Back in June, campaigning for the General Election it was striking how so many of us seem to have air brushed the Covid Pandemic from our minds. In many ways that ghastly period is best forgotten. But that also means that we just dismiss the £300 – £400 billion pounds it cost the UK. That’s an enormous sum of money; financially it is equivalent to recovering from a war. Coupled with the inflation unleashed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is in fact a miracle that in the first two quarters of this year, inflation was down, unemployment was down, real wages were increasing and our economy was growing the fastest in the G7. Or maybe Rishi Sunak was more competent than anyone wants to admit!

But the point is that there is very little money washing around. That’s made worse in Ceredigion with the lowest uplift of Welsh Government funding for any council in Wales. It must leave a lot of Plaid Cymru members reflecting on their recently abandoned alliance with Welsh Labour in the Senedd. With friends like Labour, you don’t need enemies!

Ceredigion County Council gets a lot of stick on these pages. Much of it is justified. But I think it’s time that instead of sitting around whingeing and whining, we start looking to do things to help ourselves. Ideas that don’t involve lots of non-existent money, paid by someone else.

On 3 September there was a protest at Penmorfa against the plan to proceed with a consultation on the future of four of our Primary Schools. To my surprise, the protestors (I was one) were allowed in to the council chamber to observe the meeting. This meeting went on until late at night, with grindingly slow reports; it was truly brain numbing. This is no way to run a council in crisis. Those papers could and should have been circulated in advance. A few minutes for clarification and then a vote.

Dare I say it, but I have some sympathy for Eifion Evans; he and his senior staff have to sit through these meetings. What a terrible waste of time and money. I can understand why he probably yearns for a return to Gold Command!

Is it too much to expect our council to focus on things that it could do to make Ceredigion better?Instead of wasting a day confirming (what looked to many of us) to be a pre-judged decision, spend time freeing up the planning process, to take one example.

We hear so much about the evils of holiday homes, even though they support a tourist trade that is vital to our local economy. Ceredigion Council seems devoted to giving this sector of the economy a punishment beating, under the guise that this will generate more local homes.

But as Elly Foster points out (Green Space, Cambrian News, 18 September) there is no lack of unused houses in Ceredigion, just ripe for inexpensive development. Indeed (without trying to steal Elly’s thunder) I wrote a letter to this paper back in 2022 advocating a similar proposal for unused farm buildings. I was focussing on creating starter homes for young people working locally. Elly is looking more to solve homelessness. But I think we are both crying out for a bit of imaginative positive action.

And why don’t we get people involved in helping to create their own homes? What comes first; homelessness or personal chaos? In truth a bit of both. Long before modern psychiatry got invented, The Royal Navy was using functional rehabilitation to manage “battle stress”. Nowadays, we would call that PTSD. Giving people with severe mental health problems a structured life and a sense of self-worth is a critical part of their rehab. It’s hard to think of a better way to boost your self-worth than creating your own home.

There isn’t much money, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up on tackling these challenges. What’s required is imagination, hard work and a “yes can do” attitude.