Comment DBCC-8332

Hello

Firstly, I would like to say that incresing the number of boundaries and assembly members is ridiculous. We will have an assembly member for about every 2000 people in Wales. Is this needed? Is this value for money to the taxpayer? Can we or should we be creating more political managers in Wales, when Wales has continually declined in growth, in personal wealth, in direction and in a multitude of other areas.

The children are significantly less intelligent now than 40 years ago. The NHS in Wales is a disgrace and a disaster, and has been for the last 25 years. The infrastructure, public services, law and order and outlook in every aspect of life has deteriorated until I think we could not get any worse, but it will.

Like with the NHS, education, all local and centralised government, every quango, every advisory body, you seem to think more managers and management is needed. In reality far less is needed. My local council, Caerphilly, is a good example. Employ more and more management. Give them fanciful salary packages and then cut masses of services in the entire area because they have not got enough money to run them. This is because all the money is going to managers and their pensions. So they employ more managers or advisory bodies to report on how they can save money. Firstly, they should be able to do that themselves and secondly, sack 70% of the management.

Recently I have had a huge amount of contact with different people in the NHS. A consultant summed up the feeling of the public and all NHS staff. He said the NHS does not need more money. If you gave them £100 million extra tomorrow, they would be in the same position in a month, he said. That is because managers will employ more managers to do their work etc. No real work actually gets done; just endless meetings and discussions. 'Educational or brain storming' trips abroad etc. The actual staff, the workers, never see any of the money, he said. The consultant said - in a football club, if the team keeps failing, the manager gets sacked first. In Wales, in every part of local, central government and civil service, the workers get sacked and the services get terminated. The managers get a pay rise, a pat on the back and probably an award. Then next year the taxes rise again to pay for these managers.

Another problem I encounter regularly having lived here for 58 years is the changing of boundaries and county names causes major problems with postal addresses. I can remember Newbridge, where I live, being Newbridge Monmouthshire. Then it was Gwent. Now it is Caerphilly. But that is Caerphilly county not the town. But my postcode is NP, which is Newport. But I do not live in Newport county. Caerphilly is CF prefix, a Cardiff prefix. But I do not live anywhere near Cardiff or Cardiff counties. Ordering online is very problematic because websites do not fully understand this problem. And, many auto the address to [REDACTED] Newport because of the postcode being NP. But I live in Newbridge. Do you know how many [REDACTED] there are between Newbridge and Newport?. But someone in welsh government thinks it is a good idea to continually alter the county borders and their names every few years. And we all know you're doing it to spread the council debt around and also to try and maximise the votes for Labour in future elections. Does this mean my address will have to state Blaenaugwentrhymeycaerphilly in the 'county' box ? I despair. Also, can you ask the planning department to have a meeting about street names. Language is a wonderful way of communicating but in wales it seems very limited. I provide a delivery service and street names in Wales tend to be Park, Railway, Woodland, Church, Forest etc. Basically if houses are built near trees, the address will be Woodland drive, or street, or court. Do you realise how many duplicates of street names exist in , say, a 3 mile radius? Cannot anyone in planning, in any council, think of any other words, something different, something unique that couriers cannot get wrong. Perhaps a group of members should take a trip to, say, New York, to discuss how duplicating names of streets could cause unnecessary confusion.

Another big problem, which will be the same problem we have with current assembly members as well as these proposed additional 36, is that they probably will not be the best qualified or appropriate person for the job. From what we all have experienced in Wales to date is that candidates will gave to be fluent in welsh, be born and bred in Wales, be the far left of the political spectrum and probably be classed a minority in at least 3 aspects.

The population size of Wales does not need, in any shape or form, more assembly members. We need less. A total waste of extra money needed for their pay packages; their extra support staff; the new assembly building, that you will all want built so you can each have an office, with a window and a view - and then work from home.

I propose spending all this extra money, that you keep saying you do not have, on getting rid of half the management in all areas of civil service, NHS, police, local and central government etc. Get the remaining workforce back into the offices and work a full 9 to 5 day. Maybe then Wales will start moving forward..

Best regards

[REDACTED]

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