It's All In The Detail

Yes, I know I must seemed obsessed by Councillor Gary Price, but he seems so contrary and devious that I find him a fascinating character study and one I am intending to use in a piece of fiction at sometime in the future.

If our local weekly newspapers are to be believed, and that, in itself, is a issue of some considerable doubt, Councillor Price claims to have been a member of Plaid for some eighteen months or so. This implies that he was a member of Plaid before he attached himself like some demented limpet to the group on Powys County Council formerly known as the Montgomeryshire Independents. In fact, Gary’s decision to join them caused the group to change its name to the Shire Independents just so they could accommodate the Radnorshire maverick. He so impressed them that he quickly got himself elected as Vice-Chairman of this independent, ‘Glyn Davies admiration society’ and then displaced a long-serving and well respected councillor for Blaen Hafren, Gwilym Evans, on the Council’s Board.

What’s so strange about all this is that a member of the Shire Independents now claims that membership of any political party automatically precludes a councillor from being a member of this ‘independent’ group of councillors. The obvious implication being that Gary Price must have mislead the group’s members as to his political allegiance when he persuaded them to accept him in to the group.

Another thing to note is that the Mid Wales Journal claims that Gary was born and educated in Llandrindod, yet I distinctly remember him telling me a few years ago that he was born in Beulah or was it Carmarthenshire? I know this is a trivial matter of detail, but it does raise issues regarding the extent to which he is to be believed.