Cheap-shot lies

Roughly three weeks ago Carmarthenshire County Council, or rather someone in the chief executive's department, reacted volcanically to suggestions that the council was planning to privatise parts of Pembrey Country Park and the Millennium Coastal Park:

"This is same old same old rumour and fabricated diatribe that is resurrected every few years that has absolutely no foundation at all. It is a downright and cheap-shot lie that the park is for sale, designed to provoke anxiety."

Roll forward a couple of weeks, and the council publishes the annual report of Cllr Meryl Gravell, Executive Board member responsible for regeneration. This is what she had to say about the council's plans for the two parks:

"We are looking for partners to help execute infrastructure improvements; events and activities; and accommodation solutions in the parks. Almost 30 expressions of interest have been received, and interested parties are invited to visit the parks and discuss their ideas during June, with the intention of making formal tender offers afterwards." [Cneifiwr's translation]

Millennium Coastal Park

Meryl's use of the term "accommodation solutions" is particularly interesting and suitably vague. Are we talking about campsites, caravan parks or hotels?

Responding to Unison's concerns (the full text of the press release which sparked the hysterical outburst can be found below), the council's Head of Leisure said,

"The authority has no intention of selling off the PCP or the MCP, and neither could it."

But as the Unison statement hints, what the council could do and has done repeatedly with favoured partners, is to offer very long leases on land, as often as not on extremely favourable terms.

Leases of 100 or 150 years may not technically be selling off land, but they amount to the same thing, and no private developer is going to invest significant amounts of capital to build e.g. a hotel on a short-term lease.

We are probably in for a long wait to discover the identities of the 30 ventures which expressed interest in grabbing a slice of the action, but it is likely that they will include a generous helping of familiar rugby boardroom figures and other persons "known to the officers". Who knows, perhaps Meryl's favourite former footballer, Robbie Savage, may put in another appearance.

Cefnsidan

Unison Press Release

Keep Pembrey Country Park and our coastline in public hands

Unison Carmarthenshire is growing increasingly concerned by Carmarthenshire County Council’s plans for Pembrey Country Park and the Llanelli coastline (Millennium Coastal path).

In an open invitation to private companies and investors the Council proposes that they could “Take on and improve existing facilities”, “Add holiday accommodation” and offer alternative use for areas – this is not an exhaustive list of proposals, but it does give a clear indication that the Council seeks to privatise the area and turn over a valuable and appreciated local resource to investors, whose sole intention would be to develop the area for their own profit.

While we do not disagree in principle with the development of the area, we do not understand why the council would seek outside investment when it could borrow the money itself and any profits from the area could be distributed back into the local community instead of lining the pockets of big businesses. There is a very real risk of developers being given the land for a pittance, applying for and receiving planning rights, which would boost the value of the land and simply cashing in.

We intend to ask Llanelli Trades Council, Trades unions, community and environmental groups, local councillors and AM’s and MP’s, anti-cuts and action groups, to come together to oppose this sell off and force Carmarthenshire County Council to reverse its decision to turn over vast swathes of our coastline to private developers whose last interest would be the people of Llanelli and Carmarthenshire.

We will be holding Public Meetings after the summer holidays to discuss the current proposals and formulate a strategy to defeat them. We invite all the above and the general public to attend these meetings and to get involved in a campaign to keep Pembrey County park  and our coastline in the public sector -where councillors are democratically accountable for the stewardship of our assets. We urge everyone to get involved to safe our services.

A Tale of Two Councillors

As we know, councillors in Wales are now being encouraged to write an annual report to tell us all what they have been up to. They don't actually have to write a report, but councils have to publish them if they do.

The response in Carmarthenshire has been muted, to put it mildly, but thanks to insomnnia Cneifiwr noticed that the first two (and so far the only two) out of the traps are those veteran Independents, Pam Palmer and Meryl Gravell.

The reports are interesting, at least to sad council watchers, because this is one of the very few occasions when you will get to see them setting out their stalls and showing voters how they see themselves and how they want us to see them.

As is often the case with the council website, the links to their reports do not work, at least on the English pages, but you do get a result if you search in Welsh.

To get to the reports is not exactly easy, but if you want to try, go to the Welsh section of the website, select "Eich Cynghorydd Sir" on the left of the page. On the next page, select "Eich Cynghorydd Sir" (yes again), and pick a name from the first drop-down menu. Choose Pam Palmer, and "Ewch". No, stop tittering at the back. It means "Go".

Up comes a page with Pam's picture on it. Next click on the picture. This brings up a profile, and in the middle of the profile you will find a link to an annual report for 2012/13.

See. It's as easy as that!

Pam's report has been professionally translated, presumably by scribes in County Hall.

She kicks off by explaining at great length why she does not hold surgeries, but is available to anyone who wants her at any time of the day or night (!) before going on to say that she has tried hard to make people aware of the Local Development Plan, and stomped around Abergwili distributing copies of the proposals for new housing developments to people living close to the sites. That really deserves praise.

Much of the rest concerns things like dog muck, buses, speeding drivers, and rubbish. Pam says she has secured regular rubbish collections for Abergwili, and she suggests that she has secured additional funding for the schools in her ward.

Perhaps that's one of the perks of having a councillor on the Executive Board. Lucky old Abergwili.

You will find nothing in the report about Pam's activities as leader of the Independent Party, or what she gets up to as a member of the Executive Board, and there is no mention of the County Museum which she told us she was trying to save before the last council elections.

Her attendance record for council meetings is an impressive 91%.

The picture painted by Pam is of a humble parish councillor who has the police on speed-dial and who frets about dog muck and boy racers. Her role as a political fixer and her membership of the small group which runs the county council do not get a look in.

Meryl's report is very different. If Pam is an old maid bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist, Meryl is a jet-set political colossus. Carmarthenshire's answer to Christine Lagarde, the boss of the IMF; Henry Kissinger in a frock.

Apparently there is no dog muck in Trimsaran. In fact the vast bulk of this fairly lengthy report is not about Trimsaran at all, although it has got some new rubbish bins, but exciting regeneration projects and huge grants dispensed by Meryl across the length and breadth of Carmarthenshire.

She begins by noting that the Ffos Las race course has been very successful, and that she supported Robbie Savage's application to build a hotel there.

While Trimsaran merits a few mentions on one page, five pages are devoted to regeneration schemes and other projects from Laugharne to Llandovery.

Huge sums of money are involved. It's £352 million here and £5,627,30.45p there.

Unlike Pam's elegant Welsh, Meryl's prose is rather odd at times, and occasionally it has a whiff of Google Translate about it, so perhaps this is her own work.


Unison and others will be interested to read what Meryl has to say about the Pembrey Country Park and the Millennium Coastal Park at the end of the report:

"Rydym yn chwilio am bartneriaid i helpu i gyflawni gwelliannau seilwaith; digwyddiadau a gweithgareddau; a datrysiadau llety yn y parciau. Derbyniwyd bron 30 mynegiant o ddiddordeb, a gwahoddir partïon sydd â diddordeb i ymweld â'r parciau a thrafod eu syniadau yn ystod mis Mehefin, gyda'r bwriad o geisio cynigion tendro ffurfiol wedi hynny".

[We are looking for partners to help execute infrastructure improvements; events and activities; and accommodation solutions in the parks. Almost 30 expressions of interest have been received, and interested parties are invited to visit the parks and discuss their ideas during June, with the intention of making formal tender offers afterwards.]

The Millennium Coastal Park will next year host the National Eisteddfod, so let's hope for all concerned that the Towy Community Church on Ice Experience and Ronald MacDonald BigMac Health Spa and Fun Splash don't open their gates until the druids have departed.

Oh, and Meryl was absent from nearly a quarter of council meetings.

A mystery solved

This blog has reported previously (here and here) on the sale of the leasehold on a piece of land designated for use as a car park for the Scarlets stadium to Marstons, the pub and hotel chain. It now transpires that the price was £850,000, and the leasehold is understood to be 100 years.

The land in question is part of 17 acres leased by Camarthenshire County Council to the Scarlets for 150 years (we can't accuse the council of short-term thinking, can we?) for a peppercorn rent.

At a meeting of the county council in November 2007 the council heard that the entire 17 acre site was valued at just £210,000, thanks largely to its planning designation for recreational use. The chief executive acknowledged that the other half of the site, which had planning for retail, was worth an estimated £14 million.

Not bad, you might think, for a small parcel of land to go for four times the value of the much larger site of which it was part, but of course part of the deal involved changing the planning status by the ever obliging county council, and as previously hinted by the council, the proceeds have been split between the club and the council.

The council says that it is perfectly normal for a freeholder and leaseholder to share in the proceeds of such sales, although normally leaseholders in such situations will have actually bought their leases to begin with.

The Scarlets, on the other hand, were effectively gifted the land after council taxpayers had thoughtfully spent a lot of money on making the site suitable for development, and the fact that the club has sold it suggests that it was surplus to requirements anyway.

It is also understood that a significant chunk of the council's £425,000 share of the proceeds has been swallowed up by a very hefty lawyer's bill.

All of which raises the question whether the council, as it is legally supposed to do, has acted as a responsible steward of public money and had council taxpayers' interests uppermost in its mind, or whether it has hit on a new way of subsidising the club at everyone else's expense.

For the last couple of years the club has made mention in its annual reports of plans to sell a significant asset, without specifying what that asset might be. It looks as though we now know.

Whatever the Scarlet's net share of the proceeds is after deduction of costs, it will make barely any difference to the gaping hole in the club's finances, although it may, just, enable it to report an improvement in results for the last financial year thanks to this extraordinary item.

Perhaps the sale of Car Park A will pave the way for more sell-offs as that original recreational designation is magically transformed into something more commercially attractive.

Trebles all round for the legal fraternity and the men in suits in the Scarlets boardroom, perhaps, but it looks as though council taxpayers will have to make do with a bitter lemon.

Population statistics and Local Development Plans - Updated

Update

In response to criticism the Council has backed down and agreed to extend the consultation period until 11 October (announcement here).

____________________________

Twitter is not all maniacs and trolls, despite what we keep being told. Here's one of the BBC's finest from earlier this morning:


 Tomos Livingstone ‏@TomosL 

Miniscule year-on-year increase in population of Wales, say @statisticsONS, from 3.063m to 3.074m.

This once again raises the question why we are all about to be lumbered with Local Development Plans which are based on the premise of sharp rises in both the population and the number of households.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Carmarthenshire County Council has just upped its allocations for new houses by 7% to 16,240, and in true County Hall style has put the latest version of the plan out to public consultation at one of its favourite times of year - bang in the middle of the summer holidays.

The other preferred consultation period being Christmas.

Canllawiau Kafka-aidd

Diweddariad

Mae'r Cyngor wedi ymestyn y cyfnod ymgynghori tan 11eg Hydref.

___________________________

Mae Cyngor Sir Caerfyrddin newydd gyhoeddi canllawiau cynllunio atodol drafft i esbonio sut yn union y bydd y Cyngor yn ystyried effaith datblygiadau preswyl dan y Cynllun Datblygu Lleol ar y Gymraeg fel iaith gymunedol.

Yr ateb yw, mewn brawddeg, na fydd yr awdurdod yn ystyried yr effaith ar unrhyw gymuned o ran y 16,240 o "unedau preswyl" newydd y mae'r Cynllun Datblygu yn eu cynnig yn Sir Gaerfyrddin erbyn 2021, am fod y Cyngor yn mynnu bod yr effaith eisoes wedi cael ei hystyried wrth iddo lunio'r cynllun.

Dim ond yn achos rhai safleoedd newydd na chafodd eu neilltuo yn y Cynllun gwreiddiol y bydd angen asesu'r effaith ieithyddol yn fanwl.

Mae hyn yn codi'r cwestiwn i ba raddau mae'r Cyngor wedi asesu effaith y datblygiadau arfaethedig ar bob cymuned unigol. Dim o gwbl yw'r ateb, ond bydd rhaid i ni droi at Papur Pwnc Yr Iaith Gymraeg gyntaf.

Craidd y papur pwnc hwn yw methodoleg ddiffygiol dogfen arall - Cynllunio a’r Iaith Gymraeg: Y Ffordd Ymlaen - sydd yn seiliedig ar 16 cwestiwn.

Mae'n rhaid gofyn pa mor berthnasol i'r iaith yw cwestiynau megis y rhain:

Ydy’r Cynllun Datblygu Lleol yn debygol o gael effaith ar iechyd pobl leol?

Ateb: Gwelliant

Ydy’r Cynllun Datblygu Lleol yn debygol o effeithio ar y risg o fwy o droseddu neu drais yn
y gymuned? A allai gynyddu’r risg o droseddu neu drais, gan wneud y gymuned yn lle llai
dymunol i fyw ynddo felly?

Ateb: Gwelliant

Ydy’r Cynllun Datblygu Lleol yn debygol o gael effaith ar fwynderau’r Sir? A allai arwain at
ddirywiad yn ansawdd yr amgylchedd, gan wneud y gymuned yn lle llai dymunol i fyw
ynddo felly?

Ateb: Gwelliant

Mae iechyd, yr amgylchedd a throseddu'n ffactorau sy'n bwysig i bawb, beth bynnag yw'r iaith.

O'r 16 cwestiwn, "Gwelliant" yw'r ateb i 6 ohonynt, tra mai "Effaith Niwtral" yw'r casgliad yn achos chwech arall. "Ansicr" yw'r ateb i'r gweddill. Mae'r gair "negyddol" yn rhy negyddol, mae'n debyg.

Y cwestiynau pwysicaf yn y cyd-destun hwn yw:

Ydy’r Cynllun Datblygu Lleol yn debygol o arwain at gynnydd / gostyngiad yn y boblogaeth
a allai:

•  Effeithio ar y cydbwysedd rhwng siaradwyr Cymraeg / Saesneg (mewn ffordd

           negyddol neu gadarnhaol); neu

•  Arwain at ostyngiad absoliwt neu gyfraneddol yn y nifer o siaradwyr Cymraeg?

Ateb: Ansicr

Ydy’r Cynllun Datblygu Lleol yn debygol o arwain at fwy o fewnfudo neu allfudo?

Ateb: Ansicr

A oes gan y Cynllun Datblygu Lleol botensial i arwain at densiynau cymdeithasol,
gwrthdaro neu raniadau difrifol o fewn y gymuned Gymraeg ei hiaith?


Ateb: Ansicr

Ac dyna ni. Gan mai'r mwyafrif o'r atebion yn gadarnhaol neu'n niwtral, fe fydd popeth yn iawn, ac ni fydd modd i rywun wrthwynebu datblygiad ar sail ei effaith ar yr iaith.

Gall unrhywun sydd â diddordeb yn y peth ddweud ei ddweud mewn ymgynghoriad erbyn 13eg Medi (manylion yma).

Dechreuodd y cyfnod ymgynghori ar 31ain Gorffennaf, cyfnod sy'n cyd-daro â'r Brifwyl a'r gwyliau haf, ac mae'n debyg fod y Cyngor am ddod â'r peth i'r gwely cyn i Weithgor y Cyfriad gael cyfle i'w drafod a chyn i'r Llywodraeth gyhoeddi'r TAN20 newydd.

Felly brysiwch, brysiwch bobol!

Ôl-nodyn

Mae Grŵp Plaid Cymru ar y Cyngor wedi cysylltu â'r Carmarthen Journal i dynnu sylw at eu galwad am ymestyn cyfnod ymgynghorol yr addasiadau i'r Cynllun Datblygu a'r canllawiau:

"Plaid Cymru is demanding that the public consultation period into key planning policy and development proposals which will shape the future of Carmarthenshire should be extended. Plaid say it’s totally unacceptable that consultation on such important matters should be held over the summer holidays, and accuse the council of ‘sharp practice’.

 “These are crucially important matters, which will effect communities across Carmarthenshire,” said Cllr Alun Lenny. “The LDP itself will determine what kind of county we’ll be living in by 2021, and these proposed amendments to development sites and planning policies are a key part of the process. They touch on issues like the future of the Welsh language and affordable housing – issues which are of great importance to thousands of our people. It is totally unacceptable that the consultation process into such an important document should be held over the summer holidays, when many people are away. One suspects that this is being done to minimise public response. If so, it is very sharp practice.

“There was cross-party outrage in County Hall when Western Power announced that its public consultation into the Brechfa Forest grid connection plans would finish at the end of August. As a result, the company has extended the consultation period until almost the end of September.  But now we have the council’s administration pulling exactly the same stunt – on an even more important matter.”

Cllr Peter Hughes Griffiths pointed out that town and community councils don’t sit during August and it will be well into September before most of them next meet. “The fair course of action would be to extend the consultation period until early Autumn, in order to give the public, community councils and other interested parties a proper chance to study the proposals and to respond, if they so wish,” he said.

 Cllr Hughes Griffiths has written to council leaders asking them to consider extending the consultation period until October 5th".

Stradey Park - the men in suits put the champagne on ice

The convoluted and seemingly endless battle over the controversial Stradey Park development in Llanelli seems to moving towards a climax, with distraught locals and a clearly less than enthusiastic Welsh Government on one side, and the powerful commercial interests of Carmarthenshire County Council, Taylor Wimpey and the Scarlets on the other.

Work on the site is now in full swing even though the Welsh Government issued a section 18 stop order on the renewal of outline planning permission while it considered new call-in requests. The work is going ahead on the strength of reserved matters planning permission granted by the council in 2010 which the Welsh Government found it was unable to call in because of a legal technicality.

Of course, what may be a legal technicality for the men in suits translates into the very real risk of catastrophic flooding for local people.

Taylor Wimpey appears to be very confident of the outcome of this game of chess, and has now paid  £2.8 million in Section 106 money to the council, with the balance (£4.6 million plus interest) being promised for March 2014.

Before anyone gets out the champagne to celebrate this sudden windfall, it is worth remembering that the council took this money out of its reserves several years ago to pay for the new stadium at Parc y Scarlets.

Still outstanding is a further £2.25 million raided from the council's reserves in 2007 and forwarded to the Scarlets as a soft loan.

Councillors will have an opportunity to quiz the club's management when it shows up at the October meeting of the full council, an invitation which has the words "stage managed" written all over it.

The purpose of the visit is not yet clear, although clearly the final repayment of the section 106 money will be a cause for back slapping, possibly to soften up councillors before they are asked to approve a new aid package for the financially challenged club.

The Scarlets scheme always had the enthusiastic backing of the council's chief executive (it was his first major new project after arriving in Carmarthen fresh from the debacle of Princess Royal Arena in Boston), and was undertaken despite warnings from external auditors that the business plan was "extremely challenging".

The auditors have been proved right, and the club's accounts show that it is insolvent. Fortunately it has the exclusive use of the stadium rent free under the terms of its 150 year lease until such time as it makes a £1 million annual profit. That day is somewhere over the horizon in a dim and distant future.

Perhaps in 140 years from now when a packet of crisps costs £500,000, the great great grandchildren of our present councillors will chuckle when the first contribution finally arrives.

Not surprisingly, the stadium is regarded by the club as a huge financial asset, even though it does not own it.

Coming very soon will be another report on a deal which shows how, if you are very lucky, you too could make pots of money by flogging off something you don't own.

Postscript

Peter Hain has just been on the Today Programme reminiscing about negotiating an agreement with Spain over Gibraltar which he said would have enshrined people's right to "enjoy a pint of beer" on the Rock. The agreement was no such thing as it was vetoed by the Spanish Government, and of course drinking beer is prohibited in Spain, but why quibble about mere details.

This brought to mind the curious part played by the Orange One in the Scarlets saga back in 2006 when he wrote to the then Environment Minister, one Carwyn Jones, to drop a not very subtle hint:

"I understand that you have decided to "call-in" the planning application to redevelop the site of the current Stradey Park stadium. This is, of course, entirely a matter for the Welsh Assembly Government and it is right that all issues are properly considered. However, there are concerns about the possible implications of an undue delay in the planning process and I would welcome your views on whether this can be avoided.

I understand that the application will allow the Llanelli Scarlets Rugby Club to both sort out its financial problems and contribute towards the construction of a new state-of-the-art stadium and training facilities.

As a keen rugby supporter, I believe that Welsh rugby should have four commercially viable teams, and the Scarlets, with their proud history and tradition, are of vital importance to the future of Welsh rugby. The outcome of the planning application and the timescale involved could have significant financial implications for the Scarlets, and I feel that these also need to be carefully considered, together with the protection of local concerns, when deliberating the application.

I hope that it is possible to come to an early decision on this matter and I should also be grateful if you would keep me informed of progress"

Car parking charges, Rebecca and the Barnet connection

Around about 170 years ago Carmarthenshire and some of the surrounding counties were in turmoil in what we now call the Rebecca Riots.

The Daughters of Rebecca would be called grassroots activists nowadays, as they meted out justice to racketeering landlords, Anglican clergymen who demanded their tithes from non-conformists and other representatives of the Establishment. A particular target for Rebecca and her followers was toll gates where locals were forced to pay extortionate charges as they went about their business.

Merched Beca - Rebecca's Daughters

In the end London sent in the troops, and the movement fizzled out. It did however notch up some important successes, including an act of parliament to sort out the turnpike trusts.

The racketeering landlords, greedy Anglican clergy, turnpike trusts, workhouses and Tory magistrates all have their modern counterparts: the privatised utilities, the banks, the oil companies, developers, "consultants", Virgin Trains, BT and even our local authorities, to name but a few.

Labour-led Carmarthenshire County Council is gearing up for a new wave of privatisations as it plans to deliver services in what the chief executive calls "a different way", and the council's car parking charges are the modern equivalent of the old turnpikes.

Last month residents of the London Borough Barnet won an important case in the High Court to stop their council from pushing up charges for parking permits as a way of generating extra income. The judge said that the 1984 Road Traffic Regulation Act "is not a fiscal measure and does not authorise the authority to use its powers to charge local residents for parking in order to raise surplus revenue for other transport purposes".

The council intends to appeal the ruling, but in the meantime it has sparked a debate over whether it is legitimate for councils to use car parking as a means of raising revenue.

Prior to the High Court ruling, the uppity residents of Barnet also took on their council over a disastrous new parking regime which introduced exorbitant pay-by-phone charges in the Borough's high streets. The introduction of this scheme led to a slump in business for traders, and culminated in the disgrace of a leading Tory councillor who assaulted the proprietor of a cafe when she filmed him flouting the charging system he himself had introduced.

The council has since abandoned the scheme.

Resident parking permits are confined to the urbanised parts of Carmarthenshire, but the council has been busily racking up other parking charges for several years.

Not all that long ago parking was free in most of the county's smaller towns, but by 2011 we were paying 40p per hour, and the County Council announced that it would be raising those charges year-on-year to 70p an hour by January 2014. No doubt plans are already being drawn up for the period after that.

A spokesperson for the English Local Government Association told Radio 4's Today Programme the other day that rises in car parking charges in many local authorities were not keeping place with inflation.

The ramping up of charges in Carmarthenshire is clearly far outstripping the rate of inflation, and we know thanks to freedom of information requests submitted by some community councillors that the County Council is making huge and growing profits from its car parks as charges escalate while maintenance is minimal.

The effect on our small towns is crippling. Why pay 60p to go and buy a loaf of bread and a newspaper in your local high street when you can park for free at a supermarket?

I wonder how Rebecca's Daughters would have reacted to this?


Footnote


The London Borough of Barnet and Carmarthenshire do not on the face of it have much in common, but Barnet is where the chief executive of our county council began his ascent up the local government career ladder, and he worked alongside the brother of the doyenne of the Barnet blogging scene, Mrs Angry.

For a brief period Cneifiwr also lived in the London Borough of Barnet where he used to frequent some of the rougher, spit and sawdust drinking holes. No doubt those have all long since been gentrified, and it is unlikely that he would have bumped into the genteel Mrs Angry sipping her pint of stout in such places.

Mrs Angry contemplating the downfall of Cllr Brian Coleman

Mrs Angry and some of the other Barnet bloggers took a very close interest in the Caebrwyn libel case, and Mrs A wrote a superb series of court reports while the case was in progress. Friendships were formed, and the Carmarthenshire and Barnet bloggers now occasionally compare notes.

No doubt there will be those in County Hall who suspect that there is some sort of conspiracy afoot between the scurrilous* bloggers of Carmarthenshire and the urban sophisticates of Barnet, but the truth is that we are just not that disciplined.

* A term used by the council chief executive to describe the Carmarthenshire bloggers.

An Open Letter to Marc Bolland, CEO of Marks & Spencers plc

Dear Mr Bolland

Things have not been easy for M&S in recent years, and you have quite a job on your hands turning the fortunes of the company round. I wish you well.

M&S is a great brand, but perhaps the brand is part of your problem as well. Woolworths was a great brand once too; everyone knew what Woolworths stood for, and a lot of people felt affection for it, but that wasn't enough to save it, was it?

Let me tell you about one of your smaller stores in Carmarthen, the oldest town in Wales. A lot of people here speak Welsh, and a lot of people go shopping in Carmarthen from the smaller towns and villages around it. A lot of them speak Welsh too.

True, there are lots of people in Carmarthen who don't actively use the language, but who still know quite a lot of Welsh. A bit like the policeman I will tell you about shortly.

Carmarthen is also a popular destination for lots of tourists who come to this part of the world to enjoy the countryside and the coast, including growing numbers of people from the Netherlands. Lots of these visitors also like the fact that Wales is different, with its own history and culture - something which is obvious from the place names.

For quite a long time now quite a lot of local people have felt unhappy about the way in which your company treats the Welsh language. Many of them like your products, and they have been asking the company to recognise the fact that this is a bilingual community with a distinct culture and outlook.

But recently the Carmarthen store was refurbished, and most of the bilingual signs were taken down and replaced with signs in English only. In the food hall there is only one small bilingual sign. If it weren't for the way many of the customers speak, you could be in Croydon, Coventry or Colchester.

You will not be surprised to hear that this change did not go down well, and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) has tried lobbying your management to change things. Last month we organised a protest outside the store and collected a huge number of pairs of men's underpants to convey the message that your language policy is "pants".

Cymdeithas celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, and has notched up many successes during that time. One of the society's core values is non-violence, and our campaigns quite often have a large element of humour.

The store ignored the pants protest, and the managers did not come out to talk to us, so this month we decided to take the protest into the shop.

We worked out that we could bring the food hall to a halt for a few minutes if just a small group went round filling baskets and trolleys with non-perishable food items (we did not want to cause any damage), went through the checkouts and then refused to pay for the goods, while asking to speak to the manager.

This worked very well because we look just like any other M&S customers, as you can see from this picture:

Some unhappy customers

While we were waiting for the store manager, there was a commotion at the tills because a large and very aggressive man pushed through the queue and shoved one of our members into a pile of empty baskets. At first I thought he was an irate member of the public who was angry at being kept waiting, but it turned out he was the store security manager.

He also managed to upset some of the other customers who were not part of the protest, as you will see if you watch the CCTV footage.

Although he works in a store whose customers are overwhelmingly Welsh, and many of them Welsh-speaking, your security manager could not speak Welsh and had a strong London accent. To be perfectly frank, he would not look out of place in a march by one of those far-right groups you get in England.

Given that a security manager will inevitably have dealings with the public in stressful and difficult circumstances, perhaps it would have been better to employ a local person with better inter-personal skills.

It's a question of cultural sensitivity really, isn't it?

Anyway, shortly afterwards a store manager called Jane arrived. She could speak Welsh, and calmed things down. She spent about ten minutes talking to us, and explained that many of your local staff were unhappy with the rebranding. Apparently your senior management will, provisionally, be meeting on 17 September to discuss the situation.

Jane was diplomatic, and she said she would sort things out with the security manager, who was hovering on the fringes while the discussion was going on, talking loudly into a walky talky.

It turned out that he had called the police and made an allegation of assault.

The police arrived and spoke first to the security manager. The young constable then spoke to us. He said he could not speak Welsh at first, but it turned out that he could understand the language very well. He  explained that he would have to investigate the allegations, and would go through the CCTV footage. We are confident that that will show what really happened. Nobody was arrested.

Our conversation with the police officer was also relaxed and friendly.

The reason I am telling you about all of this is because it demonstrates the value of cultural sensitivity. The staff at the checkouts, the store manager and the police all deserve praise for the way they responded, and we made it clear that our protest was not aimed at them or the customers, but the intransigence and lack of sensitivity shown by the company you run.

What we are asking for in Carmarthen is a store which recognises the place of the Welsh language in the community, which encourages the staff to use their Welsh and actively recruits people who can speak the language.

Wales also produces a lot of very high quality foodstuffs, and we would like to see your company recognise that by offering Welsh goods, clearly labelled as such. We think your customers would like that too, and prefer to see a store which identifies with the local community over one which has displays such as this:

'Best of British' display, M&S Carmarthen

You see, Mr Bolland, outside your store, you will not see many Union Jacks in this part of the world. It is true that opinions are divided about the Union Jack, the royal family and other symbols, but a glance at the political map will show your market researchers that most people round here are not very keen on such things.

Again, it's about cultural sensitivity and trying to be a part of the community you serve. Or to put it into corporate language, it's about your brand.

In the meantime, we are planning our next protest because we feel that too many promises have been broken in the past, but if you would like to invite us to speak at your meeting on 17 September, we will be very happy to come along.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Digwyddiad cas ym Marks a Spencer Caerfyrddin

Yn sgil protest ddi-drais Cymdeithas yr Iaith yn erbyn polisi iaith M&S yng Nghaerfyrddin heddiw, galwodd rheolwr diogelwch yr heddlu a chyhuddo un o'r aelodau o ymosod.

Roedd yr aelod, dyn o Lanelli, yn aros wrth y tiliau i gael siarad â rheolwraig y siop pan gyrhaeddod dyn arall â walky-talky, a gwthio ei ffordd drwy'r rhes.

Gan fy mod i'n sefyll ychydig droedfeddi oddi wrth y til, roedd hi'n amlwg taw y dyn diogelwch oedd yn hwpo a neb arall. Gwylltiodd menyw nad oedd yn rhan o'r brotest oherwydd ymddygiad ymosodol y dyn boliog ag acen Cocni.

Cyrhaeddodd rheolwraig y siop wedyn, ac mi wnaeth hithau ei gorau glas i esbonio'r sefyllfa. Bydd cyfarfod arfaethedig o'r bwrdd ym mis Medi, meddai. Roedd y staff lleol wedi bod yn pwyso ar y cwmni i newid ei bolisi.

Ar wahân i un arwydd (Talu a Chasglu) yn ei Neuadd Fwyd, mae Marks a Spencer Caerfyrddin yr un peth ag unrhyw M&S ar ochr arall Clawdd Offa. Gallwch chi brynu Fruit and Vegetables neu fanteisio ar eu special offers. Colchester, Caergrawnt, Coventry, Caerfyrddin - does dim ots, Saesneg yw iaith M&S, ac mae eu cwsmeriaid Cymraeg yn gorfod derbyn pethau fel y maen nhw.

Chafodd y protestiwr mo'i arestio, a bydd yr heddlu'n archwilio ffilm CCTV o'r digwyddiad.

Thrashed with a feather duster

News from Suffolk where the Royal Town Planning Institute has rejected a complaint against consultants Nathaniel Lichfield Partners made by locals opposing plans for a new Tesco supermarket.

As reported previously, Nathaniel Lichfield has once more been under the spotlight for its curious habit of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, or to put it another way, helping the large supermarkets with planning applications while advising local planning authorities on...erm...supermarket planning applications.

The results of this cosy collaboration can be seen all over Britain, with council planners being advised by NLP that even small market towns can comfortably accommodate a couple of supermarkets. It will sometimes concede that the arrival of a Tesco, Sainsbury's, etc. will hit local businesses, but argue that they were over-trading anyway.

NLP is a prominent member of the Royal Town Planning Institute which regulates the activities of its members. Needless to say, the Institute rejected a complaint that NLP had a conflict of interest, but suggested that the firm might in future want to stop talking about working for Tesco's and "consider further demarcations" between its public and private sector work.

Or in slighlty plainer language, it's OK to work for Tesco's and the others as well as local authorities. Just don't tell the public you are doing it.

Oh, and it would be awfully kind of you to think about creating a Chinese wall to ensure that the same staff don't work on both sides of the fence. We know that you have been telling all and sundry that you have some such wall in place, but we're not really convinced that you do. Could you do something about it before we get any more tiresome complaints in from busybody members of the public?

In a nutshell, then, the RTPI is not going to do anything about this scandalous state of affairs, and NLP will carry on with the business of making money.

Outside the cosy world of council planning departments, developers and extremely highly paid consultants where everyone knows everyone, public confidence in the planning system is at rock bottom and has been for a long time.

Westminster, or in the case of Wales the Senedd, could make a start by insisting that local authorities use properly regulated and truly independent consultants who do not depend on the supermarkets or large developers for a significant chunk of their business.

Business as usual - Carmarthenshire's Local Development Plan

Carmarthenshire County Council's Ministry of Spin recently went to town publicising the results of an opinion survey which showed, among other things, that most people in Carmarthenshire feel that the council keeps them well informed, and this put the council at the top of the rankings among Welsh councils.

The PR release forgot to mention that only just over half of the people surveyed (52% to be precise) felt this way, and it completely forgot to mention that when it came to listening to what its people have to say, Carmarthenshire came bottom of the poll.

The positive results for keeping people informed probably had a lot to do with Carmarthenshire News, the increasingly bulky council newspaper which drops through everyone's letterboxes every other month. Sadly,  most readers of this publication will be blissfully unaware of all the important council news which does not make it into the glossy pages of this propaganda sheet.

Without a doubt, one of the most important things happening in Carmarthenshire at the moment is the creation of a Local Development Plan which will have far-reaching consequences for just about everyone in the county.

The Council has just launched the latest round of statutory consultations on the plan, but you won't find a word about this in the latest edition of Carmarthenshire News, although it does devote a full page to children's puzzles and games.

Carmarthenshire is not alone in refining its LDP. The process is going on all across Wales, and the most frequently heard criticism of all of them is that they base their projections for housing, etc. on a sharp rise in the population in the period up to 2021.

The forecasts were drawn up long before the 2011 census which showed that population growth in many parts of Wales had stagnated. The census also showed that in many parts of Wales there are very large numbers of empty properties, including in Carmarthenshire.

Like other Welsh councils, Carmarthenshire has no doubt had a lot of feedback from local people criticising the population forecasts, and its response to the criticism has been to increase allocations for new houses under the plan by 7% to 16,240.

Students of Carmarthenshire consultations will not be surprised, and neither judging from the results of the opinion survey will the public at large.

The plan is paving the way for huge new housing developments across the county, and there is barely a village which will escape. In Newcastle Emlyn (population about 900), the plan makes an allocation of 89 new houses. That does not sound a lot until you realise that this would represent a population increase of about 20%.

The new draft LDP also has a lot to say about the Welsh language, and the council has produced a glossy new Supplementary Planning Guidance to deal with this. This blog will look at this piece of window dressing in more detail next week, but in essence what it does is to say that language impact assessments and 'linguistic statements' are a wonderful thing, although they will only be necessary for developments which are outside the allocations set out in the LDP.

In other words, the 16,240 new houses included in the plan will not have any impact, and anyone expecting the new policy to prevent a recurrence of what happened in Penybanc will be in for a shock. And even if a developer comes along and wants to double the number of houses allocated to a particular site, the council is likely to declare that the increase is "within the tolerance levels".

Business as usual, in other words.

Anyone wishing to write in and give their view has until 13 September to do so. The place to start is here.

Groundhog Day at Towy Community Church

The bizarre circus which is Towy Community Church appears to have consulted its PR advisers over at County Hall and decided once again to remove an article from its website advertising its intentions to set up a "life centre" in Carmarthen with Mercy Ministries, the controversial Tennessee-based evangelical movement which specialises in administering large doses of biblical tracts and "deliverance" therapy to young women with anything from eating disorders to what it terms "inappropriate sexual behaviour".

A previous article and link to Mercy Ministries disappeared from the church's website shortly before it went back to Carmarthenshire County Council to ask for a large cash injection back in December 2011, only to reappear in a reinvigorated form immediately after the gala opening of its bowling alley. At almost exactly the same time as it was submitting a licensing application to sell alcoholic drinks, despite promising local residents that it would not do so when it "consulted" them before the alley was opened.

Eagle-eyed readers have spotted several other changes to the church's website in recent days, all involving the removal of content.

Fortunately Caebrwyn has kept screenshots of some of the more interesting material which would otherwise have been air-brushed from the record.

Whatever their religious beliefs, local people must now be asking themselves whether they can believe anything Towy Community Church has to say.