David Phillips

Heap of praise

2010-06-04T12:52:00.005+01:00

One wet morning in election week, I & some comrades were outside Seaview School at 8.30am, meeting the mums and getting them to sign our petition against cuts in the education budget, when Uriah Heap (Cllr Peter May the Lib-Dem candidate) emerged from a nearby house – and was as much surprised to see us standing in the road by the garden gate, as we were to see him. Where had he come from, had he materialised? We all pointed to him and shouted, "That's the man – he's the one going to cut your children's education" (or somesuch) and he scuttled back inside pronto. We didn't see him again – so I suppose he waited us out. That must have been a bit awkward.
However, you have to admire the Heap's dedication to the cause of the individual voter, that he was out so early (sometime before 8.30) on a very wet morning, canvassing. I'd also like to know how he had stayed so dry without a coat – I was soaked. You have to hope that after all that effort he got that vote.

Restart

2010-06-04T12:33:00.001+01:00

I stopped doing this in the run-up to and during the election – I had neither the time nor (frankly) the energy – and then you rather get out of the habit. But the election's now done and dusted. So here I am having another go a trying to keep this blog up & running – I am probably not going to be any more successful than I was before! We'll see. I wonder how many 'Restart programmes' I'm allowed? So a few catch-up items will follow.

I spent all my campaigning time in Swansea West (largely with Don – sorry Lord – Anderson) – so I am particularly gratified at the result. I know that the Lib-Dems are claiming it a victory, but then we all know that they have difficulties with truth and reality. Yes Alan Williams majority was reduced, but that has to be judged in context. This was the number one Lib-Dem target n Wales, enormous sums were spent on their campaign, with an enormous team, shovelling out huge amounts of papers. Rumours are that they spent over £40,000 – it was certainly fairly reliable suggested that they had a local campaign fund of over £30,000. No doubt Lib-Dem insiders are scoffing at these figures – "if only he knew how much we really spent". Well no doubt some anorak or other will have a quick shufty at their expenses when they are published and then we will be able to compare that truth with the reality.

This had always been a marginal seat – I think Alan Williams was down to about a 400 majority at one election - and Labour were widely expected to lose. This prediction was assisted by a largely unpopular Labour Government in Westminster (that seemed more interested in its own internal squabbling than governing the country), a very unpopular Prime Minister (whose standing/credibility was not helped by shenanigins of the 'Blairistas' in the Parliamentary Party. Who did they think they were helping?), MPs expenses, the press (including the Guardian sadly) against us, the ridiculous Cleggmania and all the rest of it. The result in Swansea West was therefore a surprise to many – not least Uriah Heap, who almost collapsed when he found he wasn't going to get his train tickets up to the 'Smoke'. It was all the more pleasing as the Lib-Dems had been going around for weeks saying that the election "was in the bag" – yes but not theirs.

It wasn't of course a surprise to us on the doorstep – our returns indicated a win with a reduced majority, although I admit not quite as small as it turned out. But hey, a win is a win!

I must also pay tribute to the assistance of Uriah Heap himself. It's a pity that his husting's performances were not captured on film as they would have become classics of the genre and I would have been able to keep them alongside my video footage of Bethan Jenkins' 'aircraft carrier for Wales' interview, John Redwood singing the National Anthem and Cheryl Gillan looking forward to working with Rhodri Morgan as Wales' First Minister. I have keep Rob Speht's prescient EPost comment, given at the Swansea East count, that they had won Swansea West, that it had been a foregone conclusion. And only then was he told that they'd actually lost. Ho Ho.

During one part of the count Uriah ran through the bar at the Brangwyn Hall, punching the air and shouting, "We've done it! We've done it!". Only twenty minutes later being told that, "..erm...sorry, no you haven't". It was only the strong comforting arm of his agent, ex-Cllr Gerald Clement, that kept the by then limp candidate in the vertical axis. I suppose that I should feel sorry for the Heap, a bit magnanimous in victory, but I don't. He ran a nasty campaign and got the result he deserved. I have never been at an election count previously where a candidate had been so universally disliked as Uriah Heap at this one (and that included some in the Lib-Dem camp who were quietly (and some not so quietly) delighted at his defeat). The downside is that we still have him as the Cabinet Member for Housing. Well, we'll have to make sure that we welcome him with appropriate kindness!

Uriah Heap's loser's speech at the last Assembly election was very ungracious. His effort this time was simply disgraceful. Crass, graceless in the extreme and very, very long. It seemed that once he'd started, he was unable to stop. Certainly, his thanks to the communities of the constituency that (he claimed) had voted for him seemed interminable as he appeared to be reading from a Bartholomew's A-Z. He didn't seem to have twigged that if they had done what he'd claimed, he'd have made the victory speech instead. There was just the first few slaps of a slow-hand clap starting, when he stopped.

Susan Clegg

2010-05-10T17:32:00.000+01:00

From the BBC's News Quiz

"Nick Clegg was hailed as the new Susan Boyle:- at first no one had heard of him; then they were pleasantly surprised by what came out of his mouth; but in the end they didn't vote for him anyway!!!"

Jackboots in the applecart

2010-05-10T17:11:00.002+01:00

Whilst on the subject of job changes, I also hear that John Hague is to be doubly challenged - both as Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for the Environment. His challenger is the Eastside Gauleiter - Alan Robinson. No really, now stop laughing, stop - that's very cruel.

Given the exemplary job Herr Robinson has done as Cabinet Member for Community Regeneration, this seems an entirely justified reward. One of the many highlights of his period was his appearance at the South Wales Police Authority, where it was rumoured he covered himself in ~~shit~~ glory by his commanding grasp of the effects of the PACT policy across Swansea.

We will wait and see whether the exquisitely tailored Monsewer Hague will see off this challenge with his usual equanimity – or call in his friend Arfa Housebrick (see earlier posts).

Also upsetting the Lib-Dem apple-cart was the (for them) unexpected return of Uriah Heep to the Council fold – following his defeat by the Croydon Cruiser. He will want to hang onto his job in Housing, which had rather unwisely already been re-allocated. I would imagine that the expectant recipient would be disappointed. But who was it to be – there isn’t much to choose from. Rob Speht – to busy in China with his wind turbines (he really should explain this to Cleggy), Cheryl Philpot – well still I guess to ‘mouthy’ for the Admin mysoginists, Paul Meara – too clever. So Jeff Jones – unlikely, as this would create a Killay power couple.

I can say definitively (well at least I am fairly sure) that there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that it was to be offered to the Brilliant Comrade, the alleged Leader of the ‘Care in the Community Group’, the other member for Clydach. No truth whatsoever. Whatever would his acolytes say – not least the Mistress of Bonymaen.

Sack, sock, sick

2010-05-10T14:12:00.000+01:00

So - the rumour that has been circulating since last week is now confirmed as true.

David Daycock, our late Monitoring Officer, has got himself a new job - Chief Executive & Monitoring Officer for the Mid & West Wales Fire Authority.

I wonder whether he told them that he had left this Authority whilst subject to a disciplinary investigation. Somehow, I think not.

Although the terms of his departure from the City & County of Swansea have not been made public (all requests for information have been declined on the grounds of a confidentiality agreement with Mr Daycock) it is widely rumoured that there was a pay-off of some description involved.

I'll bet the 750 other staff about to be got rid of, would like similar consideration - they won't of course. Leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

There is also the question of the terms of his settlement and whether any of it should now be repaid - seeing as he has landed another job before his notice period from this Authority has even run out.

I am sure that he was the best candidate for the job and any suggestion that it was anything to do with the black sock brigade is entirely scurrilous.

Serious Case Reviews & Extraordinary Council Meeting. Introduction (1 of 9)

2010-04-17T14:53:00.009+01:00

Introduction
This has post has been a couple of days in the writing as I decided that I would explore not just the Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) but the wider issues involved – as it was not possible to cover all this in the council meeting (and the Presiding Officer would not have allowed me to anyway). I don't apologise for it being long, but for ease of reading, I have split it into 8 different sequential posts:

The Council Meeting
The Background
The SCR reports, divided
- Publication
- Editing
- Style & Content
The children's circumstances
Accountability
Recommendations

However, they should all be considered as a piece.
You will also note that my usual sardonic tone is absent. I don't apologise for that either.

Read the reports yourself here Serious Case Review reports

Also of interest the Western Mail editorial here

Serious Case Reviews – The Extraordinary Meeting (2 of 9)

2010-04-17T14:52:00.003+01:00

The meeting

It was not an accident that there was no formal motion before the Council – not even the usual catch-all that the "Reports should be noted". I believe it was anticipated what would have happened had there been an opportunity for amendment or a vote. The reason given for the absence of any motion, was that they were not the Authority's reports and Council therefore could do nothing with them. We had had them "For Information only" and that was the only basis on which the Council could be called.

This was not adequate and was not what I wanted when I pressed for the meeting. Yes, we got an opportunity to discuss it, but not in any meaningful democratic sense. I was frustrated and angered by this outcome, which meant that no action could be taken.

I had hoped that Thursday night's Extraordinary (i.e. Special) Council Meeting about the Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) would at least have prompted contributions from the Administration's members – which the debate on latest CSSIW report the previous week had so signally failed to do. But I was disappointed, as they refused to be disturbed from their usual indolence. Not even the added spark provided by the story in Wednesday's Western Mail (WM) about the alleged 'doctoring' of certain passages in one report (lessening or removing criticisms), could light their fires. They seemed indifferent to the possibility that they might have been mislead.

It was left to the Opposition to make the running on questioning the detail of the reports. For the Administration, John Newbury read out a prepared speech that was at least about the subject under discussion. Audrey Clement however, provided a self-justification, apparently seeing the very mention of her name as some sort of criticism that had to be responded to. Apart from these two I cannot recall anyone on the Administration side saying anything at all. No that's not strictly true, as over in the 'wild man' corner, the usual sotto voce grumblings, groanings and mutterings were audible, particularly when I tried to continue with my questions and was forced to sit by the Presiding Officer. Indeed, it was the intervention of Rene Kinzett that made her retreat and allow me to follow up a supplementary to the Director of Education.

Her behaviour was scandalous and if there were any doubts remaining about her fitness to continue as Chair of Council, she comprehensively disposed of them. Prior to the meeting, I had questioned the appropriateness of Cllr Fitzgerald chairing this Council, given that these children died during her occupation of the Social Services portfolio, that got nowhere. Cllr Fitzgerald was completely out of touch with the mood of the meeting or, indeed, the necessary sensitivity required to handle what was going to be an emotional meeting anyway. Huw Rees would have done this entirely differently. The Acting Deputy Monitoring Officer (if that is the role she had), provided no guidance and Cllr Fitzgerald's manner was so bad, that the Chief Executive had his head in his hands at several points. Indeed, I was given an apology after the meeting was over – not from Cllr Fitzgerald, of course.

This was not a good Council meeting, and did not show the Council at its best, wholly engaged with an important issue, unlike the discussion that followed the screening of A Swansea Love Story the night before.

Serious Case Reviews – Background (3 of 9)

2010-04-17T14:50:00.003+01:00

Background

This meeting nearly never happened (as with last week's to discuss the latest CSSIW (Care & Social Service Inspectorate for Wales) report into Swansea's Children & Family Services, where only 2 out of 14 measures were shown to have improved and they were to do with political and corporate leadership, rather than the actual services themselves). From the outset, there was no intention to have a full Council debate on either of these serious matters. It was only considerable pressure from me (with RK's support), that they took place. Even so, the allowed extent (the remit) of both meetings was unsatisfactory and limited.

Councillors first saw the CSSIW report just before they arrived in the Chamber for the meeting, which meant that most members had about 10 minutes to read it before the Inspectors' presentation. (Entirely fortuitously, I got just over an hour to read it). I had already objected that this procedure, insisted on by CSSIW, was not only contrary to the law, in that it did not allow the three days publication of papers required by the Local Government Act & the Council's Constitution, but was also entirely unreasonable. I can speed read (loads of practice), many can't. Most Members would only be able to read (and comprehend) the report after the meeting was over and, if they then had questions, would be unable to ask them. I had sought to get the CSSIW Inspectors to return to Council. I asked them directly when we met the Minister and later at their presentation. They refused. In fact, the Chief Inspector over-ruled one of his Inspectors who had already accepted an invitation to attend the Scrutiny Board, on the grounds that 'that was not the way they did things'!

In regards to the SCRs, the Social Service Department's view was not to have a Council meeting at all. It was concerned about the effect that dragging this all up again in public would have on the families and that there would be disclosure of the children's identities. The first argument might just about stand for Child E (Chloe), but not for the others – Mother and sister in prison for causing the death of Child B (Carly) and given away by the mother and generally ignored by his carer (and everyone else) Child D (Kyle). It seems to me that any 'rights' the families might have had, had been sacrificed. In any event, should these rights over-ride those of elected members in being able to arrive at an informed judgement? What was the purpose of these reports being published if the elected representatives of the people of Swansea were not allowed to debate them? I expressed the view that the only way to deal with issues such as these was to be full and frank. If we (the Council) accepted the conclusions, if we had nothing to hide, then full and frank disclosure was the only way to proceed. To do otherwise would be, at least, to play into the hands of those who would allege a 'cover-up'.

Under Cllr Fitzgerald's tenure, as Cabinet Member, she had had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into providing any information on the SCR or circumstances surrounding the death of Aaron Gilbert. It was only Labour motions that got anything before Council – and even then her behaviour bordered on the contemptuous. Readers may need reminding, that Cllr Mrs Fitzgerald denied absolutely that Swansea Social Services had any involvement in Aaron Gilbert's death, even though a Social Worker had been suspended and disciplinary action initiated. That she misled Council seems beyond doubt.

Therefore, following Cllr Fitzgerald's sacking and Nick Tregonning's appointment, I discussed with him how he would deal with future cases. I was pleased that he agreed with my analysis and with his assurance that he would not try to hide anything and that such matters would be quickly brought before Council. I was therefore particularly disappointed when, following the initial presentation on the SCRs to Council, Nick seemed to waver and be inclined to resist a meeting/debate.

Considerable backstage negotiation then went on, which resulted in yesterday's meeting, although the ground rules were restrictive and were still being negotiated up to the meeting. I understand that not having a meeting was not a view shared across the Corporate Management Team and it was good that Nick Tregonning subsequently changed his mind. I was pleased that common sense won out over the Department's wish for anonymity being maintained with the children being referred to by letters. I thought this wrong – we had failed these young people, and the very least we could do was remember that they were real and use their names and not treat them as statistics. Not least, as their identities had already been made public anyway.

Serious Case Reviews – Publication (4 of 9)

2010-04-17T14:48:00.001+01:00

The Reports - Publication

The full Serious Case Review reports are never made public, only the Executive Summary. As a result councillors have to take the Summaries on trust. I find that inadequate. That's not about distrusting our officers, it's about confidence in the system. Confidence, that we have identified what went wrong and that we know what we need to do to put it right. I am not sure that these reports give us that.

The first big issue is the considerable delay in publishing these reports, why they were published when they were and why they were published together. These children died in 2007 & 2008. A clue to how long they have been around is in the anonymisation. Child A was Aaron Gilbert (who died in 2005) – these three reports are for Child B, D & E. (Child C has not been published for reasons that, in the information I have been given, I entirely accept as valid). I accept that where criminal prosecution is likely/pending or the judicial process is in train, it could be difficult to publish certain information. However, of these three specific cases, only one gave rise to criminal proceedings (Child B - Carly). Although it seems certain that proceedings would have been considered in Child D (Kyle), in the third case (Child E – Chloe) they don't seem relevant at all.

So a more reasonable publication order would have been E (Chloe), almost immediately after her death in 2008, followed by D (Kyle) after decisions had been taken on proceedings, and finally Child B (Carly, who had died in early 2007) after the whole judicial procedure, including appeals, had been dispensed with. But no, the three reports were published together in March 2010. No satisfactory explanation has been given for this. Council was told that the reports were only finalised the day before publication. That is entirely unconvincing.

Why then were they all published together? Council was assured that this was just a co-incidence. Again, unconvincing.

I know that the Authority was expecting to get major headlines and the national news with at least one of the cases. So was it 'managing' the release to mitigate the damage? Well, it would be surprising if it didn't, but again Council was told that wasn't the case. Did the Authority want them out of the way before what they hoped was a good (or at least not too bad) CSSIW report? Again, that would not be unreasonable. Again Council was told that was not the case. What role did CSSIW have in governing the publication date? The Chief Inspector's dissembling and rather ill-tempered responses to my questions on this subject at Council, just created more suspicion – whether it is warranted or not I simply have no idea. What is clear is that what was always going to be a difficult period for the Authority was made worse by the way it was handled. The Authority probably couldn't believe its luck when Birmingham published just before Swansea and captured all the headlines. Or was that known? And was it that that dictated the publication date? We have still to get to the bottom of all of this.

Serious Case Reviews – Editing (5 of 9)

2010-04-17T14:47:00.001+01:00

The Reports – Editing

It was my questions that elicited the admission from the Director of Social Service, that the passages quoted in the WM article about the Kyle SCR were accurate. (I take no particular credit for that – it was just the advantage of being first. Someone else would surely have raised it, if not me). I think the Director was quite open about it. However, I do not accept his reasoning; that it was to make the report easier to read and that the report remained critical of Social Services. He did not seem to accept the point of the significant difference of emphasis between the earlier draft and the published version.

For example, that;

"...over several years ...social work staff...and their managers failed to apply the law, appropriate procedure or elementary standards of professional practice..."

is considerably more critical (and a great deal more concerning) than

"...between 2002 and 2005...social work staff and their immediate managers failed to apply the appropriate procedures or standards of professional practice...".

And then there is the complete excision of the "at least" 15 occasions that various agencies referred information to Social Services regarding Kyle's;

"persistent involvement" in "risky and criminal behaviour, self-harming or drug and alcohol abuse and inadequate parenting from the age of 12...they (the agencies) expected action to be taken.

The review found no evidence that the failures identified...were due to ...staff being overwhelmed with work...

Management and supervision... had not picked up these issues over many years

(Kyle's) circumstances were not known to senior managers ...until his death".

which becomes

"Referrals were not properly considered or acted on...Judgements were not properly reached and assessments of risk were inadequate or not carried out. No enquiries were carried into the child's presentation...there was no proper consideration of Child D's circumstances and his needs... Information shared with social services...did not lead to any appropriate assessments of Child D's needs"

Yes both versions are critical, but placed side by side, I believe that the differences are stark. They might say substantially the same thing – but they don't certainly mean the same thing! Whilst the published version is damning, the draft version is considerably more so.

These are the ones I know of, thanks to the WM and the InsideOut blogsite. Are there others? Of course, I don't know. I have written to the Authority seeking the release of certain information that would clear all this up. I have already been told that some of the information I seek is confidential, and was provided to the SCR on that basis. I have two means to access information, one in my representative capacity and the other as an FOI. Negotiations on both continue. Of course someone could always send me the draft!

Serious Case Reviews – Style & Content – (6 of 9)

2010-04-17T14:45:00.001+01:00

The Reports – Style & Content

The three reports themselves were entirely different in size and scope. The first (Carly) was very detailed, properly numbered, logical in its layout and easy to read (in the stylistic sense). The second (Kyle) was similar (it was written by the same person) but would have benefited from a more consistent layout. The third was simply inadequate. If I had produced a report like this when I was working for Coopers & Lybrand I would have had it thrown back to me and been told to do it again. Let's not forget the authors of these reports are getting paid for writing them.

I found it surprising that there was not a standard format, so that one report can be compared to another and that the ground they cover can be seen to be consistent.

The layout of all three reports is different. Report B is 23 pages long, and gives a clear picture of the circumstances that lead to Carly's death. Report D is 13 pages long, is not quite as clear on the circumstances of Kyle's death and contains 3 and half pages of recommendations. Report E (Chloe) is none of these things.

It is only 8 pages long (and that includes the title page) and has slightly more than half a page of recommendations. And of those scant pages only four short paragraphs are about Chloe herself. Four! Seven sentences and one of those was about the Coroner's verdict and another about her family being known to various agencies. One sad life (and even sadder death) disposed of in 142 words.

The whole tone of this report (read to me) as that summary suggests – as cold & dismissive. As 'care less' as the response of the agencies it reports on to the obvious screams of a child in distress and her mother desperately seeking to understand what she could do. This is best demonstrated by quoting two paragraphs;

9.7. "With hindsight, it is possible to speculate that a holistic, child-centred assessment of the family during this period, taking the full history into account, might have led to a clearer understanding of the degree to which the mother was struggling to meet Child E's needs and a more intensive and better coordinated preventative support plan. However, the lengthy history and complex nature of the factors in Child's (E) life mean that this may not have resulted in a different outcome."

9.9. "There are many young people who suffer a difficult childhood and adolescence, but who have sufficient resilience or have developed coping mechanisms which allow them to make a successful transition into adulthood."

In other words, more might possibly have been done, but it probably wouldn't have made any difference. And anyway other young people have got over it. So that's all right then!

My response to this report was one of anger. All the findings are vague, superficial and lack detail. If you were searching for clues as to why the various agencies failed to prevent Chloe's death, you won't find them here, other than they didn't seem to talk to one another, but we are assured they, "...did their best...".

Clearly their best wasn't good enough.

Serious Case Reviews – Children’s circumstances (7 of 9)

2010-04-17T14:43:00.001+01:00

The children's circumstances

It is inevitable that you have an emotional reaction to reports like these. Reading the details of the death of a child is always a harrowing experience. Not just at the waste of a life – but (in two of these reports) on the presentation of a life whose sheer dreadfulness is difficult to comprehend.

Carly's personal circumstances were desperate from very early in her life, with her Mother and sister both being heroin addicts. She seemingly became an addict around 14, being supplied by her mother and sister. All this was known to all the agencies involved and yet, after a spell in secure accommodation where she got 'clean' she was returned to her mother and within days was dead from heroin allegedly supplied by her family, whilst an agency worker knowing she had gone back on heroin said nothing.

However, the most harrowing was Kyle's report. I was really upset by this one – still am. It is difficult to conceive of a life so hopeless (in the sense of being devoid of hope) or so appalling. It reads like the favelas of Brazil – but this is Swansea today! Given away by his mother to a neighbour immediately after birth, he never went to school from the age of 10, but became involved in criminal activity from the age of 11. Thereafter he was repeatedly involved in substance abuse (alcohol and an enormous variety of drugs), violence, petty criminality, inappropriate sexual (potentially paedophilic) activity, was seen unkempt and smelly, picked up, arrested and imprisoned. He had involvement with many agencies over nearly all his life – being referred to Social Services at least 15 times. Yet in 2007 he disappeared off the radar, but nobody asked why. It was known where he lived, yet it seems no-one went to check on how he was doing. The following year he's found dead.

What kind of life was this? What view did he have of the world? His mother didn't care for him at all and his carer didn't care enough and for 17 years no-one else seemed to either. I am sure that some did (well I must trust that they did) but if they did, they didn't care enough, so he grew up without either love or hope.

There was no doubt that this child was 'trouble', but Kyle was a child. It seems from reading the report that that was what all the agencies forgot. They saw the 'problem', but not the child and so countless opportunities were missed.

I have been approached by concerned individuals wanting an independent review of these latest deaths. I am not convinced of the need for that as yet. When I have seen (or not) the information I have requested, I will look at this again.

Serious Case Reviews – Accountability (8 of 9)

2010-04-17T14:40:00.001+01:00

Accountability

It is difficult not to conclude that the failings of all the agencies involved were inexcusable.

The Director of Social Service (as the Chair of the Safeguarding Children Board) has apologised for failing these children. As has Swansea's Head of Service for Child & Family Social Services & the Police Chief Superintendent. We have been assured that lessons have been learnt. These are sincere expressions of regret, but they inevitably sound glib and inadequate. But what of the myriad other agencies involved? Very little (if anything) publicly has been heard from any of them. Chief Superintendent Mark Mathias on behalf of the Police has been a notable exception. It seems that the view of these agencies is lie low and let the Authority take the flak – but in at least two of these cases the principal causes lay outside the Authority.

And Swansea Council has been public about these reports – they could and should have gone further – but they have gone much much further than anyone else. And that's because local government has a way of dealing with these situations – and publicly. The others do not. Last year, we saw how the NHS Trust flatly refused to attend the Scrutiny Board and how other agencies reacted to questioning in regards to their involvement in Children's Services. This is not good enough. There has to be some way for these agencies to be made publicly accountable.

It is of course very easy to criticise. I saw that the new head of the family courts, Lord Justice Wall, has said that social workers have a "legal duty to unite families rather than separate them". But in Carly's case it was doing precisely that, that led to her death. But who would be a Social Worker – as the judge said, "damned if they do and damned if they don't". I am deeply disturbed merely by reading these reports, what about the social workers who deal with this day after day? My ward colleague, the Lord Mayor, Cllr Allan Lloyd, has led a life of political activism not just here in Swansea but across the world. I was given thought by comments he made at the recent opening of the Anne Frank exhibition, when he asked whether, in difficult and threatening circumstances, he would still have been prepared to stand up and take action. Like the rest of us, he hoped he would. But in this context, if we were the social workers, what would we have done? Would we have been able to save these children?

As councillors we have a responsibility as corporate parents, and whilst we cannot deal with each case, we do have a responsibility to ensure that our services are fit for purpose. The difficulty is determining exactly how we do that.

But everyone has responsibility here. Responsibility not just to stand by, but to act, where we see things are wrong. I refer again to Allan Lloyd's words. This is not being a busybody – it is our civic and human duty. Let me be clear, we know of these children, because they are children. Had they lived longer and become adults, over 18, there would have been no Serious Case Reviews, they would have been just another drug related death, just another statistic. And how many of those young adults are victims failed by our 'system'?

The other evening, Council was shown A Swansea Love Story. Whilst in one reading it is an uplifting story of survival against the odds, its back-story is harrowing, painting a picture of moral and family breakdown that most of us would see with horror and incomprehension. Of course, it is not typical – but it is real. And that is the big question, how have we created a society in which we have forgotten or allowed to be forgotten, whole swathes of people, families, not only without hope but (seemingly) without the possibility of redemption or recovery? The creation of generational cycles of dislocation and dissociation, people who have fallen so low that heroin and strong cider are not recreational drugs, but the only coping mechanism they have.

Serious Case Reviews – (9 of 9) Recommendations

2010-04-17T14:38:00.001+01:00

Recommendations

It is very important that the public have confidence in the systems that are provided in their name. This cannot have been helped by the considerable delay in publication, by the removal of harder hitting passages and by the fact that the Board is chaired by the Director of Social Service. This is not about lack of trust in our officers or indeed specifically, Swansea's Director of Social Services, it's all about the public perception of independence.

I would suggest consideration of the following for the future:

All SCRs should have the same format
All SCRs should be published within 6 months
All SCRs should be entirely independent of any of the agencies that provided services. This would probably require the responsibility being taken away from the Safeguarding Children Board.
The person responsible for commissioning the SCR should also be entirely independent.

And

Urgent consideration be given to extending, by law, the Council Scrutiny process to cover all publicly funded agencies operating in the public sphere.

PR - Now is the time for review of child death cases to be fully independent

2010-04-15T20:36:00.002+01:00

Labour councillors call for review of child death cases to be fully independent.

Swansea Council tonight debated the three recently published Serious Case Reviews into the deaths of young people in their care. The reports have been seriously criticised for taking up to three years to get published and accused of being doctored to remove or tone down significant harder hitting criticisms of the agencies involved.

Speaking after the meeting, Swansea Labour Leader Cllr David Phillips said, “Whilst sincere, apologies, condolences and claims of ‘lessons have been learnt’ sound glib and inadequate in the face of the sad death of young people who died in 2007/8.”

The full Serious Case Review reports are never made public, only the Executive Summary.

Cllr David Phillips said, “It is not acceptable that councillors cannot see the reports themselves and have to take the Summaries on trust. It is not about lack of trust in our officers, it’s about confidence in the system. Confidence, that we have identified what went wrong and that we know what we need to do to put it right. I am not sure that these reports give us that.”

Cllr Phillips said that he had been approached by concerned individuals wanting an independent review of these latest deaths. He said, “I am not convinced of the need for that as yet. However, I am in the process of seeking certain information from Swansea Council and others –I will have to see what that shows.”

He said, “Nonetheless, it is very important that the public have confidence in the system and that cannot have been helped by the considerable delay in publication, by the removal of harder hitting passages and by the fact that the Board is chaired by the Director of Social Service”.

Safeguarding Children’s Boards are routinely chaired by the local Director of Social Service.

Cllr Phillips stressed that this wasn’t about a lack of trust in Swansea’s, Director of Social Service, Chris Maggs. He said, “This is all about the public perception of independence. I welcome the suggestion that such reports should be produced within six months in future. But I would go further, I would suggest it is now time to consider that the whole process should be independent, with an independent chair as well.”Ends

Sent out this evening after tonights Council meeting. I will be writing more about that tomorrow.

Will she or won’t she

2010-04-15T14:22:00.007+01:00

There is a most curious sight down County Hall at the moment, where long lines of people are standing with their ears pressed to the walls of the Administration Group's accommodation, listening to the screams and wails as the 'arrangements' over who is getting what from the trough at the Annual General Meeting are thrashed out – and all the ears are members of the Adminstration (well the unlucky ones, I guess, the excluded). If they want to know what's going on they should just ask the Opposition, officers or indeed the guy who changes the water bottles – as everyone else seems to know. Unless, of course, this is just an elaborate game of double-bluff. But what the hell – it's amusing, even if it isn't true.

It seems that the elevation of Tricky Dicky, the Earl of Gower, to the Lord Mayorship, has provided the excuse to kick him out of his much abused Chairmanship of the Area 2 Planning Committee. Enough it seems is enough! Even thought the numbers of Planning Committees has doubled, TD's name is not on any of them. Less clear is the position of his running mate – the Mountain Man of Mawr – as he prepares for his second chance at the summit. I would think that he should be pretty safe as Chair of one of the Licensing Committees – as he is generally considered to have done a decent (well decent enough) and conscientious job – all the other stuff notwithstanding.

However, what of Milady Fitzgerald? Well the talk here seems pretty consistent, she's not to be the newly minted Chairman of the Authority after all. Here too, it seems, enough is enough. What has seemed to have stuck in a few throats is that in creating this post, no-one (not least the recently departed Monitoring Officer) seemed to have read the provisions of the Local Government Act, which puts this position second only to the Queen (or her representative) in order of Precedence. In other words, up the front before the Lord Mayor! This is undoubtedly going to get changed – but the risk that it might be the Princess of Penllegaer even if only for a few weeks seems a reward too far – not least to the aforementioned Earl of Gower, who considered he was much put upon in his last outing. A bit of public jostling would be amusing, however.

What is less clear, is where Milady goes. There is one team screaming for her to depart hence to the back-benches, where she should have gone before ("and not before bloody time" as one eloquent Admin-er said). Another that she will become the Chair of Planning – it would seem that they are seriously trying to put the nose of their newest member (The aforementioned etc) critically out of joint. However, there is life in the old dear yet as there is a third version ---- that she is working busily behind the scenes trying to shaft one (anyone) in the Cabinet and get back the place that she so properly and rightfully claims as her birthright. (You may have forgotten – or may not be aware, that Milady has never been an ordinary back-bencher. She arrived newly elected and so (obviously) newly minted as non-cannon fodder. She was not to be one of that underclass destined to fight for the light and an SRA, forced to turn to quick fixes of caffeine and free biscuits and a moan in the Members Lounge (I'll have to think of a synonym here. I was going to use the Funeral Parlour – but that was too near an advert for Mervyn)).

The favourite for the knife in the back is her Independent colleague, Cllr Gareth Sullivan. Well it's either him or John Hague – and he's too much of a bruiser, with half a brick always readily to hand in his elegantly tailored trousers!

Time will reveal all, as always.

Update: I was reminded prior to tonight's Council Meeting that there is another candidate that I had forgotten - the Eastside Gaulieter, the BNP supporting steriliser - Herr Allan Robinson (but then on performance, eminently forgettable). Certainly there would be a synergy in an exchange of positions between Milady and the goosestepper as they share very similar views on parenting support. So it seems unlikley that she would want to cuckoo him out of the nest. I also rather think that he too would put up a fight - and he is rumoured to be much in favour with the Big Yin himself. But would he become the Council Chairman? If anything - he would be more unpopular (and unwanted) that Milady - mind you the prospect of him trying to manage a Council meeting has a certain morbid fascination (I am truly sick!). Whilst he would be politically closer to his Earlship, I still don't think that TD would find the idea of him taking precedence an easy swallow.

Come what May – well not at all actually

2010-04-12T22:05:00.004+01:00

Last Thursday's Council meeting began with a completely pointless (and by Milady Fitzgerald – witless) display of chairmanship (see previous post). It was prompted by the non-arrival of the cabinet Member for Housing, Cllr Peter May – the Uplands Uriah Heep.

Now Chris Holley had told me that UH would be late – childcare issues out of town. Given the frequency with which he brings his children to meetings, I thought it more likely to be canvassing, but then I am a cynic! Prior to the meeting he had apparently told others the same thing (arriving late, childcare) – including the Evening Post (which seems a very curious thing to do....). Why say this if you weren't planning to come at all? So it would seem he was coming. The Housing items were the first on the Agenda, as it was known he would be late, why not just defer them until later? And why didn't he arrive?However, the first Housing item was a contentious one – mobility scooters in Gloucester House (see a previous post) and the wider application of his Department's decision to all users in Council sheltered and shared entrance accommodation (and indeed private/Social landlords). Given the imminent election, I had suspected that Cllr Heep would not want to stick his head above this particular parapet – and indeed so it proved.

As the evening wore on and he still did not appear, CH began to look a little desperate. And as the meeting went on until nearly 9.30pm (almost 5 and half hours) UH had plenty of opportunity, but no sign. Indeed, every time the doors to the Chamber opened, one of the wags on my side cried out "Is it Peter May?" – but it never was.

Now I entirely understand that things happen – especially with children. However, this was a scheduled meeting, in the diary for over twelve months – he could claim for the costs of caring (and he often brought his kids with him) – neither he nor his children were ill and his absence seemed apparently planned - so where was he, why had he arranged something else on the evening of a Council meeting when he had items on the agenda – something that doesn't happen too often with his portfolio at the best of times, and no-one was prepared to put the items off until later in the meeting. I believe that politics were being played here. UH has always tried to stay away from anything troublesome in case it harms his slim chances of victory in the election.

Well, whatever his reason was, it was contemptuous of the Council meeting and of the fact that he is getting a large wedge to be the Cabinet Member and for which is not normally called upon to do much in receipt of it.

If anyone saw him around in Swansea last Thursday or knows his actual whereabouts please get in touch.

That’s the way to do it – or not!

2010-04-12T21:08:00.004+01:00

First, a bit of background. In an attempt to resolve some of the 'process & procedure' issues the Council has operated for some time, a 'usual channels' confidential committee involving the Leaders & Deputies of the Opposition parties and the Chief Executive and Monitoring Officer – the so-called Constitutional Working Group (CWG). Originally, just me, June Burtonshaw, Chris Holley & Gerald Clement (and now John Hague) attended, but were later joined by Rene Kinzett when he had his Cameroonian conversion. The principle reasoning was to sort out non-political stuff away from the floor of the Council Chamber, avoiding tedious, boring (and not just to members of the public) arcane, and to outsiders, incomprehensible debates. In addition, there were ad hoc meetings between the Group Leaders only.

However, these meeting became increasingly pointless due to Chris Holley's inability to deliver his Group on a wide variety of issues. Although I still nurse the suspicion that not everything had been taken to his Group (see my earlier posts on the Planning Committee issue) and this was just a handy unarguable excuse.

In addition, we also had the Scrutiny & Overview Working Group (I think that was what it was/is called) and the pre-Council briefing, both chaired by the Presiding Officer. The first to determine the order of business for Scrutiny and (given that it had a huge in-built Administration majority) control what was actually scrutinised. (It was this that led to the complaint from the Intervention Board – see earlier post). The second was where we sat down and told each other what we were going to do in the meeting. No, we did really. Well not everything – there had to be some surprises.

Anyway, in response to the appointment of Milady Fitzgerald as the Council's Presiding Officer (it was hardly an election – being a golden gag and a seeming reward for her previous failure)and the control freakery of the Administration, who both started refusing to allow their Leader to meet Opposition Leaders on his own and made the CWG 'proportional', ie loaded it with additional Admin members to build-in a majority (for a committee that could take no decisions), in response to all that, Opposition Leaders took 'industrial action' (I guess that Rene would not want to be seen to be on strike!) and refused to co-operate and attend all these useless meetings.

The consequence of this was that the 'workings' of the Council began to grind exceeding slow – and this bothered the Chief Executive. To the extent that he persuaded us to go along with a conciliator (whom I have described as a 'marriage guidance counsellor') to see whether we could find some common ground to reinstate the 'usual channels'. This proved surprisingly productive. And in a 'full & frank' exchange R & I expressed our dissatisfaction with her conduct of the meetings (especially her frequently exasperated expression and body language), whilst Milady accepted that she could do with some training and would do better. SO meetings between Chris and I were re-instigated and Milady's conduct of the last Council meeting was almost ok – certainly much improved.

However, however....all that was not to last.

Last week's meeting was dreadful. Chris had declined to discuss the Independent Remuneration report and refused the suggestion of the Chief Executive (so I am told) to discuss his plans for the revised committee structure (see previous post) – what was he afraid of? – and Milady's conduct of the meeting was abysmal. I would admit that I started the meeting in a bad mood, as I just learnt that agreements (I thought had been secured) as to how certain reports were to be dealt with had been reneged upon. The Leader of Council had told me (prior) that Peter May (the Uplands Uriah Heep), the Housing Cabinet Member would be late to the meeting (see next post). The first couple of items were to do with the Housing Portfolio, so I asked, not unreasonably, for the items to be deferred until he turned up. This provoked a ridiculous row, as neither CH nor Milady would allow the matter to be deferred to later in the meeting, even though it was obvious that Milady Fitzgerald had been advised by the Chief Executive to do so. Milady then refused to allow me to speak even tho' it was a ward matter. One of my colleagues sought to get the matter deferred to the next meeting and Milady refused that as well. She was then countermanded by CH who said he didn't mind if it was deferred, so she changed her mind and deferred it. This was all completely mad and ridiculous and had unnecessarily raised the temperature of the meeting. Points of order flying around, Two Dinners screaming his head off and Milady F looking right royally irritated – to the extent that I demanded that she took that 'damned exasperated expression of her face' – with her response 'How dare you be so rude' and so on and on.

This was a battle that didn't need to be fought, what was being asked for was not unreasonable, but the way it was handled was disastrous. Unsurprisingly, the meeting went downhill from there. It was one of the worst, I think I've been to. Heaven only knows what the public made of it.

Spring is Sprung

2010-04-11T18:22:00.003+01:00

I apologise to my many (!) followers who have been deprived of their fix of Scouse wit and wisdom – well you're respite is over – I'm back! Well until the next disaster. I have been off-line as my home computer has been out of action due to some technical conflict problem with the operating software (no doubt my fault). At least that is what I was told – with a sad purse of the lips and the word "Vista" accompanied by a dismissive shake of the head. It went down immediately after I had a conversation with a mate who was trying to persuade me to switch to an AppleMac. So it might have just been a fit of machine pique. Whatever.......
Spring has most definitely arrived as County Hall has seen a frenzy of nest feathering (and the ejection of at least one cuckoo).

I have posted previously about the recommendations of the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales (IRP). Amongst other things, they removed the Special Responsibility Allowances for the vice-Chairman of all committees. Unsurprisingly this was met with wails of protest from the Administration, although this has not seemed to include the Mountain Man of Mawr. Perhaps he had in mind the consequences of his previous outburst over loss of allowances and didn't want to put his forthcoming re-elevation to the Lord Mayorality at risk – but then again he wasn't directly affected. Anyway, I don't want to be churlish as he has been quite nice to me recently and very amusing on the pomposity of the Brilliant Comrade.

Last Thursday's Council meeting saw the Administration's response. After wingeing for years that it was unreasonable to ask politicians to set their own pay, what is the first thing that our illustrious Leader does – politically interfere with the result. Throwing away an important principle for a cheap political stunt – whilst at the same time cynically (and hypocritically) creating a load of new committees with attached allowances for his Administration cronies. It was actually sickening to hear him trying to explain this increase as a direct and necessary consequence of getting rid of hundreds of staff. (No I didn't understand it either!).

The proposal to double the number of area Planning committees was particularly daft – as Swansea has just finished a long-running skirmish with the District Auditor about our having two committees – he wanted one. Swansea had originally had four committees – but in an attempt to speed-up the process had adopted various suggestions from my Group, including reducing the number of committees to two. So now we have gone back to where we were several years ago – I cannot see that the DA will lie down for this.

However, the most cynical manoeuvre, was the creation of a Chair of Council. Erm...this is apparently different to the Presiding Officer, having different and (as far as I can see) less responsibility – but getting paid the same! I have sat in meetings over the past 18 months or so with previous, the current and next Lord Mayors, the Leader, Chief executive and other officers discussing the changing role of the Lord Mayor – the principle part of which was to re-institute the Lord Mayor chairing Council meetings. All had thought this a good idea. I thought that it had been helped along by a letter from WAG as a result of questions from the Intervention Board about the Presiding Officer's involvement in Scrutiny. Apparently not – in an unambiguous two-fingered response, we have created a new post and in order to pay lip-service to the previous discussions created a new form of ceremonial Council that the Lord Mayor will be allowed Chair!

The new Chair of Council is based on an inexcusable (and inexplicable) misinterpretation of the relevant legislation. But I am guessing that the then (and now departed) Monitoring Officer – and how I would like to post something about his leaving – had some involvement in that so perhaps it wasn't surprising. This new post is not to be paid a Special Responsibility Allowance but an amount to cover the expenses of the office – which have been set (entirely co-incidentally!) at the same level as previous - £9,700 or thereabouts.

However, given that there have been no previous expenses of the post – it's difficult to see how anyone is going to get paid – and I am sure that the DA will have a view of this. I understand that the Leader is planning to go to the IRP to argue for this allowances. I'd really like to be a fly on the wall.

In the debate Paxton Hood-Williams castigated the moral bankruptcy of the Administration – many of whom were visibly uncomfortable with having to vote for the changes – but vote for them they did. And in a recorded vote – I feel another advert coming on! Cllr Margaret Smith described the report as a "lactating financial teat...at which they were all greedily sucking" or words to that effect.

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz,

The Admin knows where their pockets iz

The monstrous meeting

2010-02-23T22:56:00.004Z

We had a five hour Budget meeting yesterday - no breaks, so great discomfort. And the Council Chamber gets extremely cold. We have the bizarre spectacle of members wearing jumpers or the more discreet with thermal underwear. Well that is the norm for one 'lady member' - she always seem to turn up as if she's just come in from the garden - and seems very anxious to get back there as soon as possible.

As usual all the running was made by the Opposition parties (well that's us (Labour) and the Conservative'). Retiring to his previous idleness and indolence, the Brilliant Comrade, the so-called’ Leader of The Care in the Community Group’, hit on the clever expeditious wheeze of saying that he would have said what Rene K and I said , but as we’d said it first, he wouldn’t repeat it! Too idle even to bother to plagiarise. He even had the effrontery to describe RK and myself as his “fellow Leaders” (Oh, the shame. I'm not his fellow anything). He tried to explain the absence of an amendment by saying he didn’t know what figures to ask for, so didn’t know what to change – or something like that. To be honest it didn’t make a great deal of sense. But then he rarely does (and didn’t even when a member of our Group, or perhaps that should be, especially when he was a member of our Group!). I did like RK’s riposte when the GC said that he wasn’t a Conservative, “No, but you look like one!”

The Admin lot just sat there like a load of over-stuffed (with the SRA sauce) lemons. Not a bleat out of any of them. But the intellectual wing still found it hard to take. The ex-lefty, nationalist ‘two-dinners’ Morgan, stormed out of the Chamber at one point screaming, “I’m not staying here to listen to that crap!” – and went off for a nice restful cup of tea and a couple of kilos of biscuits. After all he had to get his energy up for his usual “I move the question be put” intervention – which sadly never actually came.

(It’s going to be interesting when the 1st April comes and all the vice-Chair SRAs disappear – whilst the Sage of Cwmbrwla goes up by £10k a year to £57k (I think),whilst his Cabinet colleagues trouser an additional £4k. My SRA goes down by £17 (no ‘k’) a year. I’m not jealous, really I’m not. (Even though I do more work than most of the Cabinet – and seem to take more responsibility than they are prepared to do.) But I’m sure that there might be a bit more competition for the SRAs that remain).

I thought the quality of the contributions from the Opposition was very high. I know that we in Labour had put in a tremendous amount of time and energy into researching the budget lines and working on our amendments. We did at least get a credit from Mike Day, who said we get a good job of being an Opposition. Thanks, Mike, much appreciated.

Nice Stuart Rice floundered about trying to find an excuse for their financial mismanagement. He never refuted any of the figures that I had put forward – he couldn’t as he knew where I’d got them from and that they were correct. (Even Wackie Blackie (that’s a reference to his being a Scouser like me, rather than any recreational substance) couldn’t do it on his blog. Although I confess that I gave up halfway through out of sheer boredom). Nice Rice made me laugh, when he said that there was some good news and then announced that the Budget balanced! This provoked The Sage to cry out that it didn’t need to…which will probably be news to the Finance Director and the District Auditor.

Nicey Ricey then started out on some wander around the UK, pointing out Authorities that were in deeper financial doo-doo than here – which prompted one wag to point out that they were nearly all run by Liberal Democrats! However, the best crack of the night came in response to a further traipse around the world by the Council Leader, who when he arrived at Canada, waving a picture of the Lord Mayor and myself at some Haiti fundraiser (no, I don’t either) prompted my, normally quiet, ward colleague Barbara Hynes to shout out “this is about Swansea not Canada”. Himself had the grace to look abashed and quickly moved on.

He and his cronies must have been shocked by the vehemence of the opposition from the public benches, which prompted one to retort, “I’m not going to vote for you lot again”. Let’s hope so.

With the ‘named votes’ (how councillors vote is recorded by name) we got, it will impossible for any of the Administration to hide behind some excuse or other. Save for Audrey Clement who left the meeting early – and our Dennis James who was ill.

Now the game continues with this information finding its way into our leaflets etc. Never seems to end. Ah well, I shouldn’t have joined, should I?

2010-02-23T21:51:00.001Z

2010-02-23T21:48:00.002Z

Ignorance & irresponsibility

2010-02-23T21:47:00.000Z

I was asked by the EPost to respond to a demand for an apology from Chris Holley about some alleged slight about his competence. (I would like to point out that it wasn’t alleged it was quite, quite explicit, and it most certainly wasn’t ‘slight’.) I couldn’t have the whole press release but I did get the quotes, which read as if they came from the great man himself.

“Councillor Chris Holley, Leader of the City and County of Swansea said “When I pointed out that our Country’s lack of finance is the responsibility of the Labour Party in Westminster not the controlling banking sector, there was total denial that any of the problems in Local Government were down the actions of their political party.

Councillor Chris Holley said “The unions are to join with us to call for fair funding for Local Government and call on Welsh Assembly Government and Westminster to make sure we have the funding to keep services going and stop the job losses”.”

I responded:

“Cllr Phillips said, “Here he goes again. Chris Holley must be getting really desperate to claim that the international financial crisis is nothing to do with the banks irresponsibility, but wholly the fault of Labour in Westminster. With such a level of ignorance it’s hardly surprising that Swansea is in such a mess. Of course, I can see why he would want to side with the banks as they have a great deal in common – trousering large salaries for incompetence and total financial irresponsibility coupled with an expectation of someone else to pick up the tab.

Cllr Phillips said, “He might not like it, but I do not apologise for telling the truth, that the serious financial situation is made worse in Swansea by the wild ‘borrow & spend’ plans of his Administration. It’s very worrying that he appears not know that you cannot live on credit forever, and that at some point his ‘friends’ in the banks will want their money back with interest”.

The full exchange will appear in tomorrow's EPost - I will read it with interest.

Now we know

2010-02-23T21:35:00.001Z

At last night’s 5 hour noisy budget meeting Labour councillors proposed some wide ranging amendments that would have not only kept the Tennis Centre open but avoided teacher redundancies.

Swansea Labour Leader, Cllr David Phillips said, “We presented carefully thought out and considered amendments. It’s disappointing that they were rejected out of hand on a block vote by the Lib-Dems/Independent councillors”.

The amendments not only funded the Teachers Pay settlement in full, but reversed the charge for musical instruments and the cut in weekly black bag collection, kept all street lights on and increased the replacement of faulty street lights. The proposals had been cleared with both the Director of Education and the Council’s Finance Director.

Cllr Phillips said, “Chris Holley and his Finance Cabinet Member had no answers, and made no attempt to answer for their catalogue of financial mismanagement, except bluster and finger-pointing. Having ruined Social Services by years of under-investment they had no choice but the knee-jerk reaction of raiding the Education budget”.

He said, “The hollowness of the claims of the so-called Independents to ‘independence’ was demonstrated beyond doubt last night, as they all voted on-bloc for this regressive and reactionary budget”.

Labour councillors obtained ‘named votes’ for all the budget amendments, in which a record is taken of how councillors actually voted on any particular issue. The Minutes of all council meeting are posted on Swansea Council’s website.

Cllr Phillips said, “The Lib-Dems and Independents won’t be able to hide how they voted. The people of Swansea will be able to see what their ward councillor actually did – and compare that to what they say they did, These councillors will have to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.”

Cllr Phillips was especially critical of the sole Plaid Cymru councillor, Darren Price, who works for the Plaid AM, Dr Dai Lloyd. Cllr Phillips said, “Dai Lloyd had his picture in the paper supporting the Tennis Centre – but when it came down to it, Cllr Price voted with the Lib-Dems to shut it. This is just blatant hypocrisy”. He said, “This Administration is completely out of touch with the people of Swansea – but still expects them to pick up the tab for their expensive mistakes. They are going to get a rude awakening”.

Labour's Budget Amendments

2010-02-23T21:17:00.009Z

Labour’s amendment details are as follows (I apologise but of necessity they look a bit ‘anoraky’ - and I find I am unable to post the original table - so the alignement is a bit off, Sorry).
The second one perhaps looks a mite complicated. Both we agreed as acceptable amendments by the Finance Director and the second as a potential way forward. It can be seen from both what the Labour Group’s intentions were.

The first is fairly self-explanatory. We proposed

Retain Tennis Centre *                    £   50,000
Retain weekly black bag collection       150,000
200 extra grit bins *                            50,000
Keep Street lights on                         100,000
Additional street light replacement *   150,000
Total                                                500,000

Financed by reducing Contingency Fund 500,000

* One-year non-recurring items only

The second looks a bit more complicated (and it is) but it works. The intention was to get sufficient money freed up to fund the Teacher’s pay settlement in full.

Teachers Pay Settlement             £ 2,430,000
Musical Instrument Loan                     20,000
Total                                           2,450,000
Financed by
SEN *                                                          £667,000
SRA – Pres. Officer/Deputy Pres                       16,200
Reduce Cabinet Portfolios -4                           64,836
Swansea Futures                                            79,000
Communications                                            100,000
Research & Info (Hd Infom. Cst Serv)              24,000
Contingency Fund                                          500,000
Teachers Redundancy (caveat)**               1,000,000
Total                                                          2,451,000
Balance 1,000

* Schools have to reduce demand for 1-2-1
**Schools have to sign up to redeployment.

2010 Budget - What I said

2010-02-23T20:35:00.005Z

My hanky is damp with all the sobbing of Cllr Rice’s woes. He blames someone – anyone – else, he doesn’t care. But this just won’t wash. You’ve been here for six years now – you should grow up and accept the responsibility of your actions.

There is no doubt that Swansea Council is in deep financial trouble with nearly all services facing drastic cut-backs. But this is not the fault of the Welsh Assembly, which has provided over £5million extra. This desperate situation is the result of your Administration’s ‘borrow and spend’ plans, where you have placed vanity projects over the needs of ordinary people for essential services. You could have avoided this catastrophe – because that is what it is - if you had made better choices.

You cannot continue to max out the Council’s credit card – without there being consequences. And those chickens have now come home to roost.

We have a financial black hole of £17m – which will grow over the next three/four years to £53million – that’s a 200% increase. So that’s another 1,500 to 2,000 extra staff to be made redundant; tennis players deprived of facilities (and we will be proposing an amendment that will save the Tennis Centre), poorer children having to pay for musical instruments, elderly deprived of respite care, city centre residents having to pay to park in their own streets - when visitors can park for free, libraries closed, teachers being made redundant and above all our children’s future being sold off to pay for your incompetence and weak unfocused leadership. You are very good at always seeking someone else to blame – but what is true is that it is others who have to pay for your mistakes.

You should have looked to the private sector solution for delivering the LC2, buses that people needed, not the derided and largely empty ‘purple whale’. We have aspirations to be a major European city – we are certainly unique in one aspect, our train and bus stations are a mile apart. The Library and Call Centre (well as much of it as we have got) are welcome facilities – but in entirely the wrong place and with a funding deficit to renovate St David's still being required. You inherited an outstanding Social Services department and ruined it by failing to invest adequately. The intervention in Children’s Services mess was inevitable.

You have consistently failed on project and financial management – you scrapped Labour’s stringent financial controls that I introduced (the Budget Prioritisation programme) – replacing it with a wish and a prayer, and ignored the concerns of your own officers, because you knew that many of your projects would not stand proper scrutiny.

You have consistently wasted money, £83million on Service@Swansea – over budget and with little to show for it and none of the £26million promised savings, the Civic Centre more than twice its original budget plus huge sums being spent on staff relocations, the LC2 over budget, you have frittered away £68 million in asset sales to cover failures in leadership and with what to show for it?, and you cannot now borrow anymore money, so Qed 2020 is dead in the water - and on and sadly on.

Yes the current financial outlook is bleak but we believe that better choices in these areas would have strengthened Swansea’s ability to withstand the current problems, not only saving over £100million capital but providing an additional £15+ million to invest in services now.

Times are tough and you have been reckless with the assets of the people of Swansea, your decision making has been slow, reactionary and often wrong. I always knew that the price for your rule would be high. Sadly even my fears fell well short of how badly you’ve failed.

This Budget is a shaming indictment of your management and the people of Swansea can see what you get from Lib-Dem/Independent rule – very little expect the bill! This budget should be roundly rejected.

I give notice Presiding Officer that we will be moving two amendments to this budget at the appropriate time.

Life is hard – background to the previous post

2010-02-18T20:06:00.001Z

In a sign about how seriously things have changed (and how seriously the Evening Post is taking the consequences of the financial mess – perhaps not surprising given the public furore and published website reactions) for the first time, I was asked to write a piece for their ‘Opinion’ section on the editorial pages saying what ‘Labour would do’ if this was our budget.

However, I had to explain that it wasn’t as simple as that. It’s very difficult for an Opposition party (in local government at any rate) to produce a proper alternative budget – we have neither the physical resources nor the access to the accountants to do the number crunching or the legal advice.

I also had to point out that Labour wouldn’t have been ‘here’ in the first place. Whilst there is no doubt that local government across the UK faces a dire economic situation, the position in Swansea is made so much worse by the consequences (and costs) of the decisions made by the Lib-Dem/Independent coalition led (sic) by Chris Holley.

Their ‘borrow & spend’ philosophy (‘maxing out the credit card’ as I have previously described it) has been ruinous. Swansea cannot borrow any more money until it repays a large chunk of what it already owes and the repayment costs of which are crippling. My personal view was that the Lib-Dems/Independents had adopted a sort of ‘DFS two years free credit’ idea, get the goodies now but pay for it after the (2008) election. And as they didn’t expect to win, they didn’t expect it to be their problem anyway.

As the article makes clear, Labour would have done it differently. The figures are all correct and were provided by Council officers. You will see that they are eye-wateringly large.

One of the big items in the Administration’s budget strategy is their decision to renew the Contingency Fund, an idea with which Labour profoundly disagrees. This is set at £10million and its redirection to specific services would be a useful source of funds. However, it’s clear from our continuing discussions with Council officers that our ability to propose radical budget alternatives based on this Fund is seriously curtailed, as any proposal based on a significant reduction in the fund would be ruled out of order. We are still looking for other room to manoeuvre, but as I said in the opening, this is very difficult with the resources at our disposal and officers can hardly be expected to assist us in demolishing their own strategy!

What’s also clear is that Qed 2020 (the education improvement programme) is dead in the water. No capital budget provision been made and it can only proceed if WAG put up the money. This is not assured. In any event, all future grant schemes will require a 20% contribution from the local authority. This contribution will have to be unsecured borrowing and must be underwritten by a disposal of education land that will repay the borrowing (see my comment on borrowing above). Holley and his mates will be required to submit a robust business case, showing the land, value and disposal dates etc, all agreed in advance or the scheme will not be allowed to proceed. As I say, it’s dead in the water.

The reports also make clear that the shiny new Quadrant Bus Station is already tarnished –and it isn’t even built yet! Due to various on site problems (the statutory undertakers (Gas, Water etc) not actually knowing where their underground services were, design problems – it wasn’t high enough to accommodate the shops and so forth) it is suggested that the funding timetable may have been put at risk – and some of this may fall back on the Authority. Doubt is also cast on the start of the major £9million refurbishment of the Glyn Vivian Art Gallery. Despite all the excited press announcements of the wonders of the project and the imminent planned years long close-down, it seems that the scheme is light by around £3million. It’s been made clear that it won’t start until this gap has been firmly closed – either by finding further monies (hard) or cutting back on the actual work, which could put some of the grants already received at risk.

At a recent Scrutiny Board meeting, the Finance Cabinet Member, the nice Mr Rice, tried vainly to keep the Qed 2020 ship afloat, and had no real answers as to why the Glyn Vivian had been so loudly announced as starting, when the funding wasn’t complete and the total silence on the problems with the Quadrant. That’s open, transparent and democratic government for you, well the Lib-Dem version.

Meanwhile, he’s closing the Tennis Centre (£50,000), taking £40 grand off Cefn Hengoed Leisure Centre and (a really cheap one this) introducing a £10 per session charge to kids for the use of musical instruments in music lessons – nice egalitarian measure that one.

Makes you wonder really. We’ve had Cleggy in the EPost telling us how they’d run the country and Kirsty why we should all vote Labour (sorry Lib-Dem). Run the country – they can’t even run the city! Or is there an ‘i’ missing? I’m trying to remember that crack about whelk stalls – but it’s probably a cliché?

What Labour would do (or would have done).

2010-02-18T19:16:00.001Z

I attach below the ‘Opinion’ piece that will appear in tomorrow’s EPost.

I apologise for the ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ character of this post. Some may have seen this up the other day, briefly. I posted it Tuesday as it was slated to appear Wednesday. However, immediately after I’d put it up, I learnt that its publication was to be delayed. As I didn’t want to upset the EPost, who had ‘commissioned’ it, by publishing it in advance of them, I took it down until it was decided when it would run. It will now be in tomorrow’s edition (which has now ‘gone to bed’). So here it is again (it had to be edited down to 500 words or thereabouts). Sorry for any confusion.

The figures are all correct and were provided by the Authority's officers (they will appear in answers to Councilor Questions in the agenda for the regular Council meeting, that will be published on Friday).

Swansea Council is in deep financial trouble with nearly all services facing drastic cut-backs. But this is not the fault of the Welsh Assembly, which has provided over £5million extra. Swansea’s desperate situation is the result of the Lib-Dem/Independent Administration’s ‘borrow and spend’ plans, placing vanity projects over the needs of ordinary people for essential services. The resulting catastrophic financial mess would have been avoided had better choices been made.

Swansea Labour would have done things differently. We would have pursued a private sector solution to the LC2, delivering a new Leisure Centre at nil cost, as we did with the Liberty Stadium. We would have introduced more efficient management arrangements at both the LC2 and the Stadium, providing savings of over £4.5 million per year.

Swansea Labour did not support the costly Service@Swansea IT project, whose £83m cost has produced little of the anticipated £26million savings. We would have found realistic, cost effective ways of replacing the IT systems with proper project controls, saving up to£1.2m a year, plus a further £8m due to Cap Gemini.

Labour’s priority was for a modern Bus Station, providing bus services that people wanted, not a ‘bendy-bus’. Labour would have redirected the £13.5million costs towards providing a bus/rail interchange at the railway station and redeveloping High St/Dyfatty, avoiding years of disruption in the city centre and the closure of many businesses; allowing the £12.5million cost (and rising) of the Quadrant Bus Station to be refocused.

We recognise that the Civic Centre and new Library are popular, however, their construction costs were allowed to double to £13million+. Swansea Labour intended providing these facilities in the St David’s Centre, avoiding staff relocation costs of at least £500,000 and £300,000 annual rental.

Labour would have continued to invest properly in Social Services, securing its 2004 position, avoiding our Children’s services being taken into ‘special measures’. We would not have spent £2m to simply move a Children’s home from West Cross to Blaenymaes.

The £68 million received from asset disposals would have been invested in Swansea’s future, rather than covering failures in leadership. Labour would have restored our rigorous budgetary control systems, scrapped by the Lib-Dem Administration; improving outcomes without compromising delivery.

We believe that these better choices would have strengthened Swansea’s ability to withstand the current problems, not only saving over £100million capital but providing an additional £15.6million to invest in services now.

Swansea Labour would have invested in our children, passing on all of the increases provided by the Assembly in the last 6 years to Education and Social Services and absorbed at least some of the cost of teacher’s pay settlements.

We would have provided the full cost of the school rebuild at Penyrheol Comprehensive and worked with the Welsh Assembly to secure funding for a proper by-pass for the Hafod.

We would work with our staff, our greatest resource, to identify ways of delivering services more effectively and efficiently. We would extend recycling, introduce a sustainable road maintenance programme and create dedicated cleansing teams for all major areas of the county.

Labour would keep the Tennis Centre open by scrapping the Presiding & Deputy Presiding Officer posts and review the current SRA system. We would enforce Residents Parking by employing more traffic wardens.

Times are tough and the Lib-Dems have been reckless with the assets of the people of Swansea, their decision making has been slow, reactionary and often wrong. Swansea Labour feared that the price for Lib-Dem/Independent rule would be high. Sadly our fears fell well short of the scale of their failure. What is needed to tackle this crisis effectively is a different administration with the values, vision & determination to deliver for the people of Swansea.

Chris Holley digs in

2010-02-17T16:21:00.007Z

Stung by a piece in yesterday's EPost in which John Miles accurately pointed out that Neath Port Talbot had passed on all their increase from the Welsh Assembly plus 50% of the teacher's pay settlement, Chris Holley hit back. Clearly the attacks on his Administration's financial incompetence and his weak leadership got under his considerable skin and he sent off a moan to the EPost. The Sage of Cwmbrwla claimed that, unlike him - who was nothing if not open and transparent - Labour were wrong, not telling the truth and were following a party line. He claims that if Swansea were paid the same as NPT, it would have many additional millions. He doesn't mention however, the many many millions that he has wasted - see the earlier blogpost. Oh dear, oh dear. I'll leave it to you to decide who's open and transparent etc.

I post John Miles' reply to the attack.
------------------------
Cllr John Miles, Labour’s Education spokesman said, “It’s clear the Council Leader doesn’t understand how the formula works. It’s a pity he wasn’t listening to Cllr Stuart Rice (the Finance Cabinet Member) at last week’s Cabinet meeting. If he was, he’d know that comparisons per head of the population are entirely misleading and irrelevant, as the percentage differences between the authorities are the same as last year"

He said, "The real difference between the two authorities is that NeathPort Talbot is run by Labour whilst Swansea is run by the Lib-Dems and Independents.”

Cllr Miles said, “The truth is that NeathPort Talbot has increased Education spending in line with its increase from the Assembly plus it has provided 50% of the teachers pay rise, whilst Swansea has cut Education spending by almost 1%, mainly to direct funds to Social Services. Education recently passed its Estyn inspection with flying colours whilst Social Services is in crisis, with Children’s Services in Special Measures. What Chris Holley is doing is rewarding failure and punishing success.

Cllr Miles said, “Chris Holley should remember that old political adage – ‘when you’re in a hole stop digging’.”

Haiti Appeal

2010-02-12T17:23:00.002Z

In repsonse to the situation in Haiti the Labour Group has tabled the following motion to Council:

"We will all have watched the news reports of the situation in Haiti following the dreadful earthquake with increasing horror and concern. The devastation caused by this enormous earthquake on an already underdeveloped country and the impact on its people, especially children, that were already living in one of the poorest countries in the world, is difficult to comprehend.

This Council wishes to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti and to say to the survivors “You are not alone”.

This Council therefore resolves that it will send an appropriate donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee.

It believes that all donations no matter how small will make a difference. As Mother Theresa said, “If you can’t feed a hundred people then just feed one”. This Council will therefore do what it can to promote the various means of appeal and to encourage the generosity of the people of Swansea to support the fundraising efforts".

“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give”.

Budget gauntlet thrown down

2010-02-12T17:16:00.000Z

Swansea Council’s Leader was under pressure today to agree to a debate on the Council’s budget crisis.

Labour Leader, Cllr David Phillips has thrown down the gauntlet, demanding a full public debate on the crisis.

Cllr Phillips said, “Chris Holley’s live now, pay later philosophy is no substitute for proper financial management. I have been warning for years that his irresponsible policies meant ruin in the future. But it wasn’t just me, his own officers have been telling him the same thing. I take no pleasure in being right.”

Cllr Phillips suggested that the public meeting would be of great interest. “He said, “This Council mouths empty platitudes about increasing local democracy – let’s put our money where our mouth is and hold a proper public meeting, moderated by some prominent local person, the Editor of the Evening Post say, where the three Party Group Leaders can debate the issue.

He said, “Now is the time for the Leader of the Council to face his critics and explain how he has squandered the strong financial situation he inherited, to tell housing tenants, teachers, children and Council staff, where all the money has gone. And explain, if he can, why he cannot give any future assurance on jobs, housing repairs, education, care for children or respite care for the elderly.”

Budget Da Vinci conspiracy

2010-02-12T17:00:00.000Z

The budget process in County Hall took a bizarre turn today when it emerged that the councillors’ copy of the Evening Post had been censored to remove all reports of Swansea Council’s budget crisis.

A copy of the Evening Post is put in the Members & visitors Lounge at County Hall every day together with the Western Mail and the Independent.

Cllr David Phillips said, “The Post has been disappearing all this week whilst the Budget stories have been running. But today takes the biscuit. The pages reporting yesterdays Cabinet Meeting and related Budget issues had been removed from the paper completely whilst the Editorial comment had been torn out. If only the budget crisis could be resolved as easily as tearing out the difficult pages!

But Cllr Phillips was determined to find out what he wasn’t supposed to know. However, when he finally got his hands on a copy, at first glance he found nothing other than the usual balanced report. He said, “But then I saw it. With the help of my Dan Brown Da Vinci Code book and a bit of advance numerology I cracked the message. It said, “Help us please, we have no idea what we are doing”.

Cllr Phillips said, “I know Chris Holley is a conspiracy theorist and loves a bit of mystery, but he really didn’t need to put it in code. Most of the people of Swansea already know he’s lost the plot!”

Game set & match for Presiding Officer?

2010-02-10T16:59:00.000Z

Labour councillors today proposed a radical suggestion to help save Swansea’s threatened Tennis Centre, get rid of the Council’s Presiding Officer and Deputy in straight sets.

Swansea Council’s Labour Leader, Cllr David Phillips said, “If we scrapped the Council’s Presiding Officer and Deputy Presiding Officer, we would be able to make a substantial contribution towards keeping the Tennis Centre open”.

Labour’s proposal is to revert to the previous practice of having the Council meetings chaired by the Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor.

The current Presiding Officer has been a highly controversial figure having been moved into the post when she was forced to resign from the Social Services portfolio following the failure of Children’s Services and the appointment of an external Intervention Board to drive up progress.

Cllr Phillips said, “These two posts contribute nothing of value to the smooth operation of the Council and can easily be replaced. The money saved could be put to much better use”.

Holley and Day put their heads together

2010-02-10T14:59:00.004Z

Swansea Council's Lib-Dem Leadership gets detention over school budget cuts

2010-02-10T14:58:00.002Z

Labour councillors strongly criticised the Lib-Dem run Swansea Council today for its mismanagement of school finances.

Swansea Labour Leader, Cllr David Phillips said, “Cllr Mike Day is being disingenuous when he says that some schools “may choose to cut teaching staff”. Giving less than 1% increase, whilst at the same time passing on the teachers pay award, pay and prices and other commitments means the average shortfall in schools is 4.7%. Headteachers have no other option but to cut staff. His sums just don’t add up. He and Chris Holley clearly need extra lessons in arithmetic.”

At a meeting with Chairs of Governors on Tuesday, the Director of Education confirmed the drastic cuts that were being made in education spending and confirmed that with the expected 200+% increase in the financial deficit over the next four years the situation was unlikely to get better. No members of the Lib-Dem run Cabinet attended the meeting.

Labours Education spokesman, Cllr John Miles, criticised the Council Leader and Cabinet Member for failing to attend a meeting Cllr Mike who was present, said, “It was regrettable, but not surprising, that both Cllr Day and the Council Leader failed to attend. They would have some serious explaining to do if they had. On information we have gathered so far, schools are seriously talking about redundancies of at least 100 teachers and 100 support staff across the county.”

Labour allege that losses of this scale will inevitably, and unavoidably, result in less teaching time, increased class sizes, mixed age classes, reduced one-to-one tuition and extra support for literacy and numeracy. These in turn could lead to a reduction in school hours, even half or full day closures and children sent home in the event of unplanned absence such as staff sickness.

Cllr Miles said, “Any of these scenarios will have a serious impact on the delivery of the curriculum and inevitable disruption to parents arrangements for their children and their available working hours.”

Cllr Miles said, “This cannot be blamed on the Welsh Assembly. NeathPort Talbot have passed on the full 1.7% increase they received for education in their Assembly settlement, as well as partially funding the teachers pay award. Swansea is already spending £330 less per child than NeathPort Talbot, this gap could now rise to £400. Swansea’s children should not have to pay the price for Cllr Holley’s irresponsible financial mismanagement”.

2010-02-10T14:42:00.001Z

Maxed out credit card and tired old clichés - full PR

2010-02-10T13:49:00.003Z

Labour Councillors attacked the Lib Dem led Administration, dismissing claims that the drastic budget cuts were entirely the result of reduced Welsh Assembly Government funding.

Labour’s Finance spokesman, Cllr Mike Hedges, who is the prospective Assembly candidate for Swansea East said, “This is the same tired old cliché that Cllr Holley repeats whenever he gets into difficulty. It is simply not credible. Times are hard, but Swansea is in the state it’s in, as a direct result of Cllr Holley’s incompetence and weak leadership. Instead of always seeking to blame someone else he should look to his own Administration’s disastrous management. A failed IT project, cuts across Education, a failing social services and the closure of vital respite care for the elderly and children’s homes. These are all down to Lib-Dem mismanagement and incompetence. The blame game won't wash. These are their decisions, their choices and their mistakes. And it will be their legacy".

Swansea has received a 1.9% increase from the Welsh Assembly, which equates to an additional £8million.

Labour Group Leader Cllr David Phillips said, “Chris Holley maxed out the Council’s credit card with no idea how it was to be repaid. He just hoped that something would turn up. It hasn’t. I have been warning for years that the ruinous borrowing and spending of this Lib-Dem led Administration would have to be paid for sometime. And that time is now.”

Social Services is one of the ‘big winners’ in the budget squeeze getting an additional £8.8 million, largely at the expense of Education, who will have to swallow a 0.9% real terms decrease. In addition, the Lib-Dem led Administration has refused to fund the Teachers pay increase or pay and price increases, passing these directly to schools to be funded out of their budget. Some schools are alleging that they may have to go to a four day week or even send children home because there will be insufficient teachers.

Cllr Hedges said, “Welsh schoolchildren are already £527 behind their English counterparts, these cuts will only make this situation worse. Having ruined one of the best Social Service departments in Wales, (and with our Children and Family Services in Special Measures) they are now having to invest heavily to bring it back up to standard. It’s a sad irony that it’s our children who are having to foot the bill for this. NeathPort Talbot for example have passed on the WAG increase directly and in full to schools.”

The Authority has earmarked almost all the Assembly increase for a special Contingency Fund. Cllr Hedges said, “I was not elected to put money in the bank. It should be being spent on services.”

The Lib-Dem led Administration had been planning on considerable savings coming from the controversial IT programme Service@Swansea. Instead, they are having to invest considerable further money into the programme to keep it going.

Cllr Hedges said, “We have seen nothing of the promised savings from the disastrous IT programme. I was warning from the outset that it was unrealistically ambitious. But Cllr Holley wouldn’t listen and just carried on regardless.”

Cllr Phillips said, “Cllr Holley has disposed of over £60m of Council assets in order to fund and cover-up their failures. What have the people of Swansea got to show for this? Nothing but a bigger financial black hole!"

Commenting on the planned 500-750 redundancies, Cllr Phillips said, “It’s a clear indication of the seriousness of the situation when we learn that senior staff will be going as well. But you can bet that their severance terms will be a lot more generous than the ordinary workers. Perhaps we’ll even see them back as consultants?”

He said, "However, is Cllr Holley going to apply the same principles to his Cabinet. With so many services being so drastically cut back, is there a need for a Cabinet of the same size. Will he be cutting back on his Cabinet posts? Given their abysmal performance, no-one would notice if many of them stayed at home!”.

Epitaph

2010-01-16T00:19:00.008Z

Epitaph On A Friend
An honest woman lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like hers, with virtue warm'd,
Few heads with knowledge so inform'd;
If there's another world, she lives in bliss;
If there is none, she made the best of this.

Robert Burns (slightly amended)

Chris Williams – My Memories of Nina

2010-01-15T23:48:00.002Z

I first met Nina at a labour history conference in Manchester in 1992. She attracted my attention for the declamatory, no-nonsense style with which she delivered her paper, and the robustness and energy with which she responded to her critics. But she also took the trouble to offer me, a rather wide-eyed junior lecturer, some kind and supportive comments. The roots of our friendship were sown then, and began to grow strongly when I contributed to a volume – Miners, Unions and Politics – that Nina co-edited with Alan Campbell and David Howell for Manchester University Press in 1996. For the next few years we met intermittently at conferences, and as Nina's work on Arthur Horner progressed she would occasionally phone me to ask about some detail of South Wales Miners' Federation history. Nina's dedication to this project was such that I think she re-lived the life of 'little Arthur', overflowing with enthusiasm and wonderment as she completed the huge jigsaw of his life and times.

Both of us came to Swansea University in 2005 – Nina as an Honorary Research Professor – and we began to work together on plans to attract funding for comparative labour history, involving colleagues in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Portugal as well as elsewhere in the UK. Nina was undoubtedly the driving force – dashing off proselytizing emails (always 'urgent'!) to people who might initially have been alarmed by the directness of the approach, but rapidly realized that, with Nina, what you saw was what you got: commitment, passion and a never-wavering conviction that efforts would yield positive outcomes. Travelling abroad with Nina was always entertaining, because she relished new experiences so much, even if it was only seeing the Bristol Channel from the air as we flew from Amsterdam back to Cardiff.

Nina and Phil made the move physically to Swansea in 2007 and Nina immediately made her presence felt in the History department (though she had to be dissuaded from attending departmental meetings!). She was always there to take an interest, to offer encouragement and to push for a new initiative. Without her drive I suspect we would not now be looking forward to opening the Richard Burton Archive in May 2010. But Nina was not just a lively colleague, she was also a good friend with whom one could relax over a glass of wine, talk about cricket, or laugh at some of the absurdities of British higher education.

Nina's illness earlier in 2009 shook all who knew her. Her apparent recovery brought a smile to many a face – by force of personality Nina appeared to have beaten off a life-threatening condition. We began to plan again for new projects (she told me that we would co-author an article on the historiography of coal mining in 2010 – she told me, and I did not demur!), and of course she completed the writing of her biography of Horner. But in September I noticed that there was not quite the usual intensity or focus about her, and she confessed over dinner one night that she was still coming to terms with the after-effects of the operation. A few weeks later and the news was much more serious. Now, with the brevity and finality of the turning of a page, she has gone.

The vividness of Nina Fishman will, however, take a very long time to fade from my memory. She was one of those people who, by knowing, one's own life is greatly enriched. She was intellectually and personally immensely generous, and her belief in the importance of the history she studied, wrote and taught provided an invaluable reminder of the purpose of scholarly enquiry. But most of all I will miss picking up the telephone (usually amidst domestic chaos) to hear the words 'Hello love, it's NINA'.

Donald Sassoon

2010-01-15T23:38:00.001Z

Awaiting text

Ben O’Mahony’s eulogy

2010-01-15T23:29:00.003Z

I Googled Nina the other day to find out what it was the world knew about her. And there's a lot! In a quick search I struck on four separate obituaries; which moved me. They talk of her as: the ardent socialist, the tenacious campaigner, the Academic, the Writer, the Actor. But none of these were the Nina I knew.

She was simply my friend.

I have known Nina all of my life, which was only a fraction of hers. But most particularly for the last four years. She's supported me financially at times. When I first moved to back to London, she and Phil invited me to live with them. She was a mentor to me; she knew more about films, theatre, and playwrights than anyone I've met in my life. She spoke to me as an adult well before I was one. I remember once after having a conversation about Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, she called me up a couple of months later to tell me that she had booked tickets to see it in Stratford so that we could continue our chat. She valued what came out of my mouth more than I did, which is saying something!

In my opinion she was a real citizen of the world. She had a wonderfully unsentimental and stoic attitude towards life: whenever I would speak to someone about Nina they would always end up justifying whatever they said of her with "well she's Nina"; or when she got ill and I would speak to Phil and he would say "she's still Nina". It is this innate 'Nina-ness' that I will miss most.

I'd like to finish by reading a short poem by the American poet Mary Oliver:

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

Margaret Simpsons’s recollections

2010-01-15T23:22:00.001Z

Nina and I met in 1962, when her father came to Cambridge for a year on a Ford Foundation fellowship. I have a vivid image of her in the living room of her house, with her parents, on a summer's afternoon, while her brothers, who were boys at the time, played in the garden. Nina was about 16 or 17, and, as you will imagine, very pretty, vivacious and politically switched on. She was soon knocking about with the same people I did, on the acting scene and at the University Labour Club.

A snapshot from those early days: four of us driving back to Cambridge from London, late at night. Nina in the back of the van with her boyfriend, leading us all in singing protest songs. For me that memory encapsulates so much of Nina – political conviction, love of song, a deep streak of romanticism. Politics was her faith, and nothing, throughout her life, would lessen her commitment.

But Nina was also deeply interested in people. If I ask myself why my friendship with her has survived when so many others have not, it is quite simply because Nina kept in touch. She put effort into her friendships – and she was always making new ones, and introducing us to each other. She was endlessly hospitable. She took a keen interest our children. Another snapshot – she and I and my three children all at the theatre together. My children cowering in adolescent embarrassment as Nina rose to her feet, clapping enthusiastically, and shouting "Bravo."

Her unabashed enthusiasm was one of the things I loved about her. I also loved her eccentricity. Nina was someone who bucked the trend. If it was fashionable, Nina wasn't into it. This was true of everything from politics through social trends, to fashion itself.

No one took more pleasure in her friends' successes, but she was also there for you when you were down. Even more important, was her ongoing interest in our work. When I visited her in Swansea at the start of this year, before her cancer was diagnosed, I mentioned a new writing project. Immediately she told me of an obscure autobiography in which my subject featured; not only that, but she had a copy. Phil was detailed to dig it out from the back row of a shelf of books stacked two deep, and sure enough, it was very helpful.

In July, when she seemed to have made a heroic recovery from her operation, we went to Stratford together. Over supper we talked about her book on Horner, to which she was putting the finishing touches, and about my project. I thought I was still flailing around, but Nina could see I had made progress. It was this sort of thoughtful, attentive encouragement, which made her such a valuable friend.

It always seemed to me that Nina's life really began to gel when she settled in Sotheby Road and got together with Phil. They were so mutually supportive and so good at giving each other space to do their own thing. Nina still sallied forth to her many meetings and immersed herself in her writing, but Phil's humour and shrewd common-sense seemed to me to help her lighten up. She had great respect for his intelligence and his judgement. So did I. An endorsement for a play or a film from Nina could mean a riveting evening or one that was hard-going. A double endorsement was a much safer bet.

Nina faced the ordeal of her illness with great courage and stoicism, and no one could have done more for her than Phil, who nursed her single-handedly at home, and juggled her needs against the needs of her friends who wanted so badly to say farewell. I'd like to thank you for this, Phil, on my own behalf and behalf of everyone here. [And to offer my deep sympathy to you and to her brothers.

Nina was a great presence, a huge spirit. For my part, I feel truly privileged to have had her for a friend.

‘Order of Service’ - Nina’s Funeral 17th January 2009

2010-01-15T23:15:00.006Z

Paul Robeson – Ballad of Joe Hill

We should ask not how she died, but how she lived. Not what she gained, but what she gave. Should this not be how we measure the worth of a friend?

We have come here today from many different places, some far away, not only to bid a sad farewell to Nina Fishman, but more importantly to celebrate, honour and pay tribute for her life, work and the gift of her friendship. And by doing this to offer comfort, support and our sympathy to her family; to her beloved husband Phil, her brothers Danny and David and their families. I have been asked to say, in Phil's words, that "They seriously appreciate that you've all come". You are all very welcome.

I am David Phillips. And like you, I am a friend of Nina's. Nina was (is) my oldest and closest friend. And that is a privilege that I am proud to share with you and the many others who cannot be here today.

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel". [Maya Angelou]

Nina made us all feel good. There was no day so bleak, no weather so dark that Nina's arrival couldn't improve it. Nina was not only a good friend, but was good at being a friend. She put a great deal of time into her friends, into making them, but more importantly into keeping them.

And it is therefore not a stranger, but her friends who will speak of her this afternoon, those who truly knew her and who will share their memories of their friend, our friend Nina. In the time available this will, of necessity, not tell it all. You will also appreciate that this is going to be difficult for us, so I hope you will understand and forgive if we stumble or falter a little on the way.

We will hear from Margaret Simpson, one of Nina's oldest friends, I think she trumps the rest of us as she knew Nina when she was 16. Then we will hear Ben, the son of her friends Jan and Paul O'Mahony, someone who Nina has known all his life, then Donald Sassoon who wrote such a warm and splendid obituary in the Guardian, will speak of her life in London and finally Chris Williams will talk about Swansea.

Firstly, Margaret. Margaret was unexpectedly taken ill last night and cannot be here in person, so she has asked me to stand in for her. This is what she wanted to say.
then

Ben, then
Donald, then
Chris.

Of course, I too will miss Nina. I'll miss her phone calls, ringing up with some bit of news or to find out what's going on or to invite us to meet someone she thought we'd like or simply to come over for food. I'll miss her unexpected visits when she was out for one of her enormous walks and just thought she'd call in for a cup of tea. She expected to be welcomed and of course she was.

I'll miss too her capacity to eat for Britain. She brought the same enthusiasm and dedication to the table as she did with everything else. From the first, she was for me the personification of the 'Eater Upper', a character in N F Simpson's play, One Way Pendulum. She wouldn't eat anything, Nina liked good food, but given it, she'd eat it. All of it. And yours too if there was any left!

Nina was serious but was also great fun. She gave herself to laughter as fully as she did everything. She was a great audience.

Nina was generous; generous with her intelligence and learning, although never battering you over the head with it, well perhaps if you opposed her in debate. I recall her taking issue at a seminar with one prominent MP (not the one here today) who had asserted that since Russian tanks posed no threat to Britain, they shouldn't inform NATO defence policy. Nina suggested, icily politely, that those people living within drive time of the Russian border might take a rather different view.

And Nina was generous; generous with her enthusiasm and energy, generous with things, if you liked something she'd give it to you, as Ben said she'd get tickets and take you to something she thought you'd like – or she thought you should like!
Above all Nina was unstintingly generous with her time. Even in her last weeks, when desperately ill, she made time for the almost constant flow of friends wanting (but desperately not wanting) to take their leave.

And it was that generosity that led Nina & Phil, to commission a 'free' performance of the Verdi Requiem. Nina had 'decided' that she wanted to hear the Verdi Requiem before she died, but a planned performance could not be found in the time she thought she had available. So Nina did what Nina always did, if no-one was doing what was necessary – she'd do it herself and so, of course, she did. The concert will be performed on Sunday January 17^th 2010 as planned, as Nina was adamant that it should go ahead whether she made it or not. The Requiem will now fulfil its proper purpose.

We began this short service with a song from Paul Robeson. Nina did love his voice – many times playing him at the wrong moment. Some of you will have been at parties that were brought to a standstill when Nina nipped upstairs and played Robeson, or alternatively Edda Moser singing Queen of the Night! We are going to end with another song, The Internationale. A song that is not only appropriate, but one that was very important to Nina. And one which reduced her to tears every time she heard it. I am going to ask all of you to join in and sing it with gusto. Doesn't matter if you can't sing – give it all you've got. If time is short we will begin to leave the chapel whilst we are singing. I'd like those of who remain to carry on singing. The coffin will remain for you to make your goodbyes as you leave. Phil would then like you all to join him and the family at the Grand Hotel by the station.

The comfort of having a friend or a sister may be taken away, but not that of having had one – and we were all privileged to have had the gift of Nina in life. So before we sing, I'd like to take offer you space, a few brief moments, for your own thoughts and memories of Nina and a prayer if that is what you want to do.

Long Pause

Would you please stand

Internationale
End

Nina’s Funeral 17th December 2009

2010-01-15T19:37:00.001Z

With apologies for the posting hiatus.

I was very honoured (and pleased and proud) when Phil asked me to 'mc Nina's funeral'. And to tell the truth I was also s..t scared. I have spoken at many funerals, but this was something of an entirely different order. Clearly I wanted to do a good job, and justify Phil's confidence in me. I didn't want to let down him, Nina, the family or the hundreds of friends who would be there. But what do you say, that isn't trite, cliché or hackneyed? And how do you hold it altogether when speaking of your closest friend? All that is challenge enough but in addition I then found out that there is the additional difficulty of the timing when officiating at a crematorium service. You have an half-hour slot and assuming five minutes each for the mourners arriving and departing, it means that you have twenty minutes for the actual service. As I say, scary.

Phil was pleased with my efforts – but perhaps he wasn't the most dispassionate assessor. The family and mourners were also complimentary – if they thought otherwise, well they wouldn't say so would they!

The thing I will remember most about it, was the palpable sense of enormous warmth, love and affection and the huge amount of laughter, as we shared our experiences of Nina. Yes we were mourning and grieving, but we remembered that whilst Nina was serious, she was also immense fun.

I wish to thank the staff at the Crematorium who were of enormous assistance, as was Mervyn, the undertaker – the right man at the right time. They also complimented me on finishing smack on time – to the minute! Something that they said that vicars who had been doing it for many years often failed to do. They suggested a second career could be beckoning. Hmm, we'll see.

Well I did my best and if nothing else I at least got the timing right! But I'll leave you to judge whether I succeeded or not. The 'service' and the various tributes follow in successive posts. I'm still awaiting an electronic version of Donald's eulogy. Paul O'Mahony, (someone who I met at Jan & Lawrence Fry's in Llanarthne and a mutual friend of Lawrence and Nina) recorded the funeral on his new state of the iPhone (very fancy). However, it will need a bit of work to get it up to 'broadcast quality'. Several of us had discussed how we created a space for the many people who wished to post their recollections and memories of Nina, plus photo's and other stuff. When we have got that together we will put the recording on it.

Phil had organised the 'wake' at the Grand Hotel – and the Hotel staff did a fantastic job. Several hours were spent meeting Nina's family and friends – and learning new things about Nina, some of them very surprising. I went straight from that to St Mary's Carol Service. I went with Paul O'Mahony, one of the Glyndourneanians. It seemed an entirely appropriate end to the day. This was the standard lessons & Carol thing but St Mary's do it very well. It has a superb choir and the church was packed. Paul was much taken with meeting all the 'dignitaries' – Bishop, archdeacon, Lord Lieutentant and Lord Mayor, amongst others. He also chatted with many of my other acquaintances. He offered them all 'Greetings from Cork' (unusurprisingly that's where he's from). He is also an avid blogger, I think he has three on the go, plus twitter and Facebook. If you have the energy to search his latest site (he is prolific, if not prolix) then I am sure you will find what he said about the funeral and the Carol Service.

I was sad that Andrew Vesey the Rector at St Mary's wasn't there as he was ill, although he was ably substituted by the Archdeacon of Gower. I have a great regard for Andrew Vesey, especially for his willingness to speak out and provide moral leadership. I thought Paul would have liked him as well.

PS. It turns out that Paul hasn't posted anything. Still his blog is worth a look if only for its variety and the sheer energy it displays.

Verdi Requiem 17th January 2010

2009-12-14T17:01:00.002Z

Nina Fishman – Funeral arrangements

2009-12-14T11:40:00.002Z

Thursday 17^th December 2pm. Swansea Crematorium.

Please be seated by 2pm.

Family flowers only.

Donations may be made to any charity or fund of your choice in Nina's memory. If it's helpful for the Verdi Requiem, Nina requested donations to be made to Swansea City Opera.

Donations can be sent either via me or the Funeral Director, Rees Davies & Sons, 32/34 Port Tennant Road, Swansea, SA1 8JF.

Nina Fishman. NOT an obituary.

2009-12-13T14:57:00.009Z

My friend Nina Fishman died last Saturday. I will miss her.

Nina had an inoperable and untreatable cancer. Her death was not unexpected, but for her husband, Phil, her family and friends it was still an unwelcome and unwanted surprise. Nina knew that this was one opponent that force of argument would not bend to her will - she was as direct and honest with herself in this, as she was with the rest of us in everything else. Nina had spent some eight (or more) years on the first (and definitive) biography of Arthur Horner, the Miners Leader of the 1920s-50s, putting her own health second to getting this enormous task finished. In fact 'little Arthur' so much became one of the family that when asking after herself & Phil, you always added "How's Arthur?" Having (as we all thought) overcome cancer once to finish her masterwork, we were all devastated when she was re-diagnosed just a couple of months ago. Nina was damned determined to attend the biography's publication in January next year and did what she could to keep this appointment. For once she failed.

Nina and I met over 25 years ago, through a friend of Sybil, my partner. I had never met anyone like her – still haven't! Nina became and remains my oldest and closest friend.

And that is a statement that I am proud to share with very many others, as Nina had a true gift for friendship. She was not merely a 'good friend' in the general sense, but also in the sense that she was 'good' at being a friend. Unlike most of us, who bump into our friends now and again, Nina put a great deal of time into her friends, into making them, but more importantly, into keeping them.

I guess Nina had an address book (she had no time for electronic gizmos), but it must have been the size of War & Peace. She had friends everywhere, of all ages, backgrounds and interests. And she was in contact with all of us – and was unfailingly interested in all of us. As a result, some of her friends are now friends of mine. As anyone who has met her would know, when you got Nina's interest, you got her commitment and boundless enthusiasm.

Nina was not a 'part-time' anything, when you got Nina, you got all of Nina, whether you wanted it or not! If Nina was interested in someone or something, then she cared and cared passionately.

We shared a love of opera (she converted me to Mozart, but failed with Wagner), cinema & theatre. Wine - unlike me she only bought the best. Politics, of course. There was seemingly no cause on the left that she was not involved in.

This was perhaps inevitable coming from a politically radicalised family: her parents were American academics persecuted during the McCarthy period and effectively forced to leave the US because of their political beliefs and trade union activism.

Nina was involved in driving political change at the national and European level; however, long before she moved to Swansea, she was (and remained) fascinated by the minutiae of our local politics. I admit this fascination was more likely attributable to our friendship, than my insightful analysis! But whatever it was, to an often struggling local politician she was always an interested listener. Nina knew political history, but did practical politics; pressing the lessons of history to serve a current problem. And she'd deliver leaflets (although it was Phil who most often got to deliver them). Nina was an enduring encouragement when it all got me down. I learnt not to give up, that it was worth it even if the change was small, but above all I learnt that I couldn't make anything better if I quit.

I am the better person, and certainly the better politician, for having known her. She was a gift to us all and improved the world by being in it.

I will of course miss her. I'll miss her phone calls, ringing up with some bit of news or to find out what's going on or to invite us to meet someone she thought we'd like or simply to come over for food. I'll miss her unexpected visits when she was out for one of her enormous walks and just thought she'd call in for a cup of tea. She expected to be welcomed and of course she was. There was no day so bleak, no weather so black that Nina's arrival couldn't improve it.

I'll miss too her capacity to eat for Britain. She brought the same enthusiasm and dedication to the table as she did with everything else. From the first, she was for me the personification of the 'Eater Upper', a character in N F Simpson's play, One Way Pendulum. She wouldn't eat anything, Nina liked good food, but given it, she'd eat it. All of it. And yours too if there was any left!

Nina was serious but was also great fun. She gave herself to laughter as fully as she did everything. She was a great audience, I always appreciated her rumbustious laughter whilst banging the table, as I told one of my often repeated stories.

Nina was generous; generous with her intelligence and learning, although never battering you over the head with it, well perhaps if you opposed her in debate. I recall her taking issue at a seminar with one prominent MP who had asserted that since Russian tanks posed no threat to Britain, they shouldn't inform NATO defence policy. Nina suggested, icily politely, that those people living within drive time of the Russian border might take a rather different view. Nina even managed to make thick Scousers like me believe they had made a worthwhile contribution. Nina was generous with her enthusiasm and energy, although I often had to run hard to keep up. She was generous with things – if you liked something she'd give it to you.

And it was that generosity that led Nina & Phil, to commission a 'free' performance of the Verdi Requiem. Nina had 'decided' that she wanted to hear the Verdi Requiem before she died, but a planned performance could not be found in the time she thought she had available. So Nina did what Nina always did, if no-one was doing what was necessary – she did it herself. So she booked a certain Cardiff based orchestra (listed in the programme as the Welsh Symphony), the Swansea Philharmonic choir, a top line of soloists and the Brangwyn Hall. Her plan was not only to invite her friends, but as thanks to the city that she had made her home and which had made her feel at home, all the people of Swansea. She was particularly concerned to include young people who would not otherwise be able to afford to attend such a performance. The concert will be performed on Sunday January 17^th 2010 as planned, as Nina was adamant that it should go ahead whether she made it or not. The Requiem will now fulfil its proper purpose.

Above all Nina was unstintingly generous with her time. Even in her last weeks, when desperately ill, she made time for the almost constant flow of friends wanting (but desperately not wanting) to take their leave.

I will miss her love. I will miss my friend. Goodbye, Nina love.

I am not a liar

2009-12-09T18:57:00.001Z

Another repost.

The allegation that children were kept in motorway services because there was nowhere else for them to go is a serious one, and one which has prompted a great deal of huffing and puffing – lots of smoke and very little light.

However, the allegation that this was manufactured by Edwina Hart and myself for political advantage is a gross calumny. Mrs. Hart's statement was based entirely on what the staff in the Children's homes specifically told us. I had and (so far) have no reason to doubt them.

If the Cabinet Member is so confident that this has never happened why is he so reluctant to agree to an enquiry as I asked him. And why is there a dislocation between his categoric denials and the Service Director's more muted responses.

This the statement that I read out in the Council meeting last week.

"This is clearly an important matter. However, I am not a liar and neither is Mrs Hart AM or her representative. This was not invented to gain political advantage – we had no need to do so and frankly would not have done so. We were at the facility at the staff's invitation.

I know what I & my colleague heard and I stand by what we heard and what I wrote down. Indeed my colleague had previously been told the same thing in another forum. We did not misunderstand.

What we were told was very explicit, was repeated more than once and spoken back to the staff. It was not the views of one disgruntled individual but many. It was never qualified or amended. The terms and scope of the press release were agreed. We had and have no reason to doubt the accuracy what we were told.

The Leader of Council has already, and very inappropriately, called on me to report to the Director of Social Service, the name of the member of staff who made the allegation. Disciplinary action has already been threatened. So I won't be naming anybody.

Given that, however, I can understand why staff members might now be seeking to distance themselves from the issue. However, I am very concerned as to whether any form of inappropriate pressure has been applied to staff to get them to retract a clear and unambiguous statement of the consequences of the bed-blocking at these two facilities.

I fully support the hard and important work that the staff in Ty Gwaun and Ty Cwm perform and the service and support that these facilities provide to some of the most challenging children; children for whom there is currently simply no alternative – save, in many cases, transporting them many miles from Swansea.

To resolve this matter and put it beyond doubt, I call on the Cabinet Member to commission a review of say, the past two years, to establish that no child, in any circumstances, has had to spend time in motorway services."

Sage stooge stuffed

2009-12-09T18:14:00.002Z

Yet another repost, as it got lost between this computer and the blogsite! Where it is no-one knows.

That master of political intrigue, the Uriah Heep of the Uplands, the sage of Brynmill, the Scourge of Students, er...where was I , oh yes, Peter May, got a quick lesson on the wisdom of the old political adage that 'you never ask a question unless you already know the answer'.

At the start of each Council meeting there is a session where members of the public can turn up and ask questions. Generally, (in fact almost invariably) the questions are put to the Cabinet Members, that's really the point of the exercise. However, the Tory Group Leader, Cllr Kinzett, had established that questions could be asked of any elected member.

So at the start of the meeting a young man stands up and asks me about the allegations of children being kept overnight in motorway services or something along those lines. It turns out that he was the campaign organiser (sic) for Cllr May. (Clearly Cllr May didn't want to be overshadowed by his colleagues Cllr Speight, who has his own researcher (singular or plural) and who caused a deal of upset a few months ago). I had been away for the special meeting the previous week – an unbreakable engagement booked long before the Council date was set. I guess that Cllr May thought this a jolly clever wheeze – and that he'd catch me out and embarrass me! Er...embarrass me! What a silly boy!

I had anticipated that I'd be asked something somewhere in the meeting – although I didn't expect it to come from the public gallery. But 6 of one etc. I read out the statement that is posted in the next blog.

The allegation that children were or were not kept overnight in motorway services is clearly an embarrassing one for the Administration. We have had robust (and aggressively over-the-top) denials from the Cabinet Member, which contrast greatly with the equivocal responses from the Service Director. However, whilst a powerful illustration of the effect of the closing of the homes, in my view - it's not the main issue, as without it serious doubts remain about the implementation timetable and the efficacy of the proposals – which are untested in Swansea and cannot be guaranteed to work, as the Service Director freely and openly admitted. That is why the failure to seek consensus on the proposals is so serious.

What is in many ways worse, is the Administration's failure to distinguish between 'consulting' and 'consensus'. There clearly had been some sort of agreement between the Chair & vicChair of Scrutiny and the Cabinet Member that was cavalierly over-ruled by Chris Holley. He made plain where he stood on the issue, as when asked for an assurance that the proposal to close the homes would come to Council, was "The only assurance I will give you is that it will be dark outside when we finish here" or words to that effect. Nice!

Leader assassinated – no-one notices

2009-12-04T19:39:00.001Z

Probably the most enjoyable bit of the yesterdays meeting was the careful, considered and oh, so polite demolition of Cllr Chris Holley and his 'consensus' credentials in regards to the closure of the Ty Gwaun and Ty Cwm Children's homes by Cllr Paxton Hood-Williams. I suspect that the observers from the Intervention Board in the were taking careful note. Certainly HRH H squirmed a lot whilst the knife was going in – but dealt with it in his usual way, he pretended it hadn't been said and simply ignored it. Which is his response to every item of inconvenient truth. Of which, of course, there are lots! But then of course, we know that the central political dictum (and no that isn't rhyming slang) of Lib-Dem politics is to ignore the truth if it gets in the way of their view of the world. Peter May's litter-fest of posters demonstrate that.

The Surreal world of FitzHolley

2009-12-04T19:16:00.002Z

Following the last Council meeting six weeks ago (see previous blogs – those I haven't accidentally deleted that is) there was a brisk and robust exchange of correspondence between the Chief Executive and the Opposition Group Leaders (Rene Kinzett and myself), which in my case I followed up at my regular 1-2-1 with Paul Smith. (I cannot speak for RK as these meetings are confidential, 'Chatham House rules'.)

It would be fair to say that there was (and probably remains) a significant difference of opinion as to the cause of the ridiculous way that the meetings are conducted. The Presiding Officer (PO) seems to go out of her way to be confrontational. As PO she should not only be impartial but be seen to be so. I rather got the impression yesterday that she genuinely thinks that she is being impartial. If this is correct, then I couldn't begin to guess what this would mean for those times when she would be being partial! I had cause to remonstrate with her yesterday about her irritated body language, her terse "Yes, Cllr X, what do you want now...!" or words to that effect and her total refusal to engage with or listen to what a speaker is saying – at least insofar as she comprehends what is being asked. In her hands, these essentially silent signals become screamed down a megaphone! And as I reported previously, this has the effect of raising the temperature and creating animosity and aggression where there was none. I thought afterwards that she comes on like Joyce Grenfell in that sketch of hers, "Nigel...don't do that", some out-of-her-depth playschool assistant. This was rather confirmed later in the meeting when she had the sheer brass neck to remonstrate with Council that they were behaving like children!

The opening of yesterdays meeting was a case in point. At the start of every meeting councillors are asked to approve the accuracy of the Minutes of the previous meeting - standard practice. Sometimes, but not often, it is alleged that they are inaccurate, generally an error or oversight. I cannot recollect when Minutes have been challenged that the correction has not been accepted.

At the previous council meeting Council had a ludicrous debate about whether to have a report from a legal officer about constitutional changes concerning the Pension Fund. (The matter had been postponed from the previous meeting for just such a report – see earlier blogposts). The Minutes of that item were up for approval yesterday. I challenged the accuracy of the Minute as it did not include any reference to vote that was won, NOT to have the report and that that decision was then over-ruled by the Monitoring Officer (MO) who insisted that we had to have the report (and no, I don't know why he didn't say it before the vote either!)

Group Leaders are sent as copy of the Minutes in advance of publication so any errors can be corrected and the Minutes agreed without the sort of stupid public debate we had yesterday. In reading the draft I noticed what I thought was an error of omission (albeit a large one). Now I didn't consider this to be contentious and wrote to the Committee section pointing the 'error' out. Although I understand that the matter was referred to the MO, the letter was ignored and the Minute left to stand as written. So perhaps the omission wasn't an error after all!

So yesterday, I rose to have another go at getting the Minutes correct and we then entered the world of the surreal. The PO refused to accept the challenge stating "Minutes were not a verbatim transcript". No indeed they are not, they are a record of what Council decided and Council decided not to have a report, a decision that was subsequently over-ruled by the MO. So all this should have been in the Minutes – but wasn't. The Chief Executive (CE) and the MO both agreed that I was right. Now the simple solution (and standard practice) was for them to accept the 'error' and agree to record the change. But no, the CE proposed some sort of halfway house that would note my comments but not change the Minute and then the PO supported by the Leader of Council Chris Holley, put the matter to the vote and Council decided to accept as accurate, Minutes that the CE and MO had agreed were inaccurate! Surreal, no? Bizarre certainly. (The whole Administration voted to accept and Labour and the Conservatives voted not to. I didn't see which way the Brilliant Comrade and his pals voted).

And the purpose of all of this – I truly have no idea.

What I do know is that ensured that meeting got off to a fractious start – and for no good purpose. I suppose that the Intervention Board members sitting in the Gallery must have thought they were in for a re-run of the last meeting. I am certainly getting fed-up with it all. And the credibility of Council under FitzHolley? – it continues to slide through the floor.

There is now no interaction between the political parties and the CE has proposed that he call in the marriage guidance councillors in the person of some sort of mediator. RK and myself have said this is of no use, until he and the MO get a firmer grip on proceedings and the PO is not only included in the mediation but sent on some training. I understand that Mrs F. has a Social Science degree – whatever she learnt doesn't seem to have been much applied here! (In an aside - I was told that the reason that Mrs F was given the Social Service portfolio (apart from the fact that the experienced councillors wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole) was that HRH H, misunderstood it as 'Social Services'. Probably a gross and cruel calumny).

Welsh Labour Leadership contest

2009-12-04T11:33:00.001Z

So it's all over – although the dust is still to settle and there's bound to be more kicked up when Carwyn announces his Cabinet – if only (and almost certainly) by the media.

The winner was hardly a surprise – indeed he had been the favourite since before the contest actually started. But it was a decisive result – and can hardly be quibbled with. He won in every category – and on the first ballot. That was a surprise. Certainly Edwina Hart must be disappointed by that – because I guess she would have been counting on getting some second preferences from Huw Lewis. It was widely expected that Carwyn would do well with the MPs and affiliates, but that Edwina would de better with the party members. Not so, in the event, although there was not much in it.

I was at the announcement in the theoretically secret location, that I wasn't allowed to disclose to anyone, but which all the media knew about as clearly did Plaid – given that Helen Mary Jones was hanging around outside to congratulate the winner (what was that about – was she hoping for a job in the new Cabinet?). Anyway, I cannot be compromising security now – so I'll tell you it was the Wales Millennium Centre.

Rhodri's valedictory speech was his usual mix of eccentricity, charm and humour. And he got two standing ovations – and that was hardly surprising either. His street popularity and recognition factor is something that Carwyn will have difficulty matching – for a while at least. But Rhodri will I am sure be out on the stump at the next elections.

Carwyn's acceptance speech was his usual polished performance and paid gracious tribute to his colleagues. And I am not going to say anything about that. Edwina's speech was also excellent – also gracious and funny. Huw Lewis' was...well strange. I had no idea where he was going with his complicated opening story/joke. (It wasn't helped by the fact that I have never seen the XFactor and absolutely no idea who or what he was (supposedly) talking about). He got a bit emotional in his thanks, especially to his wife (but as a 'blubber' myself I don't criticise him for that). I was surprised that he seemed so disappointed – he can't seriously have expected to win can he? I thought he did very well in the votes – whether that can be translated into his having staked out some territory will remain to be seen.

All eyes now will be on Carwyn's Cabinet. I have no inside knowledge (and wouldn't tell you if I did) but what will his balance be between reward and spread? Will there be a re-allocation of portfolios with Plaid? I wouldn't bet on anyone, but I would guess that Edwina Hart should be safe, not least as who the hell would seriously want the Health portfolio? Will the portfolios all remain predominantly in the south-east of Wales?

On the contest itself, I think it's shown Welsh Labour as a serious grown-up party. Prepared to engage in an open discussion of ideas. I believe that we have shown the other parties how to do it. Well apart from the announcement itself. I didn't really get the point of having it announced by an attractive young blond woman. What was wrong with the usual and clearly more suitable wrinkly old men in suits! Especially when I was eye-level with her knees and she was wearing a very (very) short skirt....

Back on-line

2009-12-04T10:52:00.001Z

I predicted that I wouldn't keep the blogging up, that it would be an occasional process – and I was right. It's quite surprising how much time it actually takes – and the commitment. And once you've fallen out of it – it's a bit of an effort to get back into it. Other things fill up the space. However, I am now having another go. Interestingly my last entries were about the previous Council meeting = and I got a bit fed up/annoyed with myself, that having written the bloody stuff, my incompetence led me to delete it. Perhaps it was the powerful hand of the great critic!

Tweeting

2009-11-08T20:02:00.001Z

Stephen Fry that arbiter of all things tasteful and the nations leading guide to IT etiquette has now left Twitter denouncing it as base. No longer will the world have the benefit of his 48 character erudition, apparently someone took issue with one of his posts. It was such a relief to discover that Twitter is now passé. I would have hated to have joined and discover that it was just so last week. Oh joy, oh bliss. So now I can mock the Council twitterati as yesterday's men and women.

Mr Forgetful

2009-11-08T19:15:00.002Z

So let's see, this damned Council meeting and the deleted blogs.

The blogs included reference to the Estyn Inspection. I suggested that the generally good outcome was a bit of a surprise to the LEA as they were expecting just the opposite and that the outcome may have had a lot to do with the charabanc of advisors who allegedly arrived from the WLGA (a coachload of coaches) to school staff in how to pass the inspection. It wasn't all good news as the Inspectors did report that Swansea was the amongst the worst authorities for young people leaving education with no qualifications at all. (see my earlier posts about SHYP).

I referred to the debate on this item showing the incompetence and partiality of the Presiding Officer, Cllr Wendy Fitzgerald. That her lack of any detectable sense of humour or knowledge of the rules of debate (whether ours or anybody's. A Christmas present note to her family – a second-hand copy of Citrine would be very welcome) led to a cranking up of the temperature in the Chamber and simple matters turning into acrimonious major tests of will. This is not helped by Cllr F unwillingness to accept advice from officers on the few occasions that she is offered any. Although I get my share the bulk of the opprobrium descends on Rene Kinzett. The fatuous debate on his supplementary question to the Estyn Inspectors was a case in point. She prevented him, he argued and this went on for some minutes – when she gave in and allowed his question – as she should have done at the beginning. Later on in the meeting she was giving advice to councillors on when and why they should 'stand', i.e. intervene in a debate and when to put up their hands (she failed to see the irony in her offering anyone advice on procedure). However, she omitted one and I stood up, helpfully intended, to advise on this. I was met with an exasperated sigh and the most negative body language. She didn't want to let me proceed, there was some argy-bargy and the Monitoring Officer (after being drawn to the correct part of the Constitution advised by one of his staff) finally advised that I was correct. All utterly pointless.

The entries made reference to Cllr Peter May's abject performance in public & members questions when he seemed unable to answer anything without a prompt from the officers sitting behind him. And then there was the challenge by a member of the public who had the temerity to remind Cllr May of the inconsistency in his answers compared to something that he had said at some previous meeting. Ouch! Who would expect someone to remember and quote it at you in public. Ouch again!

I also described the ridiculous situation where the Council was allowed by the Monitoring Officer to vote on going straight to a vote on complicated changes to the procedures for the Pensions Panel without a presentation on the changes, despite the fact that the item was deferred from the previous Council meeting for precisely that reason. And then after the vote the Monitoring Officer said that we had to have the presentation after all! You couldn't make this stuff up. Well you wouldn't want to. It's all very wearing.

Later on the report on a radical and totally undemocratic change to the way Notices of Motion were to be dealt with was withdrawn before debate for further work. I wondered who had signed it off in the first place, if it was so flawed. (It's coming back to the Constitution Working Group this week – but there doesn't seem be any major changes. I have no idea what's going on). The changes mean that the Presiding Officer (the aforementioned Cllr Fitzgerald) would have the power to prevent any motion getting on the Agenda – she can currently kick them into the long grass by referring them to an Overview Committee which are run by her own side. The new rules would mean that embarrassing or other unwanted motions could be prevented from ever seeing the light of day. This from an Administration allegedly committed to – what was it – "Openness, transparency & democracy".

I also referred to Labour's motion on the redundancy of the Arts Co-ordinator in the Education Department and that the response to this revealed that it seemed little thought had been given to how the outstanding work that she had done in involving children (and schools) in the arts, especially from areas of deprivation, was to be continued. There have been howls of protest at this small-minded redundancy. The Administration offered to look at it again when they considered the budget for next year. It's pathetic really.

That's the best I've got. Sorry. It's not as good as the originals – but there we are. I'll try to not let it happen again.

Rhodri’s boots

2009-11-08T12:28:00.001Z

I am probably going to regret the next post but I cannot really ignore the contest within the party at the minute – what contest? – you know the political X factor, who's going to become the new First Minister? (If I knew more about the X factor I could probably suggest various contestants for the candidates for this race – but I don't so I can't. Politicians always make pratts of themselves when they try to appropriate popular culture. I remember Harold Wilson claiming the Beatles (he represented Huyton and that's near but not in Liverpool – you can't become a Scouser that easy – I'll bet he never knew the words of a single song, like TB claimed he liked heavy metal). So I won't try. As I've got older this means that I become more and more like a High Court judge querulously asking who this or that is. Mind you that isn't new – my sporting credibility never really recovered from having to have explained who Gareth Edwards was! I was being shown photos by his uncle George Edwards (clue 1), of him and 'Gareth' at the Arms Park (clue 2), at Hamden (clue 3) and in Paris (clue 4). I said nothing at the time, but after, I asked my colleague – "Who's Gareth?" – and was met by a dumbfounded silence. In my defence I plead that although I did play rugby it was in England and I was never a spectator, but!!!!! Anyway.....

I listened to Edwina Hart on Kevin's phone-in this morning. She cannot be claimed to be the greatest media performer in the Party – I don't think she claims this herself – but the lack of surface polish allows her transparent honesty to shine through. Even an old cynic like me can admire a politician who actually seeks to engage with the question, she also has that 'common touch' that makes Rhodri so good face-to-face. As a blunt Northerner I appreciate directness – but I can imagine that it's not always popular with civil servants – particularly ones not used to being held to account. I'll bet, to use Thomas Beecham's expression about Sadlers Wells ballet, that she makes them jump about a bit. And they probably need the exercise.

Erm...in suggesting that Edwina has no surface polish I wish to make it clear that I do not refer to her appearance as she is always nothing less than immaculate. Well, I guess she wouldn't have appreciated a photo at a recent early morning picket line – but there were extenuating circumstances, it being some unconscionable time of the morning!

Edwina & Carwyn Jones are both extremely bright. The difference between them being 'down to earth' Edwina and the professional politician of Carwyn. I read somewhere that the media prefer Carwyn Jones' smooth presentation – and there is no doubt he is very good at it – that he is a sort of Welsh Tony Blair! (Do we need another one of them?) I am sure that Carwyn must be hating that comparison, because Tony Blair he aint – and that's a sincere compliment! He clearly has other qualities that he brings to 'job', I've known him for some years, and we spent some time together in various selection meetings in the run up to the first Assembly elections – but he was never going to do as well locally and didn't expect to.

The Labour Group and the Swansea constituency both unanimously backed Edwina in the contest. Perhaps neither of these are surprising, you should certainly be blowing your own local trumpet – but this being the Labour Party one can take nothing for granted! The Labour Group had a very wide debate on the candidates, in arriving at their decision members were influenced not just by their local experience of her (as they would be), but her personal qualities and experience and delivery in Wales, especially in Local Government.

We have our local hustings meeting tomorrow when we will be meeting all three candidates and hear more about their policies. I, of course, as the Group Leader will have to work with whoever is elected so (standard caveat) I am keeping my own council on where my vote will be going and nothing should be deduced from the foregoing.

The Brilliant Comrade

2009-11-08T12:27:00.002Z

I was disappointed that the usually reliable Inside Out Blogsite had got it wrong about the Labour Group defectors. The authors normally seem to know more about what's going on inside the Council than I do. I know that no-one believes me when I deny knowing who writes it – but its true nonetheless.

The councillors who left, left! They were not expelled by the Party. They left the Party, the Party did not leave them. In fact the Labour Party put in much effort locally and nationally to keep them in. During all these discussions they always maintained that they were never going to form another Group, notwithstanding the cynics who believed that this was always the intention for at least one of the defectors. So when the public announcement (typically) came on Kevin John's Sundayline, it was a bit of a non-surprise. I understand that many of their constituency supporters now feel betrayed. Although there were mucho chuckles when it seemed that Pyongyang had come to Clydach when its putative Kim Jong-Il sought to have us believe that he had had to be reluctantly persuaded. Oh yeh – bite yer hand off more like.

The Inside-Outers suggest that one of the reasons for the formalisation was an 'oddball' Council requirement that they had to be in a political group to take their seats. I don't know where they got that from – it simply ain't true. Ray Welsby managed very well on his own, as did Trickie Dickie (for a while at least – until he felt lonely). It probably had more to do with the fact that the Great Leader was comprehensively rebuffed by both the Lib-Dems and the John Hague True Independents (the latter in the most robust language!) when he, allegedly, offered his own fealty in exchange for some bonbon or other fairly closely related, so 'tis said, to a uniformed organisation that meets in Carmarthen. What is causing speculation in the People's Palace by the Sea is how much his two colleagues knew of these machinations.

The stated reasons for the new group was that their communities needed a strong voice and proper representation in the Council Chamber. Er...were they not already the members for these communities? Was the Great Leader's announcement therefore not a criticism of himself. And is there not another member representing his community of Clydach, one rather closely related to him? Did he forget? No doubt, he was reminded when he got home?

Missing blogs

2009-11-08T10:41:00.001Z

It's been suggested that the evil hand of censorship and legal threats lay behind the removal of two missing blogs about the shambolic handling of the last council meeting. But I have to reassure what few readers I have that this is not so - much as I'd like to be seen as a threat to the comfortable way of life enjoyed by the Administration and some Council officers.

I know that just because you're paranoid does not mean that they are not out to get you – but this was entirely due to my own incompetence. I deleted them by accident (trying to be too clever in inserting photos in the later entries and reaching beyond my skill set!) and had maintained no copies. I have also reached that age when yesterday is another time and another country and I have no idea what these witty and erudite entries actually said – if there is any saddo (sorry, that sounds disrespectful to someone I am seeking a favour from, so perhaps I'd better say that any connoisseur of good writing) out there who actually saved them or printed them off, please send them back to me and I will re-install them.

Latest activities – Bus Station/SYHSP/Planning

2009-11-03T22:20:00.003Z

I was invited to visit the new Bus Station site. Not a great deal to see of course – it's a building site like many other. But like most blokes, I always find them interesting. Although I'd be the first to admit that I probably wouldn't if I'd ever worked on one!
Anyway Alun Thomas, the Authority's man on site, our man with clipboard and hard hat, showed me around. I like Alun, I got to know him when he was the Clerk of Works of the Constitution Hill refurbishment. And he delivered a good outcome there with lots of consultation with residents. He's a straightforward guy, no messing, and no bullshit. Unfortunately he had his work cut out with me on this project – I arrived unconvinced and left in much the same state. It's just like the old bus station – but...er...new! To be fair, that was not Alun's fault – I think it's in the wrong place and that it's the wrong design. I consider that it should be by the station, I cannot see how we can aspire to be a major European city and have our bus and train stations on opposite sides of the city centre. I've thought that since Labour were in control pre the 2004 election. I also think that it should be a drive through bus station, as many other cities' stations are – I consider that this great bus pad reversing area to be a waste of space. But that's an argument lost – well it would have been, if there had ever been a discussion about it.
Still it is going to have seats (proper ones – not bum recliners) and a waiting room for the long distance buses and a cafe, which are clearly good and overdue ideas.
I was also very interested at the relics of Swansea's past that were 'unearthed' or exposed in the works – for example the cellar of a pub – complete with cases of beer, barrels and so on, just abandoned when the original building were pulled down.
I went to the SYHSP (Swansea Young Single Homeless Single Person Project - at least I think that's what it stands for) event in the Grand Theatre. This is the organisations Annual General Meeting, with a presentation of certificates to the young people for the achievements and a showcase of their performing talents. I went last year – when it was in the Liberty Stadium. They have learnt the lessons from then as the AGM was moved to a separate session – rather than subject all of us to it. Necessary and all, but as someone who goes to lots of similar things I'd be the first to admit that they're not the most exciting way to spend an afternoon. Indeed, Kev Johns was suggesting that those who misbehaved would be made to attend – and those who really misbehaved would be made to go twice.
However, the young people were great. It just shows that there is potential in everyone – and in some a great deal. All it needs is the time and the dedication to see it and get at it. I have great respect for people who work in this field, it must be really hard work – but when it succeeds it must be really rewarding. But is it not a mark of failure on those of us who are responsible for providing services and support to these young people? How do you motivate a young person who has, to all intents and purposes, been abandoned by the system that is supposed to help them? Against the odds these young people came through – not for any but themselves. I was full of admiration for their achievements.
I had similar thoughts when I was at the recent Adult Learners Awards. This is to recognise the achievements of adults who had learnt to read and write and become numerate after years (and in some cases many many years) of being unable to do so. Again admiration for them, not only for recognising their 'deficiency' but then their doing something about it. I was also impressed at the support that many of them were given from their workmates and employers – but especially for those who were doing it on their own. I was very moved by this event.
I am a great reader and have always been so, my father was keen on books and my brother and I were always encouraged to read. I have lots of books, thousands probably. But I take the skill, the facility rather for granted. I don't really understand what it must be like not being able to do it. I don't mean just the pleasure denied but the lack of opportunity. Also how do you deal with what other people just take for granted like I do and assume that you must be able to do it as well? Two stories, one lady of certain years – she was older than me anyway – who had learnt to read and found that she really liked ghost stories and from which she was getting great pleasure and a young/middle aged man, holding down a job, relying on his mates to help him out, but who had always looked on with envy at people on trains etc who were reading books. It was something he had always wanted to be able to do. The visible pride he had in himself when he got his certificate – perhaps the only educational certificate he had – was incredible, he was feet taller! But how did we fail these people this way, how did we fail these obviously intelligent people? How did they fall through the net? If there's any 'deficiency' it's not theirs but ours. We should be shamed by it. But what's worse is that the current council Administration has cut this programme and it's unlikely to continue in its present form. Now that really is something to be ashamed of.
I was going to write about the Panning Task & Finish Group last Friday. But I can't really bear to. It's not the fault of the people on the Group who are all well intentioned and motivated – but I've being discussing this stuff with the Leader of Council for years already and nothing's ever changed. So it all feels a bit Groundhog day-ish to me, but to their credit the Group has achieved progress. Aargh!!!!

Earlier Posts Council 1 & 2 – now lost

2009-11-03T19:38:00.001Z

Ah well it seems that I have made a proverbial. Somehow or other (technical ignorance) I seem to have deleted the two earlier posts about the Council meeting and I hadn't saved a copy!

Well if you've read them you don't need them and if you haven't you should have done. No1 was about the incompetence of the Administration and No2 about the inability of the Presiding Officer. No doubt I'll have further posts on these issues – matters being unlikely to improve significantly in the near future.

Council Meeting (4) Sterilisation or contraception of parents with children in care

2009-11-03T18:28:00.004Z

We (Labour) had put down a question that required Cllr Alan Robinson to explain what was the "awkward and difficult question" (to use his own words) that he had asked at the Councillors Forum on the 17^th July and which resulted in the public row about the sterilisation of parents with children in care. This would have happened at the previous Council Meeting at the beginning of September – but our questions were excluded because the submission deadline had been moved!

We had already tried to get an explanation at the Council meeting at the end of July – but Cllrs Robinson and Fitzgerald had run away. No let me be accurate, they didn't run, they left the Council Chamber at a brisk walk – allegedly as a result of legal advice. Who this advice was from or what it said, only they know.

Anyway we know what Cllr Fitzgerald believed as she had helpfully written to Cllr Paxton Hood-Williams stating that what she was talking about was long term enforced contraception.

Cllr Robinson had held his tongue. It had never been suggested that he had used the words "compulsory" & "sterilisation" together (no-one did) – but that forced sterilisation was the clear meaning of what he was proposing. However, as this was a matter of great public interest (not least given the responsibilities of the Cabinet Portfolio he holds), we considered that we should give him another opportunity to put the record straight.

We had asked him "for the avoidance of doubt",

"Would (you) now...unequivocally advise Council what (your) views are on compulsory sterilisation (whether permanent or temporary) of parents with children in care?"

He replied,

"To the best of my recollection, the discussion was in relation to the very sensitive issue of the situation with Looked after Children whose mothers were drug addicts. During this discussion I said that "I thought mothers, who were drug addicts, and who had had children taken into care, should be offered some form of contraception or reversible sterilisation.

I can unequivocally advise Council that, at no time during the meeting did I mention "compulsory sterilisation" and I am totally opposed to compulsory sterilisation".

The question and Cllr Robinson's answer (which is reproduced here in full) can be seen in the Agenda for the Council Meeting of the 22^nd October 2009.

So we do now know at least, that he considers drug addict mothers should be offered contraception or reversible sterilisation. However, he won't now go as far as Cllr Fitzgerald. Curious that! She at least was prepared, to some extent, to be up front.

Readers should note the weasel words of "to the best of recollection", which unfortunately (no doubt due to the passage of time) does not match either my notes of what he said (which I made at the time) or the recollection of other members present at the Forum.

For the record what my notes record Cllr Robinson (and myself) as saying is the following,

AR (He began by committing a breach of confidence which could aid identification of a child of his acquaintance who was in foster care. I won't repeat it here to avoid the danger of identifying the child, whose parents were well known to Social Services. I do have a record of what he actually said.)

AR "These parents aren't fit to have children, we end up looking after them..."
AR "Something should be done to stop unfit parents from having children".
DP "So what are you proposing...?
AR "If they can't look after them, they shouldn't be allowed to have them"
DP "So you're proposing forced sterilisation....
AR "If they can't look after their children, we should stop them having anymore, we should..."
DP "So sterilise unfit parents?
AR "We end up having to look after them. I'm entitled to my views......"
DP "Forced sterilisation – this is simply outrageous, it's disgusting, you should be ashamed of yourself. I can't believe I'm hearing this"

Readers will note that he did not deny my accusation, which would have been the simplest course, he could have said that I'd misunderstood. He didn't.

I put the above conversation to him as a supplementary question at Council. He didn't specifically dispute my record, he wouldn't engage with the question at all. He did allege that I had arrived at the Forum late. True – I'd been at a school governors meeting. But I arrived in time to hear what he said – indeed it was difficult for me not to as he was sitting next to me!

Council Meeting (3) Cllr Peter May

2009-11-03T17:22:00.002Z

(With apologies for the delay in getting back to this)

I now return to Cllr Peter May's performance at the meeting. When I used to write film criticism or book reviews, my general policy was not to review bad films or books (unless they were really bad, wrong or deceitful). There was no pleasure in it – so I'd just ignore them. I apply those criteria here as well. I take no pleasure in it, but I consider that it is in the public interest to be open what went on. What was that poncy expression I heard the other day – 'speak truth to power', a bit 'High Falutin' perhaps, but nonetheless seems true here at least.

Well to describe what he did as 'performance' would be to make it more than it was; as it would suggest that there was some degree of intention, practice or rehearsal. There wasn't any of that. It was almost as if he was the understudy – but one who hadn't bothered to learn the lines. But he's had near enough eighteen months. Given his educational qualifications, he clearly can't be stupid, but it was a shockingly poor show. Abysmal really. As an ex-Cabinet Member myself I know that you can asked really complicated left-field questions, but he was unable to answer the simplest questions without prompting from the officers behind him. He seemed shaky about the most basic information - even stuff he might have reasonably been expected to know something about (and seemed indeed to be literally shaking – fear?). It was almost as if he had been ambushed, he was so unprepared! He was so far out of his depth that I almost felt sorry for him. Almost!

I refer to this, not because, he is a political opponent, but because it is a matter of concern. Achieving the Welsh Quality Housing Standard is a significant issue for the City & County of Swansea. Since the Authority's tenants comprehensively rejected stock transfer, Cllr May has seemed bereft of any credible ideas as to what he and his Lib-Dem/Independent colleagues could do. When he wasn't blaming the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG), [they had rejected as unfeasible what proposals he had come up with] he seemed to be suggesting that it was the tenants own fault for voting the way they did. Frankly they deserve better, they deserve someone who could at least appear to engage with the problem.

Compare this dismal showing with the confident and knowledgeable performance regularly delivered from Cllr Mike Day. Disagree with him or not – he is clearly a man on top of his brief – Peter May seemed imprisoned by his.

Anti-fascist rally

2009-10-18T19:01:00.004+01:00

I am still evaluating whether to continue this blog – but having been to the anti-fascist rally yesterday I felt I had to write something about it – not least following what I considered to be incorrect news reports.

It was a very good natured rally and demonstrated, if anyone was in any doubt, that the sort of politics propagated by the WDL (and their BNP friends) are not wanted in Swansea. The WDL claims not to be fascist or associated with the BNP. This rang a little hollow (and was not helped) when they started with the Nazi straight arm salute or when they were apparently given B&B by a BNP activist in Killay. There was certainly less than a hundred of them.

What I found particularly encouraging was the 'spread' of participants – it wasn't just the usual suspects, there were people of all ages and all classes.

There were lots of speeches (of course), drummers and singers. There were over 200 at about 1pm but this grew during the course of the afternoon to what must have been close on a 1,000. I understand that this was young people texting their mates to join them. This 'viral' messaging was very effective.

The overall intention was to occupy and hang onto Castle Square – for Swansea people to occupy their city from 'invaders' – to deny them the goal they wanted. In this they were very successful and victory went to the anti-fascists. In fact there were some young women – who were so exciting by the victory that they wanted to hug everyone – even old politicos like me. I had blogged earlier that this week should be renamed "Hug a Councillor" and so it proved. Hurrah!

What was curious was that both the BBC and Swansea Sound under-reported the attendance figures. The BBC web newsreport was rather one-sided and anti- protester. It said there were only 200 anti-fascists and 2-300 WDL! (The WDL fielded their greatest numbers in the middle of the afternoon when they tried to occupy Castle Square. They were held on the pavement opposite in Castle St. They only occupied the whole footway for the width of one window of the Sheep Shop and one window of Pizza Express – about 24ft. So certainly nothing like the numbers the press have claimed).

So double counting of the latter on the grand scale. Perhaps the reporters had been partaking of the liquid refreshments so freely indulged in by the WDL in Yates' Wine Bar! (why did Yates allow them in or serve them – is this a breach of licensing conditions?) Swansea Sound also tried to allege that it was a bit of a damp squib and was rather oversold. Well, there certainly wasn't any trouble, which perhaps some parts of the press found disappointing – apart from towards the end when the WDL half-heartedly tried to breach the Police lines. It was all very jolly – very noisy – but well behaved.

The organisers worked with the Police to avoid any confrontation – which there wasn't any real desire for from anyone anyway.

I must commend the Police's handling of the affair. It was very low key, light touch and there was a good relationship between the Police and the protesters. They allowed the two groups to address each other across Castle St. (not that anyone listed!) and ran a controlled stand-off. It was very well done including the 5pm dispersal. So full marks to Ch Supt. Mark Mathias and his officers. Full marks also to the protesters for their good behaviour.

I was asked to assist in passing on the arrangements agreed between the organisers and the Police for the end of the demo to some of the protesters. This got me into hot water with some. Anarchists I was told later, who told me that these were their streets and no-one was telling them to move, they asked "...wasn't I that £$%!!&" Labour Councillor..." and that I should be ashamed of myself for doing the Police's work for them, concluding that I was a "...stooge of the Capitalist supporting Pigs". So, so old fashioned! I think I'll have a badge made with this on.

I must also pay tribute to those who attended the silent protest outside the Friends Meeting House and the others who remained outside the YMCA.

Congratulations to all of them. I know that some were inconvenienced by the road closures and the diverting of the buses and that cannot have been popular. But I hope those inconvenienced will accept that it was necessary. Swansea should be proud of itself. I trust that the WDL and their cronies have now got the message – that Swansea is not the place for them and their like.

Day Five - Friday & Final

2009-10-16T16:00:00.000+01:00

Late Night Final

My day started with a meeting of the Council’s Standards Committee. I had been asked to attend in my capacity as a Group Leader to give my views on the Standards Committee process and how it might develop. This is part of a series of meetings/discussions the Committee is having with the Chief Executive and other party leaders on the Council.

There is a general agreement that the Standards Committee has a wider role beyond that of its ‘policing role – and that it should be taking the lead on the wider issue of standards and dissemination of best practice. And also that some of it decisions need greater explanation, particularly in comparison to others.

My own view is that the ‘policing’ role has got out of hand – not the fault of the Committee as they react to what is sent their way. The Welsh Councillors Code of Conduct is the most draconian in the UK and contains provisions that have been removed from the Codes in England, Scotland and N.Ireland. Indeed, I believe that the ‘policing’ role inhibits the Committee from exercising its wider functions, not least as they don’t have the time because of the petty and footling complaints that they have to deal with. This process arose from the, laudable, desire to prevent corruption. It was not intended to dealing with adults saying unkind things about each other. Interestingly however, the controls imposed on local government are far, far stricter than those for the Welsh Assembly or Parliament – and we know what has been recently reported as going in those institutions.

I consider that Standards - and the Ombudsman for that matter – have no role in adjudicating on what happens in Council meetings, that is clearly the job of the Chair/Presiding Officer. We certainly don’t want to get into what happens in Powys – where the ‘independent (i.e. external) members of Standards Committee attend Council meetings on rota – and provide judgements as the meeting goes on. Like some sort of super school monitor! I cannot conceive as to who thought that a good idea.

However, in truth, councillors need to get thicker skins; they need to recognise that the ‘rough and tumble’ of the Council meeting is not real life! And is not to be taken personally – and must not be taken outside the Council Chamber. (I consider that this arises from misunderstanding due to inexperience – especially the inexperience of independent councillors, who have no experience of political debate or, in some cases, of conduct in meetings. And I am making a general point here - not criticising colleagues on Swansea Council.) When we are through the door – that’s it’s over and normal service is resumed. In fact most councillors have the good sense to understand that. Some however, do not. Members of the public may be surprised if they observed two councillors recently knocking chunks out of each, 10 minutes later sitting down very companionably having a cup of tea together. And as I said in an earlier post – we need to stop taking ourselves so damned seriously!

As I also say above, I think that most of the stuff that results in complaints should be swallowed! Regrettably there will be, nonetheless, occasions when matters do go too far. However, in Wales there is no halfway house, no informal dispute resolution procedure. It’s either a full formal complaint to the Ombudsman or its nothing. So I do think that there is discussion to be had on some form of arbitration. For example, an informal ‘star chamber’ - but this should be operated by the political parties jointly – entirely separate from the formal process – thus leaving the Standards Committee and the Ombudsman free to concentrate on the Code of Conduct breaches that really matter.

My attendance at the Standards Committee (and a further external meeting that followed) both of which had been arranged ages ago, meant that I could not go to the Child Poverty Conference in Gorseinon, with which they clashed. This shows that conflicting prior appointments (which happens a lot) means that you cannot get to everything, even those things like this conference, that you consider important. I have asked to receive the outcomes of this conference, as it is an issue that concerns me, representing, as my colleagues and I do, one of the most deprived wards in Wales (and indeed the UK).

What time I had free I used to finally eradicate the email mountain – which I achieved about an hour and a half ago – and now there is another 20 in my Inbox awaiting attention. It never ends….

I have no further appointments today and have a free evening. Hurrah! So this is theoretically the end of my five days blogging experiment for Local Democracy Week. I’ll now check whether anyone read it, whether I’ve blown my credibility – and evaluate whether I’m going to continue. Watch this space…

Hasta la vista!

Day Four (Thursday)- evening the 'Melt'

2009-10-16T15:03:00.006+01:00

My last appointment was to attend the “Melt” outside the Waterfront Museum. This was the melting and pouring of iron into sculpture molds. It was part of (or a corollary to) the sculpture exhibition currently running in the Mission Gallery in Gloucester Place. When we look at a painting for example, we understand how it was made (well broadly) paint was applied to a prepared canvas. But when we see a cast metal sculpture – how’s it done?

Well how it’s done is not only very interesting, technically challenging but damned exciting! All you need is a mobile gas-fired furnace, sand, moulds and lots of fire. Oh, and West Wales School of Art to operate it – that's a bit important! (Scroll down to VJ Ironpour 2007 and Press Play). I have also posted a couple of fine photos from last night’s pour, courtesy of Darragh Murphy. The Mission Gallery under the direction of Jane Phillips, is a great asset to Swansea and puts on some of the most challenging and original contemporary work. Those of you who saw me with my chef’s hat on in a recent edition of the Evening Post – that was for one of the Mission’s events. If they have me there performing and cooking food for 70 – they have got to be a good thing! (The National Waterfront under Steph Matsoris isn't bad either)

Day Four (Thursday)

2009-10-16T15:01:00.000+01:00

I am posting Day 4 on Day 5 – because I didn’t have time to do it yesterday. I got home at just before midnight and frankly couldn’t face starting it then!

I note that the blog by the Leader of Council has been taken down. After four days of non-blogging I suppose it was inevitable. But why promise you’d do something, accept a commitment and then not do it? But then I’d say that was entirely of a piece with the failed promises of openness, transparency & democracy that Chris Holley so often promises but fails to deliver. So the public can know what the Lord Mayor, the Leaders of the Labour & Conservative parties and the sole Plaid councillor are up to – but not the Leader of Council. I for one would have it interesting to read what does. But we’ll never know.

I think that these blogs are a more appropriate activity for Local Democracy Week than the damnable and demeaning ‘I’m a Councillor get me out of here’ that the Authority ran previously. But is anyone actually reading them?

Well, I’ve now got the email total down to less than a hundred. Tomorrow, I’ll read the lot. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace…why answer do today what you can put off until tomorrow, especially if its an email!

A special Council Meeting has been called for this afternoon to discuss the Corporate Improvement Plan, I cannot attend that as I have pre-booked appointments that I have already postponed twice because of the interference of Council business and can’t do it again. Life goes on outside the Council Chamber. But I think that’s only the second Council meeting I’ve ever missed (other than being ill).

Electric Scooters

I spent a large amount of time today in dealing with the continuing saga of electric scooters in residential homes that I referred to in an earlier posting. The Authority now seems to have taken leave of its senses.

It has apparently commissioned a survey from the Fire Brigade and as a result is proposing to write to all tenants advising them that they cannot store electric scooters in common passageways and cannot charge them indoors etc etc. The result of this is that a great many tenants (including some long-term scooter users) will have to remove their scooters from their homes and (presumably) new or prospective tenants will not be allowed into these facilities if they are a scooter user. And what is the Authority proposing to do for these affected, mostly elderly and inform people? Well, they can be comforted by the knowledge that the Authority acknowledges that there is a problem and they are looking for a solution? But in the meantime…….

I guess that if this advice holds then it will apply right across the Mid & West Fire Authority area. I guess those tenants and residential homes will be really really grateful to the officers of the City & County of Swansea for bringing this issue to the fore. And all because one warden in one block wanted to stop two or three tenants from continuing to store or charge their scooters in the premises! Health & Safety is important but is supposed to be about managing risk – NOT an excuse for not doing something.

Day 3 additional

2009-10-15T01:03:00.001+01:00

Well I got the email total down to just over 200 – so that was a pretty big dent. No doubt it will be back up again by tomorrow. And as I suspected I was able to delete most of them without having to do anything. Except read the damned things of course. Email is a very useful tool and is certainly a good way for constituents to get in touch ...but I don't know, the world has continued to turn and would have done so, without any of these having been written.

This evening I went to the monthly council Labour Party meeting. It's where I (as Party Group Leader) report back to the party members on activity on the Council, where we discus the future plans and develop policy. I enjoy these particular meetings - members are always very engaged and interested with lots of useful ideas and contributions. Being in politics can sometime feel like your in one of John Cleese's training films – there was called I think "Not Another Bloody Meeting". There's a meeting for this and meetings for that, committees here and sub-committees there and working groups somewhere else. Branch meetings, constituency, county, trade union, group – and that's just the internal stuff. But yes, I enjoy them, I like the debate, explaining what we are up to, listening to what others have to say...there has to be something wrong with me, I think! Well, I don't like all of them, all of the time. Obviously! I am not completely barking.

But its interesting times in the Labour Party at the moment what with the selection for the new Assembly member in Swansea East and the Assembly Leadership contest. Am I going to discuss these ... I think I'll keep my council for the moment. Discretion being the better part of valour and all that.

One thing I will say is that if you are anti-fascist/anti-Welsh Defence League/anti-BNP – after all they're really much the same thing (unless somebody - Cllr Robinson? - can tell me otherwise) – you can show your distaste for these sorts of politics on Saturday afternoon by joining the 'silent' gathering in Castle Square.

Day Three

2009-10-14T12:38:00.002+01:00

I am really tired this morning. After having got to bed late, my mind was on overdrive and I couldn't settle. I tried reading – I am on the second of Steig Larssen's Millenium trilogy - big mistake, far too exciting. So I made a cup of fruit tea and switched to Simon Singh's account of the attempts to solve Fermat's Last Theorem. There's a bit of a cross-over as one of Larssen's characters spends her time trying to solve the theorem. Anyway, I thought a book of mathematical formulae would send me off. But no! Whilst I understood the story (unfortunately gripping like a murder mystery), I just got frustrated that I could neither head nor tail of the formulae. Probably due to the fact that I was tired, but I admit that I didn't 'get' algebra when I was at school. Perhaps I still don't. I've also just bought a copy of Logicomix (I read an amazing review), a graphic novel that explains Bertrand Russell's long pursuit of the foundation of mathematics (1+1=2 (the academic life can clearly be really exciting!)) and the development of his paradox about the state barber (no, nor me either!) The jacket blurb describes it as a book about "...ideas, passions, madness, and the fierce struggle between well-defined principle and the larger good". Sounds just like Swansea Council. This is a gift for our grand-nephew (I think that's what he is) who is a self-confessed 'maths genius'. Perhaps when he's read it he can explain it to me – although most teenagers he's taciturn to the point of incomprehensible grunting, until he wants to be fed!

So bog-eyed and grumpy!

I have a quiet day today – nothing until this evening, when I have a party meeting. So I had hoped to get an early start of the email mountain – which seems to have grown overnight! However, that's gone off the rails as I've been rather involved in regards to the anti-fascist, anti-BNP rallies this Saturday.

One question I have been asked is why I became a councillor. The answer is as a result of a challenge.

My family had always been political, my parents were Welsh/Cornish-Irish/Aberdonian, left-wing Daily Herald, News Chronicle Liberals, both from non-conformist (in the wider sense, certainly, at the least, unconventional non-conforming) backgrounds. Essentially caring socially committed, boys clubs, children's homes, looking after neighbours (but then everyone did then), doing what they thought was right, good people. The Labour Party was a bit too far out, the Liberals were more acceptable. Curiously although it was my father who had the stronger opinions, it was my mother who was the most active on the ground. It would be unfair to say that "He talked & she did", but certainly my mother was the sort of committed activist that politicians like – always delivering, canvassing, regular attender at meetings etc. She was often asked to stand for the City Council (this is in Liverpool – I am a scouser in case you didn't know) but she always said no, she was a 'behind the scenes' person. A great pity because I think she would have been a great councillor and an excellent ward councillor. However, politically, it was a bit too wet for me as a teenager. I wanted something a bit more red-blooded and I tried to join the Labour Party – but what happened there is one of my 'dinner' stories – sorry.

Anyway, in default I went with them to the Liberals – not least as most of the members seemed to have rather pretty daughters and they had very good parties. This was interrupted when I became a Customs/Waterguard Officer and spent many years wandering around the UK. I finally settled in Pembrokeshire. I recall that about a year after my arrival I was canvassed in an election by a long-sitting councillor who was complaining that in all his 30 years or whatever on the Council, this was the first election he had ever fought – he'd always been elected unopposed. I found this remarkable, as in Liverpool there were elections every year and they were hotly contested. He thought that his having to explain himself to the electorate was outrageous. He certainly didn't get it – needless to say I didn't vote for him. He got elected anyway!

I wasn't impressed by him – nor by many of his colleagues to be frank. I used to moan to one of my elderly neighbours. He gave me short shrift, advising me that if I didn't like what they were doing and I thought I could do better then I should stand myself. And if I wasn't prepared to do that, I really should shut up! So after a couple of years of this, I did stand and was, surprisingly elected. And apart from a brief spell when I moved to Llandeilo (although even here I stood for Dyfed County Council – narrowly losing against the sitting candidate), I've been a councillor ever since, that getting on for 20 years (Do you know I'm not really sure, it certainly feels like it at times!). It does seem to get into your bloodstream.

Why do I do it? Well apart from wanting to make a difference (we all say that I know) I really enjoy it and I think I'm quite good at it (no doubt I'll now get disagreeable comments, but you cannot satisfy everyone and I recognise that I'm not everyone's 'cup of tea'). All my working life, my jobs have been to do with people in one shape or form (that's the jobs, not the people!) And I really get a kick out of helping and getting things done. I cannot speak for all of the 72 councillors on the Council but I believe that this is what motivates most of us. I am quite proud to be one of them, and I include the many dedicated officers in that as well (no doubt some readers will find this a bit naive or even pretentious, but it's what I feel). Whether its big things or the mundane, there is a definite 'kick' in making things better – although sometimes the 'kick' has to be a bit more physical. If there any of you who felt like I did – why not give it a try? You never know, you might win!

Day Two

2009-10-14T01:27:00.002+01:00

I am posting late in the evening (well actually it's now well into tomorrow morning - I had to start this again as I had a major computer crash and lost the first version of this post) because this little man has had a busy day!

I got home about 8.30pm and after eating (chips – comfort 'I can't be bothered to cook' food, but still very very wrong!) I watched Criminal Justice on Catch-up. I missed it when it was on last week (evening commitments again) and have been trying to catch up with it ever since. But x*!?# Virgin had some national problem, twas ever thus, so now I have to watch several episodes at once before they take it down.

I couldn't get to the Area 2 Site Visits today – as it was an all day (well 10am-3.30pm) trip around the Gower – and I had lots of other prior appointments/meetings. There are a considerable number of site visits called for the Gower – I can't believe they are all necessary, as I can't that they all need to go to Committee. Still that's a matter for another place on another day.

This morning I dealt with a couple of phone calls from constituents and discussed these with my ward colleagues. (Although the Leader of the Labour Party I am still a ward councillor and have to carry my share of that workload as well). I also made another assault on my email mountain (a bit like climbing Crib Goch ridge in the rain, three steps up and four back; as fast I get rid of them they arrive) but I think I've made a dent in the backlog, inasmuch as the net total was smaller than when I started – even if by not much!.

After lunch (which I don't eat – leaves space for the chips later!) I had a meeting with the Vice Chancellor of the Metropolitan University. I always enjoy meeting Prof. Warner; he's such a live wire. I don't know how many cylinders he's got, but he's certainly firing on all of them. And he has such commitment to the University and to the city. I believe there's no doubt that he turned the Institute (as was) around and made it into the dynamic force that it is today. Amongst other things we were discussing the University's community commitment and how it might this might develop. Very stimulating.

After that it was straight back to County Hall for a briefing on 'self-evaluation' for the Children and Family Services Scrutiny Board. Most people will be aware that Swansea's Children Services were severely criticised and judged inadequate by Inspectors and an Intervention Board was appointed by the Assembly Government to oversee the delivery of an Improvement programme. The Children and Family Services Scrutiny Board was part of the Council's response to the Intervention. It has proved very effective, indeed it's one of the best performing Scrutiny Boards (and that's not just my opinion or to belittle the work of the others). Its effectiveness is a tribute to the commitment of the members from all political parties, and to the dynamic leadership of the Chair and vice-Chair, Cllrs Mark Child and Paxton Hood-Williams respectively. Nonetheless, this is a highly complex area and despite our best intentions we are in danger of information overload. This was a 'professional' guidance session on how to assess and make the best of the enormous amount of information that we are presented with, the sort of things that we should understand and the questions we should ask. Very informative and useful. That was immediately followed by a meeting of the Board itself and the approval of the reports our various working Groups had prepared on our respective investigations. The conclusions are too long to go into here – but are publicly available. I continue to be surprised at the depth of knowledge the Board members have and the considerable amount of time that they are prepared to put in to get this right. We hold many more meetings that the scheduled cycle – indeed 2 or three times as many. But everyone willingly accepts it, but I do find it difficult to get to all of them.

Then straight onto an Association of Governors Body meeting (which was to have a presentation of dealing with the more gifted pupils. Unfortunately, I had to leave early as I had to go to meet some constituents to discuss a problem.

Amongst the problems that my Castle ward colleagues and I are currently dealing with is the issue of the use and storage of mobility scooters in residential complexes. I won't say which complexes, but we do think that the Authority (through some of its officers) is being entirely unreasonable in its response to its tenants. Electric Scooters have transformed the lives of infirm people, who previously would have had to rely of someone pushing them around in a wheelchair. Now they have regained a considerable element of freedom and re-asserted control over their lives. Nonetheless, I do acknowledge that some of the Authority's facilities were not designed to accommodate these vehicles and that that poses problems. However, they are now a fact of life and the Authority should really be being more pro-active in finding a solution. Instead of being (as it often seems) the Authority that finds reasons to say 'NO', it should be finding the ways to say 'Yes'. My colleagues & I have pushed the matter a bit higher up the tree and we are hopeful that a solution will be found.

I think that tomorrow (or today) is scheduled to be quieter – let's see how that works out!

Local Democracy week

2009-10-12T16:31:00.000+01:00

Well....
Here I am writing a blog. Not something that I ever thought I’d do! I have often been exhorted to get myself into the blogosphere, “...this is the modern way to reach the electorate...” etc., but I’ve never been convinced. I’m still not, if the truth be told. I know that many of my political colleagues do it, some of them exhaustingly! (Where do they find the time?) But are people really interested in every utterance, opinion, social occasion, when I have a cup of tea or visit the ‘loo (or is that Twitter? I can’t really tell the difference, Rene Kinzett and Peter Black could probably tell me). I know that I am a very interesting person, with a life jam-packed with incident and fascination (I wish), but do you really care? I rather think you don’t – and that’s not simply my innate modesty!
I believe that we politicians tend to take ourselves rather too seriously, we think we’re important (no, we are important, dammit), so you should too! The truth is that we are generally, quite ordinary, normal people doing an extraordinary and unusual job (some more ordinary or extraordinary than others). I suppose that it’s true to say that we don’t feel very loved most of the time. Perhaps that should be the theme of Local Democracy Week – Hug a Councillor! Perhaps by the end of this week – I’ll either be bitten by the blogger bug or I’ll stop doing it to the relief of a grateful nation.
[It really is quite easy to witter on]
This week is quite quiet in meeting terms, so is not especially representative. I have (as at this afternoon) 16 council related appointments this week – and over half of those tomorrow. Generally, it’s nearer twice that. I recently completed a survey on the amount of hours I work as a councillor/Leader of the Labour Party and it was well over 60 a week on average. I am not asking for your sympathy (I do this voluntarily) – but that’s the reality. So I’ve got a week of Planning meetings, tenants associations, Scrutiny Board, Training, school governor meetings, special Council Meeting and the Standards Committee (to talk about democracy!) So I suppose that gives me some time to complete this blog.
Email takes up a lot of time – I get over 50 a day. And the time taken to deal with all of them is considerable – and mostly uncounted. I am still trying to catch up on the backlog that developed from my recent holiday. I’ve got it down to just over 500, but that’s still a long way to go. Are all of these emails necessary – well, no they’re not – but I still have to respond to them. I do think that email can also be quite tyrannical – correspondents have now come to expect instant replies that they wouldn’t with a proper old-fashioned letter. [Erm...I knew that I’d eventually start to sound like an High Court judge or a correspondent to the Daily Telegraph!]
I don’t know whether these blogs can be opened up to contributions – if they can I think I will do it. Besides liking a good argument (in the academic sense), it will give me something to write about/respond to. If it goes well enough, I could get you all (if there is anybody out there) to write it for me!