New blog in town

 Blogs get started for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes those reasons are less than altruistic.  But the recent Mostyn ward election has ignited some interest in the form of a new blog by one of the contenders - Jason Edwards.

In his extremely well-written blog, he sets out his stall and, although he failed to get elected, this seems like someone the town would find very valuable.

His blog is here:


http://jasonedwardsllandudno.blogspot.com/

and a quick read through  leaves the impression that he values clear communication above all else - a salutary reminder for the rest of the local and Conwy Councillors, many of whom think a computer is a wooden rack fitted with little sliding beads. 

Good luck Jason - and welcome to the world of bloggers.

There's no business

The sun's being kind to us at the moment (the thermonuclear one, not the rag) and this summer looks fairly positive in term of potential visitors.
Llandudno trades relentlessly on the nostalgia factor; many of those who return - year after year - first visited when they were children, and are now reintroducing the next generation to its delights.  Trouble is, they're a vanishing commodity.  People talk fondly of Happy Valley, the Palladium, the Pier Pavilion and even places like the Old Rectory tea gardens, but these are all gone or in decline, and little new is replacing them.
Happy Valley was, of course, remembered most for the shows, and it wouldn't take a massive investment to create a basic facility that would allow for regular performances. Essentially, a concrete stage, some sort of canopy, electric points and a returning of the stepped,  tiered seating that once housed the deck chairs.  There are so many performing groups in Llandudno now, holding their own shows every week, that it would be simplicity itself to arrange a rota for interested societies to perform once a month throughout the season.

All it needs is someone with vision and enough time to see the idea through.  Any takers?

School's out

If there's one thing which is absolutely guaranteed to bring out villagers with pitchforks and hay rakes, it's the subject of primary school closures.  With numbers falling throughout the country, however, schools have to be closed, and it's easy for those no longer involved in education to dismiss the concerns of villagers as parochial and short-sighted.

But in a tiny village, the local school is much more than it seems.  It's a social resource for the entire village, for starters.  A place where people meet, gossip, exchange information, views and make arrangements.

In villages where the population is not particularly mobile, it's also more than that. It's a store house of childhood memories and experiences, which is why threatened closures evoke responses which are largely unrelated to reason and economics.

Unfortunately, given our current economic situation, doing nothing isn't an option, and as long as UK legislation demands that children be educated and that they must attend school then schools are going to have to close.

Unless these small communities start to change things. Legislation does not require all children to attend school;  it only requires that they be educated and that councils provide schools in which that can happen.  There is nothing, however, to stop parents from educating their own children at home or from taking over schools themselves and educating the children there.

Let's not pretend this is easy; it isn't, because the communities would have to fund the school themselves, they'd have to meet standards for the education they provided and they'd have to be led by someone who really knew how to deal with council officials and the department for education and learning.  But it's possible and - if communities feel as strongly about preserving their village centres as they seem to, then they should be aware that they won't be the first to go down this path.

And so it begins

The Labour government came under a lot of fire - some say rightly - for over-legislating and creating too much paperwork in many aspects of everyday life.  Now the first signs are emerging that the new coalition may be reversing the trend, but at some cost to those who most need protection.

A landlords register and new regulation of letting agents were to be introduced by the previous Labour administration but the new government has scrapped the plans.

Interestingly, the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) said cutting the plans would aid rogue landlords. Citizen's Advice also criticised the decision.

Housing Minister Grant Shapps said the sector was already governed by a well-established framework.

But renting a flat, say, is the only way many hard-working people can afford to put a roof over their heads. These people - the unmarried, childless but fully employed and extremely hard-working  - are the very people we need in the economy and we ought to be protecting their interests, if only to avoid the massive costs to the community incurred of them hitching up with someone, having ten children and then applying for benefits and housing from the local council.

Ian Potter, operations manager at ARLA, said: "A great fear is that a lot of agents who were looking at tidying up their practices will now feel they can run amok and add to the poor reputation we have at the moment."

What is particularly ironic, however, is what the Tory housing minister added. He told the BBC  the government wanted to focus instead on increasing home ownership, a rather odd aim with mortgages beyond the reach of most single workers.  Of course, the Tories will always look after those who stand to make money out of others, and those who slavishly support Tory policies should remember that their history has always been thus.

You couldn't make it up

Love 'em or loathe 'em, caravan sites and the North Wales coast have a long-standing affinity for one another. But last week, our beloved Conwy County Council decided to move against Michael Clark, the director of Golden Sands holiday park in Kinmel Bay, who readily admitted his company unlawfully put up signs on railings and on a trailer board in a pub car park.

After the case, Conwy’s head of regulatory services Phil Rafferty defended the authority.

He said: “There is a persistent problem with the display of unauthorised advertisements. We hope this successful prosecution will send a clear message to those who appear to be ignoring the law.”

Aha.  So they deliberately set out to make an example of Mr Clarke, then?  Quite apart from the dubious ethics involved, it would be interesting to see if anyone in Conwy CC can explain why they appear to have entire departments dedicated to driving away tourists. A few weeks ago, the same council decided to come down heavily on people who erected birthday banners at roundabouts.  If it was the script for a farce, you might be able to believe it, but the officers of the rudderless Conwy CC seem to have the bit between their false teeth and are charging in all directions, waging war on those whose livelihoods depend on attracting tourists.

Let's see it in perspective.  Under age drinking is serious, so presumably they've taken harsh measures against places found serving alcohol to children.  Pot holes in roads are causing thousands of pounds of damage to tax payers' cars, so presumably there's a massive effort to repair them taking place.  And of course they're ensuring that all the main roads into Llandudno leading to the beautifully maintained West Shore are open and running smoothly.

If all the above aren't happening, then how come they have time to waste mounting  expensive prosecutions against those simply trying to advertise their living?

let's see if they decide to abide by the Government's advice for full disclosure of their accounts and expenditure. And then let's see just how many of these overpaid officials we really need in these straightened times.

The council pie

The speech David Cameron gave on Monday should leave no one in any doubt that we're being softened up for the significant cuts that will be coming. The thing everyone's wondering is who is gong to suffer most.

The biggest slices of government expenditure are threefold: education, Health and Social security and - perhaps surprisingly - Local Government.

Last Friday, the government released its detailed spending figures and the fact that the 24,000,000 items of expenditure remain largely impenetrable to the average (or even, so far, the expert) should come as no surprise to anyone, given the ministerial obsession with secrecy.

It'll be interesting to see what gets cut, although Tory administrations traditionally favour jobs.  But given that Local Government represents a very large slice of the pie, perhaps stopping salaried cabinet positions might be a good way forward? Expenses - yes, they're fair enough, but what do we really get from the paid councillors around here?  Little, it seems, other than more and more secrecy.  Perhaps we need to devise some criteria for failure for their roles.

Cumbria and the media

The recent events in Cumbria have evoked the usual slurry of suggestions about banning all guns, 'lessons to be learnt' and the evergreen 'questions to be asked'.  The event itself was bad enough, but the media's craven response to this type of event remains the only constant in an otherwise depressing replay of our previous gun massacres.

The answers for dealing with anyone who is so depressed and unstable as to go around shooting people before killing themselves are fairly straightforward.  There's almost nothing you can do. This sort of thing happens - thankfully, not often, and we as a nation continue to slaughter far more per day on the roads than are ever killed by manics and maniacs.

On the 'lessons to be learnt' cliche, trotted out repeatedly by an unimaginative and time-worn media, there is only one: stay away from madmen with guns.  Otherwise ,Cameron's response was excellent.  We are long overdue a break from knee-jert reaction legislation.

What's in a million?

Some years ago thee was an article in the Times which suggested few children can grasp the concept of a million. It was, the article argued, such a massive number that the only way to try to make them see its reality was to have a board in the classroom with a million dots on.

Today's children, however, are learning in an era when a million isn't that much anymore.   A lottery winner who only scooped a million would feel hard done by; a country with a population of one million hardly qualifies as a country and how many people d'you know with a 1 Mb disc drive?  The billion has become the unit of choice, making it easy to see just how awful a mess the banks' mismanagement  has left us in, terabyte hard drives are becoming commonplace and our entire approach to thinking about quantity has changed.

All of which made it a little sad when the Torygraph fixed its sights on a leading Liberal coalition partner for a rule infringement that  - in the scheme of things - amounted to almost nothing. Of course, the DT and its owners know all about rule infringing, loopholes and bullying.

The DT is owned by the Barclay brothers, who bought the island of Brecqhou, one of the Channel Islands, located just west of Sark. Their own mock-Gothic castle on Brecqhou, designed by Quinlan Terry, features 3 ft granite walls, battlements, two swimming pools and a helicopter pad. The brothers are tax exiles, and give their address as Le Montaigne, 7 Avenue de Grande Bretagne, 98000 Monaco.
Although they make their money from the UK, they pay not one penny in income tax, which makes it rather odd that they should choose to hound those who do and those who can be seen to be infringing rules. Their respect for the democratic process is well documented.  On 11 December 2008, they were in the news for pulling out their investments (which include hotels) from the island of Sark, causing 100 staff to be made redundant (one sixth of the population) and threatening the economic stability of the island after local voters did not support candidates championed by the Barclay brothers. The brothers had previously warned that if the voters chose to bring back the 'establishment' Sark leaders that are still aligned with the feudal lord then they would pull out of Sark.

Perhaps those who so avidly devour the pages of that august organ should know more about where their money is headed.