Bags of Gossip

Plastic Bag Levy.  Headliners at Glasto? Top tip for the Man Booker?  Or just another Assembly government good intention paving the way to hell? Again.

The "levy" (election-speak for "tax") turns out not to be a tax at all, but a means of charitable giving.  I like this.  What I don't like is that the Cardiff Bay government wants to spend £400,000 of the money we did pay in tax to tell people about it.  Shall I groan for you too?

We've all done it.  A trolley load of shopping with a boot load of carefully conserved plastic bags out in the car park, and a testy queue of post-work shoppers collectively willing you to get a move on.  So you sigh, agree to add 30p for a clutch of new "single use" bags to your bill of £120, and vow never to do that again.

I'm pleased that my pence will go to charity rather than the supermarket itself. But it's not that that will change my behaviour.  I'm getting better at remembering to get the bags out of the boot first, but the Assembly government doesn't seem to be getting better at spending money.  Still thinking Prada rather than plastic.  Or maybe it's getting extra Nectar points.  We should be told.

Untimely spending sprees are the subject of a little bit of gossip from Powys County Council.  Fans of Glyn Davies (MP!)'s must-read blog, "A View from Rural Wales", will have become very fond of a certain Edna Mopbucket over the years.  There has been much speculation as to whether she has indeed been seconded to polish Eric Pickles' pens and pencils, but readers will be pleased to know that her niece, Kylie, is currently on work experience, hoovering the corridors at County Hall.

Rumours that the Powys Independent-Lib Dem Alliance (oops, almost said coalition then) is rather keen on a cabinet-style government aren't new, but Kylie seems to think that a formal request to the Chief Exec is imminent.  I've always thought it a bit strange that the Lib Dems, champions of proportional representation, would be keen on this most exclusive form of local government, but that's what they're looking for in 2011.  Or maybe Kylie misheard over the sound of her Henry.

Because an expensive consultation on changing the style of local government is just what we need right now, isn't it?  (This Nectar point conspiracy theory becomes more credible by the sentence).  Powys CC can't say it wants to close schools with one breath, and then throw money at itself in the next.

Anyway, we're already due an important consultation.  On Powys ward boundary changes, reducing the number of councillors in the county - it's late starting.  Which political group/s will lose out when that consultation is complete, and will a decision be made before the local authority elections in 2012?

I'll be in the carpark, filling my boot with plastic bags, if anyone wants to find me to tell me the answer.  Oh, that was quick.  Looks like Kylie was right.  Council to vote on this before the end of the month - at least a year before there's any legislative obligation to do so.  It must be those Nectar points ...