Sunday, 12th May, 2013
Three is a magic number
With no fanfare announcement during the course of Friday’s AGM, it may well have gone unnoticed by those present or in the public gallery. It’s perhaps understandable, what with all of the day’s other highlights. But presentations of bouquets of flowers and the swapping of civic chains were not the only exchanges going on in the council chamber, for Cllr. David Bryan had renounced his unaffiliated independence and thrown in his lot with the Conservative group duo.
In a press statement floating around the members’ room ahead of the meeting, Cllr. Bryan’s reasoning behind the move is the ‘declining influence’ of ‘individual councillors,’ in light of which he has decided that “…the only way to have any real input into the running of the council is by acting in a group.”
The statement goes on to cite the recent increase in majority of the ruling group brought about by Cllr. Sue Perkins ditching the Labour party for the farmers, freemasons and the far right (see that other website to put forward your own entry for a new fourth ‘F’.)
Concluding, the statement reads: “After the well publicised problems of the conduct of the council in the past 12 months I do feel that I have more chance of holding the ruling group to account in County Hall by collective rather than individual action.”
Cllr. Bryan’s move to the Tories increases the group’s number of members to three. It just so happens that a membership of three gives the Conservatives a brand new entitlement – a seat to appoint one of its members to on the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.
No prizes are on offer to my readers for guessing who’ll be bagging that one!
Somebody’s mischief with the seat in the chamber previously occupied by Cllr. David Bryan
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As you say, the increase in the Conservative membership from two to three gives them a brand new seat on the National Park Committee. Also, due to the vagaries of the political balance rules, they retain their scrutiny chairmanship which would have gone to Labour because of the change in the calculation due to Cllr Sue Perkins’ defection.
So, as a result of recruiting Cllr Bryan, the Tories now have two extra allowances over and above what they would have been entitled to without him.
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Cllr Bryan might be slotted into the older persons’ O&S scrutiny chair which he held prior to the election, with one of the other Tories taking the National Park seat.
Such is the nature of this game of SRA bingo that, according to my calculations, should Labour manage to recruit two extra members, we will be back to square one with Labour entitled to two scrutiny chairs and the Tories nil.
And lurking in the background is Cllr Peter Stock’s Pembrokeshire Alliance which I am told is dormant but not dead, and if it can sign up three or four members the whole thing will be back in the melting pot.
It is worth noting that, although the protagonists might pretend otherwise, this battle for seats on the gravy train has nothing whatsoever to do with providing the people of Pembrokeshire with improved services.
As I have stated today under the aegis of another of Jacob’s topics of conversation, many of we members of the ‘common herd’ are becoming predictably sick of the burgeoning institution of professional politicians; only interested in the salary, expenses, pension and future consultancy fee incomes, rather than the urge to represent the British man and woman or, at the higher level, our nation.
On a smaller scale, here in little Pembrokeshire we are rapidly becoming blighted by the professional councillor it seems. So, only the rapidly-earned pension to vote in, eh boys and girls?