At last! The new stretch of pavement at 'The Corner'.

We are pleased to report that following campaigning for many many years, due to complaints from the pensioners living at Highfield, we have now had an improved footway installed at the cross roads near Eastgate.
Work has also started on the disabled access to the South wall, following our continued pressure, and are led to expect that new bus shelters wil! shortly be installed at some stops with improved lay-bys, timetable information, dropped kerbs and lighting.

After 12 years of pressure we have now got the play area in Trewen installed and are grateful for the funding from the Llanvair Hall Trust.

It seems to me that in exchange for the "right to roam" we should be given a quota of ramblers on every gun licence, as there used to be a couple of Aboriginals on every Australian gun licence. Farmers are well up with the quota system, which would be purely temporary like the tobacco quotas in Virginia, which started in 1790, and are still going strong. Since the Spaniards worked out how to "quota hop" and catch our fish, this scheme would allow wealthy Germans to come over here "quota hopping", and shoot a couple of ramblers, for which they would pay lots of Euros. They do not like the Euro, and would therefore part with them easily. Having set up the scheme, and long before the first paying guests arrive, we would apply for payment not to shoot ramblers, as my experience is that ramblers are usually quite a friendly bunch, and we do not want them being shot by some bloke wearing lederhosen. I expect the principle objection to this scheme to come from the Ramblers Committee who would get double the number of members (and double the subscriptions!) if a couple of their members got shot...

As I see it, I have a complete mandate from you, the electors, as you unanimously did not vote for me, as no-one else wanted the job, and so it was a "shoo in".
I took care to ascertain before accepting this job that I would not have to kiss babies, as it has never been clear to me why a politician who gets votes by being an expert baby kisser, is then given the Department of Trade Industry to run, for example.

Whether I am better at kissing babies, or bringing the case of "Caerwent Community Council versus United Kingdom" is something that your Council has not been asked.
(yet!)

Richard Micklethwait
Chairman.

I was once advised that if you cannot understand something being explained, there are two reasons. One is that you are too stupid, and the other is that the other party does not want you to understand the explanation. The following is my report of the meeting, but a subsequent press report indicates that the numbers I picked up at the meeting may now have altered, or that I was too stupid to get them correct, so they should not be relied on.

Other Community Council Chairmen, the treasurer of the Monmouthshire County Council, and National Assembly for Wales members Michael German AM and David Davies AM, attended this meeting.

The principle point discussed was that of the "new formula", which is the way that the National Assembly calculates the size of the fund to Monmouthshire County Council.

It seems agreed that the old formula was totally hopeless and so lots of statisticians were employed to develop a new system, including such interesting concepts as "heteroscanicity". I went to the meeting having no idea what this means, and came back none the wiser.

The new formula takes into account all sorts of necessary information from the number of old age pensioners to single parent families, which is all very splendid except that they do not have the information to put into the formula.

I therefore think, but cannot be sure, that the system is as follows:

The National Assembly for Wales gets a lump sum of cash from London. It also receives funds for 'Objective One' from Brussels, which covers about two thirds of Wales and excludes Monmouthshire.
The National Assembly for Wales then slices a piece off the top of this cake (the lump sum) before carving up the rest of the cake.

Bearing in mind that David Davies is a Conservative and only too pleased to take a swipe at the Labour/Liberal Democratic coalition, he said that one statistic was the distance a village was from the nearest town and this was measured as the crow flies, and not along a road, which may be half a mile for a crow and eight miles by car in some of the mountainous areas concerned.

Last year our Council tax went up 24%, of which 18.3% was due to the National Assembly. I think this was due to the "top slice" they took, before cutting up the cake, and then the gross shortfall due to the unfair system of the old formula, which has been changed for the new formula, which is just as unfair according to what was said at the meeting.
Michael German said that the new formula would be fine-tuned as the relevant information became available, but it seems as if this fine-tuning will continue to discriminate against Monmouthshire for the next ten years at least. This new formula means we get 75% of the Council income from the National Assembly for Wales, wnich is the lowest in Wales.

The next lowest gets another £4,000,000 more than Monmouthshire County Council, which we then have to make up with Council tax.

It does not pay to run a "tight ship" and only spend what you have - which is what Monmouthshire County Council has done.

A profligate valley Council can just run up a large overspend, and then that gets reimbursed because they obviously need it! (Ouch)

Monmouthshire County Council is reputed to be a well run Council, so I asked that if they did not have the necessary statitics, how did they judge a well run Council? The answer seemed to be that the budget was carefully controlled to match what came in with what went out.

But by doing this we seemed to have ended up seriously short-changed.

With an election looming, it seems as if our Council tax rise will be 9.5% this year, as opposed to the all Wales average of 3%, giving Monmouthshire the highest tax rises for the last three years.

I could never quite be sure what was good old party politics or one bunch being rude to the other.

As I pointed out, with statistics, very few people die when they are 108. Therefore if you are 108 you are very unlikely to die...

Richard Micklethwait