You will now all have received your copy of "Value for your Money", the County Council newsletter accompanying your Council Tax demand.
Pages two and three are given over to an item entitled: "Where does your MONEY go?" in which the phrase "Your Council Tax funds …" puts in six appearances.
This, I am afraid, is, at best, inaccurate because Council Tax makes up only a small proportion of the Council's income.
The actual figures are Revenue Support Grant £102.5 million; Non-Domestic rates £23 million; and Council Tax £23.7 million, so Council Tax only funds 16% of the Council's net spending.
Indeed, to fund the whole of the expenditure through Council Tax would require the occupier of a Band D property to pay in excess of £3,000 a year.
As this is by no means the first time I have drawn attention to this, shall we say, terminological inexactitude, we might have expected the Council to tell us the whole truth by using the term part-funds or helps to fund, especially as we, the Council taxpayers, have forked out some £3,000 to produce this piece of propaganda.
And the half-truths don't end there.
As His Leadership, Cllr Maurice Hughes boasts, in what looks suspiciously like an illegal, taxpayer-funded puff for his ruling Independent Political (sic) Party, Council Tax has only risen by 3.5% - the lowest in Wales.
That is true with respect to the tax on individual properties but, if you look at the bottom of page 5 of "Value for your Money", you will find that the total Council Tax take has risen from £22.24 million to £23.69 million, an increase of 6.5%.
The reason for this discrepancy is that the tax base (the number of Band D equivalents in the County Council's area) has gone up from 43,594 to 44,858, an increase of 1,264, which, at £528 a shot, accounts for £662,000, or just over half of the £1.29 million additional tax.
Indeed, looking back in my records, I notice an increase in the Council Tax base from 41,572 to 44858 (8%) since 1999, though, according to the recent census, the number of people served by the council has suffered a slight drop.
In addition to the three sources of taxpayers' funds (Revenue Support Grant; Non-Domestic Rates; and Council Tax) the council has a fourth income stream: charges.
Lord Palmerston claimed that only three people had ever understood the Schleswig-Holstein question - the Prince Consort, who was dead; a Danish statesmen (unnamed) who was in an asylum; and he himself, who had forgotten.
I doubt if there is anyone outside the council's finance department who understands the precise make-up of the column headed "income" on page 5 - certainly none of the elected members who are supposed to be running the show.
Trying to make comparisons with the previous year's propaganda sheet is useless because most of the categories of income have different names.
The difficulty is compounded by the fact that what is lumped together under the heading "income" comes from many sources: special grants, council house rents, income from investments and charges for services, to name but a few.
What can be said for certain is that "income" next year is set to be £13.5 million more than in the current year.
Some of that income will be in the form of increased charges to users of council services i.e. Council Tax payers.
For example, during the debate on the budget, Cllr Terry Mills (Lab) drew attention to the fact that the council's land searches department showed a "profit" of £223,000.
This £223,000, described by Cllr Mills as the result of "a monopoly supplier ripping off the people of Pembrokeshire" is nothing more or less than a tax on house buyers.
Running the service on revenue neutral lines, leaving the £223,000 to be raised by Council Tax, would mean an extra fiver per Band D property.
That adjustment, alone, would have meant raising Council tax by 4.5% rather than the 3.5% shouted from the rooftops by Cllr Hughes.
And there have been other examples, such as the imposition of charges for collecting commercial and garden waste, where exactly the same trick, of moving the cost from Council Tax to users, has been employed.
Finally, the stealthiest stealth tax of all - the scrapping of services, altogether.
The most recent example of this particular manoeuvre is the decision to pass responsibility for children's play areas to Community Councils or, in tax terms, to transfer the expenditure from Council Tax to Community Council precepts.
Either way, we pay.
But, at least, it enables Cllr Hughes to announce small increases in Council Tax while boasting about the authority's "financial prudence and efficiency".
Don't be taken in.
My investigation into the business relationship between Cllr Brian Hall and Dr Michael Ryan has turned up yet another complication.
You will remember that His Leadership, Maurice Hughes, put out a press statement claiming that "The Council is fully aware of the company Euroryall (sic). Before the company was registered, the principals approached officers of the council. They gave firm undertakings that the company would not trade in Pembrokeshire nor provide any conflict of interest."
To back up this statement the council's Monitoring Officer has provided me with a copy of a letter, dated 3 September 2000, written by Dr Ryan to Head of Marketing and Communications, Mr David Thomas, which the council claim is a "contractually enforceable" agreement not to trade in Pembrokeshire.
I have already explained why, on its own, this letter is not a contract (see Cutting a dash) and in any case a letter from Dr Ryan cannot justify the use of the terms "principals" and "they" in Cllr Hughes' statement.
No wonder he is refusing to answer my emailed questions on the issue!
Now I have discovered a further complication.
Dr Ryan's letter is written on ORA International Ltd's headed paper and signed by him in the role of managing director.
That is not surprising, because the contract to provide management consultancy services is between ORA and the council.
However, ORA has no connection with Euro-Ryall Ltd, other than the fact that Dr Ryan is a director of both, so, on the Common Law principle of privity of contract, which provides that only the parties to a contract are bound by its terms, ORA's letter cannot possibly be a "contractually enforceable" agreement between Euro-Ryall and the council.
What baffles Old Grumpy is how a large public organisation with a budget of £150 million, and crawling with highly paid lawyers, could get itself into such a tangle over what should be a simple contract.
I suspect someone has been flying solo without a pilot's licence.
PS My enquiries at Companies House reveal that Euro-Ryall Ltd is not Dr Ryan's first foray into UK commercial life.
Back in 1991 he became a director of a company called Giornato Ltd.
His fellow director was one Gerard Jude Ryan, who, according to the records, held 142 other directorships at the time.
Unfortunately, the company lacked staying power and was dissolved in 1992.
I am presently trying to pull all the threads together on the Hall/Ryan saga and I hope to be able to publish the result, as a completely separate, novel-length article, next week
Cover up or cock up? About three weeks ago, on Sunday March 9 to be precise, one of my most reliable moles telephoned to say that, the previous day, Cllr Alwyn Luke had been arrested at Tesco's Haverfordwest store on suspicion of shoplifting.
I passed the message on to some of my media contacts in the hope that they might be able to establish the truth or falsehood of this story.
When nothing appeared in the local prints, I decided to make my own enquiries.
All the police would tell me was that a 72-year-old male had been arrested at a Haverfordwest superstore on March 8 on suspicion of theft and, following further police investigations, had been released without charge.
Further investigations revealed that this was indeed Cllr Luke.
I rang Tesco's PR company who refused to discuss any individual case but assured me that they were "extremely careful" in these matters and would not apprehend anyone unless there was a strong suspicion that an offence had been committed.
Not careful enough in this case, it would seem.
I hope they have offered Cllr Luke a fulsome apology and a trolley-full of free goodies in compensation for his wrongful arrest.
Modesty forbids Summoning up all the willpower at my command, I have resolved to avoid gloating about the weekend's events in Dublin.
I can't promise to be so self-effacing when England win the World Cup in October.