Dirty Tricks or something more sinister?

I publish here extracts of a leaflet from a Mr Harold Nicholls which was issued throughout the ward of Llandrindod South over three days leading up to the County Council Elections on May 1st. I publish it to give readers of this blog an indication of the sort of dirty tricks that are becoming regular feature of elections in Llandrindod Wells.

“ I would like to explain why I decided to stand as a candidate for county council and then withdrew my nomination paper…

Mr Peter... also campaigned to keep all day drinking on Temple Gardens against the wishes of the town council and over 98% of residents who replied to a questionnaire on the subject…

Mr Peter is also a great supporter of Shelter Cymru and Powys Challenge (the charity which brings ex-cons and young offenders to live in Llandrindod Wells).

When I discovered that another candidate, Miss Sarah Millington, was standing and had similar views to my own, I decided to withdraw and back Miss Millington. Otherwise, Mr Peter would face a divided opposition as he did in last election and win by default...

If you want more social housing at Pentrosfa and Gorse Farm vote Peter

If you want more drunks and druggies on Temple gardens vote Peter…”

Bearing in mind that the only element of these allegations that is remotely true is that I am a volunteer with the charity Powys Challenge, and that Powys Challenge has NEVER brought ex-cons and young offenders to live anywhere in Powys, I ask is this simply another example of dirty tricks or is it more sinister than that?

For any lawyers reading my supplementary question is: do allegations like these which are blatantly untrue constitute a breach of Section 106(1) of the Representation of the People Act, 1983?

An Inappropriate Appointment

Members of Powys County Council have made a serious mistake in appointing Councillor Bobby Mills to the Chair of the County Planning Committee. Everyone in Powys knows that Bobby Mills is quite a character and very popular in his Newtown ward, but to appoint him to chair a crucial regulatory committee is a step too far.

Councillor Mills has made his view on wind farms very public and very clear, and having done so, cannot claim to be impartial on this topic. This has the effect of giving planning applicants an additional weapon in their armoury when their application comes to committee and increases the likelihood of appeal if the decision of the Planning Committee goes against them. Moreover, it puts the Council at risk of having to incur additional expense in defending appeals and bearing the appellant’s costs should those appeals be upheld.

It is clear that this appointment is calculated move on the part of the Montgomeryshire Independent Group to keep themselves in the public eye and gain publicity for their bid to have the three separate Shire Planning Committees reinstated.

Llandrindod Wells Hospital under threat?

There has been an interesting change of tone in papers coming out of Powys Local Health Board recently which leads me to believe that Llandrindod Wells Hospital may soon come under threat. In the 2005 consultation document “Doing More, Doing Better”, there seemed to be a plan to close most of Powys’ Community Hospitals, set up improved local primary care centres, of which the so-called Builth Model is the first example, and concentrate some acute services in THREE centres in Powys. The precise location of two of these three Treatment and Assessment Centres, the one in Montgomeryshire and the one in Brecknockshire was always vague, but the one in the centre was clearly destined for Llandrindod Wells.

However, the recent report of the NHS Wales’ Clinical Governance Support & Development Unit (March 2008) on the Review of the arrangements for clinical governance and patient safety within the provider services of Powys Local Health Board now refers to Intermediate Care Centres instead of Treatment and Assessment Centres and Paragraph 20.2 of the report contains the following:

“We recommend the development of two or three centres in Powys for intermediate care with services provided by NHS trusts. These will provide services for appropriate acutely ill patients, surgical patients, and age care consultant patients; presently cared for in Bronllys, Brecon, Llandrindod, Welshpool, and Newtown Hospitals. In addition, the centres will provide Minor Injury Services, as well as a full range of out patient, diagnostic and rehabilitation services.

We recommend that neighbouring trusts are approached to provide services to the people of Ystradgynlais and Machynlleth, given the distance from central Powys”.

Now I’m not a great fan of conspiracy theories but it seems to me that the transformation of three Treatment and Assessment Centres into two or three Intermediate Care Centres is opening the door to withdrawing hospital services from Mid Powys. Certainly the LHB is not going to withdraw an Intermediate Care Centre from either the North or the South of Powys.

So the writing appears to be on the wall - Powys LHB in collaboration with NHS Wales seems to be prepared to contemplate only two Intermediate Care Centres in Powys and under this model the days of Llandrindod Wells Hospital are numbered.

We need to start lobbying Powys LHB now to ensure that they plan for three rather than two Intermediate Care Centres in Powys, otherwise we will find that in the next few years the people of Mid-Powys will become third class receivers of healthcare rather than the second class citizens that we are today, as far as healthcare is concerned.

The Most Annoying Thing

Nobody likes losing an election, and in that I am no different from anyone else who has been rejected by their electorate. However, in the aftermath of defeat, some things are more annoying than others. Most people who have the courage to face me start by offering their commiserations, mention the damaging effect of the intervention in the campaign by a would-be candidate who eventually decided not to stand but sought to influence the result by issuing false statements maligning my character and integrity.

But undoubtedly the most annoying thing about this defeat is the sheer number of people who ask: “Who is this woman who beat you? Nobody seems to know anything about her!” It’s one thing to be beaten by a well-known candidate with a well-established record of service to the local community, but it is so much more galling to have been beaten by someone who few people seem to know.

Such is the effectiveness of the Conservative election machine and the fiercely “Independent” Councillor for the neighbouring seat who took two weeks holiday in order to campaign against me. Yes, this may sound like sour grapes, but my intention is to issue a warning to Liberal Democrats – we have to become a lot smarter if we are going to retain our parliamentary and assembly seats in Powys.

Powys CC - the best authority in Wales?

Yes, Powys County Council could become the best local authority in Wales, if and only if, its 73 members had the courage to abolish the three Shire Committees.

The existing three Shire Committees: Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Brecknockshire are an anachronism which is preventing further modernisation of the authority and their continued existence panders to the abject failure of certain long-standing members of the council to accept the reality of the local government changes of 1973 and 1996. As long as these Shire Committees are allowed to continue in existence, there is absolutely no incentive for members of the council to adopt a Powys-wide mindset, and they will continue to make decisions which favour their shire over the rest of the county.

Make no bones about it, it is the conservative-inclined “Independent” members who are most keen to protect their power base and they are the ones who are least willing to accept the fact that, whilst the Shires have an honourable place in the history of Mid Wales, that is all they now are – history. The pernicious influence of the Shires permeates the council’s decision-making and none more so when the council faces difficult decisions. Then you will see councillors revert to type and cling, limpet-like, to the notion of loyalty to the Shire.

I can’t remember who said that “… patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”, but whoever it was could well have been describing most of Powys’ county councillors and their misplaced adherence to the Shire structure.

Choice is good, but who pays for choice?

One of the sacred cows of recent Conservative and Labour policies over a wide range of issues has been ‘choice’. Parental choice over the school that children are sent to, patient choice as to which hospital can be accessed for acute care. Don’t get me wrong, choice is good, but choice also costs, and who bears those costs needs to be taken into account.

Take small schools as an example. There is a widespread myth that small schools necessarily provide a better education for all children than larger schools. This is a rural myth rather than an urban one, but is nevertheless, a myth. So children who are educated at small schools are generally speaking, educated at a higher cost than those educated at larger schools. It is a clear of example of the well-known economic principle of economies of scale. However, since the cost of sending a child to a small school is in some cases, three times the cost of sending that child to a larger school, it follows that someone is subsidising the small school place. Who?

Well, the Local Education Authority, and by extension, the taxpayer at large. By keeping a small school open when the nearest larger school has surplus places sufficient to take all the small school’s pupils and more, is de facto, offering the parents of children in the small school a benefit that is not offered to other parents within the same local authority. So if the average cost of educating a primary school child in an authority is say £2,800 per annum, and the actual cost of educating a child at school X is say £6,000 per annum, then that child is receiving an additional benefit of £3,300 per annum from the LEA, which is not offered to a child attending school Y where the cost of education each child is at the average for the authority as a whole. This is clearly unfair.

One solution would be to offer every school a fixed sum per pupil per annum on or about the average cost of educating a child in that authority. If the school deems that this is insufficient by virtue of the number of children at the attending the school being too few to allow that school to be financially viable, then parents can, after a process of negotiation with the LEA, choose to make up the shortfall of income from their own pockets. But parents of children in small, and financially unviable schools to continue to expect that their children to be subsidised from the public purse can no longer be tolerated.

So, choice is good, but if your preferred choice can be provided only by the additional contributions of others, then it is not a fair and reasonable choice. If you choose to send your child to be educated at a small school because it is small, be prepared to make a contribution to the cost of running that school so that others who choose to send their child to their local school don’t have to pay more for the privilege you enjoy and they don’t.

Breathtaking hypocrisy

Some people are not content with having engineered one’s election defeat, they have to rub it in with demonstrations of breathtaking hypocrisy.

Take for example Mr B who was one of the signatories of my opponent’s nomination form. Within minutes of arriving home from the count, and unlikely to be best pleased with the result, the phone rings. My wife answers and then asks me if I am willing to speak to Mr B? “No!” I say. “He doesn’t want to speak to you at the moment” says my wife. “But I only wanted to congratulate him” says Mr B. “David didn’t win, he lost by eight votes” says my wife. “Oh!” says Mr B – “ but I looked on the County Council’s website and it says he won”. “Then the website is wrong” says my wife and puts the phone down.

Late last week another comedian has a letter published in the local paper intimating that my defeat would be a loss to the community. Faint praise one might think until you realise that the author of the letter also signed my opponent’s nomination form, and is thereby one of architects of the so-called “loss to the community.”

Defeat I can take, in spite of the dirty tricks, but I get annoyed at those who just want to rub it in.

Not all communities are sustainable

Amongst all the hand-wringing and breast-beating about the decline of the rural economy, there is one sad fact which no-one seems prepared to face. It is that not all communities are sustainable.

Some rural communities are clearly un-sustainable, and the real questions for our politicians and planners is: if we acknowledge that not all communities are sustainable, how do we determine which are, and which are not? And for those which are deemed not to be sustainable, how do we deliver a sufficient quality of life to those people who choose to stay in the unsustainable communities?

Unless and until, we face this unpalatable fact, then we will continue to fail some of our rural constituents.

Take, for example, the village of Howey, just two miles south of Llandrindod Wells. Recently, Powys County Council took the difficult decision to close its primary school - howls of protest, vociferous campaigns, bitter division in both that community and wider - the heart has been ripped out of the community.

A month or so ago, Post Office Ltd took the decision to retain Howey Post Office while at the same time closing two post offices in Llandrindod Wells - great sighs of relief, great claims of success by politicians – the community is saved. But is it?

No, of course it isn’t. We simply have two unrelated decisions by two quite separate institutions which, surprise, surprise, offer a contradictory assessment of the ‘sustainability’ of Howey as a community. Neither decision paid any regard at all to any notions of ‘community’. Each decision was based on quite different economic rather than social agenda.

This is simply not good enough. Our decision-maker, whether they be politicians, local or national, or business executives need to base their decision making on an holistic and impartial assessment of the needs of the community and the residents who make up that community. Otherwise, all we get are stupid, contradictory decisions, from which some people gain, but the residents are regarded as simply pawns in someone else’s great game.

Strange Happenings?

On May 1st, much to everbody's amazement including my own, I became the former County Councillor for Llandrindod South. Defeated by a virtually unknown Conservative apparently on issues only partly connected to the ward. 8 votes the majority for my opponent and dirty tricks from one of her supporters who had originally been nominated but who eventually chickened-out of standing as an Independent.

Early analysis seems to indicate that my personal vote held up well, it was the Lib Dem vote that became distinctly shaky in the face of a concerted assault on the issue of a proposal to bring in a Designated Public Places Order to deal with a significant problem of anti-social behaviour in the neighbouring ward.

Yes, the very public drinking in the centre of town is a problem, but I have always maintained that creating a DPPO to deal with it there will simply move the problem elsewhwere. Resources need to be devoted to tackling the underlying issues. These include the fact that the drinkers clearly suffer from severe alcoholism, some are homeless, some are mentally ill and all are vulnerable. By all means introduce a DPPO if, at the same time, the authority is prepared to deal with the other problems. But to introduce the DPPO without addressing the underlying issues is simply going to hide, rather than solve the problem.

Never mind, all the good work that I have done over the last three and a half years was c;early forgotten or never understood, and I was pilloried for being a volunteer for a charity that seeks to the reduce the risk of offending by young people, as well as appearing soft and sensible rather than punitive with regard to the fraught issue of the DPPO.

My loss, and that of our Group Leader, James Gibson-Watt, must be seen as a wake up call for Liberal Democrats in Powys, the Conservatives under Cameron and with no clear policies but some fetching slogans are clearly influencing the tabloid readers (and here I include Daily Mail and Daily Express readers as well as readers of the red-tops). If we Lib Dems are to make gains in the next General Election, then our message needs to be simple, relevant and convincing, and our policies need a broader appeal.