Spare a thought if you will, please for poor old Eifion Evans, the CEO of Ceredigion County Council.

Sorry. Let me start again.

Don’t feel the slightest bit sorry for Eifion. He’s doing just fine. Actually, far better than most people.

On election count day, he earned an extra £350 for his presiding officer duties, making sure it all went according to plan.

Yep, it was a Friday, a normal working day. So that, in my mind begs the question: Just why did he have to double dip with the extra £350. God only knows there are families who struggle to live on that for a week.

I can’t say if Eifion got to claim mileage for his Range Rover for the trip from his Lampeter-area ranch down to Llandysul and back, but I suspect, if there’s a few extra bob to be squeezed out to keep the horses fed… hay, who are we to complain? At least if he did haul the horse box, he wouldn’t be able to claim double.

He and every other head of a Local Authority in England and Wales have just agreed a 3.3 per cent pay rise, backdated to 1 April – rather appropriate date that – giving him a salary increase of just under £5,000 for fiscal 2026-27.

Given that the rise will kick in after collective bargaining with all the minions at councils is complete – and that could take many long months – he’ll be getting a tidy lump sum then. But, sure, isn’t tax a killer. I’m sure he’ll lose a good whack of £151,528 to taxes when all is said and done.

Frankly, I wouldn’t know, and neither would the vast majority of people living in mid and west Wales.

Eifion has a bit to go to catch up with the Prime Minister, who earns about £15,000 more a year running the country than he does for running the country.

Dafydd Gibbard, the CEO who runs Gwynedd Council – about 15 per cent more people, a bigger area and more taxpayers overall – is not quite on the breadline but will only pick up a shade under £133,000.

I do feel sorry for Elin Jones who, as the new Finance Minister for Wales, only earns a shade under £125,000. I think she’s worth every penny given the mess we’re in.

Maybe Elin should have a word in Eifion’s ear and see how it’s done: London salary and a Lampeter lifestyle.

Maybe she could mention that £10 million grant from Cardiff Bay that Ceredigion has earmarked for the active travel path through Aberystwyth. Why is a firm from Stoke building the fences? Local workers would like to know…

The last lot in Cardiff Bay doled out millions for these glorified bike paths and to say that they are being fully utilised is a bit of a stretch.

Elin, as the new Finance Minister, will be signing off the cheques and as a true Cardi, she would do well to keep an eye on how the money is being spent.

Eifion hasn’t exactly been Cardi-like when it comes to the mess at Aberaeron Harbour. A good whack of the cash came from Cardiff but Ceredigion managed to screw it up anyway and they’re – sorry, we’re – paying for the thing to be dredged now regularly to make it work.

So, given that Elin stomped home in Aberystwyth, she’ll be watching very carefully how Eifion manages the issue of the replacement footbridge at Plascrug. You can bet she backs the vast majority of town folk who want the bridge to stay where it is ‑ just repaired.

It’s out for “consultation” and some 2,000 submissions overwhelmingly reject Eifion’s bonkers notion to build a new bridge on the local schoolyard.

Kerry Ferguson, the erstwhile Mayor of Aberystwyth is still basking in her post-count glow and relishing her new position as the Deputy Speaker in the Senedd. She too has a very vested interest in making sure Eifion gets this right.

The clapping seals at Ceredigion would do well now to listen to their new Plaid leadership echelon and make the right – not Eifion’s – choice.

In fairness to Kerry, she made sure Aberystwyth Town Council did the right thing recently in reversing the Plaid-run body’s decision to appoint Dylan Lewis-Rowlands as the incoming mayor.

The digital dilettante has a nasty reprimand from Labour on file over a series of kinky sext messages sent to a vulnerable student. He has been rightly sidelined. Hopefully, his resignation will come too if he has any semblance of honour. So far, he hasn’t. He just whines that he has been picked on.

It’s Plaid’s time now to show a bit of maturity. Running a country is different to running a county. And Eifion, as we all know, runs the county.

For now.