Tuesday, January 14, 2014

New year joy in Blunderland

Here we are barely two weeks into the new year and already I am baffled. Now you might say that there is nothing new there but I am talking about the glory that is our local county council. If you wanted a picture of openness and accountability you might be better off looking towards North Korea or inside the NSA.

At the monthly meeting the council had a debate about something they weren't allowed to talk about and the main subject was not in the room, I mean really how can this be? The so-called executive board talked about it and the blogoshere is awash with speculation, but most of us are still in the dark about the unlawful payments fiasco!

We had legal opinion withheld and waffle offered in its place, pace Linda Double-Barrel and then there were mysterious breaks in transmission; really professional and well worth the gadzillions laid out for the webcast! Not that I would want it stopped now that we have it, rather that than the PR guff that gets posted out under the misnomer of Carmarthenshire News.

I was always under the impression that the county council was set up to look after the best interests of the people that pay council tax and not to pander to special cases and lame ducks. One might ask to what I allude? Perhaps a golf club or maybe a racecourse, then there might be a rugby club and a clutch of overpaid executives with alledgedly lucrative tax dodges; but there is no doubt that the people of Carmarthenshire are not getting what they deserve of their elected representatives who worry more about their allowances and perks than either the lowly underpaid workers in their employ or the benighted council tax payer.

Of course they don't have to answer to the electors of Carmarthenshire until they have wittered away the next three years twiddling their thumbs and looking the other way while Llanelli sinks under the spill off from a favoured housing development or the kids in the north-east of the county while away their lives just getting to and from a new school built on a flood plain.

Are you all shivering the way I am?? Euchhh!