This week's WoS column

• TWO Jobs Peter Hain, currently running for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, spent most of the Assembly Election campaign warning of the dangers of letting the Tories into government if people didn’t vote Labour.
He told his party’s conference that a non-Labour vote would lead to “a Tory first minister in Wales in 2007 - aided and abetted by the Lib Dems and Plaid”. He told the House of Commons that not voting for Labour would guarantee “a Tory-led coalition running our schools and hospitals”. He wrote on his website that “a vote for Plaid Cymru or for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to put the Tories back in power in Wales”.
And indeed, prior to the 2005 General Election he told the Scotsman newspaper that voting Liberal Democrat in marginal seats would let in the Conservatives “by the back door”.
Yet looking forward to the next general election he writes in this week’s New Statesman: “Scaring progressive voters with the image of David Cameron crossing the threshold of No 10 won’t win Labour the next election.”
There’s some kind of contradiction here, we feel, but we can’t quite put our finger on it.

• “THE minority Labour Assembly Government is currently conducting negotiations by loudhailer through the press rather than working in partnership for the best governance for all of Wales,” complains Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones - an incisive argument, and one only slightly compromised by the fact he chose to make it via a statement sent to the press. Good work!

• POTENTIALLY bad news for fans of glass-eyed rabble-rousing pig farmers - BNP leader Nick Griffin, who lives in Powys, faces a challenge for the leadership of his party.
Chris Jackson, formerly the party’s organiser in the north-west of England, is to stand against Mr Griffin this summer in the hope of taking the helm.
“The current leader has, and the founder leader had, enormous talent in some directions and, it seems, none in others. This has meant the party has not been developed in a balanced manner,” says Mr Jackson.
“Currently, the party is effectively run as a dictatorship,” he adds, which is odd, as we thought BNP members liked that sort of thing.

• THIS column hates conflict, so can only hope and pray that an unseemly spat between Newport West Labour MP Paul Flynn and local paper the South Wales Argus can be solved soon.
Mr Flynn accused the paper of censorship after it removed a comment left on its website claiming it would cover a story about Tory MP David Davies breaking wind.
The comment said: “Every pathetic utterance he makes seems to be covered in the paper. I fully expect a headline soon saying something like ‘MP passes wind after curry and calls for curbs on air pollution’.”
After it vanished, Mr Flynn accused the paper of censorship and having “a bias towards the right wing”. The paper’s editor Gerry Keighley responded by saying Mr Flynn had a vendetta after it dropped his column 13 years ago.
It’s heartbreaking stuff, and we can only hope it’s sorted quickly. Play nicely, boys!

• FINALLY, news arrives of the latest electronic petition to go winging its way to Mr Tony from Wales courtesy of Downing Street’s excellent petitions website.
This one calls for Wales to become a “fully inderpendant country” with “are own UN, EU, Commonwealth departments”.
This, says petition creator Liam Gregnor, “will build a stronger Wales with more prosperities” and, frankly, who are we to argue?