Justice for the 96

Yesterday (26/4/2016), 30 years after Chernobyl blew up, and 27years since Hillsborough, a jury in Warrington delivered perhaps the most condemnatory set of responses to 16 questions that the UK establishment has ever suffered.

There cannot be justice without truth.  That is why the State acts in the way it does, even today.

Few will have been able to hold back the emotion, partly due to the sheer length of time and hostility the families have had to endure.  And partly that they have, finally, overcome a powerful establishment intent on wearing down and destroying them and their lost loved ones.

Now that reality has returned to the Hillsborough story, attention is quickly - and rightly - turning to those several who modified witness statements, and pursued a 27-year long campaign of falsely blaming Liverpool fans for the tragedy that unfolded.

For me, whilst the lies, cover ups and unlawful killings are terrible, the really important point I see is this: just how quickly the establishment began orchestrating a sophisticated web of deceit and false information, such that these lies were fed, as the tragedy happened, to BBC commentators at the stadium. 

This was no bungled attempt to throw mud.  Those who spun the lies were clearly well-versed and well-supported in what to do when the shit hits the fan.  It's clear a network of advisors and wonks spun into action.  Once the BBC commentators had, in good faith, repeated what the supposedly trustworthy 'authorities' had told them, the lies would propagate like wild fire. 

And so they did, appearing in the infamous Sun headline: 'The Truth'. 

This kind of 'trash the families' approach to dealing with facts that embarrass the State is not limited to enormous catastrophes like Hillsborough.  Indeed, it seems to come straight out of some handbook that all in senior public office have, hidden under their desks for retrieval when needed.

The overall response to those who dare to ask probing questions, criticise or condemn the State - from local council upwards - is to immediately cast doubt on those who are 'stirring', as they would see it.  Lies usually follow, with kagaroo 'investigations', the appointment of friends and colleagues, cast as 'independent', who are paid to prop-up the party line.  And so they do.

This 'shoot the messenger' industry in public office is endemic and destructive.  That it is destructive is, of course, it's whole raison d'etre. 

But that it is endemic is utterly unacceptable.  These attitudes - and the people who propagate them - belong to a time past.  Indeed, many of them seem not to have really understood they no longer live in the 1970s or 80s, where media management was easy, because the public had no ready and immediate access to the papers and broadcasters.  Today, anyone can alert a material-hungry media to an interesting story as it unfolds.

Justice for the 96 was long overdue.  That much is clear.  Less clear is that those in wider public office are learning any lessons at all about falling on their sword, rather that trashing the public, when they make even the slightest of mistakes.  Let also their legal departments, full of lawyers who have long forgotten their professional duty to the truth, learn that they are not in post to spin-out lies in support of their masters.  From little lies, big tragedies grow.

Let's hope that the terrible conduct of the State, such as it has been during the 27 years of searching for truth in Liverpool, brings much more than peace for the families.  Let's hope it opens the door wide open on the ways of the State, and just why it prefers to blame the affected, rather than stand up for justice.

Above all, let's hope it brings lasting change to accountability.

Gareth Winston Roberts - Reprise.

Yes folks, no sooner than you thought ol' GWR was ready to meet the Grim Reaper, than he pops up in local meetings recently.

Missed him?  He's planning to come back from the Amlwch shadows.

Accompanied by long-term associate and solicitor, Myrddin Owens, GWR has bounced back from some illness, believed to be cancer, and started banging desks on County Council issues again.

GWR was, apparently, full of his old enthusiasm for power, and kept repeating "I haven't gone away".  He also had difficulty in comprehending regulations about services spelled out to him.  But that sort of thing comes with age - and a belief in getting his own way.

This, of course, will ring alarm bells in those who hold Roberts responsible for much of Anglesey Council's past woes, from which it is only just now emerging.

So, it seems GWR is the original Comeback Kid, and will be gracing the voting slips, come the next County Council elections, just a year or so away.

Post phoebus, nubila...

What Did The Judge Say to Anglesey Council?

Followers of the ups and downs - mainly downs - of Anglesey County Council will not have missed Judge Gareth Jones' condemnation of that basketcase organisation during 2014.

His Honour Gareth Jones is a Family Court judge who presides over the kinds of cases Anglesey Social Services department bring.

Well, sometimes.

You see, last year, Anglesey Council took it upon itself to prevent a child being returned to his mother after she had spent a short period undergoing treatment for a psychological illness.

That sounds all find and dandy, until you realise that Anglesey had not bothered with applying for a Court Order to keep the child in care.  In other words, it acted outside of - and contrary to - law.

His Honour Gareth Jones.  Not impressed by Anglesey Council.

His Honour Gareth Jones, apparently supporting the efforts of Lord Justice Munby and other senior Family Court judges, took to condemning Anglesey in public.  He said that Anglesey was "not above the law" and that he had formed suspicions from earlier cases that the reason it was apparently acting in this cavalier manner was that it was trying to cut costs by not bothering with proper legal processes.

The Council, for its characteristically ridiculous part, asserted it was "acting in good faith" in the case.

Quite how anyone acts in good faith when they are failing to follow basic elements of the law that dictates their work is anyone's guess.

Even after this public humiliation, this blog became aware of what might appear to outsiders as prejudices in case handling.  In one case seen by this blog, a referral was made to a fairly senior officer.  She forwarded the referral to a colleague, adding - entirely without justification or reason - that "maybe they've [the family] have been opened [complained about] before!"

The use of an excited exclamation mark to conclude the e-mail was deeply troubling.  The family had never been "opened before", and the complaint, when properly considered, was found to met no bar for action, and was later shown to be a complaint from a neighbour with a decade-long list of calls to police about his malicious conduct, of which this was the latest incarnation.

In a later, 2015 case, His Honour Gareth Jones took again to criticising Anglesey Council, this time for failing to make its mind up - he called it an "S-turn" - over how a child ought to have been processed in the care system.

This seems to have been the last straw for Judge Jones, who issued in his judgement on the case the remarkable news that he had "set in train" arrangements for a meeting with Anglesey's senior legal officer and head of Social Services.  It would seem Judge Jones had some form of carpeting in mind.

That was in 2015.  What has happened since?  We don't appear to know.  Anglesey, of course, always keen to suppress bad news, doesn't seem to have made anything public.  A FoI request to it would probably lead to lots of foot-dragging and excuses for not releasing the data.  We've seen that kind of thing an awful lot, and the ICO has taken them to task many a time.

The FoI request acknowledgement from the MoJ.

So, this blog can confirm a request under FoI has been lodged with the Ministry of Justice to reveal details of when this meeting between Judge Jones and Anglesey took place, and what was covered in that meeting.

The outcome will be published here, just as soon as it's received!

UPDATE:

The response was received on April 07, 2016.  It asserts that the Ministry of Justice does not hold the information sought.  But, outside of the FoIA, it did ask His Honour Gareth Jones for any response he may wish to make.

HH Gareth Jones was willing to reveal the meeting between himself and Anglesey Council took place on 14th December, 2015, but that no recordings were made, nor minutes taken.

It is disappointing that HH Gareth Jones didn't appear willing to reveal even the general topic of the meeting held with Anglesey, more especially as he has clearly sought to bring Anglesey's failings to the public attention through his statements in judgement texts.  But we can reasonable infer that the topic was dissatisfaction with the Council's Social Services unit, given the very public criticism HH Jones has made in 2014 and again in 2015.

So, it seems that if no recording of the meeting took place, then Anglesey Council will also likely claim they have no information about the meeting.

The very strange and unsatisfactory outcome of this extraordinary meeting that the judge chose to tell the public would happen, is that it happened behind closed doors and nobody appears to have taken any notes.  From the outside, the public might be concerned that this could appear to be an attempt to evade FoIA.

In effect, despite HH Jones' venture into the public arena, the public have nevertheless been kept thoroughly in the dark about a public authority's failings and a Family Court judge's involvement in, apparently, trying to improve matters.

So there you are.  The Telegraph's recent concerns about Family Court secrecy do seem well-founded, with Anglesey Council being avoided any potential embarrassment.  Nice one!

Taffia's 'Welsh Must' Project is "Social Engineering"

My!  The Welsh Class - the subset of Welsh culture that sees it as their God-given right to force everyone to speak Welsh, is really out in force these past couple of weeks.

A certain Professor Sioned Davies has warned that only by putting Welsh on an equal footing with English - Welsh is currently classed as a 'second language' - can the aim of reversing the decline in Welsh speakers be realised.

Now, I'm all for debate on this, and I hope the Welsh Class, or the Welsh Elite, if you prefer, also have the confidence and decency to listen to others' views.  But I doubt that they have.

First of all, Prof. Davies is an academic and Chair of Welsh at Cardiff University.  She lists a number of published works along the theme of the Mabinogion, and how you might translate those folk stories.
So you might be forgiven for thinking she has a certain view on speaking Welsh.  Her partners on the body appointed by the Welsh Government to 'look into' all this business also seem to have what one might call a predictable view on the subject they were charged with examining.

After all, if we asked a bunch of scientists whether science should be handed more funding, you'd sort-of expect them to conclude that, yes, it does!

Somehow, Prof. Davies report has gotten the ear of the Education Minister in Cardiff, Huw whatshiname - Lewis - that's it - who, according to Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg - now thinks every kid should be forced to speak Welsh within five years, and learn school subjects through Welsh, even in those schools who are English medium.  The Welsh Government spin machine claims Lewis's statements do not amount to this, and to say they do is "misleading."  We'll see, won't we?

This, rather unsurprisingly, has shocked many parents, mindful that English medium schools within Wales tend to be busy because numerous parents choose to have their kids educated in an useful, and not useless language.

That wholly odd organisation, Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, states in a paper report reproduced online that:

“Indeed, we are pleased that he intends to abolish Welsh as a second language and instead ensure that more and more subjects in English-medium schools are taught through Welsh,” 

That isn't a pleasure that will be shared by many parents across Wales, and it does of course plainly reveal the frankly ludicrous and regressive attitude towards the modern world that this group - and many who quietly support them - holds.

Even though the Welsh Government has its seat of power within an area of Wales where only a tiny proportion of the population speak Welsh, and even fewer speak coherent, proper Welsh, the State is beginning to turn the language screws ever tighter.  The small minority elite who bring about the pressure and mechanisms for these changes are very powerful, because they ride on a self-serving conveyor belt of public sector jobs for life.  Quickly realising that promotion depends on strongly supporting the 'Welsh Must' line, they all fall into line, bleating like so many Welsh hill sheep as they go.

If it's true that Welsh is to be force-fed to kids in school, I hope that parents remember that it is their legal duty that a "suitable and sufficient" education is given to their children.  It is, to my mind, very doubtful anyone can claim that more and more Welsh, with less and less English, is a means of satisfying that obligation.  I say it is a terrible indication that the Welsh Elite have struck back in panic at what is, to them, an unacceptable and offensive decline in speaking this useless language, and are hell-bent on changing things.

A great way to strike back would be to tell your kids to sit there, looking out the window and fail all their Welsh tests and exams.  After all, you don't have to be bothered about not having a Welsh qualification of no practical use, do you?

To all those who justify their Welshy-ism on the claim that it's to "prepare children for further education and the workplace", I say: where are all the Welsh-only speaking jobs, and point out that almost all univerisites in the UK do not need Welsh, thank you very much.

The final word really has to go to an anonymous school governor - and who can blame him for hiding -who rightly comments:

“I think there is an inherent view in the Welsh Establishment that everyone in Wales should have Welsh as their first language, and this is part of that. It’s an attempt at social engineering which I don’t think has any chance of success.”

Quite.

Llanddeusant Community Council - Bleating Where Action is Needed.

Good old Anglesey councillors!

This time, poor old Melin Llynnon - Wales' last working windmill and a vital tourist attraction - is up for grabs.  Anglesey Council simply can't make it pay, so off it goes.  It could even be sold privately.

No more cash to fill the sails...  (Image(C) this blog)

Now, it was quite a long time ago that Anglesey Council invited interested parties to submit their ideas for ways of keeping several sites across the island open, whilst taking them off the accounts.  Everybody had heard of the plans.  They were in the papers, online, people talking about them in the street.

Everybody, that is, apart from Llanddeusant Community Council, who have complained in the last few days that they would have found it "nice" had Llangefni contact them "directly."

It won't do, apparently, for Llanddeusant Community Council to be included, by definition, in Anglesey Council's invitation to "any interested party" to come forward.   Maybe this newfangled democracy stuff isn't to their liking?

That's right, not only are they so slow as to apparently not be like everybody else in knowing about the Great Sell-Off, they want it done in a way that pleases them!  I know the average age of Anglesey councillors is very high, but, come on!

I note that Llanddeusant doesn't mention any good ideas that it might have of its own.  It simply seems content to be moaning about protocol. 

But there you go, that's Anglesey for you.  How very useful!

More Diktats from the Welsh Class.

Recently, I came across this superb piece of writing, that cuts through all the bull about a foreseen Golden Dawn for Wales.

Amongst the text, which is in fact balanced and considered, we find this remarkable cut to the chase:


"...Wales has the UK’s worst child poverty. In this context, Welsh nationalism is the old man in his shed busy with a hobby only he can appreciate whilst his family starves at the dinner table. Language advocates are not responsible for Welsh poverty, but they do not help as they persist with myths that the language has instrumental value to learners. It doesn’t.

Williams, in 1989, the period leading up to the Welsh Language Act, wrote: 

'Thus we are faced with a generation of bilingual school-leavers who have been socialised into believing that their bilingualism is prized by society, which on examination turns out to be a rather narrowly constructed, middle-class public sector society, which rewards its own purveyors of information and knowledge. There are clear class implications in the development of an administrative bureaucracy, which is both the principal agency for change and the principal net beneficiary of change.'"

If you are an objective witness to politics and simply everyday life in Wales, that quote really does get to the heart of what is going on, and has been for decades.  A narrow, powerful and well-paid elite of public servants, with absolute security of employment through peer promotion and support, are continuing to dictate to others, who live a much more precarious life, how they should conduct and express themselves - in Welsh.

Or, as Radio 4 once put it "what is Welsh for?  It is to support an elite."  With rapidly-declining numbers of Welsh speakers, and my experience of Wales over an entire lifetime, and however much it may offend your sensibilities - this is the simple truth about Wales and the role of a language utterly without purpose in the modern, wider world.

Indeed, Welsh has made the Welsh Class elite so blind to any other agenda that now, in the face of panic about declining numbers of speakers, Councils are once again promoting Welsh Academies.  I'm not quite sure who appointed LEA chiefs and councillors as dictators of which language the people of Wales express themselves in.  But it's clear that it's a role they have taken enthusiastically upon themselves, and are hell-bent on spending your tax money in order to prop up their agenda.

And what of languages that really do confer economic and social advantages to our children? What place for Spanish, German, Russian, Mandarin?  Tour any school within Wales and you will be hard pressed to find much mention of these.

The Welsh elite, generally simply Welsh-English bilingual, see no purpose or benefit to them in hardline promotion of 'modern' languages.  As a result, the number of kids leaving school with a useful second language - as opposed to a useless one like Welsh - has halved in just a few years.  Politicians and teachers say it's all about time and money pressures.  The real source of the problem, of course, is themselves - the very ones who have been pushing through their 'Welsh Everwhere, Every Time' policy, to the exclusion of all else.

And, like the 'case continues' legal qualification at the end of Court proceedings reports, I am obliged to say - because this is what I believe - that I have nothing against the Welsh language, and certainly not the Welsh people - for I am one of them.  No, what I am against - and what the Welsh Class elite don't want you to hear - is the creating and continuation of that Welsh Elite who, through their own privilege and power, want you to live the way they have created for you.  That you may not want it - or that it will limit your child's future -  is never a consideration - you will have it, come hell or high water.  That, normally, is a prompt for mutiny.

What struck me in thinking of all this were two thoughts:

(1) That those who live and breathe Welsh, and within themselves are nothing other than believers in being the purest Virgin Welsh, are not motivated primarily by the language they think they are defending.  No, they are primarily motivated by the elitism - i.e. status and money - that speaking pure Welsh brings them.  In other words, the Welsh Class are a pretence: they would quickly turn to something else as a propper-up of their positions if it were threatened.  They are so wedded to the Welsh ideology that I am certain few, if any, realise this; their firm reality is entirely built upon the flaky Welsh myth.

(2) If the Welsh Class take their project so far as many seem already to be doing, then they will destroy that which sustains them.  If more and more Welsh Academies are swept in, and panic initiates more force-feeding of Welsh, then there will, inevitably, be more kids emerging from education with a very good ability in Welsh.  This will create a bigger pool of qualified competitors for jobs and resources in a tank that can only ever be so big in Wales.  In other words, the current Traditional Taffia families will find themselves under pressure from those outside those familial groups and, without further dictatorial controls to exclude them (always possible in Wales), will be farmed off pretty smartish.  Of course, with a net cast wider like this, you could easily end up with a body of highly capable, fluent Welsh speakers who do not share the Taffia's ideology, and move to oust it.  I'm not sure the Taffia appreciate this problem, but if they do, there will be an idea lurking in their minds that they old the levers of power, and will move the goalposts to maintain their position.  It's probably worthwhile to look for evidence of feigned anger and robust measures to turn the language around, whilst in fact, there wasn't a lot of energy put into the success of the language project, so as to ensure the Traditional Taffia are never usurped.  Has this happened along the lines of Pakistan and its 'we'll kick the Taliban, but only so much', so as to ensure the US keep handing out military aid that quickly finds its way into that nation's elite? 

If you like some theory 'cod' with your social 'chips', then this text is a very worthwhile and insightful read.  If you are part of the Welsh Class, of course, you will leave it very angry and offended.  Such are the sensibilities of the Taffia.

Anglesey Council Fails to Get its House in Order.

Like many folk on Anglesey, I've been on the receiving end of some very strange happenings relating to the people dealing with information requests at Anglesey Council.

Back again...

Dubbed a "basket case council" by Private Eye during its darker times some years ago, Anglesey has struggled to keep up with the times relating to data protection.  So much so that, sixteen years after its introduction, the Data Protection Act still isn't being properly respected at the Council.

The current ramp-up to an ICO Enforcement Notice began in 2011, but the problems go back much, much further than that.  One of the biggest problems was said to be councillors waltzing-in to departmental offices and demanding to see data about people they had no right to see.  This is to be set against a background where, according to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2011, the majority of councillors hadn't even thought about registering as Data Controllers, even though they were obliged to.  A letter to all councillors from the Authority seemed not to have stirred too many into correcting this unacceptable state of affairs.

By now, the Council has attracted the ire of the Commissioner, leading to an Enforcement Notice and three months to get its house in order.

The Council's press office say they were "surprised" to receive the Notice, even though a simple search online shows they were given a Preliminary Notice as recently as August 2015.  Nothing like a bit of feigned indignation, eh boys?

Able Pupils and the Absent Policies.

A long time ago - about ten to be more-or-less exact, the Welsh Government supported the concept of Able Pupils policies within schools.

So won over by the argument for supporting clever kids was Cardiff that it went so far as to call this a 'National Priority.'

Then we had the financial crash and a bit of a downturn, to say the least.  The able pupils were left to their own devices, with schools, almost to a man, failing to implement them.

Without money to back them up, APPs were never going to make much of an impact in a school system already strapped for cash and producing little by way of successful results.

That said, all the research shows that, if you properly embrace APPs, the whole school - and not just the brightest - improves in outcomes.

But, with the usual militant lefty antagonism towards anything that smacks of preferential treatment, many headteachers, if not most, were also highly resistant to concentrating on able pupils.  Most often, such pupils were clever, and would be just fine without any further attention, so the story went.  There was a whole body of kids with no ability that the schools did get awarded for getting them to write their own names - just - by the age of 11.

And that is where the effort of schools goes - into ticking the boxes and collecting the credits.

I've been involved in trying to have APPs applied to our kids for something like four years by now.  In our first school, the headteacher took to lying about the operation of an APP at her school.  We asked for a copy of the APP.  She said she had one but no copy was made available.  We asked to see the names of our kids on the register she claimed they were on.  We were met with lead-booted foot dragging.

It took that first school about 18 months to produce the most poorly-written APP anyone could have put together.  It was triumphantly handed to me in person before Easter holidays, which was surprising, given the headteacher claimed she'd had one all along.  There was then the usual crap about school statistics, and how this supported the headteacher's view that 'tracking' (how they love that word!) and outcomes showed all pupils were being catered for.

Except, the level of achievement stopped at level 6 (I think it was.)  I asked: have you ever looked if anyone might actually be capable of attaining level 7 - or more?  I posited the view that, from the information provided by the school, it strongly appeared that nobody was actually looking to see if anyone was that clever.

Well, they wouldn't, would they?  The only thing schools are expected - and consequently are - doing, is meeting the bare-minimum achievement scores set by government.  There's a whole industry out there ranging from seminars to, if some stories are to be believed, diktats from LEA chiefs to 'not be too hard on pupils' when marking national tests.

I had, incidentally, also asked the LEA for statistics on able pupils across their authority area.  Surprisingly, and even sinisterly, they said they couldn't access that data and that I had to ask my school - which they named.  But that wasn't the request I'd put in.  I hadn't said which school my kids attended.  They'd actually become so irritated by a simple question that they went out of their way to try and match my name up with where my kids went to school!  After a lot of foot dragging, they accepted they did, after all, have that data.

When it became clear that the heateacher and the LEA that propped her up with malicious and false allegations against parents had no interest in hearing reason and tangled themselves up in a ludicrous web of lies, we moved school.  Two years later, we're much closer to where we would like to be, a huge improvement, not least because the school actively listens to reasonably-put arguments.  I was also relieved and delighted - when I really ought not to have been - that our new school, without prompting - said that nobody was really looking at how well able pupils could do, because the whole system was geared towards something else.  You can take a lot of reassurance from honesty like that.

The fight for properly-implemented APPs will reappear at secondary level, no doubt, but that is for another day.  

So, the story of Wales' Able Pupils Policies which - you will recall - are meant to be a matter of 'National Priority' - have fallen well and truly by the wayside.  Make no mistake that if you, as an interested or concerned parent, want to make sure your kids are suitably stretched, then it's definitely down to you and you alone to have a meeting with the school to make sure it happens, and that you are subsequently and routinely shown evidence from time to time that it really is happening.  If your school doesn't like parents being involved to that degree, it's time to look around for an alternative.

Revealed: The Costs of Newborough Beach.

Figures released under a Freedom of Information Act request (FoIA) have today revealed the extent of wasted resources at key north Wales nature sites.

Natural Resources Wales took over the running of Newborough Forest and the Cefni forest areas about a year ago, following a revamp of authorities across Wales.

In 2013, NRW, against what I understand were clear warnings, constructed a timber boardwalk and viewing platform amongst the sand dunes at Newborough Beach.

After the storm.  £153,643 worth of platform lies in ruin after the 2014 storms.

Those who care about the area raised an eyebrow at the destruction of localised areas of the dunes, which are in a protected area.  Nevertheless, once completed, the structures were very well received and popular.

A few months later, following winter storms, the viewing platform lay in ruins, washed away by rough seas and winds.  Timbers from the site were apparently turning up at Aberffraw, where people were only too willing to use them for their own designs!

The platform was removed with remarkable rapidity that suggested not only a risk to the public safety, but also considerable embarrassment.

Whilst the boardwalk remains, it is steadily being smothered by this winter's wind borne sand, and it's clear it will become a natural part of the dunes in no time.

Those who understand sand dunes will not, of course, be surprised.  What is surprising is that NRW pressed on, regardless.

In doing so, they spent a total to date of £153,643.44, where the larger part of that would seem to have been, from the materials and engineering involved, on the defunct viewing platform.

At the entrance, things haven't been much better.  Folk pay to go in, at £3 a shot.  Other pay £15 a year if they are local.  Very local people get in for free.  So expenditure on income generators is to be expected.

However, NRW spent £17,221 on a new 'hydrokerb' barrier in August 2013, only to abandon it when it proved unreliable a year later.  To cover this problem, which apparently had no contractual fallback, NRW paid £13,280 to build a manned kiosk at the entrance.  At £3 a car, it won't take too long to regain this lost money.  But, it has to be asked why a brand new hydrokerb that didn't work could not have been the installer's liability, and not the public purse's.  Why such a much larger, non income-generating amount was spent on something that almost immediately became driftwood, is less clear.

This isn't the only waste at Newborough.  Whilst the figures weren't requested for this item, some glitzy timber banner frames and colourful fabric banners were put up in around 2012.  These had already begun to fade after one summer, before being entirely ripped away by the winter gales.  Nobody seemed to have thought about gales on Anglesey.  The local council also had no record of planning permission for these structures, nor any idea whether planning was necessary.  It seemed it was, and hadn't been sought.

Meanwhile, at the Cefni reservoir, £23,000 has been spent last summer on creating wildlife wetlands on a mini-scale, which involved the building of earthen-rimmed ponds.  Again, surprisingly for a bunch of supposed environmental 'experts', the earth was washed away on at least one pond, prompting the NRW to temporarily abandon them.

When asked for evidence of applications and granting of consents for the diversion of watercourses to create these ponds, the FoIA release stated the information wasn't held.  That means that the consents weren't sought.  NRW says that they are "investigating the situation", which appears to mean consents weren't even considered.

Ah well.  Now you know...

Update:

A NRW response to a FoIA request on the 'Mawndir Mon' project at the Cefni revealed expenditure of about £23,000 at this one site alone.  NRW was the body approving and administering the money for this work which, it is very keen to point out, was actually carried out on the ground by none other than Anglesey County Council.  The Council, wouldn't you know it, is the body responsible for approving abstraction consents from watercourses, but didn't bother for its own work.  

Little wonder, then, that there was a clear scramble in mid-winter 2014/15 to remove all traces of the diversion engineering.  The remaining earthworks and channels, however, are a bit of a giveaway, still...

Richard Parry Jones: Thank You, and Goodbye.

Anglesey Council's current Chief Executive, the bumbling and much older than PR images suggest, Richard Parry Jones, has decided the "time is right" to hang up his suit - and his £140,000 a year job (that's more money in a day than most get in a week.)

Richard Parry Jones.  Getting out before the going gets hot!

 

So, apart from his increasing bumblingness, what has prompted the retirement?

Well, it's about as clear as a crystal vase: his council is going to cease to exist, he's of an age where sensible people should let go, and why would he want the hassles of managing an authority merger?

Anglesey is one of the intransigent and donkey-like councils that doesn't want to save public money by amalgamating as Leighton Andrews is hell-bent on ensuring will happen.

Despite this, Parry Jones has been very busy, I gather from insiders, talking to Cardiff about how an amalgamation might proceed.  In this, at least Parry Jones has the sense to see the writing on the wall.  Not that the elected councillors will give up their £27,000 a year 'allowances' without a fight.

It's clear that Anglesey is going to be forced to merge with Gwynedd, come what may.  Andrews is already flat out on extending his legal powers to prevent what he calls "negative behaviours" (i.e., obstinacy) on the part of senior council officers in trying to obstruct the merger process through contract deals, for example.

I would wish Parry Jones a happy retirement, except that, as soon as his massive pension is being paid in, he'll no doubt be off on lucrative committee memberships, directorships and so on.   So, I'll bid the good luck to Leightnon Andrews, who needs all he can get in fighting the lead-weighted footdragging of Wales' local government parasites.

 

The Failure That Is Anglesey

This week, we latest GVA statistics were released for Wales.  They make for despairing reading, if you live on Anglesey.

GVA - Gross Value Added - is a measure of the contribution of each individual producer, industry or sector in the UK.  It is commonly modified to a GVA per head of population, where it becomes 'how much of a contribution each person made to the UK economy.'

Anglesey has the lowest GVA figure across the whole UK.  Not just Wales - the whole of the UK.  And indeed, this is not the first time we've seen this outcome - it's been the same for a very long time.

And it's not just a slight difference that leads us to the bottom - our GVA per head is less than half the UK average.  We are, in every sense, a poverty-stricken island.

My name?  Anglesey.

Worse than this is the fact that Gwynedd has seen a rise of 3.4% in the period 2012-13 in its GVA figures, whilst Anglesey dropped 1.5%.  So it can't merely be blamed on geographical location.  There's something special about Anglesey that leads it to consistently be a huge under-achiever.

But maybe this is not surprising when our current portfolio holder for economic development is a former farm insurance salesman who, later, couldn't even make a sweet shop pay.  That, and the legion of well-paid tortoiseshell bespectacled officers who don't appear to be on any sort of performance-based renumeration.  If they were, perhaps we'd see something better than sitting back and watching the island sink into economic oblivion.

Sadly, the answer has, for many years, been seen as 'Wylfa B, Wylfa B, Wylfa B'.  All the eggs in one basket.  A simple measure of desperation.  You'd think the politicians would learn and set their sights on a diverse economy based on small, efficient businesses.

But, why worry when your councillor's allowance each year take you twice as high as the per-capita GVA?  That is the simple disconnect between the governed and the governors.  The workers and the wasters.  Whilst they may laugh in the poor people's faces, it is a dangerous place to go, as any history book will inform.

Caught by the glitz, the self-importance and the trips abroad, our council can only join-in with its central government master and repeat that the vast majority of people support Wylfa B, when independent studies do not support this idiotic bleating.

Meanwhile, it's clear that Anglesey has been ill-goverened into the ground whilst our noddies fought amongst themselves for power and privilege. Reap the benefits, folks, and pack-off your kids elsewhere.  Oh, and pray that Cardiff will wield its legal powers to bring the sick joke that is Anglesey Council to a very swift end.

Anglesey Council - The Dumb Dinosaur Wakes Up.

This week, Anglesey's bumbling Chief Executive, Richard Parry Jones, has written what is described as a 'frank but constructive' letter to Horizon Nuclear.

Horizon, whose knees probably won't be trembling very much, say they are 'disappointed' by the Council's letter.  Hey, join the queue of the disillusioned, Horizon!

The motivation is said to be the lack of clarity over just how many jobs, and just how much economic benefit Horizon will provide to locals, as opposed to workers parachuted-in from new plants reaching completion across the world. This, from a Council whose own clarity consisted of trying to keep hidden from the public its interim MD's pay packet (that was £1200 a day, plus a few more perks, by the way.)

It is remarkable that Anglesey is only now asking these questions.  Residents have been chatting about them for years now.  For years, the Council has been ramming its 'Energy Island' (a trademarked, jolly cover for 'Nuclear Island') down the throats of residents, even though the programme appeared with no public consultation nor any identifiable mandate.   Search online, and you will find endless rose-tinted press releases by the Council, coupled to ludicrous certainty about the New Dawn awaiting Anglesey, if it gets Wylfa B.

Energy Island(TM) has delivered dubious results for Anglesey.  Most of the whoopla about tidal energy has died away, leaving little more than, erm, Wylfa B and ever-more wind turbines that would have arrived without the Council's hamfisted involvement.

The point never addressed by our hopeless Council and our uselessly compliant local media is that Anglesey has had a nuclear power station operating since 1971.  During that time, it has stood as a perverse, government-sponsored mini-island of prosperity for the few who work there, whilst the vast majority of the island's 70,000-odd population have just grown poorer in a rapidly-declining economic environment.  Nuclear power does not bring widespread and lasting economic prosperity.  Wylfa A proves that much.

Also rammed down our throats has been the shrug-shoulders to new pylons across the island, whilst other parts of the UK have protested their way to climb-downs by National Grid, now burying their lines in many parts of England, where the people are less willing to sit and do as they are told.  According to insiders, Anglesey Council has been busy working hand-in-hand with National Grid to aid their 'preferred option' of more pylons whilst trying to appear at arms' length to the public.

The new nuclear build is said to be wanted by the majority of Anglesey residents - but only if you listen to the biased views of Horizon and the Council.  A study by Bangor University found the wrong questions were being asked and, consequently, yielded the wrong answers.  The majority, it seems, are not in favour of 'Wylfa Newydd' and its patronisingly Welsh cottage-like name.  The latest missive of concern by Parry Jones now insists that the "vast majority" support Wylfa B, and that this support is "of the upmost [sic] importance."  No points for written English, then.   No doubt by 2015, it will be 'everybody, to a man'.  Such are the assertion-laden tendencies of little men.

The reality of Wylfa Newydd has been apparent to everyone except Richard Parry Jones and his merry men, it seems.  Whilst Horizon has been tokenistically pumping money into Coleg Menai and training a few people up, these are not going to be the experienced engineers and plant installers that will be needed for an efficient construction project.  Nobody believes that those people will be local; they will obviously come hot from other projects to keep their skills honed and ready for the next one, somewhere else.

Sure, some people like painters, plasterers, and maybe a builders' yard or two may become rather wealthy from Wylfa B, the vast majority of spending will not be local due to its highly specialised nature, and the expected reliability of supply.  'New turbine assembly, you say?  Yeah, I had one round the back, somehwere', isn't the kind of exchange we're likely to see at Llangefni Jewsons any time soon.

It's rather galling to find the Council repeatedly make reference to 'evidence-based' decision making, when its own claims about the degree of public support has already been shown to be highly-questionable at best, and plain wrong at worst.  

It's also a bit rich that this Council wants clarity and adherence to policy by industry when its own development plans ground to a halt years ago.  This is, in every way, a failed Council trying to make out it's an authority with clout.  It's a bit late for that.

Still, maybe Parry Jones and his lot can take another fully-justified and necessary trip to Japan to 'clarify' the position.  Nice work, if you can get it...

Anglesey County Council: Back to Normality

In the week where we discovered the 'Basket Case Council' sent a Council tax invoice for one penny to a father who'd recently lost his daughter (being invoiced), we find general business is back to normal in Llangefni.

Over the past couple of years, Cardiff has been gearing-up to rid itself of the financial dead weight that 22 local authorities represent in Wales - a nation of just 3 million people.  The clearest signal that change would happen, no matter what, came when new legislation - the Local Government (Wales) Measure - to permit a forced amalgamation of local authorities was passed in Cadiff in 2011.


Despite the endless slef-interested bleatings of the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), it's clear that not only is Cardiff intent on cutting the number of councils, but is intent on doing it quickly.  After all, the financial crisis has been going on for five or more years by now, and the impacts about to be felt by the average Joe.

The Williams Commission was clear in identifying the problems and providing the solutions on a plate to Ministers.  Under such pressure, several councils, including Gwynedd, have already relented to the very clearly inevitable and offered themselves up for amalgamation.

Anglesey, however, has other ideas.  Never one to be anything other than ridiculous, Anglesey has stated it will stick it out and resist amalgamation.  It says is wants a meeting with Cardiff to "learn more" about the process of amalgamation.  This is very interesting, because for months, the bumbling and ageing Chief Executive of Anglesey, Richard Parry Jones, has been popping down to Cardiff for plenty of meetings.

Chop, chop - merge now!

There is no defence against cutting the bloated public sector within Wales, which in many areas provides the only well-paid employment to be found.

It's also clear that much of the resistance to amlagamation is utterly predictable and self-interested moaning from councillors and senior officers alike, both groups fearing a curtailment to their lavish expenses and very positions.

Anglesey's councillors, for example, now cost well in excess of £1 million per year in annual allowances.  One elected member pocketed £43,000 last year (2013/14), according to Anglesey's own data.

Yet, whilst there is plenty of hand-wringing about how services "must be cut", and endlessly raising Council tax by 4.5-5% per year  - every year - none of the councillors discuss cuts to their own allowances, which are in many, if not most cases, higher than the average annual salary for the island.

Anglesey has never worked as a Council.  Mired in scandal and alleged corruption from the outset, it has been subject to condemnation by one District Auditor after another.  In the 1990's, heads did roll, albeit with golden 'goodbyes' and nothing by way of personal accountability, as is the way of the State.

We've since seen direct control from Cardiff by Commissioners, the initially top-secret payment of £1100 per day to a parachuted-in and widely-derided interim MD, and various special measures of various departments.

More recently, a Family Court Judge, no less, stated very publicly that he suscpected Anglesey's Social Services might be trying to cut costs when they completely failed to adhere to the law in stopping a child returning to its mother.

This is not a council in which the public can have faith.

The message to the self-interested public money grabbers who are once more putting their pockets, rather than the people first, is clear: you must merge, and quickly.  You have no track record other than failure on which to rely, and it is to be hoped that Ministers will dismiss the bleatings, and wield the axe in a deicisive manner.

Anglesey Council's Potential Deafness Problem

Anglesey Council, who initiated their much-vaunted and trademarked 'Anglesey Island' concept many years ago now, may have a big legal problem on their hands if new research is put to the test in Court.

Researchers in Germany have unearthed mechanisms by which the ear's natural sounds are amplified by stimulation by low frequency noise, which campaigners often claim to be emitted by wind turbines.  The paper itself makes no mention of wind turbines.

Sunny and noise-free.  Or so the authorities and developers would like you believe.

Planning consent is such that levels of noise at LF are never taken into consideration, because the frequency and loudness levels are at points of the auditory spectrum where, even if these LF problems were shown to exist, they would never provide a legal basis for planing consent breaches. 

Only by the notoriously difficult-to-demonstrate route of statutory nuisance can LF noise currently be brought to Court.  Local authorities, whilst obliged to order assessments when reasonable complaints arise, are often in friendly liaisons with turbine developers, and in most cases, get the developers themselves to assess the noise.  It's hardly a recipe for objectivity.

But, with this evidence, part of a developing body of research that indicates LF really is a problem and could damage health, those whose lives and property are blighted by wind turbines will feel emboldened.

Anglesey has been an enthusiastic supporter of energy projects, and wind energy insiders report that senior officers are "very keen" when presented with new turbine proposals.  The public, however, have a different view.

The tide has turned against onshore wind farms.  Their proliferation in the crowded UK has become a significant poilitical issue.

For now, it appears that this latest research is one further nail in the coffin of those who have hoodwinked local politicians and the public alike into believing wind turbines never cause health problems.  If they really believed that, then they would embrace LF noise clauses in planning consents.  That this is never the case reveals the true situation with respect to turbine developments.

Indeed, the government fairly recently relaxed limits on noise for wind turbines.  This blogger, who seems to be an ardent supporter of the wind industry and perhaps part of it, claims the German research is "bad science."  As his riposte, he ridiculously posts an online video taken with a simple video device, claiming that the wind farm in question has "no noise."  

Where the blogger is right is in his claim that the term "wind turbine" does not appear in the text of the research report. 

Whilst this is so, it is a bit like saying a research paper reporting that "high energy collisions with the human body cause injury" can't be linked to motor vehicle accidents, and so there's no need for anyone to worry about cars hitting people.  The link to turbines is self-evident and unambiguous through the range of frequencies under consideration.  The paper provides food for further research thought in direct respect of wind turbines.  

Anglesey Council's Ludicrous 'Considerations'

Anglesey Council, hardly the exemplar of local government over the past 30 years, is 'considering' a waste collection option that could see black bins emptied only every three or four weeks.

One can certainly be kind to the council and say they have both legally-enforceable recycling rates to hit, and financial savings to make.

Now it's 1,2,3 weeks per collection, not 3,2,1,!

However, the EU legislation that necessitated recycling targets came into effect a very, very long time ago.  Like many other councils, Anglesey have simply sat on their hands for several years before getting to grips with the problem of waste reduction.

But let's get back to the immediate problem: can a monthly bin collection work?  An analysis of waste going into my black bin casts very serious doubt that it can.

This family recycles all that the council accepts.  This excludes a large number of plastics, notably packaging plastic and films, that the council can't get rid of.  As a result, our bin content over two weeks is currently almost entirely made up of packaging plastic.  All our food waste is composted within our garden.

What this tells you is that, for families, monthly collections will result in ludicrously full bins.  In summer, they will smell, although the reduced amount of food waste put into them should limit this compared to days gone by.

Councils, of course, have never been able - or perhaps willing - to tackle sellers and makers of food on the plastics they produce.  As a result, the manufacturers are able to dispose of the waste they (and not us) createat zero cost to themselves.  This has always been a sore-thumb sticking out in need of attention, but it's remained unresolved.

One might argue that, with monthly bin collections, the pressure will mount on food producers to cut down on the amount of thin and film plastic they use to wrap all our products in.  But it's uncertain.  Plastic bags didn't really become a controlled item until the Welsh Government banned free bags.  I think packaging plastics will have to similarly be controlled through legislation.

So, yes, the Council does have a genuine problem on its hands.  But then, has anyone started to look in depth at the years-long contracts handed out to private companies - who must make a profit - for taking over the waste collection and processing functions in the first place?  Therein must lie some pretty hefty savings - provided you can find good managers that are allowed to manage by Councils.

Anglesey GCSE Results

If there's one thing you can rely on any flavour of government to do, it's abusing numbers.

This lunchtime, a little while behind the other local authorities, Anglesey has appeared from behind the bushes to announce - wait for it - that "99.5% of students attained grades A*-G." 

Ha ha!  They may as well say "100% of students got a grade A*-Fail."  It's a pathetic, pointless number to quote that deliberately serves to produce a short-lived 'ta-da' moment. 

So, where did Anglesey score?  It's using the word "maintained" in relation to its results.  That means not up, not down.  Is this correct?

Anglesey got 67.7% in the still very wide grouping of A* to C.  The emerging national (UK) average is 68.8% (BBC figures).  So whatever Anglesey is doing, it's 1.1% below the national average.  Anglesey seems to mean "Wales" when it uses the term "national."


As to maintaining its position, Anglesey appears to be doing itself a bit of a disservice.  Its own press release claims the 2013 figures A* to C was 65.6%, so 2014 seems to be a 2% improvement.  Similarly, the pointlessly wide range of A*-G is up a very tiny 0.2%, which we can accept is treading water. 

Anglesey's spin doctors haven't said what proportion achieved the grades A* and A.  If they are anything like the national picture, they will have dropped markedly.  

According to sources, education chiefs are "not in the country" at the moment.  This may well be reflected by the disappointing revelation that a councillor hasn't even bothered coming up with anything new to say, this year's press release containing the verbatim-same note of congratulation as last year's:

"We can be proud of the educational success of our young people which is crucial to the future prospects for Anglesey."

Well, any sensible students and their parents will be taking their academic successes thus far and crossing over the nearest available bridge to the Great Wide World beyond, just as soon as they possibly can.  That way, they can get away from the shame of Anglesey and its council, famously described as a "basketcase" by Private Eye.

So, Anglesey is treading water once again this year.  This despite special measures following its failure to provide a good service.  In the end, how many people get any sort of grade is utterly meaningless smokescreening.  It is how many people get the top grades that counts.  Sadly for any spin doctor charged with making things look better than they really are, Anglesey, like the rest of Wales, continues to occupy the abyssal depths of the PISA tables - a much more telling result.

Social Services - Anonymous Complaints

If you want to lodge a complaint about someone putting up an oversized shed next door, but want to remain anonymous, planning authorities will typically tell you to get stuffed. 

Why?  Well, it's pretty obvious.  Complaints where neither the authority being complained to, nor the person being complained about know who's behind the moaning inevitably lead to open gates for malice.

But if you want to remain anonymous to Social Services?  No problem!  They don't ask who you are, because, they say, the interests of the child are paramount over any concerns about anonymity.  It sounds good, until you ask: is Social Services about family wellbeing, or just protecting children?  It ought to be an equal concern.

This is the terrible place local authorities up and down the UK have taken us.  Arse-kicked into covering their own backsides after high-profile failures on their part, they've now swung to the other extreme of making everyone guilty until they can prove otherwise.

It is, in no uncertain terms, a turning of centuries of legal safeguards against arbitrary punishment by the state on its head.  Forget Magna Carta, because Social Services plebs think it's a kind of upmarket coffee.

And forget, too, the line that "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to worry about."  It's a lie.  If someone that hates you cottons-on to the fact they can make as many complaints about your parenting abilities as they like without anyone asking who they are, chances are they will.  Children are emotive.  They grab the headlines.  Especially when Social Services get things wrong. 

Many will say that anonymity encourages reporting of bad parenting.  Probably true.  But then, it was an ethic used to terrible effect by the Stasi, too.  Is that where the UK has come to?  It is.

It's time Parliament put an end to entirely anonymous reporting of allegations against parents.  If complainants want their details withheld, the Data Protection Act 1998 already allows that with no difficulty.  If this practice were to end, then it would be easier for parents maliciously targeted by former partners, estranged spouses and neighbours with nothing else to do of a day, to tell Social Services who they think is responsible, and match that against what is often long-term harassing conduct by others, and often a matter of clear police record, too.

So long as Social Services redefine innocence by allowing completely anonymous accusations to be filed, parents - and their children - p and down the country remain at significant risk of further distress and harm.  After all, send a shirty letter to a parent that someone, somewhere has moaned about them, and chances are they won't be taking it very lightly.  It's an incredibly awful experience, sometimes pushing already stressed parents to the edge.

It's no good saying, on first complaint, that the "file is closed."  If anonymity is OK, then Social Services can't tell whether the first anonymous complaint wasn't also made by the same person as the second.  So, when they do get the second malicious complaint, they assume it's made independently of the first.  They have to, because nobody asks who's moaning.  This is just fundamentally wrong and ought never to have been allowed to become the default arse-covering, anti-rule of law system that operates daily in the UK. 

It is a shame on the British spirit of justice, no less.

Anglesey Incompetence and a Judicial Condemnation

Anglesey Council has this week found itself in the remarkable and shameful  position of being condemned by a family court judge for failing to follow basic procedures relating to a child's care.

The child's mother, as is widely reported elsewhere, suffered a temporary psychiatric illness.  As a result, the child was properly put into care.

But when the mother recovered and returned home, the Council, in a move that can only be described as utterly incompetent, refused to give the child back for five months.  During all that time, they had no Care Order of any description, and thus no lawful basis on which to prevent the child from being returned to its mother, who had a right to be so returned at any time.

Only on the award of an injunction - stopping the council from acting unlawfully - did it return the child as it ought to have done from the outset.

Judge Gareth Jones (Family Division, Mold) commented about his suspicion - which he stressed was only a suspicion - that the Council had failed to follow procedures in an attempt to reduce its costs, hoping that these suspicions would not be confirmed.

Anglesey Council might do well to read this book...

 
The Judge also commented on the obvious: that the Council had not asked itself even basic questions as to the legal grounds on which it was preventing the child returning home.  So, rather than just not following procedures, the Council seemed to simply have not considered the basis on which their daily work is directed.

For anyone who thinks following procedures is an inconsequential technicality, it isn't.  An Authority attempting or in fact acting outside the law has become a dangerous animal.  On that basis, the rule of law fails to control the state, which continues to act according to its own, illegitimate rules.  

Judge Jones clearly fired a very large shell across the bows of the once-more listing Anglesey ship when he made clear to them that they are not above the law, and subject to it.  We might be grateful to Judge Jones for quite such a setting-straight of the manner in which the UK should and must operate.

Judge Jones commented that the Social Services Department appeared not to have been under the proper control of the Authority's Legal Department, which one might interpret as a thinly-veiled swipe at the latter department.  He said he had formed similar suspicions in a previous case involving the same council.


The child's mother is now seeking damages from the Authority, which has accepted it failed to follow proper procedures but claims it did act in "good faith".  Good faith is an oft-used term in local authority circles.  But in this case, it is unsustainable precisely because acting in good faith necessarily meant acting according to the law that directs the manner in which councils operate, which Anglesey accepts it failed to do.

Judge Jones asked the council to demonstrate to the public it could again discharge its function without external help competently, adding that it had "failed abysmally" in the present case.  The entire Council was put under special measures from Cardiff in 2011, with its Education Department separately receiving the same in 2012.

Few who keep an eye on local politics on Anglesey think that the same tired faces trying to stretch out to their gold-plated pensions can make the meaningful long-term cultural changes needed.  Instead, just a couple of years on, we seem to be already on a steady return to the kind of unacceptable normality Anglesey exhibited since it became an Authority in the 1990s.

One can only hope the claim and eventual award to the child's mother reflects the exceptional seriousness of a Council acting outside the law, and the grave impacts this had on the family.

As to those within Social Services, the Legal Department and others who landed Anglesey taxpayers with another hefty legal bill, one can only hope against hope that a senior someone, somewhere, will get the chop - without a golden, 'keep your mouth shut' compromise agreement 'goodbye'.  Not that anyone is holding their breath...

Cardiff Backs Off From Home School Law

A consultation report on a possible law to regulate home schooling has come in for severe criticism and been rejected as a good idea by over 80% of respondents.

The Education Minister launched a consultation on whether introducing legislation to force parents to register and engage with local education authorities had support amongst the public and LEAs.

Over 80% of parents responding to the consultation rejected the proposals, which included a possible legal right of entry into parents' homes.

As a result, the Minister has backed-off from introducing legislation, highlighting the very clear battle line drawn between parents, who overwhelmingly saw the moves as "state interference", and LEAs, who thought they'd like to start pushing their weight around inside people's homes because there could be welfare issues to consider.

A dark undercurrent in fact flows through the position of the LEAs.  Their responses show a clear prejudice against the whole concept of home schooling.  LEA responses seem to apply a suspicion that those parents who pull their children out of what are, within Wales, often dire schools, must have some motive other than alternative educational provision. 

As is usual for just about any public body trying to get its own way these days, the words "health and safety" are used as justification to enter homes and inspect just what's going on inside.  However, laws already exist to allow intervention where there is no evidence of reasonable educational efforts going on at home.  Similarly, there are laws to deal with those tiny minority who may be hiding something sinister by keeping their kids from school.

But this is clearly not enough for the LEAs.  Rather than accept the doctrine of innocent until evidence shows otherwise, they want to label everyone a criminal who must prove their innocence.  They very much want to see parents as suspicious simply for wanting to home school.  Their responses show a deeply troubling attempt at an extension of their mandates as educational authorities to something much more like a combination of police and social services.

One parent made the point, and I can confirm the sentiment, that dealing with a local authority was "the most stressful and time-consuming" thing she'd ever done. Across Wales, we have stories of authorities making false claims against parents, poor relations between schools and homes, and almost all 22 LEAs failing to meet those expectations for which they are paid handsomely to achieve.


Parents angrily made the point that LEAs don't, themselves, have a good definition of what a "suitable education" actually is, typically have a bias against home schooling for no good reason other than for being different, and cannot, in most areas of Wales, themselves deliver a suitable education.  Witness the PISA results over many years to find justification for this view.

The Minister has, for his part, exercised what can only be termed good judgement in immediately pulling back from legislation in this area.  Forging ahead would have led to an inevitable and rapid digging of deeper trenches between a state that wants to interfere deeper and deeper with personal lives, and those who are self-sufficient and see the Welsh education system for the total failure that it is.

The message from parents is clear: if the government provided education to an acceptable standard within Wales, they wouldn't have to sacrifice their lives to home schooling.  The LEAs must look at their own, appalling record sheet of failures before they start telling parents they don't know what they're doing.

In the end, the parent has a legal duty, not just a right, to ensure the suitable and sufficient education of their children.  That has always meant they have a choice to educate outside the state provisions, and even outside any formal school organisation.  This must never change, and local authorities must never be allowed to be judge and jury in their own cause.

Gwynedd Council - A Failure of Government

Gwynedd Council, strapped for cash (but not for those in 'important positions') has announced it will reduce bin collection frequency to once every three weeks from October.

Appearing on BBC news, a councillor (elderly, not very good at speaking english, you know the sort), asserted that "we can't keep on putting rubbish in the ground, those days are over."

Only three weeks to go before bin day...

Well, he has a point, of course.  But let's think about this for a while.  Putting things into the ground has been a legal aim for councils for very, very many years.  Legislation originating in Europe was complied with quite quickly across the member states, apart from one laggard - the UK.  Being a former imperial colonist, the UK knew better than everyone else, so just kept putting it off.

Now, the solution to not putting things into the ground is rather more complex.  But what's blatantly obvious is that you can't do it just by not collecting bins quite so often.  You don't generate less rubbish simply because the bin men aren't coming.  You just delay its entry into landfill, not avoid it.

The main reason Gwynedd won't end-up with less landfill with a three week collection period is that the people who generate all that packaging - the manufacturers - have never meaningfully been targeted by government.  No, they are a bit too difficult to tackle, and we have a free market, and so on.  So, here, have more cellophane around an individual biscuit, wrapped in three further layers of plastic, just in case.

As usual, it's a mild case of 'when there's a problem, hit the poor public'.  It is bad government, with very little thinking other than 'must save money' behind it.  Maybe, if councils stopped signing-up to expensive contracts with private companies who must make a profit, they could save money that way.  But, oh no, that would mean someone in the council would have to get up off their arses, instead of being made to feel important by private companies for doing very little other than holding sway over where the contracts go.

So, the challenge is to see (a) how much money Gwynedd really do save with three week collections and (b) by how much landfill volumes fall as a sole result of three week collections.  Oh, and (c), how much more fly tipping and toxic burning will take place, and how CCTV shut-downs will allow perpetrators to do so with impunity.

And all that's without even touching on the health effects of a bin, sweltering away for three weeks in the summer sun.

Nice one Gwynedd!  Another example of why local government is such a joke.