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Carmarthenshire's Press Office, known affectionately to journalists as "the Department for Information Prevention", is no stranger to political smears and propaganda, so the release yesterday of an extraordinarily partisan attack on Jonathan Edwards MP and Rhodri Glyn Thomas AM should come as no surprise, but it is worth taking a closer look.

The press release itself is wrong on several levels.

First, council taxpayers will be left wondering why, when so many services are being cut, that County Hall's department of spin remains unscathed, with 8 staff. This makes it one of the largest press and PR operations in Wales, and yet getting to the truth of what this luxury is costing is near-impossible thanks to a spider's web of cost allocations, outcharges, officer charges and other accountancy magic. Rhodri Glyn Thomas was recently told that it was not possible to work out where advertising revenue for the council's Pravda newspaper was coming from, and that bizarrely, the council did not keep back copies of the paper which might allow anyone to check.

Council taxpayers are also entitled to ask why a publicly funded operation like this should be used for party political purposes. If the Labour Party wants to attack Plaid, surely it should do so out of its own funds.

Yesterday's press release made no attempt at balance, and was frankly every bit as bad as the very worst of Murdoch or Daily Mail journalism. Almost half of it was given over to a spokesperson for Sainsbury's, would you believe.

Again this is nothing new. Last year the Press Office went to town with a press release and photograph of three senior councillors giving the thumbs up to a new Tesco store in Burry Port. Tesco had been given provisional planning consent, but despite the fact that the quasi judicial process was not complete, Clive Scourfield, who was then Executive Board Member responsible for planning matters, among other things, saw no problem with taking part in this media circus.

The press release went on to give details of Tesco's product ranges.

None of this does the reputation of the supposedly impartial planning process in Carmarthenshire any favours, especially when it is coupled, as so often, with what looks to all the world like party political voting on the Planning Committee.

No wonder that Jonathan Edwards and Rhodri Glyn Thomas commented yesterday that some of our Labour and Independent councillors are clearly in the pockets of big business.

The Welsh Government appears to share the concerns of the public, because when it examined the call-in request for the two Sainsbury's supermarkets, it clearly saw something it did not like. The Government is reluctant at the best of times to call in applications, even when they have a strong smell of fish about them.

As one reader of this blog has noted, 5 of the 14 call-in requests received by the Welsh Government for the whole of Wales are currently from Carmarthenshire.

One of the strangest aspects of this latest case is the timing of the Madge/Sainsbury's fatwa, because the Government decided to call the applications in six weeks ago.

The first thing to happen when an application is called in is that the council involved will be informed of the decision by Cardiff. The council is also informed when the Government receives a request.

Carmarthenshire County Council cannot claim that it only just found out about the call-ins, although the press release gives that impression.

By a stroke of pure coincidence the release, which claims that Plaid's MP and AM are putting jobs at risk, was issued on the first day of Plaid Cymru's annual conference in Brecon. This is a tactic known in PR circles as a "spoiler".

Whether or not you sympathise with Plaid, that is no way for a local authority to behave.

Update

Plaid has responded with a statement which points out the facts of this case, including an observation that it was a Labour minister who actually called the two Sainsbury's applications in. Oh dear. You can read the statement here.