issue 46

editor@cradleyenquirer.com
Online News & Topics for Cradley, Storridge & Mathon
asking the questions you want asked and seeking the
answers you deserve
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Page 13&14
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in this issue
The Chair Summary
Storesbrook Bridge
Parish Council
Website Woes
Soup and Plough
CONSPIRACY CORNER
Buryfields
Fish & Chips
OneAchord
Winter Wassail
Our Ethos
Local Businesses
From The Editor
issue 46
12th January 2019
The more astute amongst
our readers will notice a
couple of design changes
made to the Enquirer
hopefully an improvement.
Apologies for
late
production
and smaller
issue but
unfortunately
illness has hit
us. Back to
normal next
issue
Simon
Page 15
Page 16-17
Cradley Village Hall
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This is OUR community.

What is the truth behind the last Chair of the PC’s
Resignation? (part 3 the summary)
Now the question is was there collusion and conspiring between those
making complaints and others with the same agenda?
Mr Meager’s complaint was the first made 22nd March 2018 and not decided
until 14th November.
Mrs Iwancovck was made 27th June and rejected 7th September and
appealed13th September and decided 16th October.
Both of these complainants made reference to information that was not of
their direct knowledge and either based on third party information or
unfounded accusation. None of the accusations made were put to Mr
Fielding by the Monitoring officer or clarification sought by the MO. All
accusations were taken and decided at face value and never investigated fully
which was why Mr Fielding decided to wash his hands of the whole
complaints procedure.
In Mr Meager’s complaint no one present, when he professed to being bullied
and intimidated, were ever approached for their confirmation of events. The
references of Mr Fielding being responsible for the resignation of the clerk
and the previous chair can only have come from personal and
unsubstantiated statements of the previous chair in which Mr Fielding was
never named, and not first hand experience thereby being supposition not
fact. It might be interesting to point out that the previous chair had the same
affiliation to the village pressure group as all of those complaining against Mr
Fielding.
Mr Eldridge’s complaint (12th Nov) was also made against another councillor
who decided to respond to it’s puerile and vexatious nature (it asked of him
the same inane questions) and the MO found that there was no case to
answer.
So it can be seen from similarities in the complaints that these were
orchestrated and colluded attempts to intimidate and undermine Mr Fielding.
They failed in intimidating but did influence him into re-assessing the
herculean efforts he had undertaken to get the PC he loved back on track
from the orchestrated chaos it had been led into.
This is a loss that the PC that will take a long time to recover from. Let us
hope that the PC is not infected again by vested interests rather than
uncompromising community interest which is what it should be.

STORESBROOK BRIDGE
“This is the one being replaced between Staplow and Ledbury apparently
needing sixteen weeks to carry out the work.
A picture of the new one appears on the Herefordshire website.
What a wast of money to span that miserable
trickle.
The Main Cradley to Ledbury
Road is now closed for four
months for bridge repairs to
the Storesbrook Bridge at
Staplow.
Our wonderful council road
engineers are to take a
scheduled 16 WEEKS to carry
out the work. WHY? As
commented below this isn’t
a bridge over a major
waterway. The diversions
posted add considerably to
the journey by car and is
completely disrupting the
417 bus service to Worcester
and Ledbury.
In Japan it took a mere six
days to repair this road
which collapsed. If we are to
compete in world markets
after Brexit we seriously need to get our act together at home
All it needed was a culvert at a tenth of the
price. They are available in all sizes. It would
take a tenth of the time to install, last longer
and need no maintenance.
Any farmer could do the work, no special
skills needed.”
Harold Armitage
The fast, efficient and
cheaper Solution?

Parish Council
It is good to see that the start of the New Year has
apparently been marked with a resolution to use the
web site for what it was designed for : communication of
PC business to the community. Well done Kate!
We noted last issue that along with the agenda a quite
comprehensive list of documents upon which councillors base their
discussions was made public for the first time. Excellent! It is also good
to see that the council also followed something the Enquirer has stated
as being omitted which was the list of communications received by the PC
and Clerk and the actions taken. Again good to see.
What surely must be seen as an a retrograde step move is the voting of
councillors to minimise details of meetings recorded in the minutes. This
move is incredible in that it goes against the legal obligation of a council
to be open,honest, transparent and ACCOUNTABLE for their actions.
A suggested solution to work in tandem with minimised minutes was for
recordings to be made of meetings which would then be available via the
website and on request. Putting aside that many people in the community do
not or cannot use the internet, this would have been a compromise that would
have allowed those seeking information the ability to find it and those who were
only interested in decisions rather than how they were made to also be satisfied.
Unfortunately the recording suggestion was dismissed and the community are
unlikely to ever know why. That in itself would not have been a problem if the
minutes had been agreed to be comprehensive but they were not.
This minimalist doctrine has only one origin and that is firmly identified as from
Lynda Wilcox of HALC. (Hereford Association of Local Councils a subscription
based advisory service which has no affiliation nor official mandate)
She has been criticised quite widely for attempting to spread her personal
viewpoint to Parish Councils that if you don’t say it or record it you cannot be
held accountable. This is a disgusting ethos to be passed on to councillors and
clerks and contravenes the Codes of Conduct and legal
Bringing
obligations of parish councils.
Community
Councillors are there to represent the community that
elected them and nothing less than total honesty and
transparency in their duties on behalf of that
community is in any way acceptable.
together
We would have expected a positive reaction from the
“communications working party”

The PC web site is an excellent and necessary form of
modern communication between them, the
community and visa versa.
Whilst we understand the problems caused by
dumping the responsibility for the web site
firmly into the clerks already
overburdened lap this should not
prevent the site meeting its ability to
perform its task efficiently and seamlessly.
The old site delivered all that the PC needed with a minimum of work by the
clerk. Unfortunately we have an example of yet more “guidance” from Mrs
Wilcox of HALC who conned the members of the PC into believing that the
only way they could meet the actual definition of “the parish council website
should be under the control of the council” was to agree with her own
interpretation of “done by the Clerk.” This has ultimately led to some
councillors wrongly thinking that the clerk should be doing everything in the
council.
This in itself is totally disingenuous and when taken into account the work of
HALC in promoting unashamedly only website designs by Mrs Wilcox’s
friends company as their recommendation to achieve HER definition a nasty
smell starts to appear. Indeed HALC proclaim on their web site that they
have won an award for their site software which was apparently developed
by one Mark Millmore of a company called Eylid Promotions.
Under the promise of complying with Mrs Wilcox’s definition of what was
needed a specification was provided by HALC to the PC as to what was
needed by them. Surprise surprise! the specification for tender was written
so that only the already produced Eylid Productions recommended site
could fit the bill 100%. More on this smell next issue
Golden rule on websites is that to be effective they must be kept bang up to
date at all times. This is not any reflection on clerks who have been wrongly
burdened with this task but a consequence of councils being conned that
Mrs Wilcox’s word is somehow law. THE COUNCIL DECIDE WHAT IS BEST
NOT HALC. THEY ONLY ADVISE.

SOUP & PLOUGHMAN’S
SUPPER
Saturday 26th January
7:30pm
Cradley Village Hall
With guest speaker
Jane Fanshawe on
David Fanshawe, composer and
ethnomusicologist
tickets
£10
(in aid of Cradley Church)
Telephone: Ian Bailey on 01886 884682

CONSPIRACY CORNER
“LET MY PEOPLE GO !”
Otherwise 7 plagues will be visited upon your lands before
Brexit day
Moses May
As part of project fear, Treason May has organised a truck parking
fest at an airport near to Dover.
How stupid do they think we all are?
We have already been told that in the event of a no deal Brexit there
will be virtually no traffic between us and the EUSSR and everyone
will be starving and/or dying of the dreaded lurgi.
Ergo there will be no trucks going to Dover or anywhere else
therefore no need for trucks to park up there. They do say that to be
a good liar, you need to have a good memory.
This government is good at nothing, not even lying.!
H (Harold Armitage)

Buryfields
The other day a member of the public got into a conversation with the
locality steward from Balfour Beatty who was inspecting the road surface
at the Buryfields junction. During the conversation the member of the
public pointed out just how long the work had needed doing along with
repairs needed to the no through road sign which is supposed to stop
large lost vehicles having to reverse up Buryfields.
When asked when the work might be carried out he was informed that it
wouldn’t be carried out- WHY NOT! Every other road in the village
seems to get attention over and over again(due to expensive bad
workmanship)
Buryfields may well have a higher level of social housing than the rest of
Cradley but that should not be used as a reason for not giving it the same
attention as the rest of the village. As pointed out already there is a greater
concentration of vehicle in Buryfields than anywhere else in Cradley.
People in Buryfields are not “poor cousins ” to be fobbed off with second
best or even worse, ignored completely
A Meeting
Two old friends met in the street after 20 years.
Deciding to have a coffee they chatted and
caught up with each others lives.
“Goodness me Jim is that your Roller parked
there?” asked Tom
“ Yes I have been very fortunate and am now a
millionaire”
“ Wow! What line are you in?”
“ Well you remember after we left Uni and you went on to be
an accountant?”
“Yes”
“ Well, I couldn’t for the life of me decide what to do. I sat
around for a bit then one day came upon a transport yard
advertising free wooden pallets. Well, I got my hands on a couple
of hundred and started making rabbit hutches and dog houses.
The demand was outstanding and you know what rabbits are
like?”
“ So that’s where you made your fortune?”

“Actually I went bust because the demand disappeared overnight because
people took their dogs inside and rabbits were wiped out by Myxomatosis.”
“tough luck, how did you recover?”
“Well I had a few thousand pallets(because I had contracted to clear them
out) and noted that there was a gap in the market for garden buildings so I
started up a little company called sheds is us”
“I’ve heard of them, they make all sorts of garden buildings and furniture”
“ Yep that’s me”
“Well I never, just shows that with hard work and an eye for
the market you made your fortune even after failing first time
around”
“Nope---I won £25m on the Euro millions”
The moral being that in business & life we all need luck to give us a leg up!
Cradley Village Hall is always looking for volunteers to help with
planning and making fund raising events successful.
So if you think that you can give some time to keep our beautiful
16th Century building surviving into the 21st Century give us a call.
We want help at all levels even if it is just making tea and coffee.
Call Jeff on 01886 880000
or email: chair@cradleyvillagehall.org.uk
It’s YOUR Community--GET INVOLVED

Butlers Mobile Fish and Chips (and lots more!)
In Cradley on Mondays 5pm-8pm outside the Cradley Butchers and Stores.
Take a break from cooking and enjoy a traditional fish and chip supper for all the family
WE ARE CURRENTLY LOOKING INTO EXTENDING OUR PRESENCE IN
CRADLEY TO COVER THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VILLAGE AS WELL
PLEASE LET US KNOW IF THIS IS DESIRABLE TO YOU
EMAIL US:
http://www.butlersfishandchips.co.uk

Tickets now on
sale. Online at Hall
web site~ box
office. We accept
pay pal and all
credit cards
An entertaining evening of seasonal songs,
poems & stories with the emphasis on apples,
cider and traditional wassailing! ..............start the
New Year with a journey of 'Discovery," a 'Gala'
Tickets going fast
Don’t be disappointed
order now!
evening of season and tradition!
(Be sure to bring your 'Granny Smith!')
Compiled and presented by Fold Theatre.
Available from:01886 880952 or
online at www.cradleyvillagehall.org.uk

THE CRADLEY ENQUIRER
OUR ETHOS
Giving an open forum for members
of the communities to seek and
find the facts behind the gossip,
rumours and news that circulate
within small communities so that
they are better informed to make
measured choices.
1
OUR OPEN POLICY
We have an open policy in posting
comments submitted by anyone providing
they meet our conditions
2
RIGHT OF REPLY
We will grant the right of reply to anyone
who feels that anything we publish is
inaccurate or controversial
3
BASIS
Open and honest debate is the very basis
of free speech and should exist in
communities as a matter of priority

FREE ADVERTISING SPACE FOR LOCAL BUSINESS

open to all
Mon 10:30-12:30
Thurs 2:00-4:00
Cradley Heritage group are based
in the Village Hall and hold dropin
sessions for you to come along
and get expert advice on local
history, records and photos
The resource centre is based in
the Village Hall and is available
to drop in for computer advice
and help, photo copying and
free internet use
Cradley, Mathon and Storridge
Art group have a permanent
exhibition their members
work in the main hall for
visitors to view free of charge
Cradley Village Hall is looking for
volunteers to help with planning and
making fund raising events successful.
So if you think that you can give some
time to keep our beautiful 16th
Century building surviving into the
21st Century give us a call. We want
help at all levels even if it is just
making tea and coffee.
Call Jeff on 01886 880000
or email:
chair@cradleyvillagehall.org.uk
Book the Hall online
www.cradleyvillagehall.org.uk
Cradley Village Hall is a registered charity

SOME USEFUL CONTACTS, NUMBERS, EMAILS & WEB SITES
editor@cradleyenquirer.com
cradleyparishcouncil.gov.uk
clerk@cradleyparishcouncil.gov.uk
cradleydiary.com
storridgevillagehall.org.uk
cradleyvillagehall.org.uk
Map of Herefordshire
Roadworks and
Traffic Flow
Parish Councils and Wards
Highways and Public
Rights of Way Map
Report a Problem

CradleyDiary.com
Now lists all planning applications for Cradley
Storridge and Mathon and includes updates and
decisions which are not shown on the Cradley Parish
Council web site (which just shows applications)
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