The Welsh government was the first to declare a climate emergency.
Individual councils followed suit but Neath Port Talbot has held back.
Everybody has heard of climate change so I won’t labour the point here,
I’ll just use one example. The United Nations Secretary-General
described it as an “existential threat to humanity”.
I started out concerned then the more hard science I read, then more
terrified and angry I became so I joined Extinction Rebellion. There are
a couple of hundred thousand of us in the UK and we don’t all go around
standing on top of trains. Far from it. Our local group started small
and we wanted to reach out to the local community. Where better to start
than the largest local online community Facebook group “Neath
Constituency Voice For Everyone” which has over 11,000 members and is
solely run by ‘independent’ councillor Stephen Karl Hunt. Mr. Hunt has certain duties
and obligations as a councillor e.g. the promotion of equality;
accountability and openness; selflessness; objectivity, propriety and
integrity. He must not conduct himself in a manner which could
reasonably be regarded as bringing his office or authority into
disrepute.
The Neath Voice For Everyone group has enormous reach and influence
within the community, especially when run by a single partisan moderator
who can choose exactly which direction it takes, which posts are deemed
‘too political’, ‘too contentious’ or labelled as advertising etc.
Basically anything Mr. Stephen Karl Hunt doesn’t like. This hardly
represents his duty as a councillor to have integrity or to be selfless
or objective under the code of conduct. Indeed, I contend that Mr. Hunt
uses it as a medium to progress his own personal agenda, whatever that
may be on a day to day basis.
One thing Mr. Hunt doesn’t like is discussion of the climate and
ecological emergency, the biggest threat humanity has ever faced. He
bans those who post about it and certainly anyone who posts about local
climate activist meetings or fundraisers.
He also ignored my requests to rejoin the group to ask for help and
recommendations for tradesman following the recent flooding across
Wales. Something I was badly affected by personally. There’s no irony
here. First he dismisses discussion of climate change, then he refuses
to let one of his electorate ask for help following flooding due to the
increasingly severe weather we are seeing.
Here’s my own personal experience with him. You can judge for yourself.
