanelli, he joined opposition to the council's plans to close two care homes. More about this below.

In an election statement to the Llanelli Star (here) he told readers,

Even lifetime supporters of other parties want to know where I stand on issues that matter to them — the economic mess, job opportunities, Government waste, the NHS, schools, immigration.

Those are all eminently good questions, so where does he stand?


Helpfully, the Guardian published the results of a questionnaire carried out by TheyWorkForYou in the run-up to the 2010 election. Chris responded as follows (my paraphrasing):

• Should the rich bear the brunt of any tax increases needed to tackle the deficit? Young Chris is not really sure, so he sits on the fence on that one.
• Should the Government aggressively tackle climate change? No, says Chris.
• Should Britain increase public spending? Definitely not, he says.
• Are immigration levels too high? Ermm, not really sure.
• What if Iran develops a nuclear weapon? Chris would support sending the boys in, no doubt so that they can "learn no end of a lesson" once again.
• British troops should stay in Afghanistan as long as they are needed. Absolutely, says our hero.
• Should more money be spent on flood protection? Ermm, not really sure about that one.
• Extra public money should be spent to ensure that the Llanelli care homes can stay open. "No", says Chris.

Interestingly for someone putting himself forward as a candidate for police commissioner, Chris Salmon has a very strong dislike of CCTV cameras.

So it is that we have a candidate who presumably supports the massive cuts to police budgets in the Dyfed Powys area, along with reductions in spending on other things which are of no interest to local people, such as social care and flood defences, just as long as we can still send "our boys" off to the Middle East for more stirring adventures.



How the police commissioner elections in Dyfed Powys will pan out is anybody's guess, but the Tories' prospects are not bad in a contest in which there may be just a couple of candidates and not many more voters.

As a footnote, it is worth adding that the only other candidate declared so far is Christine Gwyther for Labour. Christine was sacked as Agriculture Minister by the saintly Rhodri Morgan and has clocked up an impressive record of losing elections.