Sometimes, it is in the pauses, in the absence of utterance or action, that things are at their clearest.
 
There was a searing moment in last week's town council meeting (18.1.17) when wide eyed Liz Harvey, town and county councillor, looked around with her hands outstretched and asked if anyone was going to answer her questions. The tension and embarrassment in the ensuing silence, as well as the realisation of a long buried truth, froze that crowded room. See 1.07 in the video below.
 
It came down to this. The months and years of bickering and bluster, all the outbursts of anger, the denunciations, the contemptuous asides and tortuous complaints, they were all distilled into a single dizzying moment of collective insight.
 
For Ledbury's troubled Neighbourhood Plan, there seems to be no real reason why things have happened as they have, why money was spent on this or that, why moves were made or not, who was in charge or ultimately should be responsible. At the heart of it all, the project is aimless and inchoate. There is a void. The only imperative is to get the bloody thing done - or be done with the bloody thing. Anything will do.
 
At this special town council meeting to examine progress on the town's Neighbourhood Plan and plot a future course, it was clear that events are unfolding in a way that is dislocated from detailed planning, informed discussion or the application of available professional expertise. There is no project manager it emerges. Financial forecasts of income and expenditure don't exist. Records of key discussions are not being kept. The town council which bears legal and financial responsibility, is in ignorance, nor has it been consulted at critical moments as laid down in its own rules. Nobody is in charge. The buck stops nowhere and with no-one.
 
Most damning of all, Ledbury's residents either do not know about the Neighbourhood Plan and what it means for their future, or don't care. Either way, the efforts at communication and interaction with local people have failed miserably. 
 
Non Erit Sollicitum
 
The evening started well enough. There had been an upbeat and informative progress report from consultant Sally Tagg, followed by an impassioned defence of the project by local resident Phillip Howells. He carefully rebutted criticisms that levels of community engagement were poor, saying that Ledbury's apathy was normal in these situations. Equally, costs were nothing extraordinary, given the complexity of the task, and the size of the town.  He said everything was open, above board and fully accountable. He appealed to commonsense, as a good citizen, an ex-soldier, and a professional. Really?
 
Things began to unravel. There was no round of applause. Liz Harvey got to her feet and after thanking Mrs Tagg and Mr Howells, asked the same questions she had been asking for the last twelve months.
 
The technicalities of planning policy are never rivetting. But the impact of planning decisions on people's lives is immeasurable: where a road should go, whether a view is ruined, if a school is built, or a supermarket allowed. In planning matters there are always winners - usually property developers - and losers, usually the neighbours. We elect local councillors largely to oversee a legal and fair planning process, to call decision-makers to account. In planning matters, scrutiny and 'due process' matter.
 
Over the months and years, Harvey and others (including me) have been branded trouble-makers for asking awkward, potentially embarrassing questions about the way the Neighbourhood Plan was being handled. Nor are the worries and concerns diminishing, but acquiring greater urgency as more money is spent, as the intellectual gaps are widening, and the inconsistencies becoming more egregious.
 
Tempus Fugit
 
And so once again as she ran the script, sought to get answers, the town council hierarchy and their hangers-on, sighed and shifted impatiently. After ten minutes by the clock, the mayor, Debbie Baker had had enough and told Harvey to stop talking as she'd had fifteen minutes 'from what we timed it'.
 
Why had there been a 'call for sites' while a planning appeal for new housing in Ledbury was underway? Did not the NP group think it was a risky move to invite local landowners to offer up their land for building at the same moment as barristers for a predatory development company were arguing the case in a planning court that Herefordshire needed to allow more house-building?
 
Even though there had been a call for development sites, Harvey noted that at least two landowners had been ignored by the Neighbourhood Plan after proposing seemingly viable schemes for housing and transport infrastructure.

Why had housebuilder Bovis been rebuffed when it sought a meeting with the NP group to discuss its plans south of the by-pass? Why had the Neighbourhood Plan not undertaken a public consultation on 'Development Options' as it is required to do in the official guidance? Who is project-managing the process? And so on.
 
Lacunae

New councillor Nina Shields lamented the poor response rates to the costly consultation events overseen by the consultants. Cllr Andrew Warmington wondered why the town council was not being kept better informed. Cllr Nick Morris wanted to know whether the key officer for Neighbourhood Planning at Herefordshire Council was being consulted. Cllr Andrew Harrison asked if the town council could have a monthly financial and project report. Liz Harvey questioned whether the NP group was acting in line with its terms of reference as decided by the Town Council in October 2015, particularly in sanctioning consultation events.
 
Well? Is anyone going to answer my questions, she said again. Silence.

To be continued...

Notes
​Cato the Younger: a fascinating life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Younger

Liz Harvey's written questions on the Neighbourhood Plan to Ledbury mayor, Debbie Baker 20 January 2017. Click file here.

Liz Harvey's covering email to Debbie Baker. Click file here.

Video of LTC meeting, 18 January 2017 to discuss Neighbourhood Plan.

MP for North Herefordshire (including Ledbury), Bill Wiggin is a fascinating individual with strong views and passion for his causes, everything from hunting, smoking and an end to the equality industry. People should get to know their MP better. Here are my impressions.

Some people have the uncanny knack of always being on the wrong side of the argument. Try as they might, they find themselves relentlessly promoting lost causes and shaky enterprises. It must be a frustrating life.
 
Local MP, Bill Wiggin could just be one of those individuals. He is something of a rebel. But not in a good way, if social justice or enlightened values are worth anything at all.
 
According to his carefully crafted Wikipedia entry, 'Wiggin has voted against a blanket ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants, the 2004 Hunting Bill, and some sections of the Prevention of Terrorism bills.'
 
The unfettered right to smoke is a particular hobby-horse of father-of-two Bill. Not only has he has opposed legislation outlawing smoking in cars where children are present, but has also voted against the introduction of plain packaging for tobacco products, a move designed to get rid of the colourful branding that so entices young, impressionable minds.  
 
Bill's St Jude-complex has driven him to tireless advocacy of the repeal of anti-fox-hunting legislation, against the wishes of 84% of the British population. Like all those chasing dogs, he might yet have his day, but it's unlikely.
 
Nor is it just the stupid electorate that Bill disagrees with. He supports the controversial badger cull, in defiance of almost the entire scientific establishment which argues that the programme is futile, cruel and counter-productive.  
 
Values

With that heady mix of contrarian, browbeaten farmer and freewheeling neo-liberal coursing through his veins, Bill arrives at some surprising policy positions. He wishes, for instance, that the UK government would rescind the ban on neonicotinoid insecticides. As a bee-keeper himself and patron of the Herefordshire bee-keepers association, Bill doesn't have any truck with the scientific advice, believing that chemicals of this sort are not responsible for the serious decline in bee populations. He has also been generally lukewarm on measures to tackle climate change, voting against key proposals aiming to reduce carbon emissions. Like Michael Gove, Mr Wiggin is probably tired of experts.
 
Being a staunch traditionalist with a strong interest in country matters, he has never approved of same sex marriage legislation and has opposed every one of its provisions, including preventing members of the armed forces abroad being able to marry. It's jolly bad for morale don't you know.
 
Despite Bill's sincerely-held views, equal marriage was approved by a huge parliamentary majority and by 70% of Britons. Wrong again.
 
Of course he voted to repeal the Human Rights Act, another wretched piece of legislation got up by foreigners to confound us. 

Don't let's get carried away with sympathy for bungling Bill however. He's quite a wealthy chap and has enjoyed sucking on a silver spoon for most of his life. Son of colourful right-wing Tory MP, the late Sir Jerry Wiggin, young William was bundled off to Eton yet did not follow his clever contemporaries like Cameron and Johnson into Cambridge or Oxford, instead enjoying the more modest pleasures of an economics degree at University College, Bangor.
 
Not that a middling university education did him any long term harm. Bill quickly got work as a Trader in Foreign Exchange Options for UBS, an Associate Director of Kleinwort Benson and a manager in the Foreign Exchange department of Commerzbank. A couple of elections later and he was an MP in one of the safest of Conservative seats followed by a spell as a government whip.  You get the idea.
 
He keeps busy. MP work in London and Herefordshire is juggled with running the farm, and his prized herd of Hereford cattle. On the side he picks up a few thousand as a board member of a firm that advises rich people how to run offshore tax-planning schemes. He has also put to good use his know-how gained from steering through Parliament the Welfare Reform Act by advising a company that delivers privatised welfare benefits. True to his principles, Wiggin voted in favour of the £30 a week benefit cut to disabled people, but has declined to explain his reasoning for this.
 
In a pickle

Like his dad, Farmer Bill ploughs his own furrow and doesn't care much for courting popularity, unless it's among his county chums in the Countryside Alliance.  During the MPs expenses furore, Wiggin shrugged off several serious financial scandals which might have finished any lesser gamesman.
 
The Telegraph said: 'Mr Wiggin, a contemporary of David Cameron at Eton, received more than £11,000 in parliamentary expenses to cover interest payments after declaring that his Herefordshire property was his “second home”.'
 
A year later, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon said that “it is more likely than not that Mr Wiggin did claim for expenditure he did not incur, in respect both of telephone services and of service and maintenance.” Humiliatingly, he was ordered to pay back over four thousand pounds and apologise to the House. Then he was sacked from the whip's office.
 
That degree in Economics and trading work in the City clearly hadn't worked its magic in helping Bill address his 'chaotically muddled' finances. He hit the news again that year, when it was discovered that another five grand of his parliamentary expenses had found its way into the coffers of the North Herefordshire Conservative Association. Anyway it was all cleared up eventually, the mess put down to lapses of memory and so forth.
 
This brings us neatly to Bill's erstwhile nemesis Jim Miller, the Leominster town councillor who had exposed him as an alleged fraudster. Bill Wiggin so objected to Mr Miller's intrusions into his private financial affairs that he had the local police pay a home visit, warning him to desist in his 'harassment' of the MP. No charges were brought.
 
Despite the weighty matters of state upon his shoulders, nobody should accuse Mr Wiggin of not attending to the fine detail of constituency business.
 
In Jim Miller's 2010 by-election literature for Leominster Town Council, Bill's dodgy expense claims were given an another unpalatable airing.  To the astonishment of the local community - and national press - the MP wrote to the Returning Officer, Chris Bull, also CEO of Herefordshire Council, claiming that Mr Miller’s campaign flier made “inaccurate or false” statements and asked whether they might be “in contravention of electoral law”. Three days later Miller was disqualified from the election on a technicality (which later proved to be Herefordshire Council's fault). This handed the town council seat to Benson Ferrari, local chairman of the now reviled Conservative Future youth wing. That decision was subsequently overturned in a landmark High Court ruling and Jim joined Leominster Town Council.
 
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Leominster Mayor Richard Westwood said: 'I was just stunned that Wiggin contacted the returning officer... what in god’s name is an MP doing poking his nose into a little parish election? I can’t understand what he thinks he’s up to.' And so it went on for months and years: Big Bill versus Troublesome Jim.
 
Eventually Mr Miller dropped out of the political chase, disgusted, disillusioned and depressed while Wiggin went on to win the next election, everything forgotten it seems.
 
Keeping Active

Bill has recently rekindled his interest in parish politics. During a crowded election hustings in 2015, he took the opportunity to upbraid me for harassing 'his friend' the Ledbury town clerk, Mrs Karen Mitchell. 'It is completely unacceptable to bully a civil servant' he said in stentorian tones to the evident surprise of onlookers. When I politely told him he was talking nonsense, he held up his hands and said 'no excuses' before walking away theatrically. It put me in mind of Meryl Streep's bravura bitch in The Devil Wears Prada: 'that's all'.
 
On election day itself (5 May), he loudly repeated the same accusation to a small group of people outside the polling station at the Ledbury Community Hall. Perturbed by this serious breach of election protocol, I wrote to Wiggin and asked him to explain himself. From whom had he heard that I had bullied the clerk and on what evidence, I asked.
 
Who said politicians are slippery?

​'I am slowly getting used to being talked about, usually without any regard for factual accuracy and I hope the matter is forgotten by everyone quickly', replied Bill emolliently. 'I hope that my [earlier] apology was satisfactory and as for who said what, I would not be able to tell you even if I knew, which happily I don’t.' Tsk. That'll be another memory lapse.
 
Straight talking is good, even in public if need be. And after the Miller affair, it's reassuring to learn that Bill takes a strong line against harassment. Not so impressive is our MP's grasp of important supporting evidence, nor of remembering who are the sources of his intelligence. Let's just put it down to muddle, shall we?

​Despite the confusion and all his other interests, Bill is still finding time to attend to the slow-motion shipwreck unfolding in Ledbury Town Council. According to credible sources, he was seen in conference with Deputy Mayor Elaine Fieldhouse and Cllr Bob Barnes at the town council offices on 7 October 2016. A staff member correctly said that the group could not be disturbed, and that an appointment was needed if anyone needed to talk to Mr Wiggin. A little later Bill popped into the paper shop and in an unguarded moment revealed that he was being briefed about the ongoing crisis in the town council, as well as the staff complaints against Cllrs Harvey and Harrison.

Mum's the word
The curious aspect of this is that everybody involved was subsequently reluctant to confirm that that they had met each other. In a town council meeting, Elaine Fieldhouse denied that she had even spoken to Wiggin beyond saying good morning, and quickly passed the heated frying pan to Mayor Debbie Baker. Equally flustered, Debbie at first said she hadn't met him, and then correcting herself said that she had. 'It was a private matter' apparently.
 
Also tight lipped was Bill Wiggin when asked later what his business was in the Council offices. 'It was a constituency surgery and therefore confidential' he snapped. This is odd. The MP is usually so keen to advertise his wares, but there appears to be no record in his communications activity of this surgery ever having been publicised. No names of constituents are recorded in the Ledbury Town Council visitors book.  Perhaps it was a one-off, specially arranged 'surgery' with selected Ledbury town councillors.
 
What could be so sensitive that local politicians engage in clandestine meetings, and then flatly deny having talked to each other beyond saying hello?
 
I don't like conspiracy theories. I prefer to accept the most obvious solution to a conundrum, Ockham's Razor: put simply, 'when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.'
 
Let's think... Bill Wiggin is advising Ledbury Town Council bosses how to deal with Miller-esque harassment from Harvey and Hadley. Perhaps the police should be contacted. Wait. They already have.
 
At a county conference where cyber-bullying was being examined, a posse of Ledbury town councillors (including Crowe, Fieldhouse, Baker, Eager and Francis) angrily confronted Herefordshire's head of police, Superintendant Sue Thomas, and demanded to know why she had not acted on their complaints about the harassment that was taking place in Ledbury Town Council. It was an embarrassing scene witnessed by scores of local government councillors and officers. Thus having derailed the seminar, Ledbury's contingent stomped out of the conference. Their behaviour was not appreciated.
 
Once again, Bill Wiggin finds himself on the wrong side of the political tracks. As Ledbury Town Council flounders under the weight of its own incompetence, venality and political corruption, in strides 'bungalo' Bill, his Commons nick-name (nothing upstairs, boom-boom).
 
Like the albatross, his appearance at such moments is always a bad sign. It signals impending public outrage, press denunciation and the sure manifestation of an indefensible ethical position. Perhaps I do after all appreciate the Mayor's and her Deputy's caginess about disclosing their chat with him.

A last hoorah?
So to the future. Bill Wiggin's spell as an MP could be drawing to a close. Once again, fate has dealt him a tricky parliamentary hand. The political granite of North Herefordshire has turned to slippery red clay. In the bonfire of the constituencies in which the size of the Commons will be reduced by fifty seats, Bill will be dispossessed. Meanwhile his neighbouring parliamentary colleague in Malvern, Harriett Baldwin, a bright star in the Conservative firmament, looks set to eclipse him and inherit most of the North Herefordshire patch.
 
Enoch Powell said that 'all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure.' In this instance, perhaps the impending boundary reorganisation will be a mercy to Bill: no more kicking against the traces and feeling righteously out of step with mainstream opinion, no more silly form filling, and having to go along with hare-brained political correctness and human rights.
 
In the final reckoning, Bill Wiggin, MP will be remembered as a true staunch conservative, someone who stands by tradition and against the passing whims of fashion. For him, social cohesion is founded on the unshakeable foundations of authority, order and convention. Everybody has their place. England is the finest country in the world. The market knows best. Business should be allowed to get on with business. Less red tape.
 
That is fake news by the way. I don't really know what he stands for, except what I can surmise from his voting record in Parliament and his comments in the media. Even by modern Tory standards, Wiggin junior, like Wiggin senior, looks like a trenchant right-winger. The family resemblance is striking.
 
The main thing is that Bill appears to cleave to the status quo. And why wouldn't he? With his privileged background, good connections, manly bearing and all round decency, life has been good to Bill, no real complaints at all - apart, that is from a few pesky financial rules and irritating individuals who ask too many questions.
 
When he goes, there will be many, particularly those who hanker after a simpler, gentler way of life, who will mourn his passing. Good luck Bill, and farewell!

In the present febrile climate of suicidal terrorism, readers of Ledbury's local newspaper might have missed a heart beat when they read last week's headline: 'So shocked as armed police guard parades'.
 
News that Ledbury's Remembrance ceremony 'may' have been attended by anti-terror police marksmen was direfully received by town mayor, Debbie Baker: 'I can't tell you how shocked I am... The idea of armed police is mind-boggling. It really is, and it shows the times we are in right now.'
 
Not even faraway Ledbury is safe from the shooters and bombers it seems. As shuddering Cllr Bob Barnes noted: 'We could become a soft target, and where the lone wolves are operating we do not know.'
 
If true, this report would indeed be shocking. Except it wasn't. The only shock was that so much could be made of so little. Exchanging newsworthiness for truthfulness, the story had been confected by local journalist Gary Bills-Geddes. To be 100% clear, there have been no armed police on the streets of Ledbury. The story was a fiction.
 
That Andrew Warmington had attended a West Mercia Police seminar on crime priorities began a flight of journalistic fancy which ended with a front page sensation worthy of a right-wing red-top.
 
'During this seminar,' Andrew later explained, 'the Chief Constable listed seven key concerns in crime terms for the region as a whole, giving them in descending order of importance. In fourth place was terrorism and he told the councillors present that armed police had been on guard at Remembrance Day parades at unspecified places in the region. Next thing I know, this is front page news.'
 
Consistent with the Ledbury Reporter's flourishing 'post-truth' credentials, when challenged, Mr Bills-Geddes excused himself airily: 'Cllr Warmington's report was merely the starting point for a series of questions we've been asking West Mercia police all week.'
 
The police are sensibly reluctant to divulge operationally sensitive information but after days of pestering by the Reporter, finally conceded that 'armed officers were available to be deployed to any incidents in the Ledbury area during Armed Forces Day should they have been required.' They were not required. Ergo, there was no deployment of armed police.
 
Mr B-G said this news arrived after the print deadline. But hey! Why spike a good story by waiting for a fact-check? Come on, there are papers to be flogged.

​May or did: Take your pick.
 
Gary is an experienced wordsmith. In his opening paragraph, he made sure to insert that important little caveat word: may.
 
The Daily Express does this when it runs one of its 'snowstorm Armageddon set to batter Britain' stories. 'Forecasters say the UK could be in for the storm of the century'. It's called wriggle-room. When the snowstorm doesn't materialise, those Express hacks can't be accused of exaggeration or distortion. We didn't say it definitely would, just could, runs the well rehearsed script...
 
Deputy editor of the Ledbury Reporter, John Wilson predictably wriggled in his reply to Cllr Warmington's complaint: 'Our report does not say armed police attended parades in Ledbury'. It says they ‘may’ have. If the police tell us categorically that there were no armed police at either Remembrance Day or Armed Forces Day in Ledbury we will publish it.'
 
That, Mr Wilson is never going to happen, as you well know. The police would never be so irresponsible to confirm or deny to would-be attackers any of their anti-terror manouevres, past or future.
 
Mr Wilson claims his readers are not 'dupes'. Quite so: the troubling question is that if it's on the front page with such an emphatic headline, the hushed seriousness of Gary's copy lending dead weight, bolstered with quotes from the Town Council's would-be top brass, and backed up with a portentous reference to 'talks with police chiefs' (another fiction), why wouldn't readers think it was authentic?  If it wasn't true, or in any way doubtful, the question is: why print it at all?
 
Try the 'duck test': if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
 
Who cares?
 
2016 will be remembered as the year of Post Truth. In the UK, the Brexit campaign was exposed as lying in its claim that millions of Turkish nationals were about to flood into the UK. It promised a weekly £350 million injection into the NHS if we left the EU.  Who cared that none of this was true, except the bleeding heart 'libtards' and 'bremoaners'? After June 16, the material was simply removed from the official Vote Leave web site, and it ceased to exist. There, nothing to see. Donald Trump repeated the trick before the US election with so many falsities it is difficult to know where to start.
 
The Oxford English Dictionary voted 'post-truth' as its Word of the Year. It is defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
 
Back in the seventies, one of my favourite novelists, Muriel Spark, caught the spirit of the post-truth age even before it existed: 'It's not true', says one of her characters in Not To Disturb, 'but that's not to say it isn't right'.
 
What is truth anyway? When I was young and worked in advertising, I had a cigar-chewing old school boss who told me that 'what people believe is as good as the truth.' He was either a cynic or a genius. Or both.
 
Philosophers discuss the nature of truth a great deal. It's called epistemology. What can we ever know for certain? Is there an objective reality out there? If there is, can we ever know it? In the past, scientists would say yes, there are immutable truths and laws that govern nature; now in the realm of quantum mechanics, even they are not so sure. Social scientists are more troubled still by definitive truth claims.
 
Politicians, ideologues, advertisers and some journalists, have snatched the clothes of such sceptical post-modernist thought and refashioned them as propaganda, spin and political smear. It is how you win elections these days - and sell newspapers. You say what you need to.
 
Perhaps 'post-truth' is just a euphemism for lies. Guardian writer, Jonathan Freedland believes so: 'We’ve been calling this “post-truth politics” but I now worry that the phrase is far too gentle, suggesting society has simply reached some new phase in its development. It lets off the guilty too lightly. What Trump is doing is not “engaging in post-truth politics”. He’s lying. Worse still, Trump and those like him not only lie: they imply that the truth doesn’t matter, showing a blithe indifference to whether what they say is grounded in reality or evidence.'
 
Not everyone believes the bullshit - but enough do to stink up the proverbial army blanket. Social psychologists have found that people believe information, however implausible, which confirms their pre-existing world view. Objective evidence, however compelling, which challenges people's existing beliefs tends to be ignored or distrusted. Such confirmation bias distorts all our thinking.
 
It is hard to change people's minds, once they are made up, especially by appealing to rationality. The key is to tap into emotions. The Vote Remain campaign learned this hard lesson to the cost of the UK economy. Faced with a blizzard of technical analysis warning against Brexit, Michael Gove said: 'I think we've had enough of experts'.
 
Easier by far is to reinforce existing prejudices and cherished totems, to stir up latent feelings of fear, anger and frustration. This is why 'take back control' was such a potent campaign message during the referendum among those who already felt left behind, belittled and disregarded by a perceived 'elite'. Trump said 'Let's make America great again', understanding clearly that a great white lumpenprotelariat was similarly angry and aggrieved. These weren't just clever slogans; they were appeals to profound ideological values.

Muriel Spark again had it just right: '“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”' 

Irresponsible
 
And so to Ledbury and its weapons grade Remembrance parade. Why am I expounding on this story?
 
The subtext of the Reporter's news reports and editorials is worth exploring. Are they genuinely bias-free, impartial and objective in their treatment of local political topics as you might expect from a local weekly? Are 'my group', as John Wilson accuses, 'attacking the Ledbury Reporter on baseless of grounds for [our] own purposes'. Is it paranoia? Or is there something more lurking uneasily beneath the surface narrative?
 
Why did they run this story? The generous explanation would be that there was nothing else splashy enough for the front page.
 
Protestations from John Wilson belie this view however. 'We were not sensationalist,' he said angrily, 'we were not alarmist, we informed Ledbury people about something they should know about, and I don’t give a jot if you don’t like the way we have worded it.' Ouch.
 
The point is, it was deliberately crafted. It was something Ledbury should know about - but what exactly?
 
This armed police story is of a piece with Buntingate, another travesty of politically spun misinformation. It is reaching out to the nationalists and nativists in our community, just like the Daily Mail and Breitbart does. It is carefully calibrated to erode our confidence and create fear of the other. The 'lone wolves' we are talking about are not right-wing fanatics like Anders Breivik or Jo Cox's killer, Thomas Mair, but rather the religious extremists who are poisoning our way of life: the Islamists, Jihadis, Moslems. Perhaps they are refugees as Nigel Farage claims.
 
Was the real intention to remind everyone that nothing in our society - even honouring our war dead - is sacred anymore?  That we abandon our traditional ways and our patriotic, conservative leaders at our peril? That we are under attack from hateful, disruptive forces right here in our midst? I may be wrong, but I catch a whiff of town council politics here.
 
If this were an isolated blemish on an otherwise peerless record of editorial integrity, I might be more charitable. Unfortunately the pattern is clear.
 
In this instance the emotive headline, the quotes sought from the rampant thought leaders of Ledbury's patriotic tendency (but not from Cllr Warmington himself), the weasel words and the mashing up of everything red, white and blue, was cynical, mendacious and socially divisive.

This, along with three other propaganda pieces in this week's Reporter (discussion to follow), are dog whistle political stories, oozing with populist venom and surreptitious intent.
 
There are those like Bob Barnes who might be 'reassured' by - or even thrill to - the idea of a paramilitary police force on the blameless streets of our obscure little town.
 
Less comfortable would be any visiting or local Moslem families who might venture to show their faces at a future Remembrance ceremony in our town. If I were them, I would not dare.

 In future, 2016 will not be remembered as just another of Ledbury Town Council's wasted years, but its time of ruin.

Mired by resignations (here and here) and recriminations, the Council has endured months of catatonic inaction interrupted only by a few colourful outbreaks of zombie-style rage. (see Buntingate and Tolerance Motion)
 
All in all, another year of squandered opportunities and thwarted hopes has slipped by in Ledbury, another £300 thousand pounds expended on itself to achieve very little except win notoriety as one of the UK's most dysfunctional town councils.
 
As the New Year beckons, what are the chances of renewal and repair?
 
An investigation into the machinations of Ledbury Town Council is approaching its grimly inevitable conclusion. Of one thing we can be certain: there will be some Ledbury Town Councillors who will face political ruin, personal humiliation, perhaps even criminal investigation.
 
For those vanquished, it will be not such a merry Christmas.  Over the flatulent dregs of the season, all the players in this tragicomedy might at least have time to reflect on their year just gone, the mistakes and misdemeanors, all the recklessness and arrogance, the deceits and distortions.

As the Ghost of Christmas Past icily observed: “No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused”.
 
But before feeling sorrow for their plight, it's as well to reprise what led to this colossal fiasco.
 
Post Truth

The inquiry by Herefordshire Council was prompted by a slew of complaints and counter claims by warring town councillors and residents, so many in fact that an independent team of investigators was enlisted, among them a retired police officer who specialised in anti-corruption and a local government solicitor.
 
At the heart of it all, lay grievances levelled by town council staff members against two councillors - Liz Harvey and Andrew Harrison - for bullying, harassment and intimidation. The Council took these complaints seriously; so much so that it decided to rip up the rule-book and organise its own novel investigation process that would guarantee the outcome it sought.
 
Protesting their innocence, Harvey and Harrison underwent a trial by fire at successive closed council meetings and panels where they were roasted and harried by their haters: Crowe, Barnes, Eager, Roberts (Noel), Fieldhouse, Baker, Francis and Yeoman. Dispensing with all semblance of due process and natural justice, they faced a jury composed of those same hostile councillors with whom they had been battling over openness since the 2015 election.
 
They were of course found guilty as charged. A letter was sent to every local club, group or society in the district denouncing them as heinous bullies. A lawyer might say that this was quite a brave move. The foregone result of the Council's 'internal investigation' was announced at Ledbury's vicious Annual Council Meeting in May 2016 when they were banned from all committees and outside bodies.
 
This has been a war about transparency, accountability, entitlement to power, resistance to change, vested interests, jealousy, political rivalries, personal scores and the fight for civilised human values. Harvey and Harrison were among the progressives, seeking to challenge the Council's habitual secrecy, and the grip of its inner circle of cynical decisionmakers.
 
In that carefree atmosphere of pre-referendum Britain when everyone was tired of  experts, at the dawn of this post-truth era, the Town Council gladly ignored the repeated advice of both Herefordshire Council's legal officer and a leading local government barrister that what they were doing was legally indefensible. Instead they left it in the hands of the Chief Executive of Herefordshire Association of Local Councils to cobble together a process. (Twelve months on, this still hasn't been written down nor adopted officially by LTC in its standing orders).  
 
Connections

It just so happens that this shadowy presence, Mrs Lynda Wilcox, is the wife of Herefordshire Council's Chairman, Cllr Brian Wilcox, freemason, and a leading Conservative and determined political opponent of Cllr Liz Harvey from It's Our County.
 
Armed with her talents, but which do not yet appear to extend to legal expertise, Mrs Wilcox likes to make herself indispensible to parish and town clerks around the county, and in return receives subscriptions to her organisation. She organises training events creatively marketed as 'Wise Owl', 'In the Hot Seat' and 'Information Corner'.
 
Much is made of HALC's 'insurance-backed' advice on its website. This could prove useful in the future if it emerges that incorrect advice has been given to any of its clients. As Mrs Wilcox says in her blurb with no hint of irony, 'Without HALC Clerk cover, your [parish council] could easily act unlawfully.'
 
Just as she could hardly be accused of originality in her marketing, so she would struggle to give the outward appearance of being wholly impartial in her dealings with Ledbury Town Council. Annual subs to HALC pay her wages, while her husband's political group is daily locked in mortal combat with Liz Harvey's. (The Tories have never forgiven Harvey for snatching one of their Ledbury Ward seats in 2010, and then another in 2015. Politics, a dirty game).
 
Liz Harvey argued persuasively that Mrs 'Wise-Owl' Wilcox could not be neutral or objective since it was her contentious advice to the Town Council upon which the dispute mainly centred. Initially, the responsible Council committee accepted this conflict of interest and voted to dispense with her services. But then she was reinstated. Why?
 
Even the (Tory) MP Bill Wiggin was enlisted to the Council's cause with public accusations of bullying and harassment of 'his friend' the Clerk. Uncharitable souls might suspect a political conspiracy.
 
Foreign

Latin and legal scholars will be familiar with the concept of 'nemo judex in causa sua' (nobody should be a judge in their own cause) but such fine sentiments are sadly written in a long dead tongue as far as Ledbury Town Councillors are concerned. It would be almost as unintelligible to them as the lofty words of that most hated foreign body, the European Court of Human Rights: 'everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law'. (Article 6). 
 
So where next? The signs are not encouraging.
 
Either Harvey and Harrison will be found guilty of harassment towards town council staff in which case their involvement with town politics will probably be at an end. Or, if innocent, the Town Council will descend into political meltdown.
 
Sources close to the Mayor suggest that Ledbury Town Council is minded to ignore any findings of Herefordshire Council's investigation. Councillors are already saying in the local press that they have no intention of resigning, even before the report is published. More ominously, the Council's dirty tricks machine appears once again to be cranking into life, a last gasp effort to deflect attention from its own troubles.
 
Priorities

This affair has lasted two years, cost thousands of pounds of public money and wasted prodigious amounts of time in argument and dispute. On top of the four thousand already spent, Ledbury Town Council has laid up a war chest of a further £10 thousand for future legal action, this, at a time of savage local government cutbacks. It is clear where the Council's priorities lie. Itself. 
 
There will not be any winners in this game, only losers, the hapless council tax payers of Ledbury and Herefordshire.
 
At what point will they rise up and call a halt to this madness? Might 2017 finally be the year when democratic values begin to assert themself in our sorely abused community?

 
As expected, the louts from the far right didn’t materialise in town on Saturday (21 May), but this doesn’t mean the threat to democracy and free speech has gone from the streets of Ledbury. A more insidious authoritarian movement is taking root in the town, not among the more rabid elements of social media as might be supposed, but centred within Ledbury Town Council itself.
 
There is a conspiracy to purge the Council of dissenters. Some councillors appear to be waging a concerted campaign of denigration against their critics. Yes, they are telling lies, but the old guard are also busily manipulating the levers of power to firm their grip on power. The aim is to eliminate from Ledbury Town Council dissident voices, any trace of resistance. By also creating such a hostile environment, it is clear that no decent-minded person would in future contemplate standing for election. If all goes according to plan, at the next poll, there will be few candidates willing to stand for Council, just the old faces, allowing the old rotten borough practice of co-option to return with a vengeance. Neat isn't it?
 
In Ledbury, as in other politically stricken towns (such as Berwick, Frodsham, Peterlee, Tewkesbury), local democracy is being nicely snuffed out by a ruthless clique of legally sanctioned hoodlums. Town and parish councils are truly laws unto themselves: there is no oversight, no ombudsman, no higher authority to which you can appeal. Resistance is not tolerated. They are fertile territory for power freaks, narcissists and right-wing authoritarians.
 
As 'banned' Ledbury Town Councillor Andrew Harrison pointed out at last week's Annual Council Meeting (12 May 2016), our Council is a morally bankrupt institution.
 
If you express an opinion which is contrary to the majority view, and which offends elements of extreme right wing nationalists, you are now liable to be reported for bringing the council into disrepute. Even as an elected councillor, you are not allowed to state your opinion within a council debate, it seems. [i]
 
Minutes, the bedrock of legal constitutional practice, are subject to manipulation, distortion and omission of key facts which present a false account of proceedings. [ii]
 
Scrutiny by elected members is regarded at best as trouble-making, but if persistent, is subject to accusations of bullying and harassment leading to ‘banning’ (as has happened to Andrew Harrison and Liz Harvey).[iii]
 
When some elected councillors with alternative opinions attempt to put their side of things, they are told to be quiet, while others, with more palatable views, are given free rein to read out pre-written statements, wander off topic and be generally offensive or inflammatory whenever they wish. [iv]
 
The Ledbury Town Council establishment takes a very relaxed attitude to the application of its standing orders and financial regulations, either ignoring them completely or, if this proves inconvenient, chucking them aside and coming up with new rules that better suit its purposes. Meantime, some of the rules of operation are scrupulously observed, generally those that disallow discussion or are controlling in nature.[v]
 
At the head of this league table of democratic contempt is the matter of council resolutions, when a vote is taken to do something: these decisions are theoretically inviolate, as legally binding as a court judgement. But in the deceitful world of Ledbury Town Council, they are, if required, completely ignored by councillors (and sometimes staff). [vi]
 
Taken in the round, Ledbury Town Council is a corrupt institution. It has members who are motivated by greed for power, personal self-interest and covert political objectives. It is a place where objectivity, fairness and respect as core ethical values are entirely missing. Anything goes.
 
Political scientists draw a distinction between dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. The former are characterised by the rule of a single figure, or a small ‘junta’; they are totalitarian in the sense that there is no freedom of speech or expression, while democratic institutions and an independent judiciary are suppressed.
 
Ledbury is not a dictatorship – despite the increasing power and influence that has accreted to the cultish figure of the Mayor in recent years under Annette Crowe and Bob Barnes, abetted by the local press.
 
Life under an authoritarian administration is rarely much more agreeable even if it appears less overtly vicious than a dictatorship. There exists superficially a plural system to which the trappings of democracy are paid lip service with elections, legislative debate, and the toleration of dissent – up to a point.
 
In places like Russia, Zimbabwe, and Turkey however, the odds are stacked against alternative voices. There are prosecutions for defaming the government or the church, trumped up charges against opposition politicians, redrawing of the legislative framework to outlaw criticism and there is collusion with a supine press which presents one-sided reportage. Sound familiar? 
 
In this toxic setting, political corruption is rife: nepotism, croneyism, mutual back-scratching for personal advantage and shady deals to do down opponents, up to an including violence. Because the government so effectively controls the channels of mass communication, and by patronage, pulls the strings of the civil service and judges, these regimes cling to power by popular assent. Putin, Mugabe and Erdogan are undeniably popular, and continue to win elections. It doesn’t make them good people or run good governments. The people are spun a line, kept in ignorance. Critics of the regime have their reputations ruined. Dirty tricks do the trick.
 
When there are no rules to which the powerful (and rich) adhere, and when there are no mechanisms to call politicians to account, the door is open to financial corruption. If there’s nobody watching the sweetshop, why wouldn’t people fill their pockets with lollies and bonbons? In dirty politics, you do what you can get away with. Why not?
 
The cancerous nature of authoritarian administration is more than dispiriting. It robs places of their creative vigour and dynamic energy. What’s the point in trying? Advancement happens not by talent or merit, but by knuckling down and playing the game, doing as you’re told, licking sweaty arses.
 
And so to Ledbury. The miserable tarnished crew dodge and scheme their way to looming perdition. We hope. But in the meantime, the casualties are many. Not just the two banned councillors, and those who have resigned or retired in disgust (I am one of a long line over the years), but the decent souls around the town who look on in dismay, the young people sickened by politics, the ratepayers who receive poor value for money, and the enthusiasts for change and action who have their dreams quashed at every turn. Good things happen in Ledbury despite its entourage of costly politicians. Mediocrity rules.
 
Ledbury's authoritarian town council is not just a democratic obscenity, but it is a tragedy for our community.
 
Here's a final thought. I have had some harsh words to say about these people over the years. People ask me, how do I get away with saying such awful things without incurring actions for libel. It's quite simple. I tell the truth. Nothing I say, not a word, is without evidence and justification. Ledbury Town Council is at liberty to sue me for defamation. I challenge them. Do it.
 
Notes...

[i] Cllr Liz Harvey is being reported by Ledbury Town Council for bringing the Council into disrepute. Her offence was to suggest that red, white and blue bunting should not be left up all summer long as it could be construed by some people as a political symbol of the far right, of Loyalist sentiment. Cllr Annette Crowe said that ‘because we’ve had so many complaints about the [bunting issue], and that’s gone into the national newspapers, and the threat from the far right… should not be how a council acts, and I propose that [this] goes forward to Herefordshire Council [as a complaint].
 

[ii] At Ledbury Town Council Standing Committee on 22 December 2015, a resolution was taken to seek alternative clerical support and advice to that being offered by Lynda Wilcox, who was judged not to be impartial and objective in managing the staff complaints process against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey. Lynda Wilcox was acting as stand-in Clerk to LTC and is the Chief Executive of Herefordshire Council of Local Councils. (She is also the wife of Cllr Brian Wilcox, Conservative Councillor and Chairman of Herefordshire Council, but that's another story...)
 
Minutes of that Standing Committee meeting were presented by Annette Crowe to Full Council on 28 January which omitted the Standing Committee resolution dispensing with Lynda Wilcox (who also wrote the minutes). Annette Crowe presented them as an accurate record, knowing them to be incomplete and misleading.
 
A verbal report was also made by Mayor Annette Crowe to LTC Full Council on 19 January, stating that it had been agreed by Standing Committee that Full Council would henceforth be handling the staff grievances (not Standing Committee). No such discussion took place. Annette Crowe actively misled Ledbury Town Council.
 
At the meeting of 25 February Full Council, Cllr Maria Mackness asked why the minutes of Standing Committee were ‘incomplete’. Mayor Crowe refused to discuss the matter and ordered Cllr Mackness to move on. Minutes of that Full Council meeting  (25 Feb) written by Karen Mitchell, presented on 7 April, omitted Cllr Mackness’s important question. Councillors challenged the accuracy of these minutes (because they were incomplete), and were told by the Clerk that accuracy could only be discussed of what was written, not what had been left out.
 
Mrs Wilcox clerked the Extraordinary Full Council Meeting (5 May) to consider ‘sanctions’ against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey.
 
Cllr Harrison questioned why Full Council was being asked to determine the  sanctions against them for bullying, when there had been a council resolution on 19 January which said that the Grievance Panel itself should set the sanctions. Lynda Wilcox said the process was within the terms of reference agreed, and LTC was acting correctly. (It was not).
 
Minutes presented at LTC council meeting 12 May, omitted Cllr Harrison’s important question: again, discussion of the accuracy of minutes was only allowed for what was written, not was left out.
 
Annette Crowe misled councillors on 19 January by not stating that Standing Committee had resolved not to use Lynda Wilcox henceforth because she was prejudiced and compromised.
 
Minutes have been systematically falsified to conceal this fact by Lynda Wilcox, and presented as accurate by Annette Crowe, Mayor.
 
Council took decisions concerning the prosecution of the grievance process which were contrary to council resolutions, unlawful in respect of the provisions of the Localism Act 2011, and outside of ACAS guidelines pertaining to grievance procedures.
 
Had they been provided with a true and accurate record, it most unlikely this process would have unfolded in the way it did.
 

[iii] Cllrs Harrison and Harvey have been found guilty of bullying, harassment and intimidation of the Clerk and Deputy Clerk of Ledbury Town Council. The evidence for this is subject to independent review by the Monitoring Officer of Herefordshire Council so cannot be discussed in detail at this point, but it will soon be in the public arena. Both councillors deny any wrong-doing and contend that they have been systematically blocked from investigating potential financial irregularities, breaches of procedure, lack of staff impartiality, and political conspiracy. 
 

[iv] As an example, during the discussion of the motion to report Cllrs Harvey and Warmington to Herefordshire Council for misconduct, Cllr Harrison attempted to say a few words in their defense (at 7’41” in the film clip). He was stopped by Mayor Debbie Baker. In contrast a few minutes earlier, Cllr Martin Eager (at 4’38”) read out a prewritten statement denouncing Cllr Harvey which had nothing to do with the motion under discussion but was allowed to speak unhindered.
 
Such two-sided treatment is a regular feature of LTC debate: if you agree with the ‘establishment’ you can speak, if not, you are silenced.
 

[v] The most outlandish recent example of this concerns the procedure LTC used to prosecute the grievance complaints against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey. In short, LTC should have referred the complaint to Herefordshire Council for review by the Monitoring Officer. Even if it had been handled in-house, the matter should have been dealt with by the Standing Committee according to Standing Orders. Instead it was given to the 16 councillors who constitute the Full Council. The reason for these hastily cobbled together changes were to load the dice against an innocent verdict by recruiting about a dozen politically hostile councillors into the process: precisely the reason why code of conduct complaints should properly be considered by the Monitoring Officer.
 

[vi] Having got itself into a mess with the grievance process against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey, LTC has twice voted for resolutions which it then has ignored because they would have got in the way of its objective to deliver a guilty verdict. 

Local reporter Gary Bills-Geddes must be thrilled that his bunting story hit the populist jackpot - and made the national tabloid press into the bargain. It's not often a part-time weekly newspaper journalist breaks a story which ends up in the Daily Mail. Somebody's got to do it I guess. Mark Twain said 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story'.
 
That Gary deliberately slanted his story for maximum impact is clear. It's what journalists do. Did he and his colleagues though really intend to unleash a true patriots versus foreigners, us and them crusade against dissident town and county councillor Liz Harvey?
 
Comparing Liz Harvey's words with the way it was reported reveals significant discrepancies. Other elements of the story from the brief Town Council discussion were also left out.
 
In the Ledbury Reporter's extensive coverage, five times the word "foreign" was used in the front page splash and related features, even though Liz Harvey did not utter that word once in her brief address to Ledbury Town Council. This is what Mr Bills-Geddes said in the opening sentence of the story: 'A councillor has voted against red, white and blue... because she fears it will upset foreign visitors.' In a photo caption of Bob Barnes the paper said:  'Cllr Liz Harvey claims the patriotic colours could 'unsettle' foreign visitors to the town.' In an editorial, it twice uses the phrase 'unsettle foreign visitors'. There is a What You Say piece; this too opens with the 'unsettling foreign visitors' phrase.
 
Why did the Reporter keep repeating that phrase 'foreign visitors'? Was it designed as a dog whistle to whip up chauvinistic, even racist sentiments?
 
It worked. Small wonder that the baying mob on Voice of Ledbury said that 'foreign visitors' can go jog on, or less polite words to that effect. The flotsam and jetsam of the fascist fringe are so outraged, they plan to demonstrate in Ledbury.
 
When a 'social media frenzy' (the Reporter's words) takes place, it's advisable to check the evidence. What Cllr Harvey actually said was: 'There were quite a few poets who came from Ireland who were on the [Poetry Festival] programme. They were really quite unnerved by the red white and blue and actually wondered whether they’d walked into a sort of National Front area because they were used to that in Ireland.'
 
She went on: 'I like the idea of bunting but ... it might be an opportunity to get some brightly coloured bunting that would look lovely in the middle of town but wouldn’t make people unsettled who come here as visitors'. She was responding to a suggestion from Mayor Annette Crowe that the union jack bunting be left up all summer.
 
From these off the cuff remarks, clearly unacceptable in these days of intolerant jingoism, Liz Harvey has been turned into a right wing hate figure, pilloried and threatened online, and now, outrageously according to Mrs Crowe, the cause of the potential fascist demonstration.
 
The Ledbury Reporter was also very selective in its commentary of the ensuing Council discussion. Cllr Tony Bradford, who normally gets full coverage, spoke out strongly against buying bunting for the Queen and said the money should be spent making a donation to the Ledbury Food Bank. At the other end of the argument, Cllr Jayne Roberts made what appeared to be a typically incoherent racist-xenophobic comment: 'Unfortunately', she said, 'the Moslems that come and visit us, the Irish that come and visit us... I'm afraid, it's our Queen...' When the vote came to buy red, white and blue bunting, seven councillors either voted against or abstained, including the Deputy Mayor, Keith Francis. This was over a third of the Council.
 
None of these 'facts' were reported, just Liz Harvey's words and vote. So much for balanced reporting.
 
By the time the tabloids had the story, it had been mangled into a loonie left councillor wanting to 'BAN' the flag for the Queen's birthday. A flower seller and barman, quite clearly fictional creations, were quoted in the piece.
 
One of the few balanced reactions to this hot-air balloon of political puff came from a contributor to the Facebook 'Voice of Ledbury' discussion (itself instigated by Mr Bills-Geddes). He said:
 
'I cannot believe the negativity directed toward one person who said so little, based upon a few published words from one person who should have known better.
 
'I believe that Gary Bills has caused quite the little race-storm, resulting in a public witch-hint against Cllr Harvey by not just writing an article so everyone could read what she said, but also publishing her picture, so everyone could now SEE who said it. Well done. Great job.

'Being a journalist (and I'm guessing a fairly intelligent person), I am convinced that he must have known that the reaction to his article would end like it has - with VOL going all "if they don't like it here they should just go home" and all that uneducated garbage. To me, this is really bad form.

'Whilst I understand that Cllr Harvey may possibly regret saying what she did, it was only (as I understand it) in reaction to a couple of Irish visitors, who inquired as to the nature of the blue/white/red coloured flags.

'Now, in certain parts of Ireland those colours are considered pretty political, so I can totally understand why they asked, and why she put it to the council.'
 
This gentleman might understand why, in a democratic country, people are permitted to put alternative points of view, but clearly our friends in the media do not.
 
We have been warned. When it comes to the flag, Liz Harvey is correct: it is indubitably used as a symbol of far right resistance.  It also seems these days that we may not question the wisdom of patriotic-nationalist imagery festooning our streets on pain of a reactionary backlash, led by the local paper.
 
You keep your mouth shut and your head down. Here's to the future! To democracy and free-speech! Not.  
 

What was that we were saying about Ledbury, draped in nationalist insignia all summer long, could be mistaken for a centre of far-right activism?
 
It seems our local fascist chapter, the Hereford Patriots is organising a rumble in Ledbury on 21 May. On their special Facebook Group, they say it's a: 'demonstration to demand that Cllr Liz Harvey be sacked for her anti-British, politically correct, offensive comments. Various groups attending. All welcome'. It's been advertised nationally throughout far-right networks. Lots of nice-sounding people are coming to say hello. Groups so far who have rsvp'd include the Midlands Infidels, South Coast Resistance, Pie and Mash Squad ("it's going to be a hoot"), March for England, UK Casuals ("30 game lads waiting"), London Patriots, North East Patriots, South West Infidels, Anti-anti-fascist network. "Real handy crew they are aswell" according to Mr Paul Barber commenting on Facebook.
 
The flag-waving, queen-loving, beer-swilling true patriots are now uniting under a clever little social media codeword: #5W. It stands for Five Words: We Go Where We Want. They say they are 'no longer taking it'.
 
So much for those fabled British values of tolerance, free-speech and respect for others, the Hereford 'patriots' announce: 'Lefties in positions of power who either demand that refugees are put before our people for housing, or who openly attack British ways or patriotism ought to know that we wont (sic) stand for your nonsense and you are going to draw the herd to your town/city'.
 
Herd is a good word for them to use about themselves. It means a collection of animals. They will no doubt be warmly received by some of Ledbury's indigenous racists, right-wingers and raging red-necks.

Will the local 'game lads' who threatened to fire-bomb the half Hungarian family out of the Horsehoe Pub a few years ago because they were flying the Hungarian flag be laying on lashings of half-time lemonade and sandwiches for all their pale-skinned chums?


From Ledbury Town Council a few councillors might also be swelling with patriotic pride as the parade of fluttering red, white and blue flags waves gaily down the Homend in the Spring sunshine. What a delightful tribute to our dear old Monarch and all she stands for. Well done Bob Barnes and Annette Crowe for your inspiring rallying cry last week swaddling yourselves in the Union Jack, sterling work.
 
No article about sincerely felt anti-foreigner sentiment could be complete without nodding in the direction of Cllr Jayne Roberts, veteran Ledbury Town Councillor and ex-Mayor.
 
Contributing at the end of the Council bunting debate (but unreported of course in the Ledbury Reporter) she said: 'Unfortunately, the Moslems who come to visit us, the Irish who come to visit us, I'm afraid, it's our queen'. She didn't get as far as explaining what was unfortunate, apart presumably from being Moslem or Irish.
 
Well known for her intolerance of "the pickers" as she refers to seasonal agricultural workers, Mrs Roberts the other summer had a cheery experience on her way to the office.
 
'Ha ha haygrove artic in hedge at redmarley this morning, wonder what the driver was doing this time?', she quipped on Facebook's Voice of Ledbury (where else?). 'Could it be texting, phoning or eating? this is the second time since xmas that an artic has decided to lie down in the hedge.'
 
While most reasonable people would have stopped to offer assistance and made sure there were no injuries, Mrs Roberts was happy to drive on mirthfully. When she got to work she commented:

'Not surprised as these foreign drivers should not be on our roads as they have no idea how to drive in this country'. What a lovely sentiment.
 
So when all the brave lads arrive in Ledbury, buoyed up with their #5W slogans, they won't be all alone. There will be at least a few people who will welcome their celebration of xenophobic pride. 

When I opened up my copy of the latest Ledbury Reporter and caught site of the front page, I was fortunately at home and able to run to the sink to empty the excessive saliva that had begun pooling in my mouth. While I managed to interrupt an actual attack of sickness, the lingering feeling of queasiness has persisted off and on for several days, every time in fact when I glance at those two faces grinning fatuously like a pair of Britain First supporters.

When every rational line of argument is spent, when you are facing political oblivion or pressure to own up to wrongdoing, when the game is up, there's only one thing for it. Bunting. You know that things have reached the pits when politicians wrap themselves in the flag.
 
Ertswhile enemies now best Council buddies it seems, the two laughing mayors, Mr Barnes and Mrs Crowe, have gone better than this: they have literally swagged and festooned themselves in Union Jacks. If you look carefully on the left side of the picture, you will see that Bob Barnes has got his right hand raised in a diagonal posture which for all the world looks like a fascist salute.  Or is it a raised fist or the Red Hand of Ulster? The mind boggles. Thank god the hand is cropped so we are spared the full horror of the image.
 
Flags are potent symbols. They mean lots of things. They are expressions of pride, as when Mo Farrah won his gold at the London Olympics, or of national celebration for the Queen's jubilee, or of sorrow for the fallen: who can forget the heartbreaking site of a sea of tiny flags at the Normandy commemoration each one representing a life lost in the fight against Nazism?

Or they can be objects of hatred. In Britain, the Union Jack, and more particularly the St George Cross have assumed ugly connotations over the years, unfairly so perhaps. Throughout my youth travelling to and from school in grimy Birmingham, the sight of red, white and blue flags, along with skin-head haircuts provoked in us grammar school boys, a shudder of fear and revulsion. It was the era of the Pub Bombings, and being a catholic school, we were evacuated with bomb threats on a weekly basis, as well as being targets for violence and abuse. At the Longbridge car factory against a back-drop of Union Jacks, there were terrifying mock hangings of Irish men. Anti-Irish hatred was as palpable then as anti-Muslim hatred is now. The flag had been indelibly tainted by the National Front, by extremist politics, by fascism. And I admit, those associations still linger in my mind. The lunatic right continues to appropriate the flag while menacing shoppers on Saturday afternoons and deliberately terrorising BME communities. Across the water, last summer Belfast erupted over the disputed right to fly the Union Jack over City Hall.

I have been driven up the Shankhill Road and visited North Belfast and seen the eerie sight of kirbstones painted red, white and blue, bunting and tattered flags fluttering sadly in the drizzle. In these pitifully deprived neighbourhoods, families save their pennies to have their houses painted from top to bottom as Union Jacks. You'll see a few adolescent boys kicking a can around in the broken glass, perhaps a scrawny dog wandering idly. In such benighted working class communities, tokens of patriotism, unionism, and loyalism, for they are one, are worn defiantly by people against the encroachment of enlightened, secular values, against integration and outsiders, vouchsafed against the decades of hurt and bitterness which has soured their hearts. Something of the same is witnessed in the Republican areas, although without quite the visceral xenophobia of the Loyalist districts.
 
So when Irish visitors, or people from multicultural London or Birmingham, or some black people whose lives have been ravaged by racist thugs brandishing Union flags, when they visit a quaint country town, predominantly a white British town, and see it decked in a profusion of red, white and blue for no apparent reason, they do feel a cultural jolt, a political charge, as do I. It's probably wrong, but there it is. You can't deny your gut instincts. The flag is still controversial. It means something. Is it, as those Irish poets asked, a political statement? Is this a centre for right-wing extremism? They could be forgiven for enquiring, as some of the baying mob against Liz Harvey are undoubtedly motivated by those views. Some of those loud voices on Voice of Ledbury are known right-wing agitators. Perhaps there are one or two of them in Ledbury Town Council judging by the rancid comments of some councillors in recent years.
 
Annette Crowe is outraged at the suggestion that the crass image on the front of the local paper might be seen as a nod to the far right. She asks: 'Any connotation like that, about our town; it's unacceptable. It puts the town in a bad light. Just putting the comments out there is unacceptable.' Is she either extremely naive or is this just more political hay-making, another gambit to get her name in the paper yet again? Is that look of defiant glee genuinely about intense patriotic sentiment or the prosecution of tawdry political opportunism? I hadn't realised that we had disappeared down a worm-hole and wound up in North Korea, where free thought, much less a stated opinion is forbidden.

The Daily Express and Mail, themselves proud fascist sympathisers in the 1930s and still raging against anyone left of Mrs Thatcher, claimed Liz Harvey wanted to 'BAN (their caps) the Union Flag.' Did she really? See the transcript of exactly what she said in the Council meeting here.  More worrying is the fact that Annette Crowe appears keen to ban real concerns people might have about the far right and its imagery permeating our town. Even the mention of it is now 'unacceptable' in Mrs Crowe's dubious judgement.

The question for Mr Barnes and Mrs Crowe is why they would ever think that staring out provocatively draped in rampant nationalist insignia could ever be a good thing, except on a day of national celebration. Even then, good taste surely demands that there are limits. A few 'true patriots' no doubt will be delighted. Most reasonable people will think them tastelessly vulgar. Others with longer memories, finer political sensibilities or first-hand experience of the corrosive effects of nationalist hatred will be disturbed, even worried. 
 
My view, and it's not worth much, is that by all means we should put out the flags and swathe the town in bunting for the old Queen's birthday and 1916 commemoration. Let there be lots of red, white and blue, but there should also, properly be a healthy dose of Commonwealth colour. The 56 nations of the Commonwealth love Elizabeth as much as the Brits; they fought in the First and Second World Wars, one million seven hundred thousand men and women died. Does their contribution, and memory count for nothing in Ledbury?
 
What a kind gesture it would be both to the monarch, and to our friends overseas, that Ledbury celebrates its place in the world and shows that we are not a narrow-minded little town full of patriotic zealots.
 
To Mr B and Mrs C, they should remember Samuel Johnson's words: patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Note: please no comments pulling me up on my use of the Union Jack, rather than the supposedly correct 'Union Flag'. In Britain, it's known universally as the Union Jack whatever the pedantic patriots  say.

​2015 was a special year for Ledbury Town Council. There was, for the first time in a very long time, an election for all its members. A sprinkling of new faces who appeared in the Council heralded fresh thinking and enthusiasm. Did it live up to its promise? Did the lights of democracy finally flicker into life?
 
After the rifts and bitterness of the previous year's Barnes’ mayoralty, Annette Crowe swept into the Mayor’s seat like a latter-day Brunhilde, pledged to bring people together, to sow happiness, and introduce a new era of openness and democratic transparency.  At her Civic Service, Handel’s majestic coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, rang out in a burst of hope and joy. While she and her friends were thrilled, not everyone was suitably impressed with this regal musical offering. Eyebrows were also raised when invitations went out for the ‘Mayor’s Glitz and Glamour’ Ball, a hefty £45 a head taking place at Alexander Park, half way to Hereford.
 
But despite these minor off-key gaffes, hopes were high that Annette’s reign could only bring better things to the Council. God knows, they surely couldn’t get any worse after her predecessor. Could they?
 
Yes they could.
 
The last twelve months has surely to rank as the most ineffectual and unimpressive term of mayoral office since… well, the year before, as it happens, during Bob Barnes’ inglorious turn with the plate chain. And that is saying a lot.
 
Reviewing positive achievements coming of Ledbury Town Council’s efforts is an undeniable challenge, particularly so this year.
No Room.
There is one. In the teeth of seething opposition from the Old Guard, some council meetings have been relocated to disabled-accessible venues. Being charitable, it’s a step in the right direction. Mind you, for as many meetings that have taken place away the Market House, an equal number have remained there. How so?
 
Personally, that shabby upstairs room has never appealed: from the throne-like dais upon which the Mayor and her lackeys grandly comport themselves, the steep dark stairs, the amateurishly arranged pictures and wonky displays, to its dingy lighting and impossible acoustics, the place reeks of oppressive tradition, a throw-back to the 1850s when it was done out as a meeting room. It is not a comfortable space. Yes the Market House is an icon of Ledbury – but for all the wrong reasons.
 
Why is the Council still using a room that is completely off-limits to anyone who can’t manage stairs or struggles with their hearing, a room that is impervious to good quality sound and video recording? I think we know the answer to that question, but I asked this anyway at a Council meeting and was told condescendingly how very hard it is to find suitable meeting rooms in Ledbury. I wanted to argue the point, but despair overcame me.

There are two problems. Why hasn’t a venue roster for the next four years of the Council been drawn up? From the various church halls, the Community Hall, St Katherine’s, the Burgage Hall and school assembly halls, surely a range of vacant slots can be identified? If not immediately – let’s not get too excited - at least the town might expect that sometime in the yawning future all meetings will happen at ground level. Not yet it seems. No financial provision has been made for room bookings in the coming year. Also, no arrangements have been made to reserve a regular slot in accessible rooms as and when they become available.
 
The plain fact is that Ledbury Town Council has no interest in making itself accessible to the community.  Annette Crowe’s early enthusiasm for this easiest of projects has all but petered out.  No stars awarded.

​This brings us to the second point. Ledbury needs more community meeting facilities. So what consideration has the Council given to this subject? None. In a couple of years’ time, Ledbury’s population could have grown by several thousand souls. The pressure on facilities will become more intense. For a town of its size, Ledbury is pitifully short of meeting, performance and rehearsal spaces. Who cares? Not the Council. It’s too busy running the cemetery (at a financial loss) and other traditional ‘maintenance’ pastimes that occupy all its efforts and imagination.
Unneighbourly Behaviour.
As usual in the face of such pressing questions, Ledbury Town Council prefers to look inwards and spend a lot time fiddling with itself. The Neighbourhood Plan could have been the vehicle to identify locations for town centre assembly rooms catering to young and old together, bigger and better than we have now. There is public money to support such projects. Look at Bishops Frome’s splendid new village centre.
 
Alas, the volunteers sustaining Ledury’s Neighbourhood Plan, running with such revolutionary ideas, were given the sack in October 2015. At that embarrassing Council meeting, Cllr Rob Yeoman applied a dose of political ‘Agent’ Orange to the green shoots of community activism after the disconsolate years with dreary Bob Barnes at the helm of the project
 
The Ledbury Spring: it couldn’t last. In a right-wing coup that would have gladdened a junta of geriatric generals, the Council control freaks snatched it all back. It was an act of vindictive nihilism.  What a stupid thing to do.
 
Cllr Yeoman bemoaned the slow progress and unruly behaviour of the Neighbourhood Plan team. We needed progress, and professionalism, he said, and fast. Consultants would manage the Plan henceforth and in the interests of efficiency, select the best people to work with.
 
Five months later and where are we? Nowhere. Not a thing of substance has been achieved since the coup. I lie, for the budget for the Plan has been raised from £20 thousand to an eye-watering £70 thousand, most of that going the way of consultants, the Foxley Tagg Partnership. The completion date has been pushed back to sometime around 2018 – long after the major housing developments for the town will have been set in stone. That will mean the project has been in progress for seven long years. Why, some of the original members may tragically have passed on by then.
Building Spree.
There has been a ‘call for sites’ with advertisements taken out in the local press in which landowners have been asked to come forward and have their fields and meadows considered for building plots. Not wishing to be too hyperbolic, can I just say that this is an OUTRAGE. Ledbury’s Neighbourhood Plan has no need to consider additional housing on top of the already confirmed Viaduct site (600 homes), the Cricket Pitch (100 homes) and the likely redevelopment of the Football Ground (about 60 homes), the outstanding possibility of Gladman appeal being upheld (321 houses) and the 50+ homes which have already been built in the parish since the clock started ticking in 2011 on the town’s housing growth target of 800 homes by 2031.
 
Given that Ledbury has already more than fulfilled its housing quota up to 2030, why the hell is Mrs Sally Tagg, a development consultant with strong links to the housebuilding industry, being paid an additional £5,000 of public money to solicit further bids from landowners for even more housing? Are the people of Ledbury aware that we have a circle of consultants and town councillors who seem intent on building way more houses than even the development hungry Herefordshire Council has allocated for us? Possibly not: external communications with the community have been typically inadequate and ineffective.
Lacklustre.
In other news, the Town Council ruled out the running of the public toilets in Bye Street. It also refused, until a couple of weeks ago, to share grass-cutting duties with Herefordshire Council, long after every other parish and town in the County had felt it necessary to do so. It refused the opportunity for funding from Herefordshire Council to fill potholes locally. It rebuffed an approach from the police for a ground-breaking burglary deterrent project for the whole town. It has even had to hand back getting on for £8,000 of grant funding which was there to PAY the council to consult with local people. No progress has been made on taking on the running (and income from) any of the town centre car-parks, again, unlike other local market towns. Even the apparent ‘gift’ of a piece of public art is seeing the council surprised by the need for several thousand pounds of public money to be spent on its installation.
 
Out of control traffic continues to upset and endanger local residents. Nothing has been done to tackle this, despite firm proposals being put forward for a traffic management survey to be undertaken. A local resident is fuming that his offer to pay for a speed survey in New Street has been repeatedly rejected by the Town Clerk.
 
Democratic participation: no progress.
 
Ledbury’s miserable markets continue to occupy much time and energy in meetings and working groups, but with little success to show. It’s not difficult to get a good market off the ground. Towns and cities are doing it all over the world, have been for a few thousand years now. Once again, in this town, we continue to miss the mark.
Steady as she goes.
So, Ledbury Town Council’s annual budget of £320 thousand continues to be spent in the way that it always has. Forty per cent of it goes on running the town council itself (see analysis).  It employs a large staff who are apparently rushed off their feet. But what are they doing most of the time? Seemingly running the Council… meetings, minutes, administration, lots of bureaucracy while maintaining a comfortable existence in their cosy, expensive-to-run offices in Church Street. Most of the rest is spent on looking after the Rec, some grounds maintenance in Dog Hill, and subsidising the cemetery – things it has been doing since it first began; plus ça change.
 
Financial regulations are left unreformed. There are still glaring holes in the way the Neighbourhood Plan is being managed. None of the recommendations made by last year’s official auditor have been enacted.
 
It’s not that we have high expectations, or begrudge the wages of Town Council staff, the frustration is that so little happens of consequence as a result of them. What are we getting for our money?

If Ledbury Town Council ceased to exist tomorrow, would anyone notice? Would there be an outcry? Would our quality of life be diminished? I don’t think so. Let’s face it, alternative, much cheaper arrangements not requiring the expensive apparatus of democracy, could be put in place to cut the grass and dig the graves.
 
When you come to look at Ledbury Town Council’s year, there is not a lot to look at, beyond the business-as-usual back-stabbing, the amateurish disregard for rules and due process, the steady drip-drip of poison emanating from shady political groupings, oh, and the deadening cloak of incompetence that seems to attend everything it ever does. How is it that a group of mainly clever, thoughtful, good-hearted people can turn themselves into such a shower?
 
All the grandiose trappings of our town council, are at best an irrelevance, sometimes a nuisance, but mostly a complete waste of time. Buck up people. 
 
The trouble with rising town council tax demands is not so much the 11% percentage increase on the Council Tax bill (which in real terms represents just 65p every month), but the poor value that local people receive from their investment in local services. If we got more for our money and had a town council which worked successfully to bring investment, jobs and extra funding into the town, people like Mr John Worby (Letters, Ledbury Reporter, 25 March) wouldn’t feel quite so much like he was being taken for a mug. 

At the height of the Cold War in 1961, a small group of determined politicians who believed unshakeably in themselves, brought the world to within a twitch of nuclear Armageddon.

On paper it seemed like a good idea. America’s Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was designed to overthrow Fidel Castro’s Soviet-leaning regime. It was more than a humiliating failure for President Kennedy. Fearing another assault, Castro appealed to the Soviets for defensive support who willingly set up a battery of nuclear missiles just ninety miles from the Florida coast, bringing every US city within striking distance. Thus ensued thirteen unlucky days which nearly ended in World War Three. A deal was struck finally, and Kruschev agreed to remove the missiles in return for the US accepting the existence of communist Cuba and humiliatingly, removing its own nukes from Italy and Turkey.

Who lost most? Answers on a postcard…

The Bay of Pigs fiasco became the focus for a psychological examination of why people continue to do things that are patently wrong-headed, misguided and unwise in the face of overwhelming evidence that they shouldn’t. By insulating itself from criticism and vigorously suppressing any alternative voices, the Kennedy administration had become blind to its own recklessness. Arguably Tony Blair, George Bush and their advisors suffered from the same myopia when they launched the Iraq invasion, another military disaster waiting to happen.

Thinking the Same Way

Irving Janis coined the term ‘Groupthink’ to describe the phenomenon of irrational decision-making among close-knit groups.  What happens is that individuals within the group feel a strong pull to conform, to back each other up, and to avoid outside influences which may challenge their comfortable consensus.

It is cosy being part of a friendly, mutually supportive, stable team in which members are unquestioningly loyal to each other, where there is minimal conflict. While it might feel good for all kinds of psychological reasons, this is not a healthy situation in which to find yourself. There is a tendency to closed-mindedness, to stereotype alternative viewpoints as spiteful, meddlesome and biased, to label dissenters as treacherous trouble-makers or even bullies.  When the group begins to believe unquestioningly in the rectitude of its behaviour and values, when important decisions are waved through without argument, and when alternative viewpoints are greeted with affront and outrage, you know you are in trouble.

Groupthink happens in companies, political parties, in quangos, among military planners and in local councils, just about anywhere where small groups of like-minded individuals are working in a closed environment. It is most likely to occur where these groups inhabit situations where they perceive themselves to be under threat, real or imagined, and so feel insecure and defensive. 

Ledbury Town Council Does It Again

There is more than a touch of groupthink in Ledbury Town Council just now.

At last night’s Finance and General Purposes Committee (23 October), the reaction of two councillors who hold positions of power in the Council was intensely revealing.

In considering some pages of accounts, Cllr Liz Harvey proposed that the format of the information could be improved, that the information was confusing and difficult to interpret, particularly for members of the public. A sensible, diplomatic response might have been to agree to have a look at the matter and explore ways of making improvements if possible. Not a bit of it. Bristling, the chairman, backed up by the Deputy Mayor, waved the comment aside and said that he could see no problem. End of discussion.

Later in the meeting, I raised some concerns about the training budget for Town Council staff. Last year and this, the budget was £2000, about 2.7% of the salary total. It was being proposed that this remain at the same percentage in future years. Not only did the overall figure look to be on the low side (5% of salary would be a rough norm in the wider business world), but given the scale of challenge in coming years with additional responsibilities handed to the Council, and an election in 2015 involving a new intake of councillors, I suggested it would make sense to invest more generously in staff learning and development.

When that suggestion was slapped down, I pointed out, unhelpfully it seems, that there appeared to be a problem in this area given that less than a third (£618, representing 0.9% of salary expenditure) of last year’s training budget had been actually spent, with a similar trend in evidence this year. Why, I asked, were staff not being encouraged to take up training? Why was the training budget so underspent? Was this not a failure of HR management given the centrality of having highly motivated, fully equipped people at the heart of the Town Council?

My comments were fairly pithy, but they were well meaning in that our office staff are the Council’s single greatest asset whom I believe should be fully supported in their professional development. Not managing to spend even a modest training budget such as ours, cannot be counted a success, except that is, if you think training people is a waste of money.

To this, I was told at some length by the Chairman Paul Winter that he took ‘great exception’ to my comments. I should not use words like ‘failure’ and other emotive language, he scolded. I was wrong to suggest that people were not free to take up training opportunities (something I didn’t say nor imply). There were nods of agreement around the table. Hadley is at it again. Causing trouble.  How very dare you! And no thanks, Cllr Winter added, he wouldn’t be requiring my input in helping to undertake a training needs analysis which aligned staff learning with strategic organisational priorities, an area in which I am professionally qualified.  A raw nerve had clearly been accidentally touched.

Bad Vibes

No it’s not pleasant being bombarded with bad vibes, secure in the knowledge that my name is once again confirmed as mud by the ruling elite. I don’t expect colleagues always to agree with me. Over fifty four years, I’ve had my fair share of being attacked by badly-informed and short-sighted people. What I do expect, is at least a semblance of objectivity in the way decisions are made, a willingness to take on board alternative ideas. It’s why I’m involved in this small town politics thing: god knows it takes a lot of valuable time and energy, is emotionally exhausting and perennially frustrating. This is the town I live in and care about. Damn politics and dancing on egg-shells, I want to see right by Ledbury.

Back to groupthink: if Ledbury ever needed a diverse range of new voices to inject some critical thinking, dynamic creativity and strategic acumen into our affairs, it is now.  The town is facing a set of formidable challenges – rampant building development, public service cutbacks, cracks in our community cohesion and an unsustainable local economy.  The last thing we need is a small inner circle of old-hands deciding what’s best, regarding alternative views as politically subversive, listening only to each other, believing completely in their own narrow, entrenched world-view.

Last night’s meeting was a case study in obstinacy, closed-mindedness and overweening control.  There needs to be a change of mindset. 

There will be once again howls of outrage at this piece. You know what? This voice, at least, will not be suppressed. Troublesome I may be, but I won’t be buying into the cosy establishment consensus that has run Ledbury for decades. It's dangerous. Far better to run with that pesky thing called democracy.