South Wales Evening Post - 1 March 2007
A Swansea councillor has offered his "humble" apologies over a leaked email to colleagues.
Councillor Ioan Richard told councillors he was sorry if an email he sent calling for "trench warfare" had caused any offence or embarrassment
The email was sent to fellow councillors after an agreement was reached to hand over the chairmanships and vice- chairmanships of scrutiny boards to members of opposition parties.
Under the plans Councillor Richard would have been ousted from his position as chairman of the council's licensing committee.
He wrote to fellow councillors saying: "TRENCH WARFARE - are you up for it? I am seriously in favour of it!"
He went on to outline a plan to make the appointment of chairmen and vice positions to be voted for at every meeting.
He said: "This has enormous implications of inconvenience to Labour, Tories and Plaid. It means they will have to muster up a majority at every committee.
"If not we take the chair and vice-chair back for a three- or four-week cycle. If we succeed only once in five goes we will get 20 per cent of their special responsibility allowance - eg 20 per cent of a chair's £9,000 is £1,800 - an amount not to be scoffed at, and it will really inconvenience the other lot and annoy them enormously.
"They have several members in serious ill-health; one globetrotter on local government business; one the ombudsman may soon suspend; several who cannot get time off work for every meeting; some who are just lazy; others who may be on holiday; some who may need to go on private business, for example a family funeral; others may just be late in a traffic jam or just temporarily sick with nasty flu bout."
However, Councillor Richard was forced to make a public apology ahead of a full council meeting to discuss the budget.
He said: "This is in respect to an email I recently sent to colleagues which was somehow published.
"If that has caused offence or embarrassment I would like to humbly apologise."
