Swansea Labour Party 5

The leader of the Labour gang now running Swansea council is David Phillips who, despite the name, is English, and from Liverpool. It seems he came to Wales to take a job with Customs and Excise, in Pembrokeshire, some 40 years ago. Leaving after little more than 20 years service he drifted up to Swansea and became an adviser on VAT and similar issues to small businesses. For personal and council purposes Phillips has always signed himself ‘David Phillips AIIT, MInstD’.

The first set of letters stand for Associate of the Institute of Indirect Taxation. Though some unkind souls – even within his own party – questioned whether he should be using this ‘qualification’. Not least because in August last year the Institute of Indirect Taxation merged with the Chartered Institute of Taxation. (You must have seen it on the News!) It was also suggested that his membership of said body hadDavid Phillips lapsed years before the merger.

The Institute of Directors on the other hand is extant and going strong. A global body catering mainly for those on the boards of large companies . . . odd, because Phillips the tax adviser was never much more than a one-man band. There was also the problem that claiming to belong to this organisation, and perhaps having shared a fat cigar with these oppressors of the proletariat, did not go down well on the barricades with the more right-on members of Swansea Labour Party.

Anyway, things came to a head recently when an FoI was lodged asking for clarification of these letters and whether the Great Leader was entitled to flaunt them. The response was swift and Ealing-esque. Staff at the Civic Centre swung into action deleting AIIT and MInstD from all publications, physical and electronic. So we can safely assume that Phillips was not entitled to use these letters.

Leaving me to ask: What sort of man tries to impress people with letters after his name that he is not entitled to use? (And should such a man be a council leader?) Having been responsible for the expense, will Phillips now recompense the council tax payers of Swansea for council staff having to spend time covering up his little ‘oversight’?

STAYING IN SWANSEA . . .

Intelligence reaches me of regular deliveries of wind turbines through the docks, bound for Brechfa Forest, Mynydd y Betws and other sites. These turbines are coming in from, Spain, China, the USA and Denmark. On foreign-crewed and foreign-owned ships that do a quick turnaround, thereby denying the local bars and massage parlours a chance to lighten the sailors’ wallets.

The turbines then cause massive traffic problems as they are transported on specialist haulage units brought in from outside of Wales, to be erected by construction crews also from outside of Wales. Once up, they will be milking the subsidies making massive profits for their foreign owners. Often on land owned by government agencies (Forestry Commission) or English absentee landlords (Duke of Beaufort). And of course, once erected, they will not provide any employment. So who in Wales – dockers apart – benefits from these rapacious, ugly monsters? I link this with the above story because of course Swansea Labour Party is in love with wind turbines, and recently voted to inflict them on Mynydd y Gwair.

Of perhaps greater concern is a rumour circulating locally that not all the wind turbines arriving in Swansea docks and / or being erected in Wales are new. If so, is any agency empowered to monitor these turbines, check that they are up to scratch? And seeing as the effective working life of a new turbine was recently lowered from 25 to 15 or 16 years, what is the life expectancy of a second-hand machine? How could it be calculated? And who’s going to remove them and engage in genuine environmentalism – by repairing the damage done – when they cease to be of use?

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Big Gee

What do you consider as RELEVANT “tittle-tattle”?

NickO'Seer

I agree. Nick O’Seer. CN, CE, CFSP, EBRD, EIB, EU, FAO, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICCt, ITUC, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, IOC, IOM, IPU, ITU, MIGA, NAM, NSG, OPCW, OSCE, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UPU, WCL, WCO, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTO

Macsen

Is that the view of everyone in Aeron Vale Allotments Society? I didn’t realise that Swansea politics mattered north of Mawr.

Big Gee

What the hell has Aeron Vale Allotment Society got to do with anything? North of Carmarthen we all care about the politics of the whole of our country – it tends to be the M4 corridor mob that think Wales ends at Carmarthen and that it’s a desert of green from there up with no inhabitants.

What “Mawr” are you on about? I think you want to change whatever you may be smoking these days!

Macsen

Big Gee – When I click on your pseudonym I get the Aeron Vale Allotments website.
Mawr is the Council Ward in Swansea where wind turbines are to be installed – Do try and keep up.

Big Gee

OK thanks for clearing that up. So “Mawr” (Big) is a Swansea ward – very imaginative name I must say!

By way of explanation from me > I happen to run the Aeron Vale Allotment Society web-site (one of my little indulgences in semi retirement is allotment gardening). I also host another 37 sites – including this one, but http://www.aeronvale-allotments.org.uk is probably the most decorous. I’m less likely to get engrossed in anything controversial on there (with the exception of the occasional allotment war!). I also actively promote the allotment movement at every opportunity, so I thought I’d parade it in my profile.

It’s a nice little pastme – now that I’ve partially hung up my active political boots – with the exception of the odd little comment here and there. Put a search in Google for Gwilym ab Ioan & you’ll probably dig up a little more – if you’re that interested.

No complaints I hope!

Macsen

Not even Tory ex-Swansea-Cllr. Kinzett (Rocking René) agrees with you.
http://renekinzett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/pathetic-beyond-letters.html

Jac

Ah, ‘Rocking’ Rene Kinzett. Well he would defend someone using letters, wouldn’t he. He loves to flaunt FRSA after his name, which simply denotes that he pays £250 a year to the Royal Society of Arts. But he hopes it will impress the ignorant, who’ll mistake it for an academic or professional qualification.

Which is not to say that he doesn’t have an academic qualification . . . a very average degree gained at the second or third attempt. For Renee is yet another of those English students who have become so worryingly dominant in Swansea politics in the past few decades.

And though we know him as a Tory, Rene was originally a Lib Dem. Until, that is, he was not selected as the LD candidate for Swansea West. At which point he flounced off to join the Tories.

Seeing as you may know him, Macsen, you probably remember the time his brother came to visit, and stabbed an off-duty copper in an Uplands pub. At the trial Rene swore his sibling was a saint, and that he (‘Rocking’ Rene, no less) would ensure the boy behaved himself if let off. At the end of the trial the brother’s previous was read out . . . a right thug, who was sent down for a long stretch.

Rene of course is gay, as are a disproportionate number of the ex-student councillors in Swansea. (Why does Swansea attract so many gay English students?) This often results in cross-party friendships and social networking where sexual orientation seems more important than ideology or principles.

I could go on, but I’d rather not think about these people using the city I love to promote their own agendas or as a stage for their exhibitionist behaviour.

Shambo

Wow, already had you down a mildly sociopathic closet racist but the homophobia rounds things off nicely.

Jac

No, I’m not homophobic. What I am against is those who make a big issue, even a career, out of being gay, and then attack as ‘homophobic’ anyone who doesn’t agree with everything they say, on every subject. This ‘you’re homophobic’ bullshit is no better than the ’60s hippy-Left calling everyone who disagreed with them ‘fascist’. It’s infantile and simplistic; but with the advantage that it saves having to think, and present a cogent, reasoned argument.

Jac

Oh, yeah, the other thing that pisses me off is the thought of democracy being subverted and corrupted by any undeclared group whether it be Freemasons, the League of Left-handed Redheads, Gays, or anything esle.

SicO'Prat

Don’t you just love rumours and irrelevant tittle-tattle?

Big Gee

What a “scally” as they call people of this ilke up on Merseyside! What are we doing with a shite like this running the second largest city in Wales? Little wonder we’re the laughing stock of the Anglo Saxons across the border for being so gullible as to accept their cast-offs with such gusto. Shame on us I say!

We’re STILL the dumping ground of odd-balls, social mis-fits & society drop-outs, and it would seem, low ranking con men now as well!

I despair with our stupidity.

The Red Flag

I think it’s outrageous.

Red Flag GSM(NI), UN Bosnia, LS & GC (failed)