Council pay scandal has nothing to do with Plaid

I wanted to respond to some of the comments made by Anthony O’Sullivan, the former chief executive of Caerphilly County Borough Council in the South Wales Echo on November 8.

In his comments Mr O’Sullivan seeks, wrongly, to link Plaid Cymru to the senior officers’ pay scandal.

Pay rises for already highly paid officers were raised by Mr O’Sullivan but the late former Plaid leader Allan Pritchard and other senior members, including myself, opposed salary increases for top officers.

It didn’t matter to us whether there was an election or not – we were never going to approve these rises and that was made perfectly clear. Things obviously changed when Labour took control of the authority in May 2012 – they were happy to approve massive increases for top players.

Plaid’s view then, as it is now, is how could we agree these rises when ordinary council employees had had their pay frozen for years? It just wouldn’t be fair, would it?

At the time of the pay rise the council make-up comprised 50 Labour members compared to 20 Plaid councillors.

Mr O’Sullivan indicates a need for transparency but it seems it did not always apply to him. Plans to buy out annual leave allowances and essential car allowances were negotiated in order to equalise terms and conditions across the authority. But he allowed five officers in his own department to opt out and none of this was reported by him to the then Plaid administration.

Colin Mann

Leader, Plaid Cymru Group, Caerphilly County Borough Council

AMs don’t grasp train misery

My student grandson travels into Cardiff for both education and part-time employment. Could it be more difficult to do so? In this past week morning trains have either not arrived, arrived late or passed through Caerphilly empty, the reason being given “lack of guards”. Neither college or employer are very happy with the excuses given for late arrival by my grandson!

In the evening rush hour, he has taken to trying to board the train for Caerphilly at Cardiff Central although Queen Street is closer.

The reason for this? Passengers are being refused access to the trains at Queen Street as they are already overfull.

The number of carriages on the train – just two! Why, why, why?

Who is responsible for running empty carriages or cancelling trains in the morning and operating totally inadequate trains in the evening?

Can I put a challenge to our AMs in the Bay?

Travel by rail from and to the Valley stations, morning and evening, for one month.

But whatever happens (if anything) can the electorate have a complete answer along with your proposed action?

If you claim to represent the people, get out of your cars and do some of the things that the electorate have to do every day – try to travel by train. If you care – show it.

I’ll watch keenly for signs of action by the Welsh Assembly and other involved parties!

Ron Boyce

Cardiff

Fireworks torture after Bonfire Night

May I express my utter contempt for the thoughtless anti-social wretches, who have so little in their empty heads that they get enjoyment from detonating loud explosions after Bonfire Night in Canton.

These boneheaded idiots wouldn’t care and would probably relish the fact that my daughter’s beautiful, gentle and well-behaved dog is reduced to a quivering terrified wreck, frantically pawing at the solid living-room floor in an attempt to bury herself because of the fear they have inflicted.

Further condemnation too for the retail outlets, especially the supermarkets, with their professional displays of these nightmarish items, that appear to make them exciting harmless fun to encourage purchase.

Extra-special criticism for the main Tesco in Cowbridge Road East, which several days after November 5 still had a gaudy display at the front of the store, offering some sort of vile incendiary device dressed up to look like fun for £75.

What an unpleasant world we inhabit when a harmless, enjoyable and traditional night that provided great pleasure and joy for the vast proportion of the country, has been turned into weeks of hellish torture and sheer misery for tens of thousands of people and their animals.

Great time to be a yob, they make it easier for them each year.

Andrew Thompson

Llandaff, Cardiff

Conformists enjoy others’ suffering

If you live in South Wales and you hear Boris Johnson, declare that billionaires are the “wealth creators” of our nation, you will remember how many ordinary 19th-century Welsh citizens believed in and voted for just such a Conservative society and economics.

The Marquis of Bute was the richest man on the planet, and men and boys gave their lives down the pit to make him so.

Because the Marquis owned coal mines and Cardiff docks, he got more money from every ton of coal exported than all the miners and dockers involved.

The gasping sickness of emphysema, the obliteration of their bodies in an explosion, was the price which those good people paid, to allow the Marquis to indulge his expensive hobbies.

But the fault was not just the moral blindness of the grotesquely opulent Marquis, but rather the ordinary conformists of those days and today who have learnt nothing from that sacrifice of better lives, and are quite incapable of a vision of “social justice”.

That phrase means nothing to them, because their minds and their votes already lie trapped in the hands of Boris and his design for a deliberately unjust society.

They prefer it.

Their own self-satisfaction, for the same morbid psychological motives of the past, demands poverty for other people.

CN Westerman

Brynna

Businesses should be free to choose

Not that I am in a position to employ anybody – but if I were, I cannot understand how it is anybody else’s damned business whether I employ male or female personnel.

Yet we have feminists trying to force a local framing shop to take a female employee when they want a boy. Surely it is nobody else’s concern. This is jack-booted fascism – nothing less.

There is no justification for trying to ram opportunity equality down the throat of a small business.

Peter Sunman

Cardiff