We do not seem to have made much progress with pot-holes and it is far too cold to sit around and admire them, and so one of the points of interest this month is that it seems as if two Scots Pine trees have been felled on the Highfield housing site that should not have been.
Laraine, our hard working clerk, has checked up and has been assured by the Monmouthshire County Council Forestry Department, that the trees were "dead, dying or dangerous", and that they have not been felled but have merely been "horizontally pruned".

My rude remarks about signposts with no signs on them has elicited the truly Alice in Wonderland comment that it is too expensive to take them down.

These lengthy white papers and Agenda 21 reports all want the countryside to have "diversified" enterprises, but that will not be very practical if you cannot get to the site of the enterprise - as will be the case in the Cwm as the road is doing it's best to subside into the Castroggy Brook.

The police report this month was very cheerful as detection rates have improved, and please use the opportunity to talk to the police at the "surgeries", so we ensure that all possible information is fed to the police, as well as complaints. It is a case of "use it or lose it".

The Government "White Paper" which landed on my desk last month is now on our web-site, see below.
Now we have the "Monmouthshire Local Agenda 21 Strategy" which seems full of possibilities, but I remain unclear as to how these splendid plans get paid for.
However, we cannot let the example of the non-pig farmer, whose letter I quoted last month, go un-noticed, and so I think that this lack of income can be sorted out with just a little effort.

Our next problem (that is not so easily solved) is that the Playing Fields Association application for Lottery loot could easily be held up because the leases on the Playing Field and Hall will expire in the not so distant future, and so we are trying to help by untangling the leases and so comply with requirenments of Sportlot.

Rumour has it that everyone who has applied for Lottery loot is bald, as the application procedure makes you tear your hair out...

The Community Council would like to congratulate the Youth Club on installing the bench at the cross roads in memory of Chris Hall. Well done and many thanks for a good project following an appalling event.

As everyone else is proposing splendid ideas, with not a cat's chance in hell of them being implemented, we might as well be politically correct and join in. Last month I suggested we should acquire a 16 inch gun, such as used the product of the old Royal Naval Propellant Factory (now the Caerwent Training Area). I am told there are still some of these battleship guns on the "Martello Towers" in the Thames estuary. Such a gun could fire a shell the weight of a Range Rover from Caerwent to Cardiff which would wake up the National Assembly in very quick time. Two loud bangs, one of departure of the shell, and the second on it's arrival, and you can bet our Council tax would go down by a lot more than 15% instead of the 9.6% rise that the "new formula" will impose on us next year.
This formula is calculated, not with the necessary information needed, as that has not been collected, but using other information that is available and which discriminates against Monmouthshire and looks likely to continue to do so.
You decide which is the most crackpot - getting a 16 inch gun or the new revenue settlement system. At least you would get a lot of bang for your buck with the gun.

This month's wheeze is to introduce beavers on to the Castroggy brook as it disappears down sink holes.
As I hear it, beavers hate the sound of leaks and get very busy with mud and twigs and will stuff the holes in short order. This would make the Castroggy into an all season stream as it was before the Severn Tunnel made a hole in the aquifer and drained this limestone area, and it would connect the foreshore to our proposed nature reserve.

Richard Micklethwait
Chairman.