Tuesday 18 August 2015

ON THE TOWN


Every so often Rhyl Town Council embarks on a Public Relations exercise such as producing the above glossy leaflet which arrived yesterday at Jones Towers.

The town council has been talking about turning the tide and seeing light at the end of the tunnel ever since the present version - a community council - was invented in the mid 1990s. 

Being ‘positive’ is all very well but being realistic would be better.

The town council, mistakenly referred to in the leaflet as a voluntary body, is an elected body for which only a small proportion of electors bother to vote. It has no powers worth mentioning, the key decisions affecting Rhyl are taken at county level and above.

The leaflet is dishonest in that it fails to mention that nearly a dozen unpaid town council members are also well-paid county councillors – including the one pictured on the front cover.

The text makes no mention of party politics. Readers should be aware that the town council is a Labour Party-infested body that has been known to behave in petty and bullying ways when non-Labour people are elected.

As an ex-member of Rhyl Town Council my opinion remains that it is an unnecessary layer of local government that could be scrapped and never would be missed.

Welsh Government regulations allow voters to get rid of a town/community council completely. Readers wishing to know how to do this can obtain the relevant document from:

Colin Jones / email: rhyl.colin.jones@live.co.uk

--