CEREDIGION council and University of Wales Trinity St David are being less than straight with students and the public.

Further education’s Coleg Ceredigion, whose campuses at Aberystwyth and Cardigan are owned by Trinity St David, says it has no plans to close either.

The council’s chief executive, Eifion Evans, on the other hand, tells councillors both are likely to shut.

The mixed message is reprehensible, partly because both the council and the university will be perfectly well aware that the uncertainty may well undermine student recruitment and consequently the campuses’ financial security and future prospects.

What are these two bodies playing at? How can they act so shabbily?

On the council’s part, the confusion is rooted in deviousness. It has secretly bought - by means of about £1.8m of public money funnelled through the Welsh government - a 150-acre farm next door to Trinity’s historic Lampeter university. With fewer than 100 students, all university teaching was moved recently to Trinity’s Carmarthen campus.

The council-university plan - now revealed, disgracefully late in the day, after the die has been cast - is that the farm will form the foundation of agricultural courses.

No argument on that detail. Farming teaching can only help to strengthen and sustain a core part of the Ceredigion economy. This is very welcome.

The problem, it turns out, is that the proposed new Lampeter campus will also, according to the council, offer courses in horticulture, gastronomy and construction.

Aberystwyth’s Coleg Ceredigion just happens to have run, for many years, culinary courses, while Coleg Sir Gar in Cardigan teaches construction.

Both colleges also run very popular A-level courses, which would not be provided at the revamped Lampeter campus. That provision would be a huge loss.

Competition consequently intrudes.

A statement by Coleg Ceredigion chooses its words carefully. “There are”, it says, “no plans to close any of our campuses in Ceredigion, and remove post-16 education from Aberystwyth and Cardigan.” No plans now, but the draught of future uncertainty whistles in.

This proposed project bears all the hallmarks of Ceredigion council autocracy, and is horribly reminiscent of the apparently now abandoned proposal to axe most sixth-forms and concentrate teaching at a single, southern, location - probably Aberaeron.

Here again is the southern focus. This time, secrecy has been given its head. Arrange the money - for the Lampeter farm - fix matters with Trinity St David, and Eifion’s your uncle. Public consultation? You must be joking.

So why, it should be asked, did the Welsh government not grasp the democratic deficit inherent in approving a public loan for a public scheme about which the public knew nothing?

As in other matters, the council’s Plaid Cymru cabinet has much to answer for.

Above all, who’s sticking up for current and future students, and tutors, living in the Aberystwyth and Cardigan areas who enjoy further education and a job close to home and might well find it impossible to get to a new campus in Lampeter? The council must be compelled to safeguard their best interests.

HOPE springs eternal. For a brief moment, there seemed a flicker of anticipation that the Welsh government was going to act over the atrocities running riot in Gaza, where eminent legal opinion is that starvation is being used as a criminal weapon of war.

A split second or two where optimism might topple grim experience and you could see Cardiff shed its complacency and demand that the Starmer government move beyond its gutless condemnations touching on an Israeli army attacking a population already on its knees.

As starvation in Gaza spreads, was Eluned Morgan’s government going to align itself with the World Health Organization and 108 other agencies denouncing Israel’s blocking of effective distribution of life-saving aid?

Would she condemn the Israeli military for killing, according to UN officials, more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to reach food-distribution sites?

Would the first minister go further, strongly urging direct action as a successor for words and insist Starmer push for a comprehensive arms embargo and that Britain suspend trade with Israel, which last year was worth £5.8bn?

Always remembering that the British government allows exports to Israel of much needed spare parts for F-35 jets, whose bombs rip apart children and destroy civilian infrastructure.

Would she institute moral probity in place of her government’s offerings to date, which have amounted to little more than flabby admonition?

The fleeting moment of hope referred to arose on BBC Radio 4’s Six O’Clock News on Thursday 24 July.

“The first minister of Wales has said her government…”

Yes, yes, what did she say?

“The first minister of Wales has said her government might close some of its buildings if staff don’t spend more time working in the office…”

Ah, I see…

CONSERVATION areas matter. Aberystwyth’s needs all the protection it can get.

Take in, if you haven’t already, a few examples of the town’s built heritage: the drunk-on-styles Old College; Georgian porticos and fanlights on North Parade; spiralling green turrets in Lower Great Darkgate Street; the Burton’s Building; decorative glazed Edwardian brick in many streets, and including a ‘JG’ - John Gibson - memorial above W H Smith’s remembering the first editor of the Cambrian News.

But something odd is going on.

County council planners are objecting to a new, internally-lit Premier Inn sign on the hotel chain’s listed seafront building, which replaces an approved inner-lit sign. The new version looks inoffensive and almost the same as the old one.

What is strange is that bang next door is a former old people’s home unoccupied for years, apparently partly restored, the whole ground floor hidden behind slabs of unsightly hoardings. What are the planners’ thoughts on that?

Further along the promenade is the disused Belle Vue Hotel, again empty for years after a fire next door. To one side there’s cavernous hole in the ground, like a Second World War bomb-site, resplendent behind more hoardings.

No word of council criticism about that either.