Welcome to Alice in Wonderland

The Queen, a figure difficult to please, introduces her trademark phrase "Off with his head!" which she utters at the slightest dissatisfaction with a subject and the subject to hand is the matter of the council dealing with the unlawful payments debacle at the Carmarthenshire County Council full council meeting the other Wednesday.
Who is the Queen? You might ask, or indeed who is the judge or the executioner, watch the last ten minutes of this webcast and make up your own mind as to who wrote the prepared speech of the chairman to close the meeting.

And please look back through cneifiwr's and caebrwyn's blogs, oh! not to forget the wonderful Mrs Angry too. and laugh or cry at the state of local government in Wales and England.

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.