Eerily quiet!

With only two months and a few days to go, it is eerily quiet on the local election front here in South Wales. You would have thought that with the ruling Labour party’s record, its deplorable management especially on education and social care for the elderly the opposition Plaid Cymru party and yes UKIP as well, would be jumping up and down shouting for all to hear! Obviously this silence is just what the Labour party wants and needs. The Rhondda County Borough on its own has a quite sizable debt hanging around its neck so I suspect a hefty increase in council tax. This Labour run borough is one of the poorest if not the poorest, local government areas in the UK. It is an terrible example of how very poor people can be wrung dry by fat politicians. Even the last penny is not safe.

The legacy of just closing mines and related industries at the stroke of the pen but without making sufficient plans for what to do with the thousands of unemployed is still hanging around the whole area. The refuse tips are mostly gone bar one or two and open-cast mining still continues around Merthyr Tydfil but basically mining in Wales has finished. The housing crisis in the area is also a legacy from Victorian times. Personally I live in a stone-built house from the 1860’s, a dwelling that housed an abattoir. In those days quickly built with local quarried stone it now beginning to show its age. And so are thousands of other local houses built on the steep valley sides. Draughty, and damp fuelling the chest and lung infections that are a hallmark of the Rhondda today! Education in the Victorian built schools are the worst in the UK thanks to the disastrous policies of numbskulls to facilitate ‘equality’ and political correctness. Two of the most misunderstood words in the Oxford dictionary! But in Labour speak they portray their socialist ideals. All in all it is not strange that ordinary people are feeling left-out, forgotten and just treated as a never-ending resource to pay for the excessive spending of elected dim-wits. If we want to tackle the scourge of drugs in our society, we could not do better but to start afresh and having a very hard look at our local society and environment. Get rid of the bureaucracy that has grown beyond all reasonable proportions. We do not need 600+ MP’s, we do not need governments in Wales, Scotland. And we do not need 75 councillors in a small area like the Rhondda. Even half would be too many. Anyway, I thought as my morning newspapers were late, I take to the keyboard and have a nice rant. Ah, it is good to be alive, even living in an abattoir!