What a Bore!

I had intended a summer free from blogging to enjoy the wonderful weather that we are having and spend a little time on the water. But I can't let it pass without comment when Cllr Malcolm Calver spits out another of his venomous and truth mangling articles on his website (manorbier.com).

The subject was the meeting of Manorbier Community Council on Monday 17th July when Mr Phillip Newman of ACAS gave the Council his thoughts on the Council's position in the pending Employment Tribunal hearing.

Let's look at Cllr Calver's allegations:

He says it was a secret session, but the meeting had been advertised on community notice boards for the statutory period required by law so anyone who was interested would have known the meeting was taking place.

When the meeting started the Council voted in favour of a resolution to go into private session because the matter to be discussed was a claim for wrongful dismissal by Mrs P Davies (former Clerk) and would inevitably contain references specific to Mrs Davies, which I'm sure she wouldn't want in the public domain.

This is also the reason why Mr Newman said he couldn't talk to the Council in open session as he would be giving advice on a specific case.

At this point it is worth noting that, although the discussion was specifically about his wife's claim and possible monetary compensation against the Council, Cllr Davies refused to declare an interest and remained in the meeting when members of the public left. It would also be interesting to know if he took part in the discussion. Perhaps one of the councillors present would like to tell us? Surely his failure to declare an interest is a breach of the Code of Conduct?

On Cllr Calver's bleat about costs to local council tax payers, if he had taken the trouble to read the literature which all councillors received from ACAS he would have seen that the service provided by ACAS is funded by central government and costs the local council tax payer NOTHING. So, no, Cllr Calver this will NOT be "another high expenditure item requiring local financial support from the charge payers".

Perhaps Cllr Calver would like to tell us why he seems so opposed to the involvement of ACAS, which, for his information, I will spell out in full. ACAS, The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. No doubt conciliation and arbitration are words foreign to Cllr Calver's vocabulary, his favorite word seems to be confrontation.

But enough of that and on to other things.

Since I have been prodded into starting blogging again and since I have been accused in the past of spreading village gossip I'll do just that but to avoid being accused of libel I'll name no names although I'm sure most of my readers will know who I'm referring to.

Who is the councillor who has developed the bad habit of wandering into people's houses unannounced and uninvited and in some cases surprising the inhabitants in various stages of undress?

Much more serious, the rumour mill has it that this same councillor has been questioning various children about alleged vandalism both in the street and on one occasion entering Manorbier school without the head teacher's knowledge and questioning a child when no teacher was present. I hear that the mother of the children in question has written to the Board of Governors of Manorbier school asking for an official enquiry, and complained to the police and the Monitoring Officer of Pembrokeshire County Council . If this story is true then we must hope that these bodies treat this matter with the seriousness that it deserves and no attempt is made to 'sweep it under the carpet'.