Jacob Williams

Video killed the radio star

The Rocking Rev, Cllr. Huw George, has been a star attraction in the media lately, and his rise to fame has been pretty rapid and steep.

From star of national radio to worldwide YouTube in the space of a few weeks, you’ve got to wonder, does Hollywood and the silver screen beckon?

The sample above may give us a clue. It features the Maenclochog member quite prominently.

If you can’t spot him (it’s unlikely) he’s wearing cool shades, strutting his stuff on Haverfordwest’s newly-paved Bridge Street and Castle Square. (Six-figure grant money well spent?)

As a non-Welsh speaker, JW gathers the video was created to promote the inaugural October 15 ‘Shwmae Day,’ and features two generations of Georges, among many others, lip-syncing away to some instantly forgettable (and very strangely-sung) ditty.

The second video, below, which has ‘resurfaced’ (if you’ll excuse the pun) for the second time on YouTube, is Cllr. George’s 2012 audio/visual election promo.

Ironically, it also features the main man himself traversing hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of freshly-laid publicly-funded ground covering, this time it’s the miles of new tarmac plastered over roads in his ward.

He wanted his electorate to make the association that he used his ‘positive politics’ to get the tarmac for his patch.

Most of it was laid down in the immediate run-up to his re-election bid. There was some speculation that ‘positive politics’ translated as ‘influence,’ but it was all ‘routine’ work, we’re told.

The extraordinary meeting requisitioned by five councillors to discuss the pensions scandal is understood to have been put on temporary hold – at the signatories’ request.

They wish for the meeting to be held off until Anthony Barrett, the WAO auditor, has published his public interest report into the matter which has so far prevented him from approving PCC’s 2012/13 financial accounts.

The auditor’s PIR is expected to be published at some point during November. So far the council leader has proclaimed that the legal doubts are only the auditor’s ‘opinion,’ and, of the Wales Audit Office, he says: ‘they’re not the law.’

It’s difficult to assess the merit of the council’s defiance over the legal doubts.

Neither the public or councillors are privy to the precise stumbling blocks raised by the auditor, or the information contained in the authority’s external legal opinion – despite efforts to find out.

The public interest report issued by the same auditor over a financial decision made by Caerphilly councillors held that the mere attendance of certain officers at the meeting “who would have been (and were) beneficiaries,” rendered the decision ultra vires and the payments unlawful.

It’s quite reasonable to assume the same auditor, being consistent, will draw similarities to the presence of such officers in Pembrokeshire during the ‘Pensions Arrangements’ discussion, regardless of the legality of the financial scheme itself.


Posted on: Wednesday, 23rd October, 2013.

7 Comments...

  • Paul Absalom

    I must say, Cllr George’s performance was 103% and we know Cllr Adams always gives 131% (private joke!)

  • PR

    I’m sure Huw George sees himself as just “a good sport” when in fact he looks bloody ridiculous every time he appears/speaks in public.

    He is cringeworthy.

    One of the suggested videos that comes up at the end of your video Jacob is one I had seen a couple of years back but had forgotten about, I wonder if you’ve seen it:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8FFfXa8c0w

  • Hi PR, yes I have seen that video, not for a while though – it’s nice of you to give the author of that other website a plug. He needs it too!

  • Jon Preston

    All very good, but I do think many of those filmed look a little ‘awkward’. The children seem to like it though!

  • If Paul Absalom really wants to get ahead, he would do well to consider that BROWN NOSING = 150.

  • Mike, had you worked out that PLAGIARISES comes in at a healthy 116, whilst ASSUMES only makes a lacklustre 97?!

  • PR

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn-Lr9dsQMU

    Before he was a singer!

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