Wednesday 9 April 2014

Message to Miliband


Anyone from Carmarthenshire listening to Ed Miliband today during PMQs over the Maria Miller scandal must surely be wondering if Welsh Labour are existing as a separate entity to their London party bosses.
He said;

"The reason the public were so appalled was that if it had happened in any other business, there would have been no question of her staying in her job. Why was he the last person in the country to realise that her position was untenable?"

Has Mr Miliband actually seen the sorry mess in Carmarthenshire, and Cardiff for that matter? His Labour colleagues in Carmarthenshire Council happily agreed to make two payments to a public official which have been deemed unlawful by the Welsh Government's own auditors.

Even though the Carmarthenshire public are as "appalled" as the general population are over Maria Miller, the council Labour leadership proceeded to (expensively) defend these payments and refused to suspend the public official. Even the prospective Labour candidate for the next general election gave the council leadership his blessing over the scandals.

Then, despite the police launching an investigation, the public official has been allowed to casually 'step aside' on full pay and now appears to be continuing with his duties away from his desk.

The Welsh Labour Government has also refused to publicly condemn the scandals, a situation which is being seen simply as a Labour government refusing to criticise a Labour council.

The public official in Carmarthenshire is not supposed to be a politician, but he is a public figure and has consistently put himself forward as one. What is important is that the unlawful payments, and the cost of defending them, has come from the same pot of public money which Ms Miller has used.

The total amount is also a damn sight more.

Perhaps Mr Miliband should get on the blower and communicate with Wales, or does "in any other business" exclude Carmarthenshire and its long suffering residents?

Ed and Carwyn

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you tweeted him a link to this post: https://twitter.com/Ed_Miliband

caebrwyn said...

Anon 19.45
I have now.

Anonymous said...

It isn't just Wales - I can point you to scores if local authorities where this is happening controlled by all parties - the general public complains yet nothing is done. In these authorities none of the councillors or officers want to change the status quo: it suits them too well. There is no-one to complain to: in our area we have tried the police but they don't want to know either and the tame press just prinys council flim flam as news. We have nowhere to turn.

Anonymous said...

Personally I think the Labour Party are the biggest
hypocrites of them all.Carwyn Jones always says the
Tories are attacking Wales,it's his useless lot in
Cardiff they are attacking and pity they did not go further
west to attack his useless lot in the Kremlin in Carmarthen.

nospin said...

Have taken the liberty to tweet to cameron & cons, also Farage & UKIP, more chance of them rattling Ed's cage to do something about Welsh Labour's attitude to the whole mess

Anonymous said...

We have some County Councillors, who would frankly have trouble tying their shoe laces. I certainly know of one who can't even open his own emails and has to get local authority staff to do it for him.

It's no wonder the alleged financial irregularities went undetected.

They talk about Scrutiny Committees - they couldn't uncover wrongdoing unless it bit the blighters in the buttocks.