Call me Cllr MOF

I have been elected, without contest, to Llansanffraid Glan Conwy Community Council. With only 11 candidates for 12 seats there will be no election for the community council again this year.

Having looked through old local newspapers I cannot find any reference to Glan Conwy Council being subject to election since the end of the Second World War (with the exception of me and Dan standing in a by-election last year).

I'm sure that Glan Conwy isn't unique in this respect; there will be a large number of other community councilors who are also selected without election through all of Wales.

I have been congratulated on my "election" by many members of the community, but I don't think that congratulations are in order; I am bitterly disappointed that I have just been selected without having to go through the rigours of the electoral process. I would have preferred to have stood an election, made my case and lost miserably rather than be, yet another shoo in, in the long list of shoo ins to the council!

Community Councils are the foundation stone of the democratic process, the fact that so many community councillors are selected without election makes a farce of local democracy.

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There are four candidates for the County Council elections in the Llansanffraid Ward for Conwy

Ivonne Sarah Lesiter-Burgess Welsh Liberal Democrat
John Malcolm Spicer Independent
Dan Worsley Welsh Conservative Party
and
the candidate who will have my support

Graham "Gas" Rees

No democracy in co-option!

Putting apart sour grapes (and my grapes are very sour) elections are the way in which we should choose our representatives. There is something wrong in the way that community councillors are co-opted under the current system!

The rules are that ten people have to ask for a community council by-election; if that doesn't happen then the council co-opts.

In my last experience three candidates wanted to be considered as community councillor - but there was no election.

In my opinion three candidates should automatically trigger an election – three people after the same elected job – put it to the voters!

Surely the very fact that more than one person wants an elected position should automatically trigger an election makes sense in a democracy!

The only reason for co-option should be if nobody had put their name forward for election!

And now for some more sour grapes - Drew wouldn't have stood a chance against me in an open election, so he wouldn't have taken the risk of standing! I would have won unoposed!

So much for democracy!

Glan Conwy Community Council

The council co-opted a vacancy today to a person who lives in Eglwysbach, rather than a resident of our village!

I am very annoyed. Only two people have asked the voters of Glan Conwy to support their membership of the community council in the past 30 years! Me and Dan.

Dan won fair and square in the August poll, but I had more votes than any other member of the community council has ever gained! It is a travesty that the support that I gained in an open election should be overridden by internal favouritism.

I will stand for election again next May, on my record of community service, which I hope the people of Glan Conwy will respect! I can guarantee that I will beat some of the nodding donkies who are, with all respect, an embarrassment to Glan Conwy Council!

Glan Conwy- a place where many sleep but few live?

There have been a number of posts on the Welsh blogosphere in the past few days noting the latest Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation Statistics; as Jac 'o the North notes there aren't that many surprises in the statistics – the poor areas of Wales are still poor, although as Plaid Wrecsam notes, not all is woe, some areas have improved.

The statistics will, undoubtedly, help politicians and others to see that something should be done and attempt to offer something as an answer to those problems; good luck to them – I hope that something works.

It is easy to split large towns and cities into areas of social deprivation on a ward to ward basis; Caia Park is a poor area of Wrecsam, St Mellon's Estate is a poor area of Cardiff / Newport, the West End is a poor part of Rhyl etc. Something must be done for them!

But what about the poor in my village - Llansanffraid Glan Conwy?

Both wards in my little village are doing all right; both are in the upper percentile of Welsh communities, as are most rural wards. But this hides the fact that wards divide the rich and the poor in cities and large towns, but leylandii hedges divide them in rural communities!

A side effect of the ward based needs analysis used by the Assembly Government is that the needs of locals in my ward and similar wards thorough Wales are ignored, because the needs of the native poor of working age are masked by the wealth of incoming retirees – which makes us a statistically rich community but means that locals haven't got a hope in hell of getting any support from the Assembly or any other Government Agency to create work or leisure or community spirit in our village.

So my village becomes a place in which many sleep but few live!

Something should be done about this too!