Jacob Williams https://jacobwilliams.com

The author of that other website, Cllr. Mike Stoddart, appears to be making good use of the legal reassurance that came off the back of a 2012 High Court ruling on freedom of speech. Some might say he’s abusing the privilege. The ruling was made on an appeal brought to the High Court by Pembrokeshire councillor, Malcolm Calver, after he was found to have breached the code of conduct by failing to show respect to his fellow members on Manorbier Community Council in remarks he had made on his website.

The Adjudication Panel for Wales had upheld the prior findings of Pembrokeshire County Council’s Standards Committee that Cllr. Calver had breached the code, so Cllr. Calver appealed to the High Court where the decision was successfully overturned. In his ruling, the judge said those who place themselves in public office should expect to be lampooned and criticised, and should have “thicker skins.” It spurred the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales into rewriting the guidance for councillors. The changes made to the guidance clearly reflect the judge’s ruling, stating that due to the “enhanced protection” of the right to freedom of expression, it was “highly unlikely” that comments or criticisms made by political opponents would be considered as a breach of the code, and would not be investigated if reported.

This renewed confidence seems to have gone to Cllr. Stoddart’s head, because in his most recent blog post on his website, he resurrects an alternative honours system for Pembrokeshire councillors that he founded a long while back, called “Old Grumpy Rewards for Excellence.” He last handed them out before he became a councillor himself in 2004, and they have remained in abeyance until now.

The grumpy one even awards an OGRE to yours truly – the ACM – a medal for the most shameless publicity seeker. To receive such a glittering appreciation for my relentless self-promotion so soon is unexpected to say the least. So thrilled was I when I found out, that I even thought about changing the website to jacobwilliamsacm.com, but decided against as these things can probably be stripped. It’s named the Alistair Campbell Medal, after the infamous New Labour spin-doctor.

I’ve actually heard on the grapevine that there are a number of other members of the council who would love nothing more than to see me awarded with the post-nominally entitled honour, the “Best Ugly” Medal. I can’t think why. I haven’t received official notification of it yet, so I shan’t get my hopes up.

---

Knights of the Round Table

A motley crew of ennobled Pembrokeshire aldermen are to meet this afternoon (Friday) at a small gathering in County Hall. Details are sketchy at the moment about the form this small get-together of the gentry will take. It isn’t known which officers or external representatives (if any) will be present, or exactly what’s on the agenda. The meeting of interdenominational representatives will include the council leader, a representative each from Labour, Plaid Cymru, and the Conservatives, and it is suspected that the main topic on the agenda is an action plan to try and combat the worst elements of the two recently-published adverse follow-up inspection reports. It’s a noble cause of county-wide importance and is the hottest topic of public interest in Pembrokeshire as we begin 2013.

Just how all-encompassing this meeting is actually going to be, though, is quite unclear at the moment. It appears that the meeting might not have any provision for the representation of unaffiliated councillors, who make up 13/60ths of the council’s membership. Unaffiliated members of the council (also known as unaligned, proper independents, true independents, uglies, idiots, the great unwashed, the mongrels) are independent councillors who are not members of political parties or groups formed on the council. If the thirteen uglies aren’t included in the meeting, then it would seem somebody believes their input is worthless.  In other words, upstairs knows best. As many (including the authors of the reports) would argue, that’s one of the main reasons the council has made no progress on this matter, so this attitude hardly instills confidence for the immediate future. Though, with the renewed and more likely prospect of tougher measures to come down the line from Cardiff Bay; 2013 could be unlucky for some.

---

Honourable discharge

An eagle-eyed reader has got in touch with JW to relay what seemed to be a tenuous conspiracy theory. I get the odd one in my inbox, most can be shrugged off as the stuff of fairyland, but I was in a festive mood, so I gave this one the benefit of the doubt, and read on.

It’s in relation to the leader of Plaid Cymru, Cllr. Michael Williams who, in the Western Telegraph letters column on 12th December, clearly stated why the cabinet member for education, Cllr. Huw George, should take responsibility for his historic and present part in the council’s failings in safeguarding and education. The following day there was a meeting of county council. A motion of no confidence in Cllr. George (which was carried over from the October county council meeting) was on the agenda. When it came to the vote, Cllr. Williams abstained.

My reader couldn’t fathom out why the tone of the Plaid Cymru leader’s letter published on the Wednesday, failed to translate into voting for the motion of no confidence on the Thursday. He says he scratched his head for hours, and eventually settled on the conclusion that Cllr. Williams decided party-loyalty was key. Whilst my correspondent wasn’t entirely comfortable with his own explanation for the bizarre situation, he says it was the best he could come up with. His theory was given some credit (he thought) due to the fact that, as the vote was a recorded one, Cllr. Williams was the last of his group’s members to declare their vote on the alphabetical recorded voting call-out, and in all likelihood, he simply followed the rest of his party’s abstainers whose names were called out before his.

My reader then went on to claim this theory might not be the case after all, and goes further by saying that if Cllr. Williams had loyalty at the front of his mind when he abstained, it couldn’t possibly have been to Plaid Cymru, because it appears he isn’t even a member of the party. I started to lose interest at this point, but then my correspondent backed it up with hard proof. As sad as I know readers of this website must be, he recently found himself inspecting the mandatory county council members’ registers of interests. When he thumbed through to Cllr. Michael Williams’ entry, he was in for a surprise. He could find no declaration or mention of existing or historical membership of Plaid Cymru. There’s loyalty for you!