The
accounts we've read of court proceeding suggest that Carmarthen chief exec Mark
James had a slightly tricky time in the witness box.
The Western Mail - or possibly the Press Association given the similarity of reports - quotes Mr James as
claiming that his actions, which subsequently found him and the county council sued
for alleged libel, were motivated by noble intentions.
"There
were a lot of misconceptions and falsehoods being put around about what we were
or weren't doing", he told the court.
"Councillors
felt that the entire reputation of the council was being put into disrepute
and, as the principal advisor to the council, I was the one they turned to to
do something about it."
This prompted him to write an unflattering letter
about Jacqui
Thompson aka blogger Caerbrwyn to a third party which was copied to 74
councillors and viewed 825 times in a different blog.
The
circumstances as to how this all came about and how a counter-action for libel
was authorised - as reported by Y Cneifwr - seemed
a bit low on rationale and occasionally even lower on
credibility.
The
trail continues but we wait to see if anyone raises the point that the sequence
of actions taken against Caebrwyn span the time in office of two separate and [supposedly]
opposed political administrations. For the moment, Mr James appears to be
at risk of coming over as the common denominator.
Not sure about the separate and [supposedly] opposed administrations bit. The personnel of the two executive boards is more or less the same. Before the 2011 elections the Independents had more seats than their Labour coalition partners. After the election, Labour had a lead of 2. Following a recent defection, Labour and the Indies are level pegging.
ReplyDeleteWhether you call it Independent-Labour or Labour-Independent, the people running the show are the same ones who have been there for years (10+ in some cases).
Point taken
ReplyDelete