Lights out

• Comments (0)

Lights are being turned off at Welsh Assembly Government offices across the nation tonight as part of a worldwide climate change campaign, reports the BBC. It will go dark in main government buildings between 8pm and 9pm to support "Earth Hour".

Why on earth would they be on at that time anyway?

Notes from Newport

• Comments (0)

In Newport today for Plaid Cymru's Spring Conference. Full coverage in tomorrow's Wales on Sunday, but here's a few extra snippets for you...

• How is being in coalition with Labour going to affect Plaid's chances in May's local elections? Leader Ieuan Wyn Jones was pretty confident it wouldn't be a factor when I spoke to him yesterday: "It doesn’t look like we’ll be punished, if you like, for being in government with Labour."
So what say you, Deputy Housing Minister Jocelyn Davies, speaking at a briefing for journalists this morning?
"Some may very well be put off voting Plaid because we're in coalition at Assembly level but that's a choice for them". This, we think, is called "being off-message".

• Speaking of Ms Davies, a joke doing the rounds here is that the conference is only being held in Newport so the South Wales East AM could attend. Her conference record is "patchy", one of her colleagues mutters: "She doesn't really do North Wales."

• The conference's opening speech this morning from South Wales East AM Mohammad Asghar was - how can I put this politely? - a stream of consciousness. Not only did he claim, bizarrely, that Newport is "the heart of Plaid Cymru", he also bemoaned the fact his daughter had moved to England and implored the Welsh Assembly Government that in the future Welsh children can "never ever leave Wales". I do not think this is official party policy.
What's more, he cited as one of Plaid's crowning achievements their policy of putting women at the top of all regional lists for Assembly Elections. Lord alone* knows what Dafydd Wigley thought of this plaudit: if it wasn't for the rule he'd be an AM again now. And they're scrapping it as a result.

• Finally, who was the idiot who left their mobile on, thus disturbing Mr Wigley's speech with a ringtone which - embarrassingly - was a burst of pounding techno? Whoops! It was me. Sorry.

*Pun intended

Progress, power and priorities

• Comments (0)

So it's off to Newport for the final of this year's Spring conferences - Plaid Cymru - and the most eagerly-anticipated leader's speech of the lot. While Rhodri Morgan's interest is mackerel now, Nick Bourne is sitting relatively pretty and Mike German is working his notice out, Ieuan Wyn Jones needs to give a masterclass in tightrope walking. All parties need to give a different message to their base as to the voters at large, but Plaid leaders in particular have a delicate balancing act between placating some of their more restless delegates and saying the right things to swing voters watching the TV highlights. And when you're a Plaid leader having to say no to your supporters for the first time ever, that balancing act becomes even more precarious.

Here's a taster of the message he'll give later today:

The leader of Plaid Cymru and Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones will say today that Plaid's priority in Government is to bring about progress rather than merely to preserve power. In his keynote speech to Plaid's Spring Conference in Newport Mr Jones will tell delegates that Plaid is not interested in being in Government on a 'business as usual basis' - either in the Assembly or at Local Government level. He'll say that Plaid is in government to bring about change and to provide fresh thinking - even if that sometimes involves making difficult decisions.

Ieuan Wyn Jones will say that his party has "become an innovative force in Welsh politics" and that "even the most cynical of commentators are noticing the difference Plaid is making through being in government". Mr Jones will also say that the One Wales Government needs more partners in local councils that want to deliver the party's vision of a modern, prosperous and just future for our communities.

Possible update on the blog from Newport tomorrow, although don't hold your breath - otherwise there's full coverage in Sunday's Wales on Sunday including an in-depth interview with Mr Jones himself. He managed to fit in 45 minutes with me yesterday morning despite his packed diary.

Bicycles and wheelbarrows

• Comments (0)

And so to Chapter, the trendy Cardiff arts centre, this morning where Plaid Cymru unveiled the first of their 'innov8' policies they're going to be wheeling out in the run-up to May's local elections. There's eight of them, and they're innovative. See what they've done there?

Not that all of them will be implemented in every Plaid-led council or council in which Plaid is part of the leadership, according to Helen Mary Jones who, along with Leanne Wood, unveiled the policies this morning. The goal is to implement at least one per council, "The one that suits best," according to Ms Jones. So what were we treated to today?

The first, most eye-catching of the two, involves "going back to the future," as Ms Wood put it, and introducing bike-sharing schemes in urban areas, Paris has done it, as has Barcelona, Helsinki and Berlin. Why not Newport and Wrexham?

"The average journey of a Smart Bikes user will be around 2.5 miles," explains the press blurb. "The first half hour will be free of charge with a sliding scale of punitive charges thereafter to encourage bike circulation. It is estimated that each bike will be used 20 times a day. Successful systems have a acapacity of 0.01 bikes for each citizen. In Lyon it is estimated that each bike travels 6,000 miles a year. Anti-theft technology and heavy fines will be used to deter abuse of Smart Bikes."

How else will this be paid for? A public-private partnership involving firms paying to advertise on the bikes, says Ms Wood. Is this a historic embrace by Plaid of bringing the private sector into public service provision, I asked her after the press conference. An emphatic no: "Hospitals are vital public services, this isn't."

And so to the second policy launch: asking Wales to dig for victory. Or, as they call it, 'grow your own' (they seem to have done away with such grammatical niceties as capital letters). "Plaid-governed local authorities will release publicy-owned land to be converted to community gardens and allotments," says the document handed out. "Increasing local food production will help deliver healthier lifestyles; develop local food economies; boost local procurement and reduce the environmental cost of transporting food." Any questions from the press? No; allotments aren't as sexy as possible mass thefts of Coca Cola-embossed bicycles.

I did have one question though: have Plaid candidates in the local elections been informed of these key planks to the party's platform or were they learning of the policies at the same time as the press? Helen Mary Jones couldn't answer it; the Plaid press team said they thought "leaders" were aware. Council leaders definitely were. It was down to them to pass the message on to candidates. There were "hundreds" of Plaid candidates, Ms Jones pointed out. So the answer, I think, is "no".

Startling revelation of the week

• Comments (0)

The BNP is racist, says councillor who has quit the party.

Next week:
* Pope has Catholic leanings.
* Bears tend towards wood defecation.

Parallel lives

• Comments (0)

I wasn't the only one to draw allusions with Kevin Keegan when Paul Murphy was reappointed Welsh Secretary almost two months ago to the day. The parallel was clear: both were veterans returning to their old stomping ground much to the surprise of everybody who had assumed they had long since been put out to pasture.

Well here's another striking similarity. Murphy, we are told, may resign from the Cabinet over Gordon Brown's refusal to offer MPs a free vote over a new law to allow more experiments on embryos. Murphy and Keegan returned to their old jobs within days of each other. If Mr Brown refuses to budge and Newcastle United don't get wins over Fulham and Tottenham in the next week, might they also depart within days of each other?

If your name's not down, you're not coming in

• Comments (0)

POOR Kim Howells, Pontypridd MP and Foreign Office minister: all his old mates are going to have a party, and he's not invited. A celebration takes place at the end of May to mark 40 years since the 1968 occupation of Hornsey College of Art in London, a political protest former communist Mr Howells played a leading role in. The organisers, Unison and Aslef and Haringey TUC, had invited Mr Howells to come and join in with the cocktails and canapes.

Then Mr Howells started hanging around with his new friends in Colombia. And now his former buddies in the unions have withdrawn his invitation. Wonder what the 20-something radical Mr Howells would have made of his ministerial incarnation?

Betrayal or victory

• Comments (0)

So is the announcement on the future of Llandudno Hospital by Health Minister Edwina Hart a betrayal of hospital campaigners, as Conservative AM for Clwyd West Darren Millar says?

“This is a hammer blow to the people of Llandudno and all those who use the hospital. Despite all her warm words of reassurance the minister is simply rubber stamping recommendations in the Designed for North Wales report which caused so much public outrage across the region in the run-up to last year’s elections. More than 17,000 people have signed petitions rejecting the removal of these vital services at the hospital. The Labour-Plaid government has ignored those concerns. By removing such services from Llandudno they have put the hospital’s future at serious risk. Many voted for Plaid Cymru last May on the basis that acute services at Llandudno Hospital would not be withdrawn. People will not forget this betrayal.”

Or is it a victory for hospital campaigners, as Plaid's Aberconwy AM Gareth Jones says?

"As a result of the Minister’s statement today we can safely say that we have achieved our three objectives. Our thanks go to all the people for their overwhelming support for the campaign, without which we wouldn’t be where we are today. Let no-one deny either, the difference that Plaid in the One Wales Government now makes to the lives of the people of Wales. Mr Frank Burns’ contribution with his stunning report and Edwina Hart’s guts and determination to make it happen should also be recognised.”

They can't both be right, surely?

Today's Spin Doctor column from Wales on Sunday

• Comments (2)

• EXPECT much, much more to be written and broadcast about Enoch Powell over the next month or so as the 40th anniversary of his infamous “rivers of blood” speech approaches.
Amid all the hand-wringing and academic murmuring what we’d really like to hear are the views of Peter Davies, Newport Conservative councillor, father of Monmouth MP David ‘Top Cat’ Davies and owner of a dog called, er, Enoch.

• PHEW! It’s thirsty work at the Wales Office, there’s no doubt about that.
Which would explain why, last year, the office formerly inhabited by No Job Peter Hain and now by Welsh Viceroy Paul Murphy slurped its way through 2,090 litres of bottled water.
That compares with 2,072 litres the previous year and 1,665 in 2005. Eco-conscious Mr Murphy says his department is “exploring possibilities of installing filter taps to provide a drinking water tap in the kitchen at my London office”.
Frankly, if the “possibility” of installing a tap in a kitchen is so complex it needs “exploring” you wonder quite how they’re going to cope once legislative competence orders start flooding in from the Assembly.

• PING! An e-mail arrives in our inbox from Heritage Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas’ press officer.
“Big weekend of Welsh sport ahead, says Sports Minister,” it is titled.
Thanks for that. It had entirely passed us by.

• A LITTLE local difficulty for the Lib Dems up north after a party activist, Steph Ashley, described Llandudno as “a place where people from the north west of England go to die” on her blog.
Ms Ashley, a branch officer from Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, made the comment in relation to the party conference – sparking predictable indignation from the council’s Labour leader, Ronnie Hughes.
“This is insulting to the town of Llandudno, which is proud of all of its citizens. Steph Ashley should apologise to local people for this slap in the face,” he blustered, while the residents of Llandudno wondered what a blog was before going back to sleep.

• ANOTHER slur on a picturesque Welsh town, this time Llandrindod Wells, invites an even more ludicrous response from a local councillor.
Mike Parker, presenter of ITV Wales’ Great Welsh Roads, said of the town’s Victorian charms: “Why don’t they go the whole hog and introduce cholera in the town’s water supply or send the kids up the chimneys?”.
A wry aside, you might think. But not if you are Councillor Gary Price, who appears to have interpreted it as a direct incitement to chemical terrorism.
“What kind of comments are these? To say this could be dangerous,” he said, apparently without irony. “Imagine if someone listened to him and upset the watercourse.”
Yes. Just imagine.

• STILL, we can forgive him his hyperbole.
After all, this is the same Councillor Gary Price who, upon learning of changes to the layout of Powys Council’s debating chamber in January, told the Powys County Times: “I’m not prepared to lie back and take it. Changing the chamber would be like throwing away the history of Radnorshire.”

• AND so to what we hope will be a regular addition to Spin Doctor: spurious press release of the week, in which we draw attention to a release sent to us by a London-based PR consultant, inevitably called something like Holly or Pippa, containing “research” hoping to promote their product.
This week: Horlicks have commissioned research on sleep patterns.
Apparently “more people in Wales have snapped at their children due to tiredness since the New Year than anywhere else in the country with 19 per cent compared to the national average of 11 per cent”. The solution? Horlicks.
Marvellous stuff, and a worthy inaugural winner.

Psyche path

• Comments (0)

Former Conservative AM Glyn Davies thinks the only reason that can be given for the pay rise/change in pay differential for AMs announced last week is that the Assembly now has law-making powers, albeit it in a limited form. "I could not believe what my ears were telling me when I heard talk of AMs 'working harder' - a phrase which could not be better designed to inflame public sector workers and almost everyone else who is also 'working harder'," he writes.

Alas! His advice is too late for Caerphilly AM Jeff Cuthbert who, in a feature in tomorrow's Wales on Sunday, comes up with another explanation for why AMs deserve more pay.

"On the constituency front, AMs are more and more getting into the psyche of people’s minds, which MPs have done for years, and the workload has increased significantly," he says.

Right you are, then.

Alun Cairns: Alarmed

• Comments (0)

Four out of 10 school teachers in Wales do not have a degree in the core subjects they teach, a new survey has revealed. Shadow Education Minister says: "To consider that large numbers of teachers are not trained in their subject to degree level is alarming."

So is it really that big a problem? Should we be panicking? After all, Mr Cairns is not a man to get easily alarmed, is he...?

On his page on the Conservative Party's website, Mr Cairns muses over the prevalance of late-night violence. "It is also alarming that large groups of people are too frightened to go out after dark because of violent crime," he says.

In March 2005 Mr Cairns put out a press release in response to the fact more than half of people in Wales were not receiving NHS dental care. "The alarming number of dentists leaving NHS schemes in favour of private only plans means that the number of people not receiving care will grow," he said.

Later that year, in November, he addressed the Assembly on the thorny issue aggregates dredging off the Gower peninsula in Wales. "The coastline offers magical properties and some of the most attractive beaches in Europe," he told AMs. "There is little wonder, therefore, that the potential loss of sand along the coastline is so alarming and such a worry to locals and visitors alike."

In November 2006, Mr Cairns warned that jobs were being slashed across Wales. "Welsh industry is haemorrhaging jobs at an alarming rate," he pointed out.

In September 2007, Mr Cairns was concerned about figures showing seven- and 11-year-olds in Wales were not doing as well as they were a year before. Shadow Education Minister Alun Cairns said: "It's alarming that the trend hasn't started to converge after so much effort, so much resources and so much political priority had been given by Rhodri Morgan and the Labour party."

Poor Mr Cairns: he does seem to get alarmed an awful lot.

Quote of the week

• Comments (3)

"It's not a pay rise, it's a changing differential in pay."

Assembly Presiding Officer Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas on the 8.3 per cent pay rise for AMs recommended yesterday.

The Brady Punch

• Comments (0)

What do the neighbours make of the controversial decision by the Assembly Government to scrap car parking charges at hospitals?

Here's Karren Brady, high-flying businesswoman and managing director of Birmingham City FC, in her column in the Birmingham Mail:

CHARGES for parking at NHS hospitals are iniquitous and should be swept away.
They are being removed in Wales from 2011 and whatever they can do in the Principality I'm sure we are capable of copying in the mother country.

That, I think, is what you call 'praising with faint damnation'.

PS As it's March 5, our colleagues over in Birmingham are probably safe to remove the holly and 'Merry Christmas' message from the logo on their website now.

Green ink

• Comments (0)

Good to see Carmarthenshire man Stephen Green - director of Christian Voice and official spokesman for the world's 2.1 billion Christians - back in the news: he's been too, too quiet. Now he's warning that a ruling by the Law Lords, refusing to hear his lengthy and futile blasphemy case against the producers of Jerry Springer: The Opera, will "bring down the judgement of God on us all".

"I love my neighbour and I do not want that to happen," says Mr Springer. And there's no doubt he's full of love as this column, originally printed in Wales on Sunday in May 2006 shows:

JULY 2003

Ex-builder Mr Green writes to the chief constables of every police force in Wales and England complaining about police officers being allowed to take part in gay pride marches.

Terence Grange from Dyfed-Powys Police writes back: “As a lifelong practising Catholic who has seen service in both the military and police force all my working life, I must advise you that I find your views morally offensive and totally reprehensible and I would be grateful if you would cease any further communication with me.”

JANUARY 2005

The group first gains national notoriety when it circulates the home addresses and telephone numbers of senior BBC figures in protest at the screening of Jerry Springer: The Opera on BBC Two.

Some people on the list receive calls threatening them and their families with death and bloodshed – just, presumably, as Jesus would have wanted.

FEBRUARY 2005

A cash-strapped Scottish cancer charity, Maggie’s Centres, is forced to turn down a substantial donation that came from the proceeds of a special performance of Jerry Springer – The Opera. The charity had been due to receive £10 per ticket for an afternoon gala, the total amount being around £10,000.

Big-hearted Mr Green writes to the charity threatening to “picket” its branches and “block its work” unless it refuses the “sinful” money. Oddly, it does not offer to make up the shortfall itself.

Fresh from his cancer triumph, Mr Green turns his attention to targeting abortion clinics and the often desperate women forced by circumstances to use them.

“The taking of innocent blood brings judgement on our land and cries to Heaven for vengeance,” he says. “The presence of abortion centres in our towns is iniquitous. They should be shut down. It would not take much: just a few prayer vigils outside clinics.”

Strangely, no clinics have yet shut as a result of these vigils.

AUGUST 2005

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans, the ever-sensitive Mr Green issues a statement claiming it was the deserved result of God’s wrath at the city for staging an annual gay Mardi Gras.

“By one of those co-incidences which only Almighty God can manufacture, the name ‘Katrina’ means ‘purity’,” notes Mr Green, while the bodies of 1,604 innocent people still lie buried in rubble.

DECEMBER 2005

As Labour’s Civil Partnership Bill is introduced, allowing gay people to enjoy the same legal benefits of married people, Mr Green – who, you may have gathered by now, devotes much of his time to thinking about homosexuality – steps in to offer his opinion.

“They will cement sad, deluded people into a lifestyle characterised by deceit, disease, degradation and death,” fumes Mr Green.

Warming to his theme, he adds: “Ordinary people will be revolted by the sight of these couples embracing,” while most ‘ordinary’ people shrug and get on with their own lives.

Noting the amount of coverage his views have now gained in the media in the media, Mr Green told The Times last year: “Perhaps the Lord thinks I have got a certain gift. With all the hate mail I have been getting, I am obviously rattling Satan’s cage.”

Perhaps the Lord does think he’s got a certain gift. Or perhaps journalists have his mobile number and know he’s always good for an easy quote. Who knows?