• FIRST Minister Rhodri Morgan is looking on the bright side following Labour’s woes over the past few months. Yes, he says, Labour has gone through its difficulties in recent months. Yes, they may have taken a battering. But it’s small fry compared to what their rivals have gone through in the past.
“You think of the Tories and Black Wednesday, they lost £4bn on the foreign exchanges in 1990 and they won the election in 1992 with the biggest ever popular vote,” he said at the launch of Labour’s local election campaign.
A fair point – and only slightly undermined by the fact that Black Wednesday took place in September 1992 and, rather than win the next election, the Conservatives crashed to their worst defeat since 1832. Other than that, something for Labour for clutch to.
• REGULAR readers of this column, should such people exist, may remember that prior to last year’s Assembly Election we described Dafydd Morgan, an independent candidate for Ceredigion, as “just the man to clean up the Assembly” after he promised to “rid the country of ‘white collar skullduggery’ coming from a ‘Taffia’ of certain local Masonic-inclined administrators, solicitors, officers, elected representatives, bank officials and business people”.
Mr Morgan took us at our word and put the quotes on his campaign literature, claiming to have the backing of Wales on Sunday.
Well, he’s back in the public eye – his trial begins at Swansea Crown Court on March 13 for alleged burglary and harassment.
• POOR comparison corner: has Health Minister Edwina Hart ordered “more reviews than a West End theatre”, as Shadow Health Minister Jonathan Morgan claims?
Or has she commissioned “more reviews than a WMC musical”, as Liberal Democrat Health spokeswoman Jenny Randerson says? And does this comparison not really work at all? Discuss.
• QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I’ve listened to Radio 1 all my life but I’m trying to wean myself onto Radio 4” – Mid and West Wales AM Nerys Evans, 27, does her best to dispel the notion that some of Plaid Cymru’s 2007 intake are a little, er, wet behind the ears.
• SPEAKING of grown-up politicians, Martin Eaglestone, the Labour candidate who tried and failed to win Arfon in last year’s Assembly Election, expected the worst before this weekend’s Labour conference.
“We wait to see what stunts our opponents try to throw up as distractions, but I don’t think we will be diverted from facing the challenges of the future,” he mused.
Perhaps by stunts, he was referring to the Labour politician who turned up at last year’s Plaid spring conference clutching a pledge for Ieuan Wyn Jones to sign promising not to join any form of post-election coalition with the Tories. When that failed, he resorted to accusing Plaid MP Adam Price of stealing his pen.
His name? Martin Eaglestone.
• THERE’S nothing journalists like more than writing about other journalists, so it’s a joy to report the news that Cardiff’s Guto Harri, top BBC political hack, is leaving behind the profession to earn some proper money with PR firm Fleishman Hillard.
“Playing my part in a dynamic, impressive team, wrestling with a broad range of tough and complex challenges, is a daunting but inspiring prospect, and I look forward to it with relish,” says Guto, who seems to have picked up PR-speak remarkably quickly.
• FINALLY, Lembit Öpik, Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire and one-half of chart-averse novelty pop act the Cheeky Girls, has tabled an Early Day Motion before the House of Commons, criticising the press for its “shocking priorities”.
Mr Öpik, who recently appeared on Al Murray’s TV show batting away toy asteroids from a globe with a cricket bat, believes the press has got its priorities all wrong and...you know what? We haven’t got the energy to go on.