Only a few days ago Carmarthenshire County Council issued a brief statement saying that it would have to give the auditor's reports careful consideration in due course, and that it would not be appropriate to comment further until such time.
Within hours of putting that out it issued the first of what has become a daily bombardment of increasingly aggressive press releases. The latest came out of nowhere yesterday, in response to nothing, attacking the Wales Audit Office.
Today the council followed up the press release by publishing what it says is the correspondence it had with the WAO which it believes shows that it is the maligned party. As with the QCs' reports published earlier this week, it actually makes matters worse and raises new questions about the judgement and conduct of Mrs Linda Rees Jones, among other things.
In one e-mail she tells the WAO that in her view opinions voiced by Adam Speker, Mark James's barrister in the libel trial, constitute independent legal advice. Legal advice they may be, but by no stretch of the imagination was a barrister acting for James in person an independent source of legal advice.
The Wales Audit Office has now replied, saying that the correspondence published today is selective (see BBC report here).
Selective and misleading statements, bullying, threats and attacks on the integrity of everyone from members of the public, MPs and AMs to public watchdogs such as the Ombudsman for Public Services: none of this will come as any surprise to many people in Carmarthenshire. The only surprise is that Mark James, Kevin Madge and the rest have convinced themselves that they are so immune from being held to account that they are now conducting their battles in public on a national stage.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
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