As someone has already commented on the previous post, Jacqui came across as a calm and thoughtful person, and having had the pleasure of meeting her on several occasions, that is exactly what she is like in real life. The same is true of her husband Kerry who is a local lad born and bred.
In other words, utterly different from the picture of a couple of menacing obsessives painted by the County Council.
Despite employing 20 people in its press and PR operations (this figure was one which the council gave the Chartered Institute of Public Relations towards the end of last year), the council declined to take part in the programme, just as it declined to cooperate with the BBC on documentaries about the Delyth Jenkins case, the Patricia Breckman case and the Towy Community Church bowling alley project.
After Evan Davies had finished saying that the council had been invited to give their side of the story but declined, John Humphreys let out a loud and disapproving groan.
Back in Carmarthenshire, the council obviously had to think long and hard about what to say about the events of the last few days. This is what it came up with:
Statement regarding court action
WE respect Mr Justice Tugendhat’s decision to reserve judgement. It would not be appropriate to comment further until such time as that judgement has been reached.
Update
Just before 5pm this afternoon, i.e. eight and a half hours after the broadcast on Radio 4, the ever-alert council press office woke up and felt a bit miffed about what Evan Davies had said. So it put out a calarification on Twitter as follows:
Carms Council Press
To clarify,
Attached to the tweet was a link to the "Statement" above. Doh!
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In other news the Editor of the Carmarthen Journal, Jonathan Roberts, is moving on to take over at the South Wales Evening Post, which is owned by the same group. Mr Roberts was appointed to the Journal only just over six months ago, and this move represents something of a rapid promotion.
During his very short stint in Carmarthen Mr Roberts presided over "structural changes" to the newsroom and a makeover of the paper itself, which is now 25% bigger than before.
Cneifiwr has to confess that he no longer buys the newspaper on a regular basis, but made an exception this week.What is good about the new-look paper is its sections dealing with news from the different geographical areas covered. Not so good is the pagination and navigability of the paper. It is very hard to find your way around it, in other words.
Not good at all is the paper's continuing policy of only reporting council stories approved by County Hall. In fact quite a few of the stories this week appear to have been produced on Jail Hill and reproduced wholesale. Gone are the days when readers could expect this local newspaper to scrutinise and question the county council.
The letters page contained the usual barrage of missives about wind turbines, with one letter praising the county council.
In return, the Journal can show a healthy crop of council adverts, including one full-page, colour announcement of a tyre and waste amnesty outside Morrisons in Carmarthen. With acres of empty space surrounding the few words on the page, the council's marketing department is clearly flush with cash at the moment.
Finally, and a topic Cneifiwr hopes to return to before long, Delyth Jenkins gave an interview to the South Wales Evening Post about the Public Interest Disclosure Act. There are growing calls for this act to be overhauled to give real protection to whistleblowers, such as Delyth.
As readers will recall, the Delyth Jenkins story was set in Johnstown, a stone's throw from Carmarthen, but the good people of Carmarthen will have to buy either the Swansea-based Evening Post or The Guardian if they want to read about something which shows Mr James's regime in a less than flattering light.
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