Sainsbury's row heats up

Ahead of tomorrow's full council meeting, Plaid Cymru Carmarthenshire have issued a statement (as below). which includes the publication of the paper trail of documents concerning the whole Sainsbury call-in row.
It also includes a letter of complaint from the MP and AM copied to the Ombudsman, against Council Leader Kevin Madge (Labour) and the Chief Executive, Mark James, I have linked to that letter at the bottom of the press release

With the situation growing more politically acrimonious by the day, tomorrow's council meeting promises to be an very interesting one.

Here's the Plaid press release;

"Recent weeks the political debate has been dominated by an unsavoury political row initiated pre-emptively by the Leader of Carmarthenshire County Council.....The initial press notice was issued jointly by the Executive of Council and Sainsbury’s via the press department of the Council.

Since the original story broke the Leader of the Council has been embroiled in an exercise of political spin, using the publicly funded press department of the Council, to rival Tony Blair’s Iraq dodgy dossier.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 10, the Full Council will meet for the first time since this sorry episode began.

Nobody goes into politics expecting not to receive a couple of low blows from your opponents, especially when your main rival is the Labour party. However, at the heart of any democratic system there has to be political integrity. This means that on no occasion should elected members and civil servants issue statements that are blatant lies and have no basis in fact.

We have therefore taken the extraordinary step of publishing our paper trail on this whole saga. These documents are the basis of a complaint we have made this week to the Local Government Ombudsman against the Leader of Carmarthenshire County Council and the Chief Executive, which can be found at the bottom of this post.

Jonathan Edwards MP and Rhodri Glyn Thomas AM"

Included in the letter of complaint is Mr Edwards reaction to the refusal to allow the Plaid motion at tomorrow's meeting;


"The latest twist in this sorry saga is of course your refusal, without referral to the Council Chair, to rule the Plaid Cymru group motion presented last Friday out of order as it did not have a date.  We appreciate 
that Standing Orders state a date to which the motion is intended should be noted, but your decision has done nothing but perpetuate the opinions of some county residents that the council has lost all sense of openness and willingness to debate."


Link to the Letter of complaint

The full press release and list of documents can be seen here; Jonathan Edwards MP - Sainsbury's

(Recent posts on this blog include; MP accuses Council Leader of defamatory comments, and Carmarthenshire chief Executive 'blocks' debate - says MP)