Superman saves Pontamman

We are coming to the end of Carmarthenshire County Council's long summer recess, but very few councillors have got around to putting pen to paper to write one of the new annual reports the Welsh Government seems to be keen on.

Most of the handsomely paid members of the governing Executive Board, including Kevin Madge (Lab, £47,500), Tegwen Devichand (Lab, £31,120), Jeff Edmunds (Lab), Jane Tremlett (Ind), Mair Stephens (Ind) and Jim Jones (Ind), each on £28,780,  have yet to go to the trouble of telling their electors and the rest of us what they have been up to during the last year. The same is true of Anthony Jones (Lab) who receives £21,910 for chairing the Planning Committee.

The honourable exceptions earlier this summer were Meryl Gravell, Pam Palmer and Keith Davies, and they have now been joined by Cllr Colin Evans (Lab), Executive Member for Technical Services (refuse, roads, etc).

Cllr Evans was one of the new intake in May 2012, but despite his short time in office, anyone thinking about printing out his annual report would be well advised to consider the cost of printer ink first.

The first three pages list achievements as local member for Pontamman. These include the imminent construction of the Llandeilo bypass (apparently this involves annexing several neighbouring wards), £12,000 which he "made available" for a traffic calming scheme near the Heol Llwyd play area, and his failure to prevent the Planning Committee from steam rollering through a controversial housing development at Lletyderwen.

Perhaps Col should have told his outraged voters that most of his Labour colleagues on the Planning Committee would vote for the Massacre of Innocents if they were instructed to by the planning officers.

Recycling rates up

Having dispensed with his more or less local activities, Cllr Evans goes on to list 19 separate achievements in his role as member of the Executive Board. These include increasing recycling rates at the Council's Waste Recycling Centres from 41% to 76.94% in just a year.

If only he had tried 0.06% harder.

This is followed by a further 20 bullets points listing the council's achievements in the field of waste management and several more accompanying paragraphs of rubbish-related activities.

All of this would have exhausted any lesser mortal, but as we can see from the snap below when he took time out to save All Saints Church in Ammanford, SuperCol looks very relaxed:

Dechrau canmol

With four more years left in office, Colin is on course to solve the problem of global warming well before we go back to the polls.