Why I won't be voting WELSH LABOUR
There is no suggestion of any impropriety or the breaking of rules by anyone specifically named or who could be identified by the facts that are posted. Everything you read, to the best of my knowledge, is or has been "within the rules". Within the rules, but whether what you read below is acceptable in the Court of Public Opinion, that's a matter for the reader.
1. COUNCIL TAX
⦁ Council Tax - we pay the second highest Council Tax per Band of the 22 councils in Wales
⦁ In 2016/17 your bill for just council services was 25% more than the Wales average, 24% more in 2017/18
⦁ In 2017/18 this is what you will pay in these towns if you are in band D
Neath £1,713.33 Labour
Abergavenny £1,470.06 - £243.27 CHEAPER Conservative
Brecon £1,429.39 - £283.94 CHEAPER Independent
Carmarthen £1,485.98 - £227.35 CHEAPER Plaid Cymru
Cowbridge £1,420.43 - £292.90 CHEAPER Labour
Tenby £1,155.59 - £557.74 CHEAPER Independent
⦁ It is hard to believe that if you lived in Tenby, over a council term of 5 years you would pay £2,788.70 LESS than if you lived in Neath. It's more or less pay 2 years in Neath for 3 years in Tenby
⦁ The Police precept has risen from £169 on a band D property in NPT in 2012/13 to £218 in 2017/18. That's a rise of 29% in five years, nearly 6% a year on average. The precept is decided here by the Police and Crime Commissioner - Alun Michael. He was the Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament for Cardiff South and Penarth for 25 years from 1987. You may have seen pictures of him canvassing for Labour around here in earlier elections. Michael now has a staff of 26 people under him. They include an Equalities & Social Justice Manager. Yet not a single one of his staff is disabled and only one of his staff is from an ethnic minority.
2. THE STATE OF NEATH TOWN
⦁ Neath Town Centre is disgusting. The promised regeneration has failed to materialise. Beggars continually doss in shop doorways, accosting people at night. Even in the day they can be a nuisance. What happened to the promised clean up announced under Operation Avalanche last year? It provided a nice photo-opportunity for one of the Labour councillors in town. But that's about all.
3. LABOUR COUPLES - GRAVY TRAIN OR AN ACT OF DESPERATION?
⦁ In the council term just ending there were two husband and wife Labour couples on NPT council. In this election there are an astonishing SEVEN Labour couples standing for election.
⦁ Does this signify a desperation in the Labour Party finding suitable candidates or is it an outrageous attempt to jump onto the Gravy Train as even two sets of basic councillor allowances would give the successful couple an income of £26.6K per year for the equivalent of three days' work each?
4. COUNCILLOR ATTENDANCES
⦁ The Labour Party has deselected several of its councillors for the 2017 election. One of the reasons suggested is poor attendance records. So we have paid allowances to these councillors for the last five years and only now is anything done about it. A minimum of £13,300 a year to each one. Yet some who had poor attendance are still up for election in 2017. What guarantees are there that the next lot won't be a bunch of freeloaders too?
⦁ NPT will not publish figures for your councillors' attendances. Councillors themselves can look them up - but not you. Yet in Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Swansea, Bridgend, Powys, Merthyr Tydfil and Cardiff councils you can instantly check on the attendance records of any councillor via those councils' websites. Ask yourself - why is it we are different to all the others? What is there to hide? Has the Labour Party deliberately kept this out of the public domain because they knew that so many of their councillors were taking the piss? And still are in some cases.
5. COUNCIL CABINET AND WHAT IT COSTS
⦁ Councils are allowed to have up to a specified number of "senior salaries" for councillors. They can choose to run the council with a lower figure if they want. For NPT the figure works out at a maximum of 18 "senior" posts, plus the Mayor and Deputy Mayor. LABOUR RUN NPT has chosen to fill all such "senior salary" posts for councillors. And nearly all of them occupied by Labour councillors, naturally.
⦁ The Council's "Cabinet" consists of 9 senior Labour councillors. Their collective salaries amounted to £268,930 in 2016/17 so over the full council term of 5 years these 9 councillors have cost over £1.3 million in salary. Cabinet salaries range from £28,780 to £33,460 per annum. These are the current Cabinet members:
Councillor Alun H.Thomas, Onllwyn ward - standing down
Councillor Peter A.Rees , Neath South
Councillor Mike L.James , Pontardawe
Councillor Edward V.Latham, Sandfields East
Councillor Mrs Sandra Miller, Neath East
Councillor Peter D.Richards, Baglan
Councillor John Rogers, Taibach - standing down
Councillor Anthony J.Taylor, Taibach
Councillor Arwyn N.Woolcock, Lower Brynamman
⦁ Of the nine, one councillor (Miller) has a husband who is also a councillor, who receives the basic salary of £13,300. One (Taylor) has a wife who is also running for election in 2017/18. And one (James) jointly owns the building rented as the office for Jeremy Miles (referred to below) and has a contract with NPT to provide specified taxi services on which the Council spent £350,000 in 2015/16.
⦁ Our highest remunerated individual Labour councillor is Peter Rees, representing Neath South and is the Council Deputy Leader. Here are his payments:
⦁ 15/16 £33,459.96 plus £295.25 expenses
⦁ 14/15 £33,459.96 plus £265.60 expenses
⦁ 13/14 £33,459.96 plus £524.15 expenses
⦁ 12/13 £32,539.65 plus £297.00 expenses
⦁ The highest remunerated couple are John and Sandra Miller who both represent the Neath East ward. They jointly receive over £42k per annum in payments, and have done so for each of the last 5 years of this council term. So they have received in excess of £210,000, and that's just council payments, not including what they are paid via separate employment or pensions. What has come into your household over the last five years, in comparison?
6. COUNCIL MAYOR
⦁ The Plaid Cymru leader on NPT has raised in previous years whether it is time to do away with the Mayor and Deputy Mayor role on the Council, so as to save money and protect services elsewhere. The proposal fell on stony ground among Labour members. The office of Mayor and Deputy still continue.... complete with enhanced allowances, chauffeur driven car, chains of office and expensive dinners presumably.
7. THE COUNCIL LEADER
⦁ No-one seems to have suggested doing away with another ridiculous extravagance. The retiring Council leader, Ali Thomas, has a hired Ford Galaxy, plus a chauffeur to pick him up from home in the mornings and drive him to the Civic Centre, take him home, and ferry him from function to function. This is a longstanding custom and practice, the previous Council leader, Derek Vaughan having had a car and chauffeur too. This is in addition to the car and chauffeur that is used for Mayoral functions. If both attend the same function, do you think they share one vehicle and chauffeur? What do you think? Well the answer is "No". They go separately. This is Welsh Labour and in Neath Port Talbot we are talking about.
8. ON NEPOTISM, CRONYISM AND THINGS THAT MAKE YOU UNEASY
⦁ Our last MP was Peter Hain (Labour). He rented his office from a private landlord in Windsor Road. The landlord is the Neath Constituency Labour Party. The upstairs of that building is let out to another Labour councillor who sits on Neath Town Council. The new Labour MP, Christina Rees, has a similar arrangement with Neath CLP. The rent is paid to Neath Labour Party out of the public purse - yet the landlord (Neath CLP) is allowed use of the building by a clause built into the rental agreement. Could you imagine this arrangement anywhere else? Our MP and Neath CLP have shared the same telephone number for years. But who do you think picks up the bill? And the bill for rates, gas, electric and water, despite the fact Neath CLP has periodic use of the building.
⦁ In Pontardawe the Neath Labour Assembly Member, Jeremy Miles, has a private landlord too. The landlord is a business partnership that is an NPT councillor plus one. This councillor is a Cabinet member and his Council allowance in 2016/17 was £28,890. The rent payable by Jeremy Miles is about £8K per annum.
⦁ The outside of the Neath office of our MP, which is owned by the Neath Constituency Labour Party, has been extensively refurbished since May 2015 with the benefit of a Commercial Property Grant where property owners can get up to 50% of the cost of such works out of the public purse. Grantees must be a "micro, small or medium sized enterprise" as defined by the EU. How a local constituency political party comes under this umbrella and has been able to get its hands on this public money is a mystery best answered by those involved.
⦁ Peter Hain employed his mother, his sister and his niece at various times on the public payroll. He also paid his son nearly £6K out of his public allowances to build him a website in 2007.
⦁ When a senior Dulais Valley Labour councillor lost his seat unexpectedly in an election in 2004 he was subsequently employed by Peter Hain as his agent.
⦁ Christina Rees has employed the fiance of her daughter as a full time Caseworker in her Neath office. It pays £16k to £26K a year depending on experience, plus a non-contributory, civil service pension worth 10% of the salary. Vacancies should be advertised and competed for. Was it? Now that's a question I'd like to see an answer to.
⦁ There are three full time staff on the public payroll in Christina Rees' office, as explained above, one being her daughter's fiance. The other two are candidates in the council elections on 4 May. They both previously worked for the publicly funded Communities First, Western Valleys. If both are elected how will Ms Rees run the office when they are expected to attend council business? We pay for her office, her staff and our councillors out of public money so will we be short changed as a result?
⦁ The Labour councillor standing down in the Tonna ward this year was Peter Hain's office manager until his retirement in 2015. Following redundancy she immediately found another job just like it - she went and worked for Stephen Kinnock in the same role. An office manager's job for an MP pays up to £38K a year. A basic councillor's allowance is £13,300. There aren't many places in NPT where you'll be able to gross over £50K a year, particularly off the public purse. But working for a Labour MP at the same time as being a Labour councillor is one of them. Of course - Ms Rees' office manager in Neath could soon join this exclusive club. Her other member of staff, coincidentally, is standing in Tonna to try and succeed Kinnock's office manager. In Port Talbot, one of Stephen Kinnock's other office staff is similarly standing for election.
⦁ Of 650 MPs in Westminster, in 2012/13 Peter Hain was the second highest claimant for expenses for oil and electric at his "second home" in Aberdulais. He claimed expenses of £4,571.74 in that year just for his oil and electric bills, in a house classed for expenses purposes as a "second home" which meant it was supposedly occupied for less of a time than his luxury flat in the centre of London. That's £87.92 per week! Just for oil and electric. The oil was used partly to heat an oil-fired Aga, on which he cooked, and infamously claimed in an interview in 2006 that he thought food tasted better cooked on it. "At first I was a bit sceptical about the Aga. I thought it was a great big lump. But now I actually think it's fantastic. We found food cooked on the electric cooker tasted very second class." I bet you'd have liked £87.92 a week for help with your heating and electricity bills, but tough luck - you're not an MP.
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When I think of the above, I find it impossible for me to place my vote against any name that has Welsh Labour alongside it. All I see is that if you are part of them, particularly part of their "inner circle", you can do quite nicely for yourself. In my opinion it's a system that works for them. It doesn't work for me.
But not everyone has a price...........That's why on 4 May I won't be voting for anyone standing for Welsh Labour. And I won't be on 8 June either.
