Kings of their castles

Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
(Pic : Webbaviation.co.uk)

In the old feudal system, an overlord would grant tenures to a vassal in exchange for loyalty or service, known as a fiefdom. The lord handed this responsibility would become the dominant power within that fiefdom, a system that's only slightly modified today.

Wales is divided into 22 fiefdoms, each with their own feudal baron(ess). That's before you include all the petty fiefdoms : the charities, the third sector bodies, the quangos, the local health boards, the housing associations, the community organisations....

Nobody elects them. Yet they, and other unelected officers, hold real power. Sometimes they command budgets – part or wholly public money – running into tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pounds.

Your elected councillor holds a rubber stamp, and is generally told where and when to stamp it. They do so because what the baron says usually goes.Yessir massa. AMs, MPs, and MEPs have slightly more sway. The Welsh Government generally act on advice they're given by experts and civil servants.

The barons are usually amongst the highest-paid people in government full stop. Sometimes, they might have control over how much they - or relatives/friends who just so happen to be working alongside them - get paid.

We don't know how or why they get the jobs, just that they're (presumably) worth the large salaries because they're (presumably) good at said jobs. That's why, for example, Welsh local authorities, are such bastions of transparency, efficiency and good practice.

You won't notice a good feudal baron. They'll handle public money wisely, they won't try to make a name for themselves by being controversial and they won't upstage the elected (or uncontested) representatives of the little people.

If you do notice them, then it's usually because something's gone horribly wrong.

Once certain actions or motivations cross certain lines, you no longer have a faceless feudal baron. You have a dictator.

Now people might think that a dictatorship is something that happens to entire countries. That isn't necessarily true. "Dictator" just means someone wielding power in an unrestrained manner, whilst being answerable to nobody but themselves – a local authority chief executive for example.

You can elect dictators. You can even have dictators with a friendly face and a benevolent attitude to their people and property. But is a dictator of an entire country, any worse than little dictators in their fiefdoms?

You can have strong dictators, who wield absolute power. You can also have weak dictators, who manipulate events, procedures and political scenarios like a chess grand master.

In many respects, the weak dictators are more dangerous. They have a plausible deniability in what they say or do – a constitution for example. They can argue that anything they do is "constitutional", though usually the constitution is beyond anyone's understanding, and changes depending on the situation. They'll use this to entangle opponents in points of order or due processes.

But both strong and weak dictators display the same characteristics.

They, in a position of power and responsibility, don't like criticism, and might try to silence those who do criticise them – even elected representatives. The sneakier ones do it through the courts.

They'll sometimes hide behind "good works", or "awards" as an appeal to authority.

They have wide spheres of influence. They'll have plenty of sock puppets - people acting as a legitimate, public-facing front - while they control things behind the scenes.

They'll be paranoid. There'll be heightened security around them, or their workplace – police, security guards – and they'll use them if they decide it's necessary. They'll only trust those people similar to themselves, whether they're from the same political party, or run similar regimes. They'll form cliques, societies and associations to lock everyone else out.

They might make excessive use of propaganda, or lean on journalists and publications to report things a certain way. They might even have influence in how the news is reported. They could use money to do this, or they could simply use force of will. That could mean running/owning a newspaper, or counting journalists within their inner circles.

They'll have a high opinion of themselves, awarding themselves grand titles, fancy cars and carry themselves in a certain manner.

They'll be overtly concerned about their public appearance. They want to control how things are presented, or how much people can know. They'll have disproportionately large PR departments.

They have a resolute belief that they are always in the right. They'll turn every tiny bit of good news into a magnificent achievement, and they'll call catastrophic failures mere setbacks, or just won't accept any blame at all. They can do no wrong, and they'll always promise jam tomorrow.

It all starts the same way. It starts with political banter and petty insults. It starts with politicians being censured for asking the inconvenient questions. It starts with white lies. It starts with posters being defaced, or placards being ripped out of front gardens.

Then it becomes scaremongering, or accusing others of scaremongering. Then they create strawmen threats that never existed, vowing to step in and provide strong leadership during tough times.

Then it snowballs further. It becomes arrests for filming meetings. It becomes false accusations, court cases, fines, jail sentences for wanting nothing more that the truth.

It leads to overriding the "authority" of the elected representatives, and taking powers for themselves - drip by drip, week by week, year by year. Their authority becomes increasingly unquestionable and resolute.

Then - perhaps most damning of it all - it becomes a bad government.

It usually ends the same way too. All the little people who helped them – whether it's for personal gain, or a sniff at power – are standing alongside them in front of the proverbial firing squad. It might take one term, it might take decades, but it usually does happen at some point.

These people have always been in the background, waiting for the right time, building up decades of experience, manipulating events or climbing greasy ladders. Or maybe they've simply been in the job too long and it's gone to their head.

We've created, and tolerate, a political system that allows these people to not only remain in place, but thrive. It keeps a leash on them and it gives them solid boundaries - granted. But what it doesn't give us all, is the freedom to challenge or to choose them.

It's a price we pay for delegating tough decisions to others. It's supposed to prevent us ending up in a situation like the United States, where common sense and rationality is sometimes sacrificed in the name of democracy. When it works well, it works well. When it's broken, we all suffer for it.

As a system, it's a wall not unlike another famous wall. You could also consider it a threat to our liberty - our right to know who is in charge of what, what they do, and our freedom to criticise, analyse or simply know the truth and come to our own conclusions.

I don't care who does it. It could be Mr Sargeant. It could be Mr Jones or Mr Cameron. It could be Ms Wood one day, who knows?

But somebody please, tear down this wall.

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BBC Wales' current affairs programme, Week In, Week Out has an episode relating to a long-running planning dispute in Carmarthenshire to be shown on Tuesday (16th October) at 10:35pm. It'll include interviews with the Public Services Obundsman, Rhodri Glyn Thomas AM (Plaid, Carmarthen East & Dinefwr) and the chair of a public inquiry into the case.

"Trisha and Eddie moved to Carmarthenshire in 2003 for a bit of the good life. They were going to start a cattery and animal sanctuary on a small holding. But those plans went up in smoke when they discovered that their neighbours were running a haulage business without planning permission.

They complained to Carmarthenshire council in 2004 but the authority failed to stop the lorries. In fact, they denied the couple’s claims and even accused them of faking evidence.

But now the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales has vindicated Mrs Breckman and her partner Mr Roberts with a damning report on how Carmarthenshire council handled their complaints. The authority has been found guilty of maladministration."