Letter: Welsh politics is an worsening expensive shambles
MP David Chadwick's column (County Times June 6) caused me to grieve at the histrionics of young career politicians.
I congratulate him on his progress, despite setbacks, to a £93,904 MP's salary in Westminster, from April 2025, plus expenses and generous pension arrangements.
His pension, unlike the state pension for the rest of us, is fully funded, so no surprise there.
But penning his thoughts on the 'onslaught of pressure' to farmers, was he aware of Powys County Council's predominately Lib Dem Cabinet's
decision to sell some of Powys's county-owned farms?
This picking of long held 'low hanging fruit' to boost council coffers, bare through weak management across the entire county council, is short-sighted and disgraceful.
This year's council tax increase is 8.9% with inflation at 3.5% (CPI). Next year, who knows?
So, cost cutting across the board should be top priority.
There is no alternative. Any talk of growth being sufficient to pay ever burgeoning county council costs is bunkum.
If the MP was aware of the farm evictions, his column is spurious - if he was not aware, he should have been, and perhaps he and Powys's other MP, Steve Witherden, should get their heads together and bring the strongest pressure to bear on the County Council.
Alongside, avoiding the political divide, Senedd members for Powys, Russell George and James Evans, should engage too.
As opposed to evictions (CT June 13), cash strapped Powys County Council's cabinet members for a Fairer Powys and a More Prosperous Powys seem keen to welcome a possible 'asylum seekers' deal'.
This would see the national government or Senedd handing over 'Cash to boost Powys housing stock'.
For whose benefit - for displaced tenant farming families - surely not?
Welsh politics is an expensive shambles, shortly to become more so, if a further 36 under-qualified lightweights join the Senedd, ready to plunder the public purse in 2026 - with a likely extra cost of £18 million annually, rising remorselessly.
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