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Cneifiwr will be away for most of the coming week trying to earn a crust, but these being the dog days of August, and with Carmarthenshire County Council continuing its very extended break, it is unlikely that there will be much to report on that front.

Like fellow blogger Caebrwyn, Cneifiwr does an occasional sweep of the council's website to see what is going on, starting with the Agendas and Minutes section which deals with meetings of the various committees, the full council and the various members of the executive board.

For those who remember the famous Carlsberg advert which showed a complaints office covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs, it's like that only more so. Carlsberg had one empty department; Carmarthenshire has a whole suite of them.

The big sleep began back at the beginning of March when the previous administration held its final meeting of the full council ahead of the elections two months later. Since the May elections the full council has had an Annual General Meeting and one ordinary meeting. In effect this means just two meetings in 6 months (the fancy dress jamboree of the AGM was spread over two sessions) .

The planning and licensing committees have met on a regular basis because, of course, they have to deal with applications which would otherwise pile up. None of the other committees has managed a single meeting since the elections, including the various Scrutiny Committees. The chairs of those committees are paid a salary of £21,910 per year.

In the case of the scrutiny committees the reason for the inactivity is understandable:  there is nothing to scrutinise.

Up at the top of the tree is the Executive Board, which Kevin Madge expanded from 9 to 10 members. He also felt that he needed two deputies, whereas previously the council had struggled along with just one.

The two deputies are Tegwen Devichand (Housing) and Pam Palmer (Business Management and Rural Affairs). They each draw a salary of £31,120.

Among the minutes and agendas is a section dealing with decision meetings held by the various members of the Executive Board. The two deputies have between them clocked up precisely zero decision meetings since May. Pam Palmer's only known outing in her new role as champion of the county's rural communities was a press release about milk prices. She has no more control or influence over milk prices than you or I, but it's important to sound as though you care.

The other 7 members of the Executive Board with a portfolio have collectively managed to hold 8 decision meetings, although Cllr Jane Tremlett (Social Services and Literary Quotations) also scored a duck.

Together Cllrs Madge, Devichand and Palmer are drawing salaries (excluding expenses, pensions, etc.) of £109,740 a year. Together the remaining 7 members of the Executive Board take home £201,250.

Collectively, then, they have cost us £103,663 since the elections in May, and they have participated in 4 Board meetings and 8 decision meetings. That works out at a cost of £8,386 per meeting (excluding expenses, pension contributions, etc.). Cllrs Madge, Devichand and Palmer are slightly less good value, having cost us £9,145 per meeting.

With all this frenzied activity, it is understandable that not all of the Executive Board members manage to get to every meeting. Cllrs Meryl Gravell and Mair Stephens both missed one of the four meetings.

The chairs of the scrutiny committees (£21,190 p.a.) have taken home £35,316 since the election without chairing a single meeting.

At that thought I will leave you choking on your cornflakes as I head off for work.

The Guardian reports that the Welsh Government and some Labour and Tory councils are preparing to fund food banks run by charities (usually religious groups) as a way of tackling cuts next year to the Social Fund (see story here).

Families facing extreme hardship who would previously have been able to apply for emergency aid to buy food, pay for fuel, etc. will instead be sent along to local voluntary groups.

Carmarthenshire County Council has been steadily moving down this route for some time. Former leader Meryl Gravell made no secret of her support for the "Big Society" as a way of reducing pressure on council budgets. Then as now Labour was in coalition with Meryl's Independents, and now that Carwyn Jones has apparently seen the light, we can expect an acceleration of religious outsourcing.

This week Ellen ap Gwynn, Plaid leader of Ceredigion, tweeted the link to the Guardian piece, an action which neatly encapsulated the differing attitudes of these neighbouring authorities on at least two levels. After all Kevin Madge, who believes that Twitter is dangerous, has consistently supported Big Society outsourcing in Carmarthenshire.

Not all voluntary groups are religious, of course, but certainly in Wales Christian groups play a very large role. The problem for government and the rest of us is how to tell the good ones from the others. Which ones can be trusted to give a decent, reliable service free from abuse, discrimination and other malpractice?

And there are just so many churches, sects, groups - whatever you want to call them. No matter how loopy or extreme, every Christian group describes itself as "mainstream". The Catholics, the Anglicans, the Methodists, the Independents, the Baptists, the Seventh Day Adventists, Pentecostalists and all of the many others claim to be mainstream, even though they are worlds apart in practice and belief.

The Catholics are pretty mainstream, but as an organisation the church has an appalling record of paedophile priests, cover-ups, sadistic nuns and monks entrusted with caring for children and vulnerable adults, financial scandals and breathtaking bigotry from members of the hierarchy. If you think that is all a thing of the past, take a look at the press in mainland Europe.

At the other end of the spectrum we have well-attested examples of brain-washing, psychological manipulation, financial scandals, fraudulent spiritual "healers", homophobia, ill-treatment of women, ostracisation, and so on.

Of course, mixed in with all this are countless decent church members, but the rotten apples are always there, and comings and goings mean that church membership is constantly changing. How is a council supposed to monitor that across every church or group it may be in partnership with?

As observers of this whacky scene know, many of these religious groups also have a chameleon like expertise when it comes to PR and media management. When Mercy Ministries came under fire for its emphasis on demonic possession, the organisation blandly announced that it was withdrawing the offending manuals and replacing them with new ones. The manuals remain secret.

And what are the motives of all of these voluntary groups? For the majority of rank and file members and volunteers it may be compassion, duty or love of humanity. But the suspicion always remains, particularly among the evangelical groups, that winning new recruits, "saving souls" or whatever you want to call it is what drives much of this activity, particularly in the higher levels of these organisations.

Last year Carmarthenshire County Council organised a Christmas toy box appeal. The council, police and other public bodies collected toys which were then passed on to a group which included three fundamentalist evangelical churches. Under the Equalities Act 2010 it should probably have carried out a kind of risk assessment to ensure that the churches would not discriminate or abuse their position. From a Freedom of Information request earlier this year we know that no such assessment was carried out.

The council is also, as we know, an enthusiastic supporter of Towy Community Church, and much praise has been lavished on the church's schemes for a food bank, furniture recycling centre and debt counselling service. Just as with the toyboxes, the council should almost certainly have carried out an assessment under the Equalities Act before committing almost £1.5m of public money to the church's schemes. It didn't.

The church's plans for the former St Ivel creamery in Johnstown include what the architects describe as a suite of counselling and therapy rooms. Therapy? Counselling?

The debt counselling plans help cast light on likely motivation. As this blog has asked before, what was wrong with existing voluntary groups, including the CAB (desperate for volunteers by the way) that made the church want to set up its own separate service? Why didn't it encourage its members to go along and join CAB instead?

As Caebrwyn discovered, Towy Community Church will be offering this service in partnership with a group called Christians Against Poverty which ran into a spot of bother with the national umbrella group Advice UK because its methods were "incompatible" with those of other Advice UK members (see article here). In plain terms, the Christian group saw debt counselling as an opportunity to evangelise.

Some councillors in Carmarthenshire appear to think that just because an organisation describes itself as Christian, that is good enough. Just close your eyes, and hope for the best.

Let's hope that the Welsh Government and our councils take a long, hard look at what they are getting themselves into before they dismantle care services and hand them over to these eager volunteers.

Fel pawb arall dw i'n hen gyfarwydd ag e-byst o Nigeria (Mrs Ojebiwa requests urgent reply) a'r banciau (Upgrade your Halifx Online Banking Account Now!), ond ces i e-bost gan "Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru" yr wythnos hon. Oeddwn i wedi ennill y set gyfan?

Nac o'n. Agorais i'r e-bost, ac wele, dim byd ond dolen gyda'r gair brazil ynddi. Sbam gyda feirws, mae'n debyg. A sbam deallus mewn ffordd, achos fy mod i'n defnyddio'r geiriadur.

Oes rhywun arall wedi cael rhywbeth tebyg? Oes rhywun wedi hacio i mewn i'r system?

Update 24 August

In striking contrast to our local newspaper, the London-based Guardian has published an obituary of the late Eileen Beasley written by her grandson, Cynog Prys. You can read it here.

Eileen was a remarkable and brave woman, and we owe her a debt of gratitude. Heddwch i'w llwch. May she rest in peace.

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If asked, most of the dwindling number of people who buy a local paper would say that they buy it in order to keep up with the local news. In the case of the Carmarthen Journal there must be other reasons for forking out 65p.

Despite recent changes to its personnel, the paper's editorial policy towards the county council appears still to be a case of only printing what County Hall tells it to print.

Last week we had a big feature celebrating the St Catherine's Walk shopping centre, complete with some rather dubious facts and figures courtesy of the council's press office.

This week, readers of the Teifi Valley edition will have been pleased to see a picture of pupils of Ysgol Gyfun Emlyn celebrating their A Level results. What readers who rely on the Carmarthen Journal for their news would not know is that the school has been experiencing a difficult time since the publication of a very critical Estyn report earlier this summer. The headmaster left, and it is unlikely that there will be a replacement until early next year. Not long after the report was published, a packed emergency meeting was held at the school to explain to concerned parents what was happening.

Of course, this did not reflect well on Carmarthenshire County Council or its Education Department which has been accused of starving the school of funding and resources.

None of this appeared in the Journal, although the Cambrian News, which normally ignores this southern extremity of its patch, ran a lengthy and dramatic report on the affair.

Last week the Western Mail picked up an important story about the long running dispute between Carmarthenshire's chief executive, Mark James, and Councillor Siân Caiach. Mr James had bombarded the Public Services Ombudsman with complaints alleging that Cllr Caiach had breached the councillors code of conduct. The ombudsman dismissed every single complaint and had some important things to say about freedom of speech.

The Journal appears not to have noticed, just as it also failed to spot news about another controversy involving the council and the ombudsman in a case involving planning enforcement, a blacklisting by the council of an elderly couple and a libel suit.

It is probably a fair bet that many of the readers of the Journal are mature in years and that they would have been saddened to hear of the death of Mrs Eileen Beasley, one of the most remarkable women in the county's history. The story of Trefor and Eileen Beasley's campaign may even have interested younger readers and others who had never heard of them.

The Journal remained silent on this, and its sister paper in Llanelli managed only a paltry 10 lines.

It is also a fair bet that many of the Journal's readers will have been at some stage in their lives to the Elli Theatre in Llanelli; they may also have been interested to hear about Brynaman Lido, built by miners in the 1930s and now, like the theatre, being shut for good by the council. Both stories made it on to BBC radio but failed to find space in the Journal.

On the other hand readers were treated to a story about a collection of local photographs, accompanied by a black and white photograph of Meryl Gravell's wedding.

Next week: Pam Palmer's holiday snaps: 1966 - Caravanning in Grimsby.

No, it's not Anne Widdecombe

For reasons we can only guess at, Carmarthenshire County Council has gone very quiet about Dai Greene, but a new love affair appears to be blossoming with someone who has a full head of hair and lots of gold.

Robbie Savage and a business partner recently received outline planning permission for a hotel at Meryl's favourite race course just down the road from her home in Trimsaran. The twinkle-toed former football player and several other notables, including planning consultant Stuart Owen, have now been shown around the Hub in Llanelli and given the run-down on the council's on-going development projects.

Mr Owen will be familiar to observers of the Carmarthenshire planning scene for his involvement in many of the county's more interesting planning applications, including a bitterly contested, controversial housing development at Waungilwen near Drefach Felindre. Councillors initially rejected that application, but miraculously overturned their own decision a few months later.

The council press release breathlessly tells us that Town Centre Manager Andrew Shufflebotham was on hand during the visit to outline the projects the county council is involved with.

Mr Shufflebotham said: “We have £60m in investment coming together. There is the £4m investment in the Library, the cinema in East Gate where the Odeon has bought the interest and it could become their flagship in the region, there’s Nando’s, and a brand new theatre at Y Ffwrnes. Town centres have to change and become more leisure oriented and 24/7.”

On the same day that the press office churned this out, Llanelli residents learned that the council's Grade II listed, art deco Elli Theatre is being axed. Presumably it was not sufficiently leisure oriented and 24/7. Why waste money in restoring this relic of days gone by when mega contracts could be awarded to a developer for a brand new theatre?

Also today listeners to Radio Cymru would have heard Llanelli councillors saying that parts of the town are becoming "like an open prison" (story in Welsh here from the BBC), but the press office was unable to find space to cover that news item.

Robbie hinted that another possible project will be a care village on part of the 18 acre site behind the planned hotel.

All of which will be a stone's throw from a mammoth executive housing development. Readers interested in local history may wish to peruse some back numbers from Caebrwyn's catalogue, beginning here.

Parts of Llanelli may be turning into an open prison, but there will definitely not be any riff-raff in Tre-Meryl.

The council headquarters of Carmarthenshire and neighbouring Ceredigion neatly symbolise the radically different cultures of the two local authorities.

The ancient town of Carmarthen is dominated by the former prison which now houses the county council. High on a bluff overlooking the old river meadows, now partly covered by a sprawling and incredibly ugly retail park, glowers the granite bulk of County Hall, protected from the rest of the town by the largely fake turrets and walls of the old castle. Visitors are greeted by a uniformed attendant who operates a traffic barrier before they enter the gloomy building. Parked in special reserved spaces in front of the building are various shiny black BMWs and Mercedes.

Members of the public who want to observe a public meeting are made to go through an intimidating, Kafka-esque procedure involving reading statements and filling out forms with personal details, including their home address, before being escorted to the public gallery that smells of BO, boiled cabbage and mildew. There they are locked in with only a partial view of the chamber below, and the heat is often stifling.

By contrast, visitors to the Penmorfa headquarters of Ceredigion County Council in Aberaeron will find a pleasant, modern building by the sea. There are no security guards, and the grounds are open. Visitors arriving by car can just drive up and park, and there are no heavy-handed entry procedures.

In Carmarthen the centre of gravity has now shifted away from the old heart of the town to a shiny new shopping mall; the American term seems appropriate here. The Carmarthen Journal devoted a big spread to praising St Catherine's Walk this week, reporting that the last two empty units have just been taken. The gushing prose and the figures quoted, courtesy presumably of the council press office, painted a picture of phenomenal success and a town swimming against the tide of decline.

Perhaps there is something in all of this, but the boarded up shops in the old town centre tell a different story.

As luck would have it, I reluctantly had to pay a visit to St Catherine's Walk late in the morning on Thursday. It was one of those days when the sun shines one minute and it is overcast and dull the next, with the occasional shower thrown in. A day in mid-August at the height of the tourist season when you might have expected lots of visitors "from away" to be indulging in a bit of retail therapy.

After all, we've now got Miss Selfridge, Debenhams, Top Shop, Pizza Express, Orange, a Harvester "restaurant" and all the other shops you would expect to find in a shopping mall in Essex, Manchester, Hull or Croydon. Home from home for the visitors.

For all those grumpy old men who loathe shopping, Cneifiwr can at least report that going into Debenhams is not painful. In fact, it was like a retail version of the Marie Celeste. A determined male shopper could be in and out of there in less than 10 minutes, wife's present gift wrapped as well.

The rest of the shops did not seem to be any busier either as Cneifiwr sped towards the market hall for a haircut (£8 and no appointment needed). Followed by a Cwtsh Bach breakfast, including mug of milky coffee, for £3.60.

The Market Hall was quite busy, and this part of the development at least seems to be a success and feels as though it is a part of the town rather than an alien graft.

According to the advertising feature article in the Journal, 7.4 million people visited St Catherine's Walk last year, and the place is attracting visitors from a 60-mile radius.

I did hear a Brummie and an American accent during my visit, so perhaps it should read 2,000 mile radius, but I somehow doubt that 7,399,999 other people have traipsed through the sterile concrete, glass and stone precinct in the last year. That's more than the entire population of the town every day. Or two and a half times the entire population of Wales every year. Bollocks.

To the right of the Journal puff was a timeline giving the history of the St Catherine's Walk development. This told a rather different story of protests and legal battles, big developers, bloody-minded councils and little people. It even included a subversive reference to Simons Group, the East Anglian developers whose advertising material features council chief executive Mark James, a customer of theirs when he was running Boston Borough Council.

At one point in the saga, townspeople were planning to hold a referendum on the proposed closure of St Catherine Street. Naturally, the council was opposed to any such exercise in consulting the people of Carmarthen. Eventually, after legal proceedings and months of stand-off, the council blinked.

A couple of miles away on the other side of Carmarthen, the council is now determinedly pushing through plans for a huge extension of the town in what is known as the Carmarthen West Planning Brief, with 1,200 houses. Huge questions remain over who will pay for the infrastructure, including a £4.5 million link road, and there is fierce opposition from the town and its elected representatives once again.

As usual, then, this is a story of confrontation, top-down "we know what's best for you" government, big business and wrecking of an ancient landscape and the identity of the oldest town in Wales.

Over in Cardigan, another ancient town, work has finally begun on restoring the castle. The County Council bought the historic pile and sold it to a trust formed by local people for £1. When the work is complete, the  heart of the town will be transformed, with facilities including attractive grounds, a Welsh language centre (imagine that, people of Carmarthen!), a cafe and a venue for weddings, conferences, etc.

The project is being run entirely by local volunteers, and it is a true community project involving people from all sorts of backgrounds, unlike Carmarthenshire County Council's evangelical bowling alley.

Just round the corner from the castle is another site called Pwllhai. This was formerly the home of the farmers' cooperative and was acquired a couple of years ago by another community group who managed to raise enough money to buy it and save it from a commercial property developer.

The Pwllhai site is large, and includes a number of buildings and two car parks. It now houses a veterinary practice, a local produce market, an eco shop, a museum of agricultural and maritime artifacts and a family centre.

The local produce market is currently held once a week, and there are usually two local farmers selling meat (including lots of old-fashioned and unusual cuts), people selling bread, cakes, eggs, fruit, vegetables, cheese, excellent takeaway food and shellfish. Most of the stallholders are Welsh-speaking, and all are local.

The museum is quirky and great fun. It is run by a few volunteers who are not much younger than their exhibits. I recently went in (entry is free) to have a look, and asked about an ancient copper basin. This simple question kicked off a really entertaining half hour of reminiscence about slaughtering pigs and brewing beer.

The family centre is a drop-in for young mums (and a few dads) with small children where the children can play safely and the parents can relax a bit and socialise. It also runs courses, including one designed to introduce young parents and children to basic, everyday Welsh.

The car parks not only provide much needed additional parking in the town, but they are deliberately cheaper than council provided parking, with charges starting at just 30p. This is because the 4CG, the group which runs the site, feels strongly that high parking charges are driving people out of town centres.

Now 4CG (Cymdeithas Cynnal a Chefnogi Cefn Gwlad) has launched a new project to raise enough money to buy the town's former police station and court house. If it goes anything like the Pwllhai venture, the organisers will succeed in raising money from private well wishers around the world. You can check out their website (English only, unfortunately) here.

All of this is being driven by local people, rather than the county council, although it is true to say that the council has been cooperative and helpful.

Cardigan has more than its fair share of social problems, and Ceredigion County Council is by no means  perfect, but the contrast with dictatorial and arrogant Carmarthenshire is striking.

Next time you go to Cardigan, drop in at Pwllhai (markets every Thursday) and have a look.

County Hall in Carmarthen may have resembled Sleeping Beauty's castle ever since the local government elections in May, with activity mainly confined to PR stunts such as the Executive Board's big day out in Ammanford and embarrassing attempts to use Olympic hurdler Dai Greene as a mascot, but the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales has found that the council has been keeping him busier than ever.

First we had a damning report from the Ombudsman into a case involving the council's planning department. As is usual in these cases, the Ombudsman sought a meeting with the council's Chief Executive as he was putting the report together, but his requests went unanswered. Perhaps the council's most senior officer (renumeration of almost £210,000 in 2011-12) was simply too busy with diary entries such as posing for a photograph to appear on the front page of the council's propaganda sheet, Carmarthenshire News.

Space in the Chief Executive's diary was presumably found, however, for a meeting with members of the legal profession who have been instructed by the council to challenge the Ombudsman's report in the courts.

There may also have been other meetings with learned counsel to discuss an action for defamation brought by the couple whose complaint was the subject of the Ombudsman's report. The couple were understandably less than pleased to find that they had been placed under special measures and branded "persistent complainants" by the council without being told what was being done to them.

Also placed under special measures by the Chief Executive were Councillors Siân Caiach and Arthur Davies who were banned last year from asking questions of any of the council's battalion of highly paid officers apart from the Chief Executive himself.

The two councillors also had a couple of motions critical of the council leadership vetoed by the Chief Executive. To prevent this sort of impertinence from happening again, the council's leadership then pushed through a change to the constitution requiring a minimum of seven signatures on a notice of motion (no other council has such a high barrier). Even if the requisite number of signatures could be collected, the Chief Executive retains powers to veto undesirable motions, just in case.

While all this was going on, the Chief Executive submitted a veritable snowstorm of complaints against Cllr Caiach to the Ombudsman alleging various breaches of the Councillors Code of Conduct.

You can read details of the complaints and the Ombudsman's dismissal of all of them over on Caebrwyn's blog here, as well as this piece in the Western Mail.

One of the cast of characters with a walk-on part in this unfolding drama is the council's chief press officer. The press office's way with words and its unfortunate history of attributing words spoken by one person to someone else has been noted before. On this occasion it appears that words spoken by a BBC journalist quoting Cllr Caiach were somehow taken out of context and made the subject of a complaint against Cllr Caiach.

The Ombudsman's report suggests that the Chief Executive should endeavour to be less sensitive to criticism, and his findings are a landmark in protecting rights of freedom of expression and open political debate in local government.

The council has said that it is studying the Ombudsman's report, and no doubt there will be more consultations with lawyers in County Hall to see whether there is scope for another legal challenge.

Meanwhile the convoluted libel case involving the Chief Executive and fellow blogger Caebrwyn grinds on, with costs escalating for each month that passes. It is understood that Mr James's London legal team recently ventured out to the windswept wastes that lie beyond the M25 and spent a day closeted in County Hall to discuss the case. For anyone who has ever forked out for an hour of air time with a London barrister, the thought of the cost of transporting a whole posse from London to Carmarthen for a day (and most likely overnight stays) will make their eyes water.

The case is still four months away from getting to court, but parts of it hinge on the sensitivities of Mr James, who it seems was particularly distressed by a reference in the offending blog to a character from a popular children's story. It is also understood that sensitivities may have been upset when Caebrwyn was less than ecstatic at the news that Mr James had been appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire early this year.

A small digression here in order to educate my readership on the role of Lord Lieutenants (apparently that is the correct plural). Apart from wearing fancy dress and clanking around with swords at council annual general meetings, these relics also play a key role in advising the Queen (or rather a committee of worthies in Whitehall) on the suitability of people who have been nominated for gongs and appointments to non-existent posts in non-existent institutions. So now we know who to blame thank.

But back to the Ombudsman.

Among the welter of complaints, writs, judicial reviews and reports, Cneifiwr understands that the Ombudsman was recently asked to look into the circumstances of a meeting of the council's Executive Board in January of this year.

Not on the published agenda, but discussed and approved nonetheless was a report recommending that the Council provide the Chief Executive with an indemnity to fund both the defence of an action for libel being brought by Caebrwyn and an action against the blogger.

The minutes of the meeting record that such an item was discussed (and of course approved), although a public interest exemption was slapped on the whole affair, and the public was allowed to know only that an indemnity had been granted to an officer because of "exceptional circumstances".

It also appeared from the minutes that no declarations of interest were made, and that the officer concerned (it is reasonable to assume that this was the Chief Executive) remained present in the meeting while the report was presented and approved, even though he had a direct personal interest in the outcome.

Any councillors who acted in this way would most likely have found themselves accused of serious breach of the Councillors Code of Conduct and hauled up before a tribunal.

But council officers are different, and are subject to a different code. The well-meaning officials who drew up the Officers Code of Conduct almost certainly never envisaged that a council would blaze the sort of trail that Carmarthenshire is determinedly going down.

The Officers Code of Conduct envisages that there may be occasions when an officer should declare an interest, and it says that in such cases the officer should inform a more senior officer. What happens when the officer is the most senior officer is not explained. Presumably in such cases, the Chief Executive is expected to talk to himself.

In order to make a complaint to the Public Services Ombudsman, members of the public have to satisfy the Ombudsman that they have exhausted the complaints procedure of the relevant authority first.

You can bet on all sorts of things these days, but it is unlikely that Ladbrokes would have been willing to accept a bet that such a complaint to Carmarthenshire County Council would be rejected.

Just as complainants first have to exhaust the council's internal procedure, the Ombudsman also tells would-be complainers that he is powerless to investigate complaints against individual officers. No matter what they are alleged to have done, they may not be investigated by the Ombudsman.

Complainants may, however, make a complaint against a council as a whole, but then the Ombudsman may only investigate complaints in which a member of the public has suffered personal loss or injustice. Complaints against a council for failing its wider duties to the public are not part of the brief.

Of course this public spirited individual was doomed to failure from the beginning, because even if all of the other hurdles had successfully been negotiated (even Dai Greene would have struggled), the complainant would still have had to prove that the chief executive's presence at the meeting where his personal indemnity was discussed and approved had somehow been improper or resulted in maladministration. And since the meeting was held in behind closed doors, subject to a public interest exemption and recorded only in a brief written minute, such proof would have been rather hard to come by.

In other words, the council is adamant that there was nothing wrong about the January meeting, the Ombudsman is powerless to investigate, and the system ensures that officers are wrapped in cotton wool.

To end, here's a thought about the Councillors Code of Conduct, which is primarily concerned with ensuring that councillors should not behave in such a way as to bring their office or council into disrepute.

Carmarthenshire County Council certainly has a reputation. It has recently been the subject of several damning reports from the Ombudsman. It has been the subject of some hair-raising BBC documentaries. Stories of its shortcomings have been covered in the Western Mail, UK Press Gazette and other publications (although not in our muzzled local newspapers). And of course Carmarthenshire is becoming a regular feature in Private Eye's "Rotten Boroughs" column.

It seems our council is doing a pretty good job of dragging the county's reputation through the mud without any help from Cllr Caiach.