Jonathan Bishop

May I give my heartfelt thanks to the seven councilors who supported councilors Stuart Fisher and Bob Fox’s nomination for me to be this year’s town mayor for Pontypridd.

To have 75% of those resisting the Old Labour ruling group to have supported me is a vote of confidence of a size I never will forget.

Whichever way the vote went, there would have been a co-operative party mayor that night, and I hope that fellow co-op part member Steve Carter – who was elected with 47% of the council member’s support – is able to hold back the dark forces of Old Labour, and act in the interests of the people of Pontypridd, and not the Labour group which co-opted him onto the council and which the Labour party refuses to recognize.

Thanks to New Labour, the people in England can now have schools run on the co-op model, where parents get to have a bigger say in the running of the school, and the money goes directly to the school without the need of the local authority to take its cut.

I hope now that the people of Pontypridd have a Co-operative Party Mayor and Assembly Member, the Old Labour way of dictating to the public will go, and the people will be allowed to take charge of their own affairs.

It St Clere’s High School in Essex can be an independent co-op and have 92% of pupils achieving five GCSEs at A*-C grade, why can’t Bryn Celynnog, Hawthorn High or the Welsh medium school on Campws Garth Olwg, be co-ops independent of the local authority?

Hawthorn High currently has A-Level grades of 92% A*-E. Just imagine what that extra money – currently paying the director of education’s wages – could do to help them go the extra mile? If these schools were all independent co-operatives, then it would be for the parents and students to decide the school’s name and the type of food it serves, and not the authoritarian LEA.