Catch 22 meets 1984

I am so grateful to the various people that have attended and tweeted about the libel action brought by Jacqui Thomson (@caebrwyn on twitter); they have kept us all up to date with what went on in court.

The one thing that intrigues me is the absolute silence from any elected member of council explaining exactly why they are willing to underwrite the legal costs of the highest paid local government official in west Wales.

Mrs Angry from BrokenBarnet covered the proceedings in the following blogs, listed in chronological order:
the-crucible-of-democracy-blogger
daft-arrest-caebrwyn-libel-case-at-high
a-term-called-malice-caebrwyn-libel
double-indemnity-day-four-in-caebrwyn
can-i-get-witness-day-five-of-caebrwyn
catch-22-meets-1984-day-6-of-caebrwyn

The last blog has an excellent postscript!

Liliput bigendianism or a libel trial of blogger

As anyone might be aware I have been following the shenanigans of Carmarthenshire County Council and the way they treat anyone who dares criticise the regime.

This is a council that is proposing to close public toilets for want of £90,000.... How much is being spent on two of the highest paid people in the county on a jaunt to London on the, to me, spurious jolly trying to defend the indefensible. I'm surprised that anyone with the least amount of common sense would institute proceedings in the Royal Courts of Justice without at least reading the supposed source of the offence, but Mark James and his acolyte Linda Rees-whatever are luxuriating in first class splendour to and fro at the expense of council tax payers.

I'm indebted to the tweets for MrsAngry of Barnet, newsbrooke and Cneifiwr for keeping us up to speed; and of course best of luck to Caebrwyn.

On openness and accountability

I do find it oddly amusing that a council that has such a lot of CCTV pointing at the general public is so coy about showing that same public what is going on in the council?

 Community Safety Manager Kate Thomas said: “CCTV makes a huge contribution to tackling crime and anti-social behavior as well as providing reassurance for residents. The operators are extremely proactive, helping to provide evidence of crimes being committed and are often commended by senior police officers for their good work. The Community Safety Partnership is committed to tackling crime and disorder in Carmarthenshire and CCTV is just one of a number of tools being used in the drive to make the county a safer place to live, work and visit.”

I am the first to ask whether they could install cameras in the council chamber and prevent their hoodwinking of the public into thinking that the council is accountable in any way for the maladministration that has happened in at least two cases pointed out by many people including the Welsh Local Government Ombudsman.

Advice to CCC re making savings

Mark James has said that the council need to make savings of some ridiculous amount. Perhaps he should look at getting rid of all the "directors" of services including his own post, at a rough guess that must surely save a million quid a year. I'm not sure that the present executive board provides any true value for money either and then there are the toothless scrutiny committees.

The next to go would be any office space that the council rent rather than own, followed swiftly by its vanity publishing effort that gets shoved down our throats whether we want it or not. Maybe they ought to call in the various loans that have been given to lame ducks and get the development companies to pay proper amounts for land released at peppercorn rents.

I wonder how much money is wasted on software and computing but huge amounts could be saved by using open source software; a lot of cities and regions in Europe have migrated to Linux on servers and desktops for annual savings of millions of pounds, several US government departments have done the same.

The one thing they shouldn't do is close public toilets in busy seaside villages, Pendine, Laugharne, Llansteffan and Ferryside to name but a few, or else the piles of ordure will put off the very welcome visitors who use the local businesses!

yet another Meldrew moment

In this weeks Journal and other places on the web Mark James is unapologetic over the Ombudsman's condemnation of the council and offers the advice that it would have been better to keep them in  a B&B. I am shocked that a so called "civil servant" should be so uncivil!

This is the man who blithely shifts in imaginary funds from next years budget to cover a shortfall in the financing of a local care home.

This is a man who wishes to cow council tax payers and lobbyists by threatening to sue for costs against any protest by any group.

This is a man who dismisses constituents concerns as being unworthy of mention in a full council meeting, is he as dismissive to everyone?

Time is coming when somebody who can actually do something might notice how this man blights our reputation here in Carmarthenshire!

As the honourable Victor said "I don't believe it"

Super Olympics

I am just returned from a day (Thursday 9th) in the Olympic stadium; the experience of the whole thing was amazing, on arrival we were whisked through security and someone spotted I was using two walking sticks and escorted us to a golf buggy to take us to near the stadium and when I got out a young man (thank you Mark) appeared with a wheelchair and zoomed us to ticket resolution who changed our tickets for up in the gods to much more accessible places just above the 100 meters start line; he also kept popping back to see if I needed help to get around.

We saw women's high jump heats, decathlon discus and pole vault and last but not least the 4x400 heats. There was a fantastic buzz all the time but when the GB sprint team was announced the buzz turned to a roar which seemed to get louder through each leg of the race, no wonder they qualified.

The sun shone brightly and food and drink was consumed and by 2pm we were thoroughly cooked and ready to go home, when Mark reappeared and whisked us back to the golf buggy shuttle to get back to the gate.

The stadium is brilliant and all the volunteers and other people seemed all to have taken happy pills, it could have been grating but wasn't. All the service personnel were absolutely great and the place was heaving with people, the only free space was around the heavily armoured and armed policemen although they were smiling and sweating heavily under their burden.

After a glorious few sunny days in London we have returned to situation normal and teaming rain, oh joy!

Faecal matter

I am sort of amused and horrified at the same time about the "Dog fouling costs £2m per year" headline in the local paper. I and five others spent last Monday wallowing through two ledgers that Carmarthenshire call their accounts and couldn't find out very much because of the way the information was presented, yet the chief executive was able to magic up the £2,000,000 figure in seconds. So Mr. James could you please tell me how you got the figures, as it was not easily apparent in the ledgers we were given?

Indeed our scrutiny of the books was frustrating, as we were only given fragmented books and could not have purchase ledger totals or a trial balance against which to work. How the council runs its business seems to me to be a whole lot of obfuscation and recharging, twas enough to make an old idiot's head spin.

So do they have something to hide?? In my humble opinion they certainly do!