{"id":1373,"date":"2017-04-01T21:01:27","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T20:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/?p=1373"},"modified":"2017-04-01T21:13:32","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T20:13:32","slug":"carmarthenshire-county-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/2017\/04\/01\/carmarthenshire-county-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr Carmarthenshire County Council, still singing “Indemnify Me” on April Fools."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mark<\/a>Carmarthenshire County Council was originally formed on April Fools Day\u00a01889 by the Local Government Act 1888. It was abolished on 31 March 1974, and begun anew, which shows beyond doubt\u00a0that it is entirely possible for the Council to wipe the slate clean and begin again.<\/p>\n

There’s no sign of that though in the disgraceful matter of James v Thompson. Carmarthenshire County Council’s unelected CEO Mark James claims to have struck a blow for council\u2019s up and down the land<\/a> by gaining costs indemnity from the Council (CCC) to launch\u00a0a counter-claim in defamation against a blogger who had sued him for libel for comments he made following her arrest for filming a council meeting. The well covered story has\u00a0dragged on and on, for so long\u00a0that the Council have had time to implement it’s own videoing of meetings.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So it was that ten days before April Fool\u2019s 2017 ANM\u00a0sat in court to hear Mark James’ lawyer Mr Spackman, describe to District Judge Parsons how proportionate it was for Mrs Thompson\u2019s home to be immediately sold to meet the damages awarded to Mark James for the controversial indemnity<\/a><\/p>\n

Damages were of course due because Judge Tugenhat’s judgement of the case found that Mrs Thompson had failed to justify her claim that Mark James was “a pinocchio”, or that Carmarthenshire County Council’s indemnity was a “slush fund”, as she had written.<\/p>\n

So we sat there, while Mr Spackman reeled out his word-net, chipping away at the unreasonableness of his case in a pseudo-regretful monotone, mumbling about proportionality, author of her own misfortune, etc, the usual\u00a0lawyerly grease, to\u00a0persuade the Judge to chuck the Thompsons out of their home for the damages alone, even though Mr Thompson wasn’t a party to the case, and even though the indemnified costs of that case were not being claimed at the present time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ask a Busy Woman<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Jacqui<\/a>It\u2019s worth mentioning that as well as being in court a week last Thursday to save her home, the Thursday before that Mrs Thompson was being interviewed by the police under caution. This interview followed yet further allegations by Mr James of \u201charassment\u201d, again for writing.<\/p>\n

Due to the lack of clarity about whether charges would follow, Mrs Thompson was not even able to share details of specific allegations but she did share the fact\u00a0that she has always offered Mr James a right of reply on her blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in Carmarthen Court, Mr Spackman droned on: proportionality necessitates brevity, parties moving on.. and time is certainly also a pressure for Mrs Thompson who’s now got to stretch hers\u00a0to come up with the \u00a3250 per month the Judge decided she must pay to Mr James\u00a0to stay in her home, having ruled that it\u00a0should not be sold immediately. After the hearing Mrs Thompson\u00a0told me that she felt the Judge had been fair, and it’s also true that Judge Parsons did refer to several things Mrs Thompson said as having been uttered\u00a0 “in the heat of the moment<\/em>” which Judge Tugendhat had certainly not acknowledged, to her detriment.<\/p>\n

But fair? How fair was it\u00a0to accept\u00a0Mr Spackman\u2019s obsequious submission that\u00a0the Welsh Audit Office’s findings on the indemnity as\u00a0“unlawful” amounted to a mere “opinion”, equally weighted with those of two\u00a0barristers who said they thought it was<\/em>. And how fair to\u00a0eventually shrug the whole thing\u00a0off as a matter which “should have gone to judicial review<\/em>\u201d but it\u2019s of course too late now? District Judge Parsons said he would not \u201cgo behind”\u00a0the decision of the Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIndemnify Me\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Carmarthenshire<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark James, who apparently didn’t have time to attend,\u00a0sent a message through Mr Spackman that he could chuck the damages\u00a0“in the gutter” if he wanted, arguing that whatever he does with the money\u00a0is no one’s business but his own. Never mind the stated ground for indemnifying him that:\u00a0“The Head of Paid Service has confirmed that he is not motivated by a wish to benefit financially and that accordingly should his action be successful any damages awarded to him will be paid over to the Authority and will not be kept by him”<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

A cynic observing such flagrant flip-flopping, might wonder whether Mr James could’ve won at all if it hadn’t been expedient to protect the unlawful indemnity of the shelling out of potentially hundreds of thousands of tax-payers pounds to defend its own CEO’s reputation.<\/p>\n

At any rate neither Carmarthenshire County Council nor Mr James himself will make any comment. Enquirers to the\u00a0Council are informed that it is a “private matter”<\/em> and are referred to Mr James\u2019 lawyers, who say “Our client will not be making any statements nor conducting any interviews”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But hang on, if proportionality and finality matter so much, why aren’t they claiming those costs post haste?\u00a0Council leader Emlyn Dole told the BBC last year that it had been decided to “pursue the full costs awarded to the council by the High Court, in the interests of the public purse”<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Awkward<\/b><\/p>\n

Had Mr James lost the indemnified counter-claim, the people of Carmarthen would be paying his indemnified costs. Asking the people of Carmarthen to pay for that, in addition to Mrs Thompson’s own costs, after there had been such a hoo ha about it in the first place would have been, to say the least awkward.\"for<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr Spackman might rumble on citing time again\u00a0and\u00a0the importance of all parties moving on, but isn’t it also important not to use \u201ctoo late for justice now\u201d as the ultimate weapon against whistleblowers? The possibility of avoiding the tragedy of whistleblowing<\/a>\u00a0is surely at its most remote\u00a0when mistakes in the Justice system, last port of call for many, are ritually compounded, instead of being revisited and sorted out.<\/p>\n

And Jackie Thompson’s is a case in point because whether the Judge was fair or not, and with or without Judicial Review, the brick wall from both Mr James and the Council demonstrates\u00a0that winning the counter-claim certainly hasn’t made the indemnity issue go away.<\/p>\n

In fact the opposite, because until the Council does claim the costs, the people of Carmarthenshire have already paid<\/em> for it: awkward – no wonder nobody wants to talk about it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mr Carmarthenshire County Council?<\/b><\/p>\n

\"CPS<\/a>Referring enquirers to\u00a0its already stated position therefore doesn’t help the Council.<\/p>\n

Neither does Mr James\u2019 contemptuous message to the Court about throwing the damages into the gutter help to shake the unfortunate perception that he knows what he is doing is wrong.<\/p>\n

Plus, is it right on principle that the good people of Carmarthenshire should pay to defend a “he said \/ she said” argument, on behalf of a\u00a0non-elected official?<\/p>\n

To deliberately ignore an offered right of reply and then claim to feel harassed by writing is the opposite of democratic. It also contradicts CPS guidance on new media<\/a>,\u00a0where the police are obliged under article 10 to protect robust free speech, and especially political speech.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the police will read the guidance and properly inform Carmarthenshire County Council\u00a0that high ranking officials should be expected to be able to hold a civil conversation in public with a critic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

April Fools comes round again.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"<\/a>Maybe Carmarthenshire folk\u00a0should urgently petition the council to nudge Mr James to get on and claim\u00a0the costs. The longer Mr James and Carmarthenshire County Council don’t do that, or state that they will not claim them, the more vexatious the whole thing appears.<\/p>\n

Not only that but the delay makes\u00a0Carmarthenshire\u00a0residents into unwitting, yet nevertheless unhelpful bystanders to a state of continued threat on Jacqui Thompson’s head.\u00a0Surely the public, the Council, Mrs Thompson and even Mr James are all owed better closure than that, and\u00a0spare Mr Spackman from rumbling on.<\/p>\n

The more they prevaricate about these indemnified costs, and keep the people of Carmarthenshire out of pocket, the more the impression of injustice risks\u00a0solidifying into a firm conviction that Mrs Thompson\u2019s comments about dishonesty and a slush-fund were not “seriously defamatory” at all, but justified.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly April Fools again, it’s just not quite clear as yet, who the joke is truly on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carmarthenshire County Council was originally formed on April Fools Day\u00a01889 by the Local Government Act 1888. It was abolished on 31 March 1974, and begun anew, which shows beyond doubt\u00a0that it is entirely possible for the Council to wipe the slate clean and begin again. There’s no sign of that though in the disgraceful matter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[170,7,4],"tags":[242,2,240,244,245,243,241],"class_list":["post-1373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comment","category-ethics","category-politics","tag-carmarthenshire-county-council","tag-featured","tag-jacqui-thompson","tag-james-v-thompson","tag-judge-tugendhat","tag-libel","tag-mark-james"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1410,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions\/1410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amazonnewsmedia.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}