Matt Withers

Moving on

2006-07-13T11:20:00.000+01:00

This will be the last posting on this Blogger site - as of today it's going all official and moving to the swanky, icWales-owned Welsh Blogs site and renamed A Change of Trouble.

This is good news for readers in the respect I will be posting on a semi-regular, daily-ish basis, rather than just putting the Wales on Sunday column up; bad news for me in that it's taken a good six months to get to the point where it's among the first ten hits when I Google my own name.

The name of the blog comes from a Lloyd George quote, by the way: "With me a change of trouble is as good as a vacation."

See you on the other side.

PETTY PETER

2006-07-11T09:54:00.000+01:00

Sunday, July 9 2006
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FOR followers of Welsh politics, it is heartbreaking to witness the current playground spat between two of our finest parliamentarians.
On the one side there is Two Jobs Peter Hain, the tikka-tinged Welsh Secretary.
Two Jobs has in the past week kept up his admirable record of having changed his mind about pretty much everything throughout his political career, backing nuclear weapons despite his long-standing CND membership, and now backing a new nuclear power station in Wales a few months after stating clearly there shouldn’t be any new nuclear power stations in Wales.
But there’s one matter on which Two Jobs is not for turning - he’s not going to play nicely with Elfyn Llwyd, Plaid Cymru’s parliamentary leader.
As well as suffering the indignity of being the “leader” of a parliamentary party consisting of three MPs, mustachioed Mr Llwyd is now having his questions to Two Jobs in the Commons met with the political equivalent of somebody putting his fingers in his ears and saying “la la la”.
A reminder of why: Elfyn told everybody that Two Jobs had offered Peter Law a peerage not to stand against Labour in Blaenau Gwent. Elfyn did this when Two Jobs wasn’t there to defend himself, which made Two Jobs cross. Now he is getting his own back in a grown-up way by refusing to answer Elfyn’s parliamentary questions properly.
Hence we got this exchange on Tuesday in what is supposedly the mother of all parliaments.
Elfyn Llwyd: “What discussions he has had with colleagues in the Department of Trade and Industry on the number of post offices in Wales?”
Peter Hain: “Numerous ones.”
Elfyn Llwyd: “I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that enlightening answer.”
Mr Llwyd has described Two Jobs’ non-answers as a “slap in the face for Wales”, somehow suggesting that the entire nation should take umbrage at the Welsh Secretary not answering the Plaid leader’s questions properly.
Two Jobs’ response? “He knows what he has to do: he has to start behaving like an honourable member then he’ll get all of the facilities that a secretary of state has traditionally displayed and I've faithfully displayed to all MPs and to all parties.”
Somehow you just know all this is going to end in tears.
Boys, boys. Do sort it out or we’re going to have to knock your heads together.

LAST week I e-mailed every MP and AM in Wales, asking for their views on the so-called ‘Sarah’s Law’ for a news story that appeared last Sunday.
Most politicians responded with unusual haste, saying whether they supported it, opposed it or were still unsure - with most stating their opposition to the idea.
Not Newport West MP and old-school leftwinger Paul Flynn, though, who clearly found the question an unwelcome distraction from his favoured task of trying to dislodge his own leader.
Hence the following e-mail exchange took place:
PAUL FLYNN MP (responding to the original e-mail): “Is Wales so short of news?”
ME: “I'm dreadfully sorry to waste the time of an elected parliamentarian by asking his opinion on an initiative currently being examined by the Home Office.”
FLYNN: “So you should be. Confine your inquiries to populist politicians.”
ME: “Oddly enough, the vast majority of those politicians who did deign to reply were opposed to any such law. Hardly populist.“Would always being on hand to give a quote about Goldie Lookin Chain be considered populist, I wonder? Hmmmm....”
FLYNN: “GLC IS SERIOUS STUFF. STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW.”

EARLIER this year, this column began one of the most half-hearted and quickly-forgotten campaigns in newspaper history, when I urged Plaid Cymru members not to dump endearingly loopy Shadow Social Justice Minister Leanne Wood from the list for next year’s Assembly election.
Local members, you won’t remember, were darkly murmuring about the amount of time Ms Wood spends on irrelevant things of no importance to her constituents.
So they’ll be delighted to hear of her latest wheeze, which is to demand that mini TARDISes (is that the plural?) are placed all around Wales to attract Doctor Who fans to the country.
“Cardiff could really benefit from commemorating the locations where the series has been filmed,” she says.
“It would be a sonic boost for the city and Wales. We should help people recognise that to explore time and space like the Doctor, they should come to the streets of Cardiff and other places in Wales.
“It would also be a tribute to the hard work of the Welsh and British talent involved in creating the series.”
It really is a crying shame they have already cast the Doctor’s new assistant for the next series.

NEW AM for Blaenau Gwent Trish Law made her Assembly debut on Tuesday to much applause, except from most of the Labour members who, oddly, failed to make it into the chamber for the start of proceedings and Trish’s introduction from Lord President King Dafydd Elis-Thomas.
This despite the fact there are two bells to remind slovenly AMs a plenary session is about to start. No sour grapes there, then.
So what did the Labour members miss?
“As you will all know,” said Trish in her first speech, “I am here to represent the people of Blaenau Gwent”.
Thus giving those of us following the Trish Law Drinking Game - as detailed in last week’s column - the excuse to break out the Gordon’s for the first time. Long may she continue!

MOSTLY taking up the times of Wales on Sunday staff this week has been a website that tells you what your name would be were you a Brazilian footballer.
For the record, Rhodri Morgan comes out as ‘Rhodraldo’, Tory leader Nick Bourne is ‘Nildo’ and Lembit Öpik ‘Lembildo’.
Prize for the best Brazilian name, though, goes to Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones who would be known as ‘Wyn Jonaça’.
Thinking about it, Ieuan would make a good manager for Brazil, used as he is to leading a team that collapses into infighting and navel-gazing after every bad result.

IT'S A HUGE TRISH-UP!

2006-07-04T09:51:00.000+01:00

Sunday, July 2 2006
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DURING early-round matches in the FA Cup, a friend and I numb the tedium by playing what we dub ‘the John Motson drinking game’.
This involves settling down to watch the league v non-league clash with a bottle of vodka, taking different amounts of drink depending on which hackneyed cliche Motson trots out.
For example, describing the underdogs as “plucky” means one drink; saying “this is their cup final” is two; making a pun on a part-timer’s profession (“he’s a postman by trade, so he’s used to putting in deliveries”) is three.
Usually we’re away with the fairies long before half-time, blanking out the drab fare on offer.
It’s a long time until the football season proper begins. But happily for alcoholics, following the Blaenau Gwent by-election results, this game can now be easily adapted to enliven political speeches, interviews on Dragon’s Eye or even the live coverage of Senedd proceedings on S4C2 (yes, you have got it - it’s up there near Teachers’ TV and the auction channels).
The rules are basically the same, except it involves taking a sip of drink every time a rookie politician comes out with a well-used phrase.
It’s called the Trish Law drinking game, so grab a bottle of your favourite poison, sit back, listen to the newly-elected AM for Blaenau Gwent speak and follow these basic rules. Fun for all the family!
• Trish says: “I’m here for the people of Blaenau Gwent”. One drink.
• Trish says: “People are bigger than the party. Parties are not bigger than the people.” Two drinks.
• Trish says: “Never again will the people of Blaenau Gwent be taken for granted.” Three drinks.
• Trish responds to a question about exactly what policies she will be putting forward as the woman holding the balance of power in the nation’s legislature by saying: “I’ll listen to the people of Blaenau Gwent.” Three drinks downed in one go.
• Trish responds to a detailed question about how a cash-strapped public service could be paid for by referring vaguely to a “war chest” apparently held by the Assembly. Four drinks and a conga around the room.
• Trish responds to a detailed question about how a cash-strapped public service could be paid for by pointing out that the Senedd building cost £80m and the Wales Millennium Centre receives £2m a year: Five drinks, break out the Pringles.
• Finally, in the event Trish puts forward a detailed and fully-costed policy proposal to provide a long-term economic boost to the people of Blaenau Gwent, finish off the bottle of whatever you’re drinking in one go.
Not only does this liven up the most drab of political interviews, as Trish’s radio interview on Friday morning showed, you’ll be sozzled before even getting the bus to work.
Hic!

FORGET Trish Law and Dai Davies for one moment - politician of the week is Craig Williams, the 21-year-old Conservative set to challenge Rhodri Morgan’s Cardiff West seat in next year’s Assembly election.
Craig’s mother, Andrea Williams, tells the Powys County Times: “I don’t know where he gets his interest in politics from, none of the family is really into it at all.
“I didn’t even know much about the different parties before Craig became involved.”
One to watch, we feel.

THE government is proving its firm commitment to tackling the scourge of terror - by holding a conference in Wales this week to ask people “about what is terrorism”.
Yep - that’s right. Rather than spending the cash on improving the security services, a conference will take place at the Millennium Stadium on Thursday to “consult the public on the definition of terrorism”.
Some people may find it a bit obvious - blowing yourself up on a tube train, say, or flying a plane into a building.
But this is too simple for the Independent Reviewer of Terror Laws, Lord Carlile, who wants to “engage debate and seek the widest possible cross-section of opinion on this important issue”.
He adds: “The public has as much right as politicians and academics to contribute to a discussion about what is terrorism.”
Hear, hear. Ever since September 11 and the 7/7 London bombings, we’ve had a constant clamour from the public for the Government to initiate an urgent discussion about what terrorism is. Perhaps next time Lord Carlile could hold a public consultation on the definitions of “time-wasting”, “poor priorities” and “pointless”.

IF you fancy being paid £62,000 for thumb-twiddling and bathing in asses’ milk, then sorry. Applications for the perfect job closed on Wednesday.
The job in question is the ‘Press Secretary to the Secretary of State for Wales and Head of Communications Wales Office’ or, in plain English, Two Jobs Peter Hain’s spin doctor.
According to an advert placed in the Guardian: “You’ll do more than handle and monitor press and broadcast media. “You’ll help strengthen ties between Wales and Westminster, and build effective internal communications across a multi-site organisation” (ie make sure the phones work).
It’s too early to know yet which “ambitious self-starter” will land this key role but, knowing the Wales Office, it’s bound to be somebody of exceptional talent well worth the hefty salary. News as it comes.

STILL, if winding up Two Jobs rather than working for him is more your bag, Labour types have found a new way to do it, and it doesn’t involve making obscure and petty amendments to the Government of Wales Bill.
Two Jobs wants to be Deputy Prime Minister. So does Education Secretary Alan Johnson. In the early 1990s, when former postman Johnson was running the Communication Workers Union, Two Jobs worked under him as his head of research.
Labour aides enjoy reminding him he used to be the other wannabe deputy’s deputy. Two Jobs, apparently, doesn’t find it very funny.

HATS off to Denbighshire Council, who began a scheme called ‘Bright Ideas’ in April, offering £150 each to members of staff who came up with an innovative idea to improve the running of the authority.
Last week the winners of the cash were announced, and they show what a forward-thinking lot the staff at Denbighshire are.
Among those pocketing the cash were a plan to “double-side photocopying,” along with an idea to “switch off monitors at the end of the day” and “have one standard style of headed paper for all Denbighshire departments.”
Marvellous! Roll over Stephen Hawking.

FINALLY, this column is perplexed by a claim in one newspaper last week that Welsh Lib Dem leader Lembit Öpik “was once a stand-up comedian”.
As far as anybody can tell, nobody remembers it, the asteroid-obsessed MP has never claimed to have been one before, and there’s no mention of it in his official biography.
So has he ever been a comedian? Or, like William Hague with his 14-pints claim, is he “enhancing” his CV to appear more cool?
“I don’t know the details,” says John Staples in Öpik’s office.
“I know he’s turned his hand to it. I’ll find out and give you a call back,” he adds, before doing nothing of the sort.

Steht auf, wenn Ihr deutsche seid

2006-06-10T15:59:00.000+01:00

No column for the next two weeks - I'm off to Germany for the FIFA McDonald's Mastercard Yahoo Coca-Cola World Cup, and exchanging Welsh political tittle-tattle for discussions over the relative merits of Ecuador's back four.

Bis bald.

IT'S THE WOLF!

2006-06-10T15:35:00.000+01:00

Sunday, June 11 2006
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AS this column has pointed out before, North Wales is an oasis free from crime, leaving the region’s senior police officers plenty of time to pontificate on other matters.
Chief constable Richard Brunstrom enjoys sharing his well-thought out and sensible views on speeding, include the much applauded statement that “there is no excuse for drifting over the limit any more than there is for drifting a knife into someone”.
This week, though, the limelight has been stolen by his deputy, Clive Wolfendale, who announced that flying an English flag on a car driving into Wales is effectively racist.
Mr Wolfendale, who hails from the ultra-Plaid-voting city of Manchester, said that flag-waving was a “precursor to behaviour which is much worse than flag waving - it's violence, it's racism, it's hooliganism of the very worse kind.”
The comments were variously described by MPs as “laughable”, “misguided” and creating a problem “that isn't actually there”.
It’s not the first time Mr Wolfendale has made such a telling and insightful contribution to a national debate, and it’s about time this most cerebral of crimefighters was given the chance to escape from Mr Brunstrom’s shadow.
So this week we pay tribute to Clive Wolfendale - the man making North Wales a safer place to live.

AUGUST 2003
Newly-appointed deputy Mr Wolfendale launches a passionate plea for people to love his boss after a national newspaper runs a large picture of Mr Brunstrom and the headline ‘Is this the worst copper in Britain?’.
“My proposition is that I think there's a very strong case that Richard Brunstrom is the best copper in Britain,” says Mr Wolfendale.
“What I am saying, I suppose, is support your local sheriff.”
He then sets off on a brave and selfless quest to help Mr Brunstrom lose his ‘worst copper in Britain’ tag...

APRIL 2004
Launching the North Wales Black Police Association, Mr Wolfendale attempts to make its members feel more welcome by delivering his opening speech as a rap.
“Bein' in the dibble is no cakewalk when you're black,” announces Mr Wolfendale. “If you don't get fitted, then you'll prob'ly get the sack.
“You're better chillin', lie down and just be passive. No place for us just yet in the Colwyn Bay Massive.”
His ditty is later described by Trevor Philips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, as “wrong”, “patronising” and “demeaning”.

JANUARY 2005
Figures show crime has shot up over the past year, with 11 murders in North Wales in 2004 compared to just two the previous year.
Fortunately, Mr Wolfendale is on hand to pinpoint the cause of rising unrest in his region - film director Quentin Tarantino.
Proving policing’s gain is sociology’s loss, he says: “In today's society more people are likely to spend their evenings watching a Quentin Tarantino movie than reading Jane Austen.
“Perhaps we should not be surprised by the consequences. We need more Persuasion (Austen's classic book) and less Kill Bill.”

JANUARY 2006
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, a former police chief superintendent, appears on Radio 4 to discuss North Wales Police’s investigation into whether Tony Blair insulted the Welsh seven years ago, suggesting it may not be the best way of using police time.
He quickly receives a letter from Mr Wolfendale, kindly asking him to keep his opinion to himself in future.
“The issue of Anglo-Welsh racism is not trivial,” writes the top cop.
“Your contribution to the BBC programme was ill-considered and seemed personally motivated. In the event of a future occurrence, I shall be obliged to provide a response which is equally personal.”
Lord Mackenzie describes the letter as sounding “very much like a threat to silence a Member of Parliament”, not entirely unfairly.

It’s been a hard struggle, a brave toil, an epic journey. But, almost three years after saying Richard Brunstrom wasn’t the worst copper in Britain, he can probably safely say he’s proved it. If nothing else, you have to doff your cap to him for that.

“WHILE out campaigning in Blaenau Gwent,” the Daily Telegraph reported on Friday, “Conservative party vice-chairman Grant Shapps found a Tory voter in Tom Goodhead, the great-nephew of NHS founder and the area’s one-time Labour MP, Nye Bevan.”
Gosh! How “surprised” Mr Shapps must have been to have simply stumbled over a Tory voter with such historic links!
Except, of course, he didn’t.
Tom Goodhead is hardly unknown to the Tory Party as the outgoing chair of the Cambridge University Conservative Association and one of the party’s most hotly-tipped young wannabes.
And, given he’s from Newport, he’s hardly liking to just be wandering around Blaenau Gwent by mere coincidence.
And he’s made the news before, in 1997, when, at the age of 14, he gave John Prescott a grilling on a Radio 4 phone-in and, as a result, was invited to lunch in Cardiff by an impressed Michael Howard.
The Telegraph hack could probably have checked that rather than just take the Tory Party press office’s word for it - it was reported in, er, the Daily Telegraph on April 19 1997. “My mother is a Labour supporter and not happy with my views,” he said then.

NO-HOPERS

2006-06-07T11:16:00.000+01:00

Sunday, June 4 2006
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AS the Battle for Blaenau Gwent hots up in the coming weeks, spare a thought for those who have the most thankless task in the two by-elections.
While attention will focus on the fight between Labour and the independents, there are those people who will be beavering away hard in the background without anybody noticing their hard work.
They are, of course, the Conservative candidates, Margrit Williams and Jon Burns.
Standing as a Conservative in Blaenau Gwent is a bit like hurling shoes into the air to knock clouds from the sky: pointless and a bit silly.
So it’s heartening to see that Mrs Williams in particular is raring to go and not at all bitter about having the fight the unwinnable seat for the second time in nine years.
“I actually really enjoy it,” she said of the constituency she managed to gain a whopping 6.6% of the vote in 1997 and where her husband Huw trumped her with 7.5% four years later.
“I had a fantastic reaction and a fantastic time the first time. Standing in Blaenau Gwent is not any sort of punishment, I wanted to do this.
“I’m really delighted to be standing here and really proud to fight this seat. It’s fantastic.
“They like what we’re saying on crime, jobs and regeneration.”
Given the inevitable focus on Labour and the Law camp it’s easy to forget there are a whole host of other candidates knocking on doors in a bid to impress party bosses and get a tilt at a better seat next time.
The Tories, Lib Dems and Plaid are all in a race to save their deposits, while the Green Party have put up a candidate for the Assembly - John Matthews, who ups the number of former Labour people standing in this constituency by one.
In fact, the only time you’ll hear any of them mentioned is by the BBC who are legally obliged to read them out grudgingly and as fast as they can.
But the Tories, at least, appear to be taking it seriously and are about to send in some of the party’s big guns such as David Cameron and, er, some of their other well-known politicians jetting in to press the flesh. Labour, oddly, have decided sending Peter Hain and Rhodri Morgan to chat to voters might be a bit of a bad idea.
“Valleys people are wonderful,” gushed Mrs Williams. She lives in London.

THE battle of whether Monmouthshire is part of Wales or England continues with TV critic Garry Bushell’s party, the English Democrats, turning its fire on its Conservative MP David Davies.
The English Democrats - a rag-tag bunch of ex-Tories - are standing in next year’s Assembly election calling for a referendum on whether the county should be returned to England just 722 years after the Statute of Rhuddlan placed it firmly in Wales.
They are now hoping to stir up unrest against David ‘Top Cat’ Davies who, they claim, is “confused” about which country his constituency is in.
Writing to the MP, the party’s chairman, Robin Tilbrook, said: “We have had it reported to us that you voted on an England-only issue, ie the Council Tax capping order.
“I am therefore writing to ask you whether this is the case and if so how you would justify this as an MP for what is currently a Welsh constituency?”.
An unimpressed Mr Davies wrote back, explaining: “I did indeed vote as you suggested, as those are the rules that are currently in place.
But this was not good enough for Mr Tilbrook.
“He must be a little confused about whether Monmouthshire is in England or Wales,” he harrumphed.• Meanwhile, a Bushell update: the former Gonads frontman gets in contact after this column mocked his attempts to redraw the map a couple of weeks back.
“Thanks for the mention,” e-mails Gal.
“Little England? No. Let’s have a greater Britain. “Allu at 'r Boblogi!”

SHOULD the BBC still be looking for pundits for the forthcoming World Cup football-a-thon, they would do well to avoid Rhodri Morgan.
Fresh from his diplomatic triumph last week - when he announced he would be supporting England until “their fans start acting stupid” - the First Minister has now started casting his expert eye over their players.
“I follow Cardiff City and saw Cardiff play Southampton when the wunderkind Theo Walcott played,” he says.
“They kept him bottled very, very well - I don’t think he got a run all game. “I wasn’t impressed, not that I know enough about the game to know,” he adds, with refreshing honesty.

THE 'KNIGHTS' WHO SAY NAY!

2006-05-30T10:15:00.000+01:00

Sunday, May 28 2006
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ALL kinds of mysterious things go on down at the National Assembly in Cardiff Bay.
People bearing the cryptic initials ‘AM’ flit in and out of the landmark building – yet what they are actually up to and what goes on in there remains a puzzle to all but a tiny cabal involved.
There are those who speak of enigmatic regular meetings known as ‘committees’ – but no-one has ever seen one of these, much less be able to attest to what oracular subjects are discussed. At least no one has ever seen one and lived to tell the tale, that is.
So it is little wonder that two high-flying Labour AMs have managed to get involved in a row with a shadowy Scottish Freemason group who are claiming the pair as their own while the two women deny any connection.
In fact the story could only be more arcane if there was a Da Vinci Code link - and, happily, the sect are based at Rosslyn Castle, which lies at the heart of the book and supposedly houses the Holy Grail.
Catherine Thomas and Karen Sinclair, AMs for Llanelli and Clwyd South respectively, are baffled after the Rosslyn Templars posted their pictures on their website among other noteworthy alumni.But the group says it is not a case of mistaken ID and they would not be removing the pair from its list.
At first glance, the National Assembly does not appear to have much in common with Rosslyn Chapel.
The Midlothian church has long had connections with Freemasonry and is used by a group called the Knights Templar for ‘investiture’ ceremonies. Legend has it three big medieval chests – the size of “steamer trunks”, apparently – buried beneath it contain the Holy Grail.
So who are these Knights Templar? According to their website, they are historically a group of “warrior monks”. And delving further lists some of its “famous” members through the ages. There’s William St Clair of Rosslyn (1700-1778). There’s, er, Clive Sinclair, who gave the world the ZX Spectrum. And, oddly enough, there are Thomas and Sinclair.
And yet there’s one slight problem – neither of the AMs have any link whatsoever to the Scottish Freemason group, and are desperately – and unsuccessfully – trying to get their names and pictures removed from its website.
Neither of them, they insist, are warrior monks.
An assistant in Ms Sinclair’s office has e-mailed them twice demanding she is disassociated with them, while Ms Thomas’ office is also keen to get her off the site. Just Google ‘Catherine Thomas + Llanelli’ and see what the first link throws up.
“I came across this website,” said an assistant in Ms Sinclair’s office. “Karen has absolutely nothing to do with this organisation whatsoever. I personally have e-mailed them telling them.
“I said, ‘Can you please take her off’. For obvious reasons she doesn’t want to be on there. And they didn’t do it, so I e-mailed them in stronger terms. And nothing’s been done.
“They didn’t ask originally because obviously at the time we would have refused point blank.”
Catherine Thomas’ researcher Rachel Shaw also said her boss was not a warrior monk. “I e-mailed them quite a few months ago to ask them to remove Catherine but they haven’t replied,” she said.
But where AMs fail to get hold of Templars, a spokesman told me he was in no mood to remove their pictures from the hall of fame.
“If you read the page, it’s a list of famous people called Sinclair, simple as that, and it was the Sinclairs who built Rosslyn Chapel,” he said.
“There seems to be some kind of a political agenda running here simply because I’m a freemason. Are they actually saying I can’t reproduce publicly available information simply because I’m a freemason? That seems to be the implication from these two individuals.
“The suspicion has to be, like in Nazi Germany who gassed 80,000 Freemasons because they were freemasons, they seem to think we can be discriminated against.
“It’s just a list of famous Sinclairs,” he added (Ms Thomas’ family name was Sinclair).
“If they can’t read plain English then perhaps I should take them off because they don’t deserve to be considered normal human beings.”
This one sounds like it could run and run. And, feisty ladies as Sinclair and Thomas undoubtedly are, they should watch out – according to our encyclopedia, the Knights Templar were “a feared and elite fighting force in medieval times”.

ODD rumblings at the website of political party/one-man-band Forward Wales, who last week conducted an online poll: “Have things got better under Labour”?
Unfortunately for John Marek’s party, the answer was a resounding “yes”, with 83% agreeing with the statement.
This caused much merriment in the Senedd with Labour AM Carl Sargeant waving it around gleefully at Dr Marek.
Yet check back on Forward Wales’ website and - amazingly! - everyone seems to have changed their minds and 68% now think things have got worse. Remarkable!

HOW FREEDOM OF INFORMATION WORKS
“Members voted 15 to 8 in favour of approving the application. There is no record of how any individual member voted and the committee clerk’s notes had been destroyed in accordance with the council’s Freedom of Information policy”
From the Public Services Ombudsman’s report into a complaint of maladministration against Pembrokeshire Council

AND so to the first instalment from the website http://www.chris-bryant.blogspot.com/, which, one presumes, is what the Rhondda MP gets up to when he’s not flogging reports into the untimely deaths of respected civil servants for party coffers.
“My name is Chris Bryant,” says the writer. “I am evidently an outspoken, over-nice, psychotic person.
“That is what most people say about me anyhows. I love my family and friends; they are a great support to me and my future career to be an entertainer.
“Yes... I want to be an entertainer, yet I don't know what type of entertainment that I would like to do. I love acting, singing, and even modelling. I love everything.”
Actually, looking at it again, it’s not the MP. This Chris Bryant’s from North Carolina. But it just fits all too perfectly...

WELL done to quango Finance Wales, who spent £6,000 of public cash on sponsoring the 15.10 Finance Wales Business Handicap at Chepstow earlier this month.
But Rhodri Morgan will be hoping the result is not a harbinger of next year’s Assembly Election. The Grey One was beaten into second place.

FEEDBACK CORNER
IT’S always nice to receive feedback on the column and know at least somebody out there is reading.
So thanks to ‘Rob’ who wrote last week: “Your column is ill-informed, amateurish and not very funny.
“You are trying too hard to become the next Richard Littlejohn - you just haven't got it.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about as regards Mr Littlejohn. You couldn’t make it up.

BUSH OFF!

2006-05-20T17:30:00.000+01:00

Sunday, May 21 2006
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IF you’ve ever had the misfortune of reading TV columnist Garry Bushell, you’ll know the kind of things that get his juices flowing.
The scandalous lack of celebrations for St George’s Day. The scandalous lack of variety on TV. The scandalous lack of Brian Conley on TV.
To our knowledge, though, Garry has never treated his readers to a detailed treatise on the 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan, which made Monmouthshire part of Wales.
But perhaps his readers can expect to see his views on this amid rants about Hayley Cropper and the number of “poofs” on the nation’s screens, as the former frontman with punk rockers The Gonads has a political party, and they’re planning on standing in next year’s Assembly election.
The English Democrats, of whom Garry is a leading light, are searching for candidates to stand in Monmouthshire on the basis that the county should be returned to England after 722 years this side of Offah’s Dyke.
So how will Garry - who polled an impressive 643 votes in last year’s South Staffordshire by-election - win over the people of Monmouthshire?
“The nationality of Monmouthshire has been a matter of debate since 1284,” foamed a spokesman.
“In 1960s the then Labour and Conservative governments conspired to put Monmouthshire into Wales, partly to dilute the growing Welsh nationalism in Wales generally.
“The people of Monmouthshire, have never had a say in the matter, and the English Democrats intend to put this matter right.”
The party’s campaign slogan will be “English Democrats - letting Monmouthshire decide”, helpfully setting them aside from UKIP, Veritas, the Popular Alliance Party and all the other right-wing splinter groups who will be losing deposits left, right and centre next year.
Anybody in Monmouthshire considering voting for the English Democrats might also like to pop over to their website and see what kind of an England Garry - who is standing for London Mayor in 2008 - wants them to join.
“My England is bubble and squeak and foaming pints of Boddingtons,” he writes. “It is Les Dawson and Barbara Windsor, Max Miller and Page Three.
“My England is pie and mash and Aston Martins, Derby day and Arfur (sic) Daley, Mods and Suedeheads, Lennie McLean and Carry On films.”
It really is a wonder the English Tourist Board haven’t snapped him up yet.
Anyway, if he struggles for candidates perhaps the bearded buffoon could rope in some of his mates to stand for the Assembly.
Bobby Davro AM has a nice ring to it.

MARTYN Jones, the Labour MP for Clwyd South, counts security among his prime concerns.
Especially since the London bombings of July last year, bow tie-wearing Mr Jones has made constant demands on the Government to up security checks, keen that no dangerous lapses occur in future.
So today we celebrate security-conscious Mr Jones and salute his efforts to ensure Britain is a safer place to live no matter what. Here’s a few examples:
FEBRUARY 2002
Ten shops in Brynteg, near Wrexham, receive £20,000 from the Government to provide increased security, a move welcomed by Mr Jones.
“The Government is responding by delivering on its promise to tackle crime,” he says.
7 JULY 2005
Former councillor Steve Jones, who now works for Martyn Jones in the Houses of Parliament, is caught up in the London bombings but escapes harm.
Happily, Mr Jones points out that security in Parliament itself is “incredibly tight”.
SEPTEMBER 15 2005
Mr Jones backs the Government’s tough new ant-terror laws, extending the amount of time terror suspects can be held to up to 90 days.
“I am not unhappy with these proposals,” he says. “Unfortunately needs must at a time when people are willing to be suicide bombers.”
2 MAY 2006
Mr Jones writes to Home Office minister Tony McNulty asking how much cash is being provided for security at the ports of Holyhead and Mostyn (it’s £3.7m).
10 MAY 2006
A security guard at the House of Commons asks to see Mr Jones’ pass, as is customary for anybody entering the House. Mr Jones brushes past him.
“Sorry, sir, my orders are to ask everyone who is not wearing a pass to produce one,” says the security guard.
Mr Jones replies: “I am an MP. Now leave me alone.”

FORWARD thinking from Dame Eliza Manningham-Butler, Director General of Prif Gyfarwyddwr y Gwasanaeth Diogelwch - that’s MI5 for the monoglots out there.
The security chief has issued a statement in Welsh to tell us that MI5 is about to set up home in Wales as one of eight regional centres in the UK.
Less impressive is that the service’s own website still only gives information in English, Arabic and Urdu, in direct contravention of the Welsh Language Act.

MARTIN Caton, MP for Gower. Look, Martyn, I didn’t want to return to the subject of you and your Early Day Motions (a Parliamentary petition, nothing to do with breakfasting on All Bran and prune juice), we really didn’t. Honestly.
But if you’re going to persist with wasting your constituents’ time with things of absolutely no importance to them, I'm going to have it keep mentioning it until you learn.Because on Thursday you managed to get through no less than 29 of these things.
And - I may be wrong here - but I don’t know how important to your constituents the opening of Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant is.
Nor the promotion of Didcot Town to the Southern League, Norwegian National Day, or the fact that BBC Parliament is only shown in quarter-view on some receivers. And we can only presume you were in the loo when Edinburgh MP John Barrett introduced his motion calling on the Government “to raise awareness of the importance of handwashing with soap”.

PRESS RELEASE OF THE WEEK
“The Swansea Housing Association has chosen an open source enterprise content management application provided by Alfresco Software to replace the existing Lotus Notes system used in its development department.”
That’s what we love about press officers - no matter how seemingly dull the topic, they can somehow make it sound exciting.

OBSCURE REFERENCE OF THE WEEK
“The best farce since Charlie’s Aunt”
Steve Thomas of the Welsh Local Government Association compares the merger of the four police forces to a long-forgotten 1880s music hall comedy.

PREMATURE DEATH ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WEEK
"PLAID Cymru’s Westminster leader Elfyn Llwyd yesterday apologised to the Commons for not properly notifying the late Peter Hain he was planning to accuse him of offering Peter Law a peerage not to stand against Labour.”
The South Wales Evening Post greatly exaggerates the death of the Welsh Secretary.

THE DAFT CRUSADE

2006-05-16T12:00:00.000+01:00

Sunday, May 14 2006
------------------------

THE Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s tale of conspiracies in the Catholic Church is an absolute phenomena in the publishing world.
In fact, at the last count, every house in Britain had, on average, two copies each. And with the Tom Hanks film opening next week the thriller is set to become as unavoidable as Noel Edmonds’ doodle-strewn hands.
Not everyone is a fan, though, and these include Christians somewhat miffed at the popularity of a book and film claiming that everything they believe in is a conspiracy.
Leading the outcry, as ever, is Stephen Green, the sane and rational director of Carmarthen-based protest group Christian Voice. And, as ever, newspapers queue up to interview Mr Green on his views, as if he was somehow a spokesman for the Christian religion in general.
“It’s a challenge to the Church and it’s a challenge we should be rising to,” says Mr Green. “I think protest is too strong a word - evangelistic vigil would be more appropriate.”
Mr Green, of course, likes to use the media to voice his well thought-out views on current events, and the media are just as happy to print them.Here’s a selection of some of his recent outbursts - you decide which is more damaging to the Church, an airport novel or his ramblings...

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 (I)
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.

FEBRUARY 2005 (II)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 now gained 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?

HATS off to the Labour Party, who have learnt the lessons of selecting an English Blairite lackey to fight the seat of Blaenau Gwent in last year’s election by radically opting for a Welsh Blairite lackey this time around.
Owen Smith, a senior lobbyist for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, was chosen last week to take on Dai Davies, the agent of the late Peter Law whose death sparked next month’s Parliamentary by-election.
So what can the people of this most Old Labour of Valleys constituencies expect of Mr Owen? A fine heir to the likes of Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot?
Er...not quite. For example, on the issue of “choice” - that is, huge companies buying up schools and hospitals - he’s not quite in league with First Minister Rhodri Morgan.
Choice is “not really relevant in Wales whether you're talking about health or education”, Mr Morgan said in June 2004.
How different from Mr Owen who, lobbying for a bigger role for Pfizer in the NHS last October, said: “We believe that choice is a good thing and that patients and healthcare professionals should be at the heart of developing the agenda.”
Who would Nye Bevan have voted for, I wonder?

PITY poor Llywelyn Rhys, who has just been appointed to a role with the worst job title ever.
Mr Rhys was named as Wales Wind Officer last week.

FINALLY, this column gets accused of hypocrisy for mocking the nation’s politicians while not being held to account itself.
So here’s a wicked whisper to balance things up: which useless Welsh journalist rang up Plaid Cymru’s affable press officer last week angrily demanding a mobile number for Gwenda Thomas, AM for Neath, and accepting no excuses?
Mrs Thomas is a Labour member.

TWO PEERS IN A POD!

2006-05-09T10:03:00.000+01:00

Sunday, May 7 2006
-----------------------

TWO Jobs Peter Hain is furious, apparently.
“Friends,” reports the Western Mail breathlessly, “say they have rarely seen him in such a rage.”
He’s angry because Plaid Cymru’s Parliamentary Leader, Elfyn Llwyd, accused him in the Commons on Thursday of being the man who offered Peter Law the disputed peerage - without informing the Welsh Secretary in advance he was going to do it.
According to Commons protocol, Mr Llwyd should have alerted Mr Hain in advance, rather than phoning his office 35 minutes before the session started, and while Mr Hain was at a family funeral anyway.
An apoplectic Two Jobs has since fired off an angry letter to the Speaker, Michael Martin, demanding that Mr Llwyd be forced to apologise.
Perhaps, to help, he could give Mr Llwyd a copy of the apology he himself once had to make to the Commons for misleading it - for doing exactly the same thing.
Keen readers of the July 1994 edition of Parliamentary record will recall how Mr Hain, then in opposition, decided to name a number of Tory MPs he believed had acted improperly in the Lloyd’s collapse debacle.
Unfortunately, his efforts to alert them he would be naming them were even shoddier than Mr Llwyd’s - telling the House he had put notices on the board in the Members’ room just before it closed at 10 o’clock the night before.
“The honourable member knew precisely that the debate would take place today,” snapped Speaker Betty Boothroyd. “He knows that the board closes at 10 o’clock. He might have made better endeavours than he has to inform the members that he is now naming.”
In actual fact, he hadn’t even done that - when he turned up at the board it was already closed, so he simply handed them in at the Post Office. The following Tuesday, he was forced to come back to the House to say sorry for being a naughty little fibber.
“I owe you and the House a full apology in two respects, Madam Speaker,” he said.
“I inadvertently misled you when I stated that the letters had been left on the board; furthermore, I now recognise that letters left at that stage of the evening provided a totally inadequate warning in this case.
“I deeply regret my actions, Madam Speaker, and repeat my sincere apology to you and the House.”
There you go Elfyn - your apology speech already written for you.

THERE has been much chortling over the extra-curricular activities of portly Prestatyn playboy John Prescott and the ensuing tales of unbuttoned shirts, furtive flings and chipolatas.
But few people have relished his squirming with quite so much relish as former Welsh Conservative leader Rod Richards who, lest we forget, found himself in similar circumstances a few years ago when his relations with a public relations girl became, well, public.
Top of the list of those taunting the-then Welsh Office minister was the honourable member for Hull East - one John Prescott.
“He tried to maximise the politics of it all,” says Mr Richards. “He’d make little snide remarks to me, asking questions, all the rest of it. “An awful lot of people have come unstuck before me and after me and I’ve never commented on their downfall other than express regret.
“But in Prescott’s case I’ll make an exception because he was a complete b*****d, basically. What goes around comes around.”
But sadly, Mr Richards can’t sled any light on the big mystery of both his and Prescott’s affairs - why do attractive younger women seem to go for middle-aged politicians who are more Holyhead than Hollywood?
“I guess that’s a question for women,” he says.

TORY finance spokesman in the Assembly Glyn Davies resigned last week to become the first politician to quit to spend more time with his committee (Mr Davies is also chair of the Environment, Planning and Countryside Committee).
“He is resigning from the frontbench as I understand it primarily because of the work he has to do as chairman of the committee,” said Conservative leader Nick Bourne.
“Having a committee chairmanship is a responsibility so I can quite understand that.”
And who can doubt the reasoning behind Mr Davies’ departure is anything other than a desire to concentrate on a committee that only sits every two weeks?
By a remarkable coincidence the decision came about as the Tories rowed about the selection process for the Tories' Mid and West Wales list for next year’s election, and their clumsy attempts to put culture spokeswoman Lisa Francis above Mr Davies on the list.
It was this that led to a mail-out to all party members in Montgomeryshire urging them to back Mr Davies - against party rules and forcing the entire farrago to be staged again at not-inconsiderable expense to the party.
In the event, Mr Davies ended up ahead of Ms Francis on the list when it was announced on Thursday anyway. Good job he’s got that committee to keep him busy, otherwise mischievous types might think he’s just waiting for Mr Bourne to mess up at the next election and take over as leader, eh?

NOT all farmers are living high on the hog as a result of the EU gravy train.
Reports on the figures released by the Assembly Government last week, showing how much each farm received under the European subsidies system last year, concentrated on the Powys estate that pocketed £264,000 of taxpayers’ cash in hand-outs last year.
But right at the bottom of the several-thousand page document, one farmer, G.J.James of West Wales, received the whopping sum of 53p last year. Sadly, trying to find a farm in West Wales is a bit needle-and-haystack, so we’ll never know what Mr James spent our 53p on.
A can of pop? A newspaper? Some dusters? Did he even bother paying the cheque in? We need to be told.

LORD President King Dafydd Elis Thomas has been reading his tea leaves prior to next year’s election, and the news is not good for First Minister Rhodri Morgan.
During a thrilling debate on the economic redevelopment of town centres on Wednesday, he called on Alyn & Deeside’s Labour AM Carl Sargeant to speak as “the leader of the opposition”, which seems a tad on the optimistic side given Mr Sargeant is about as unquestioningly loyal as they come. Does the good Lord know something we don’t?

LAST week’s Wales on Sunday found favour with at least one person - folk legend Billy Bragg.
The Big-nosed Bard of Barking, performing at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall last Sunday, was very much taken by the pile of papers stacked up on the table of anti-Fascist organisation Searchlight, particularly the front-page story and the allegation BNP chief Nick Griffin had named his pet pigs Anne and Frank at the expense of the Holocaust victim.
Bragg waved the paper around the stage and told the audience of 40-something ex-sociology students why “this is why we’re still fighting!”.
Right on, comrade! As nobody’s said for a good 20 years.

LAW AND DISORDER

2006-04-29T16:51:00.000+01:00

Sunday, April 30 2006
--------------------------

DON Touhig, the Labour MP for Islwyn, was snappy with the BBC Radio Wales presenter on Tuesday morning wishing to talk to him about Peter Law’s defection and whether he could ever be forgiven.
This was no time to talk about such things, Mr Touhig said. This was a time for Mr Law’s family to grieve and remember Peter the man.
He was right: Mr Law had only passed away a matter of hours before. The funeral will not be held until Thursday. There needed to be time before lunging back into the rough ‘n’ tumble world of Blaenau Gwent politics. Say, a least a few more hours.
Because that’s how long it took for the machines to be set in motion for the inevitable spinning, back-biting and underhand machinations about to be let loose in Blaenau politics.
Within hours Labour whips at Westminster were pressing for a by-election to take place as early as May 25 - involving moving a writ in the Commons before the funeral and provoking strong criticism from other MPs.
And two days later the Law camp hit back, his wife Trish surprisingly telling politics show Dragon’s Eye that was offered a peerage not to stand against Labour last year. Labour quickly retorted her claim was “categorically not true”.
So on the one hand the group hoping to keep the seat independent - the recently-formed Blaenau Gwent People’s Voice group - gets in punches in not only before the election, but a week before the man is even buried. On the other the party of government in both Cardiff and London effectively accuses a grieving widow of being a liar.
It’s not edifying fare.
But would Mr Law be turning in his grave at this spinning, fighting and snatching at his legacy?
At the sight of good, old-fashioned political battling, arguments and something close to a genuine ideological debate over who is right to represent such a unique community as Blaenau Gwent? Peter Law didn’t make his name as a politician without the ability to engage in all the above better than everyone else.
He would have loved it.

THE Westminster Government has decided that it might need to raise the cost of making Freedom of Information because civil servants were using up too much time with frivolous requests.
The Act was introduced last year to herald in a whole new era of open government, finally giving the British people access to any information held by the Government they want to see.
In actual fact, it’s turned out to be a load of old rubbish, with Government departments, police forces and NHS trusts inevitably taking far longer than the 20 day limit to reply, and when they do they usually come up with some fatuous excuse not to hand over the information, as if knowing the cost of cleaning the windows at Bridgend Council which somehow constitute a threat to national security.
But it’s still too “open” for Labour, who are going to crank up the fees for information in order to what it describes as “vexatious” requests.
Happily, one freedom of information campaigner, Heather Brooke, made an FOI request to the Department for Constitutional Affairs asking just how many “vexatious” requests had been made in the year-and-a-bit since the Act was introduced.
The answer, out of 4,000 requests made across Britain: six.
These are: how much government departments spend on toilet paper, make-up and vitamin supplements; how many windows the Department for Education and Skills has; a desperate woman with a uniform fetish wanting to know how many officers in Hampshire Police were single; and a nutter demanding evidence that ministers actually existed.
Six requests in less than 18 months, and the Government decides to ramp up the cost to effectively kill the Act and, with it, any pretence of open government. Sometimes you just have to sit back and applaud.

IS PM Tony Blair off the Christmas Card list of Sir Emyr Jones Parry, the Carmarthen-born British Ambassador to the United Nations?
As Britain’s man in New York, you’d imagine he had some kind of relationship with the Prime Minister. But speaking to this column last week, he proved strangely elusive.
“I’m not claiming any kind of relationship with the Prime Minister,” he says, elusively.
But surely you’re in a position to reach the PM by telephone whenever you need to...?
“I’m not saying that. All I can say is I am an employee of the Government and would not presume any kind of relationship with anybody. I am privileged to serve my country.”
Funnily enough, we decided against running the interview in full.

JUST how much do the Assembly Government want us to forget their dumped manifesto pledge to scrap home care charges for disabled people?
Last week they finally got around to removing it from their website, replacing it with the snappy: “A package of domiciliary care initiatives has been announced that will make significant improvements in the lives of many disabled people, older people and their carers.”
But just in case anybody checked, they have taken the steps of blocking the Assembly’s entire site from the excellent Wayback Machine website, which allows users to check how sites have been changed over the months and years.
Perhaps they never said it. Perhaps it was all a strange and beautiful dream...

WELSH football champions TNS have put their name up for sale on eBay, sadly ending Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling’s weekly joke that “they’ll be dancing on the streets of Total Network Solutions tonight”.
But who’s in the running to rename the Champions League qualifiers?
At the time of writing, the leading bid - £250,100 - is by someone called Tom Savage. Tom’s previously bought six items from eBay - some tea tree oil, a photo of the pacific ocean and four books on auction schemes. Make of that what you will.
Still, could have been worse: the bidder who wanted to rename the club ‘Rubbish Ground Poor Team No Fans FC’ dropped out with the price at £130,000.

THE delivery team for the 2012 London Olympics has no Welsh members on it, Plaid Cymru has complained.
No, it hasn’t. Nor any from Scotland. Or the Isle of Man. Or France, Russia or American Samoa for that matter. Why would it? London is in England.
This column thought Plaid considered Wales a separate country from England rather than just a region. You can’t complain about London meddling in Wales’ affairs and then demand a Welsh voice in something that, after all, was won by London.

FINALLY, this column is trying to wean itself off its obsession with Early Day Motions, but before we do here’s one last easy teaser for both of its regular readers: which Welsh MP signed up to a Motion last week demanding the Government “promotes English wines at every possible opportunity”?

'YOU DID ME RHON'

2006-04-22T15:06:00.000+01:00

Sunday, April 23 2006
--------------------------

GEORGE Galloway is still incredibly bitter.
Not, this time, about his ejection from the Labour Party three years ago.
Not about the News of the World’s hapless attempt to stitch him up earlier this month.
Not even about his car-crash appearance on Celebrity Big Brother which, endearingly, he still argues provided a useful soapbox for winning a wider audience around to his geopolitical views on the Middle East.
No, as this column discovered when granted the honour of an audience with the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow last week, Galloway still harbours deep grudges over failing to win the Labour nomination for the rock-solid safe Rhondda seat in the 1983 by-election.
Galloway tried to stand for the seat but managed to upset those around him for the first but not last time of a political career that we’ll just describe as ‘colourful’.
“I got more nominations than all the other candidates put together, but in a classic Labour Party stitch-up of the time the supporters of all the other candidates agreed together to keep me off the shortlist,” he says.
“In other words, they all agreed that the strongest candidate - the one who had the most support - should be kept off the shortlist.
“My union - the Transport and General Workers’ Union - was about to make a very big fuss about it at a national level when the General Election of 1983 was called.”
In the event Allan Rogers was selected for the election and Galloway only entered Parliament in 1987 as MP for his native Glasgow Hillhead.
“I was fairly big in the union at the time and the Welsh section of the union was very important,” he says. “I was working out of their office and had a leather-jacketed union official by the name of Ron Davies. I had a very nice time in the Rhondda and had a lot of support there.
“What went against me was the fact I was going to win. I was the nominee of the miners and was given honorary membership of the Maerdy - M-A-E-R-D-Y - lodge” - Galloway has an unnerving habit of spelling out every other word, like the two-headed monster from Sesame Street - “for the South Wales area of the NUM, which is still one of my most proud possessions.
“It was a very radical area and it had a great history of struggle.”
It also turned out Galloway took a break from celebrating his own shock victory in last year’s General Election to toast another against-the-odds victor - Peter Law, who took Blaenau Gwent by defeating lacklustre Blairite lackey Maggie Jones, who has since been made a Lord.
“I don’t think New Labour will be so keen to parachute someone in whose only qualification is they do what they’re told again.
“I watched that result with a certain amount of satisfaction, and the first time I see her in her ermine robes and coronet, I shall have a good laugh.”
Finally, so what does the firebrand MP and sometime cat think of politics in his old stomping ground of the Rhondda now?
“I know about the antics of the preposterous popinjay who currently represents it,” he says.
Ouch! Whatever can he mean?

REMEMBER Robert Kilroy-Silk’s Veritas, the short-lived and spectacularly unsuccessful splinter party from Ukip, who lost deposits up and down the country at the General Election last year?
Ukip are, of course, themselves a splinter group of anti-European Tories looking to take a harder line.
Well - bear with us here - a new splinter party has emerged phoenix-like from the ashes of Veritas, and they’re planning to blow more deposits at next year’s Assembly elections.
The Popular Alliance Party promises to draw on disaffection from the big four who are “out of touch”, and will focus on - can you guess? - Europe, immigration and law and order.
“As regards Wales, a lot depends on how the Welsh people sort of look at us as a party,” says PAP chairman Brian Buxton.
“But we should certainly be looking at standing in any election that comes along.”
The Popular Alliance Party has promised a referendum on scrapping the Assembly when Mr Buxton is swept into Downing Street on a wave of electoral glory. So what chance victory in the 2007 Assembly Election? “We are not going to get into power in the first election, obviously,” he says, with refreshing honesty.
“Maybe not even the 21st.”

SADLY, the Popular Alliance Party does not have the budget of the Swansea-based DVLA, who are so awash with motorists’ cash they could afford to pay model Jodie Kidd the best part of £700,000 to front an ad campaign.
Ms Kidd was signed up to promote a Government ad telling people they can renew their car tax disc online.
Following a Freedom of Information request, it emerged the marketing budget for the campaign was £671,000.
“As far as I can see, they have spent a lot of money on using a supermodel to front a PR campaign that nobody I know has ever seen,” said Tory Westminster transport spokesman Chris Grayling.
Surely it would have been cheaper to use Heather Muirhead - sacked by the DVLA last year for sending video images on her mobile of her and her boyfriend making love?

BAD luck to the nimbies at Cardiff pressure group Hit It For Six, who object to the renovation of Glamorgan Cricket Club, the staging of the Ashes and the ensuing economic boost in case somebody takes up their parking space for a week in three years’ time.
Spokesman Dr Dafydd Jones told BBC Radio Wales on Friday morning he welcomed one of the world’s great sporting events to Wales - but at a more “appropriate” venue.
Which of Glamorgan’s minor venues would he suggest, we wonder - Colwyn Bay (capacity: 4,750) or Swansea’s St Helen’s ground (4,500)?

LAST week I exposed my shoddy education by confessing I did not know what ‘chef d'oeuvre’ was, a word used by Clwyd West MP David Jones to describe Ann Widdecombe’s latest novel.
A prize was offered to whoever could enlighten me, and a reply comes from none other than newlywed Culture Minister Alun Pugh...or at least somebody posing as him.
“Wayne Rooney is very fond of saying ‘My betting system is a mathematical chef d'oeuvre’ I understand,” writes ‘Mr Pugh’.
“It means masterpiece. We speak of little else in the pubs of Colwyn Bay.
“I claim my free book. Anything by Noam Chomsky or Wayne Rooney. Nothing by Ann Widdecombe or Jeffrey Archer.”
Sadly, the WoS cupboard is not bursting with books by either, but we DO have a copy of Marianna Csoti’s ‘How to be a People Person’ - which teaches the reader how to “resolve situations of conflict and handle criticism” - and it’s currently winging its way to Mr Pugh’s Assembly office, impostor or not...

MISSING THE VOTE

2006-04-15T18:16:00.000+01:00

Sunday, April 16 2006
--------------------------

ANOTHER week, another outstanding example of the joined-up thinking and consistency that defines the Labour Party.
As the eight people following the passing of the Government of Wales Bill will know, Two Jobs Peter Hain is forcing a Bill through Parliament that would stop Assembly candidates standing both in constituencies and on regional lists. “It is wrong that a candidate rejected by the electorate in a first-past-the-post election can somehow appear in power in front of the electorate,” said Labour’s Baroness Anita Gale of Blaenrhondda in a House of Lords debate a couple of weeks back.
Leaving aside the issue that this will undoubtedly benefit Labour - the mathematics that go into this would make Stephen Hawking’s head explode, so just trust me that it will, OK? - there’s a couple of other matters here.
Firstly, Baroness Anita Gale, as a member of the House of Lords, is in a position of power despite never having bothered to stand in an election in the first place.
And secondly, there’s the woman of the moment - Maggie Jones. Maggie, you might remember, managed to lose the previously rock-solid stronghold of Blaenau Gwent to Peter Law by a mere 9,000 votes in a first-past-the-post election last year.
“Wake up Maggie! We think we’ve got something to say to you!,” shouted the people of Blaenau. “**** off back to Brighton!”.
Maggie has now been handed a peerage, thus somehow appearing in power in front of the electorate despite being rejected by the electorate in a first-past-the-post election.
Still, Labour has long been determined to get Maggie into Parliament by hook or by crook.
According to a hard-hitting, no holds barred interview in Labour’s in-house magazine Agenda, the “petite, elegant” Jones – “candid, funny and, you guess, fairly fearless” – is “the kind of woman who wouldn’t appear out of place at the top of any organisation”.
And a letter sent to all Blaenau Gwent voters by dour Chancellor Gordon Brown reminded them Maggie “knows all the Labour Cabinet ministers personally. Her voice will be heard in the places that matter.”
Indeed, she’s a savvy politician, Maggie, peering over her crystal ball prior to last year’s election and predicting: “There will always be a small amount of people who wish to exercise a protest vote.”
Odds on her landing a ministerial role within a year despite being completely rejected by the voters?

“THE European Parliament has made a commitment to establish a common statute for all its members...providing greater transparency,” says the section of the Labour website explaining the role of its MEPs.
So exactly how greatly transparent are its members? One Welsh Labour MEP, Glenys Kinnock, has not bothered filing any declarations to the Parliament since July 2004, meaning nobody knows what outside jobs, perks or gifts she has received in the past two years. This comes despite reminders being sent out in the past month and means she could theoretically face suspension – except there is no system in place for monitoring declarations, only filing them. She’s not alone in this - around half of the European Parliament’s 732 members have not managed to file any declarations since the 2004 elections.
“Transparency and democratic scrutiny of the institutions are crucial to ensuring public trust in the Union itself,” says the EU’s website, although that apparently does not stretch to its members.
All aboard the EU gravy train!

WHAT with it being Easter, and a time of renewal, it is a delight to report that relations between this column and Clwyd West MP David Jones are back on track.
A few weeks back I sent Mr Jones a copy of Ann Widdecombe’s latest book An Act of Peace (“warm in tone and wryly observant” - The Times) following a slight misunderstanding when I inadvertently accused him of not having any Muslim friends.
“Very remiss of me not to thank you for the kind gift of the Widdecombe chef d'oeuvre,” he writes. “I am preserving it carefully until the next Conservative coffee morning, when it will be auctioned, no doubt realising a handsome sum.”
No, I don’t know what chef d'oeuvre is either. If anybody can tell me, I’ll send them another book.

LOTH as we are to return to the subject of Rhondda MP Chris Bryant in his smalls, sometimes the news just needs reporting.
Labour man Chris next week takes part in the annual Lords v Commons swimming race, and has been sponsored by swimwear manufacturer Speedo in return for modelling its pants.
In addition, Peter Stringfellow is providing a team of lap-dancers to act as cheerleaders. Class.

WELSHPOOL-based British National Party leader Nick Griffin boasted last week that his bunch of far-right loons had become a “serious political party” and its appeal had “broadened”.
So just how “serious” have the BNP become?
Launching its campaign for the forthcoming local elections in England on Friday, the party announced a press conference for journalists to announce its manifesto and candidates.
As you’d expect of a serious political party, the assorted hacks were requested to gather at 12.30pm in Grays town centre, Essex, and meet at the entrance to the Morrisons superstore, where they would be met and taken to a “secret location”.
Reassuring that such security arrangements ar being made for that nice Mr Griffin and his merry band of swivel-eyed cohorts, but even Captain Beany can muster more professional arrangements than that.

MERGER MOST HORRID!

2006-04-08T15:03:00.000+01:00

Sunday, April 9 2006
-----------------------

THERE are many strong arguments against the merger of the four Welsh police forces.
It’s going to be an expensive, bloated, bureaucratic mess. The sheer cost of rebranding and relocating the operations is going to have a huge impact on Council Tax. Rural areas will see the centres of power move further away into towns and cities.
But the strongest argument is this: those people running North Wales Police might end up running operations across the whole country.
Be afraid...
North Wales Police, led by Richard Brunstrom, demonstrated once again last week that its prioritising is, to say the least, er...a tad on the erratic side.
First of all, it emerged the force had written to a newspaper columnist, Allison Pearson, after wrongly accusing her of making racist remarks on television. Daily Mail rentaquote Pearson received a letter from the force about a complaint that she used the apparently offensive phrase “little Welshies” during an appearance on BBC One's Question Time. The supercops in Old Colwyn swung into action, launching an investigation into Pearson, forgetting that (a) She didn’t actually say that on Question Time; (b) She wasn’t even on Question Time the date in question; and (c) she is herself Welsh, so was effectively being accused of racially harassing herself, which poses an interesting philosophical question. The force have now apologised.
But we can also reveal this week that, seven years on, North Wales are STILL pursuing an investigation into PM Tony Blair, seven whole years after he apparently uttered the phrase “F***ing Welsh” while watching Labour get drubbed during the first Assembly elections.
Despite it appearing several months ago that the investigation had been dropped, North Wales officers apparently travelled to London in the past few weeks to interview Pat McFadden, a Labour MP who, as Blair’s former political secretary, was in the room at the same time as the potty-mouthed PM was using the language of the snooker hall.
They also questioned Lance Price, the former spin doctor whose otherwise deadly dull book made the allegations and who now lives in France, and have now made a request to speak to Blair’s former press supremo and Lions tour ruiner Alastair Campbell.
Confirming the probe was still underway, a North Wales Police spokeswoman said: “The investigation has been live for three months.
“We’re hopeful of reaching a conclusion next month. The issue of sanction will be considered when it is complete.”
Apparently, Downing Street insiders are “relaxed” about the investigation.
Well, of course they are. Does anybody really expect to see Tony Blair being frogmarched out of Downing Street in handcuffs by North Wales officers and charged with race-hate crimes? There’s more chance of seeing him skip hand-in-hand with Gordon Brown down Whitehall singing Bring Me Sunshine.
So why bother with the investigation, other than the fact London is quite a nice place to have a day out (even allowing for two hours interviewing Mr McFadden, that still leaves a good afternoon to visit the Planetarium or the London Eye)?
This is what will happen: the case will be quietly dropped, enterprising journalists or MPs will find out how much it cost and, once again, North Wales Police will be left looking very silly indeed.
Five years ago, the same force spent £3,800 and 96 hours investigating comments made by TV presenter Anne Robinson on her show The Weakest Link, a case to which four senior officers had to be assigned. She had referred to the Welsh as “irritating and annoying”.
If she had just used those words to describe North Wales Police she would probably have had a point.

MEANWHILE the boys in blue in South Wales have clearly been learning lessons from their colleagues in the North on prioritising their investigations, this time launching a crackdown on the scourge of footballers wearing novelty t-shirts.
South Wales’ finest swooped on Swansea players Lee Trundle and Alan Tate last week after they celebrating winning a two-bob trophy by waving an anti-Cardiff City flag and, in Trundle’s case, wearing a “hilarious” t-shirt depicting a Swansea player urinating on a Cardiff shirt.
“South Wales Police have arrested a 23-year-old man and a 29-year-old man on suspicion of section four public order offences,” monotoned a police press officer. “Both men have been bailed until the end of April.”
Well, phew. We’ll all feel safer knowing that the police are making South Wales a safer place to live.
After all, the two players are only one less than the number of people who have appeared in court for waving placards calling for death to Jews and informing Europe “your 9/11 is coming” during protests against the Danish cartoons a few months.
Then, vast swathes of protestors waved banners such as “behead the one who insults the prophet” and “free speech go to hell”.
A grand total of three people of the several hundred involved have since appeared in court after being arrested by the Metropolitan Police following those protests. Trundle and Tate - uneducated and naive, but not actually encouraging terrorism or beheading - were arrested almost instantly.
Well done!

COUNCIL press officers lead a luxurious life. They sit around, bathing in asses’ milk, having grapes peeled for them and occasionally moving to write a 200-word press release on a councillor opening a school fete, before leaving the office at bang on 5pm.
But is there a more pampered press officer in Wales than Gareth Watson, chief spin doctor at Denbighshire Council? Anybody who e-mailed him last week received an automatic response stating: “I will be out of the office starting 03/01/2006 and will not return until 01/12/2020.”
You have to say, if the pay at Denbighshire Council in any way matches the holiday entitlement, they’re a very generous employer.

AND so we return, belatedly, to this column’s favourite busy bee, Gower MP Martin Caton.
At the start of the year we worked out the Labour man signed more Early Day Motions in Parliament than any other Welsh MP, an impressive 764 in the last six months of 2005 - four a day - on such vital subjects as Liverpool’s entry into the Champions League and letterboxes being too low.
Happily, Martin has started 2006 in the same eager-beaver way, managing to sign 14 on the last day before the recess alone. These include pieces of parliamentary graffiti:
• Welcoming the building of a new sundial in Staveley, Derbyshire;
• Congratulating David Beattie of Northern Ireland on winning the silver medal in the shooting at the Commonwealth Games;
• Congratulating Reading FC on securing promotion to the Premiership;
• Congratulating the staff at Queen's Hospital in Burton-upon-Trent for “their hard work in reducing the projected deficit of the Burton Hospitals NHS Trust”;
• Noting with regret the repatriation of disarmed Slovene soldiers at the end of World War II; and of course
• Demanding that St. George's Day, should be a bank holiday in England.
Keep it up, Martin!

IS Rhodri Morgan planning a reshuffle for under-fire Culture Minister Alun Pugh?
It's just that all AMs received a memo from Mandy Lewis in the Assembly whips' office last week containing a written cabinet statement from "Alun Pugh, Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning..."

THE SECRET DIARY OF ALUN PUGH aged 51 3/4

2006-04-05T12:12:00.000+01:00

Sunday, April 2 2006
-----------------------

IT’S been a busy old week for the Culture Minister, Alan Pugh, man whose name it is increasingly difficult to write without prefixing it with “beleaguered”. What with the furore over the appointment of a temporary chair of the Arts Council of Wales, following the sacking of Geraint Talfan Davies, and opposition parties calling for his well-groomed head, you have to wonder what’s been going through his mind.
Well, now it can be revealed. While hanging suspiciously around the Assembly toilets the other day, Wales on Sunday chanced upon a shabby old diary left lying on the side.
The spelling was erratic and some of the doodles along the side a tad disturbing, but, once we wiped the Wagon Wheel stains off, it gives a fascinating insight into the mind of a minister under fire.
Ladies and gentleman: The Secret Diary of Alun Pugh, aged 51-and-three-quarters:

Sunday, March 26

My advisors tell me that if I don’t get somebody new in place for Geraint by the end of next week I’ll be breaking some kind of law. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anybody.
“What about Professor Dai Smith?,” says one of my helpers. I say I have never heard of him, but my helpers say he has a beard and has written lots of big books, so must be really clever.I phone him up.
“Hello Dai, it’s Alan Pugh here, Assembly Culture Minister”, I say, forcefully. “Would you like to be acting chair of the Arts Council of Wales?”.
But Dai surprises me. “No,” he says. “I really can’t. I just don’t have the time. No no no no. No chance.”
Oh dear. I say: “Go on”.“Oh, OK then,” he says. Another triumph for Alun Pugh!
I retire to bed with a mug of cocoa, safe in the knowledge crisis has been averted.

Monday, March 27

The opposition parties want to know who I have given the job to, but I put my fingers in my ears in the Senedd and sing “la la la”. That will show those party-political mischief-makers! Ha!
They then try to claim I did not advertise the job properly allowing people to apply. This is yet more lies from the opposition - I advertised the post at length in my constituency, only yesterday putting it on postcards in the windows of Kwik Save in Abergele and Mr Patel’s Off-Licence and General Store in Ruthin.
But, just to check, I bump into Rhodri Morgan in the corridor and check my job is still secure. He coughs, ruffles his hair and moves on, which is obviously a kind of code for “Yes, Alun, and a promotion awaits you too”.

Tuesday, March 28

Today the announcement of Dai’s appointment was made public and met with universal acclaim, aside from the usual party-political mischief makers.
Some people seem to think that, just because he used to be in the Labour Party and agrees with me on absolutely everything, he’ll just carry out my bidding.
My Tory shadow, Lisa Francis, describes my conduct as a “contemptible, dilatory and an embarrassing shambles”. I look up dilatory in the dictionary. It means “intended to delay”. Hardly, Ms Francis!

Wednesday, March 29

As usual, my appearance at Questions to the Culture Minister is met with the gentle ribbing and good-natured banter I expect from my colleagues.
Teasing shouts of “resign!”, “go now!” and “you’re a disgrace, Pugh, you idiot, just go before you cause any more damage!” are batted away with my usual wit.
I even rallied my troops with the story of how, this week, I single-handedly saved Wrexham FC, not only ensuring a deal was struck for its buy-out, but agreeing to stand in as an emergency centre-half for Saturday’s game against Grimsby.
That’ll show the party-political mischief makers!

WAY back in 2005, when the Welsh rugby team could still play a bit, Wales on Sunday launched a campaign for an honours system to reward those who had achieved great things for the nation.
Despite backing from such big names as Tanni Grey-Thompson, Katherine Jenkins and, er, Ali Crocker from Red Dragon FM, First Minister Rhodri Morgan refused to budge.
“Unfortunately, there is nothing more the First Minister can do,” his spokesman said last May. “His hands are tied.
“Under the UK system, the Queen makes all official awards based on recommendations considered by impartial, expert advisors.”
Yet a year on, and with nothing changed in the constitution that would have untied his hands, Rhodri seems to have done a U-turn.
Asked in the Senedd by Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones last week if he would consider introducing a system for honouring the cream of Wales, Rhodri replied:
“We do try to honour people on a personal level, telling them how much we appreciate what they do to showcase Wales at its best.
“Do you want to go further than that? If so, I am open to any suggestions regarding how we could set up an honours list, not only for sport, but for other areas as well.”
No idea what changed Rhodri’s mind. Perhaps he’s only just got around to reading last May’s copies of Wales on Sunday. Or perhaps there’s an election next year.
Who knows?

ALWAYS good to receive feedback on the column, but when it comes from royalty it makes it all the more special.
So thanks to Lord President King Dafydd Elis-Thomas, who put his regal fingers to good use last week by e-mailing me with his thoughts on last week’s column which, you almost certainly won’t recall, suggested he found elections a bit of a drag.
“As an avid reader of WoS and your column I agree with your assertion that I am ‘of course a firm believer in democracy’,” write the Assembly’s Presiding Officer.
“So much so that I have stood for election six times to the House of Commons, once to the European Parliament and twice so far to the National Assembly. I look forward to standing for Dwyfor Meirionnydd in the Assembly general election in 2007.
“I also voted for a fully elected House of Lords to which, following the long-delayed discussions on reform which have now resumed and subject to the democratic selection procedures of my party, I may yet be able to stand. “As you said last Sunday 'the very thought that a Lord of the Realm might have to face a vote...' About time too!”.
Brilliantly, the Plaid man then signs himself off as “Dafydd aka Lord President etc”, which suggests that either (a) the e-mail is a spoof, or (b) Lord Elis-Thomas has a keen sense of humour he has mischievously hidden from public view for the past 30 years.

LATEST in the series of how MPs spend their time - Meirionydd Nant Conwy’s Plaid member Elfyn Llwyd has tabled an Early Day Motion (the Westminster equivalent of graffiti) congratulating the Welsh Commonwealth Games team “on their performance and success in Melbourne”.
Cost of this Motion? £2,500. The other MPs to sign it? His Plaid colleagues Adam Price and Hywel Williams. They may as well have just had a drink together in the team’s honour.

RHODRI MISSES THE BEAT AGAIN!

2006-03-28T11:06:00.000+01:00

Sunday, March 26 2006
--------------------------

THIS column has long been proud to officially hold the title Last With All The News That Matters. And this week it surpasses itself yet again with a piece of news exactly - drum roll please - two weeks old!
But - as it’s about First Minister Rhodri Morgan making a public buffoon of himself, and really we don’t get anywhere near enough of those - it was worth putting in anyway.
The cultured among you may be aware that, earlier this month, celebrated conductor Karl Jenkins led the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of The Armed Man - which is, apparently, his “deeply moving choral masterpiece” - at the Wales Millennium Centre.
The whole point of the highbrow affair was to raise money for the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, hence the presence of Rhodri and the Assembly’s Presiding Officer, President Lord King Dafydd Elis-Thomas.
Except, during the first half, conducted by Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra’s Michael Bell, it became quickly obvious that Rhodri wasn’t there. They sought him here. They sought him there. But the elusive First Minister was nowhere to be seen.
The first half finished, and the band were gearing up for the second half when who should be literally running into the WMC, puffing and panting and clad in his shabby red jacket, was Rhodri. His excuse:
“I went to the St David’s Hall”.
Happily, he made it inside to see Roger Lewis, managing director of ITV Wales and formerly MD of Classic FM, give a moving introduction to the piece and publicly thank Rhodri and Emperor Elis-Thomas for turning up.
Still, it’s not like this kind of thing often happens to Rhodri.
It’s not like at the last Welsh Musician of the Year concert - also boasting the talents of the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra - when he turned up late and was made to wait outside the concert hall until the first half had ended as it would have disturbed the musicians to let him in midway through.
And it’s completely unlike July 2004, when he turned up late to meet the Queen at the Royal Welsh Show because he was stuck in traffic.
It also bears no resemblance to the previous month, when he didn’t even turn up to D-Day commemorations in Normandy because he was discussing the 2010 Ryder Cup at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport...
Everybody knows the Assembly budget is tight, but it’s probably about time it stretched to a filofax for a First Minister who, lest we forget, is rapidly approaching 70...

SPECULATION last week that, in the event of Labour failing to win a majority in next year’s Assembly election, Presiding Officer Dafydd Elis-Thomas, a Plaid member, could become First Minister in an opposition-led coalition.
It is suggested, although Tories would refuse to serve under Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones, they might under President Lord King Elis Thomas - the First Minister being democratically elected by all AMs.
President Elis Thomas is, of course, a firm believer in democracy.
After suffering the ignominy earlier this year of having to actually face an opponent for his seat, Gwynedd councillor Liz Saville Roberts, a haughty Elis Thomas told the Caernarfon and Denbigh Herald: “I think that it was a waste of time and resources for Plaid Cymru to have held the hustings.”
The very thought that a Lord of the Realm might have to face a vote...

STRANGELY, despite it being the sole topic of conversation in saloon bars the length and breadth of the country, no High Street bookmaker appears to be taking bets on who the new chairman of the Arts Council of Wales is.
As such, and as the man who so accurately predicted Liam Fox to win last year’s Tory leadership race, I’m happy to give a few unofficial odds on the man or woman set to succeed Geraint Talfan Davies, who Alun Pugh has already appointed and is refusing to name.
Favourite at 2-1 on is former Plaid leader Dafydd Wigley, who, as you will know from recent press reports is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING and his slightest involvement in anything is guaranteed to make it a COMPLETE UNBRIDLED SUCCESS.
After that, at evens, is Culture Minister Alun Pugh himself taking the reins, while I’m offering 5-1 on Charlotte Church, 20-1 on Errol from Roland Rat, and Sir Clive Woodward at 80-1. It’s 100-1 bar those.

ON a completely unrelated note: while the rest of the Welsh Labour Party Conference in Swansea were gripped on Friday by the stream of meaningless verbs and nouns Peter Hain seemed to think constituted a speech, not everybody was so enraptured.
One Assembly cabinet minister spent the speech in the bar, seemingly having great fun and not even watching it on the TV.
I’d tell you who it was but, well, he doesn’t believe in naming names, so I’m not either.

NO-GOOD ANGELS

2006-03-21T11:25:00.000Z

Sunday, March 19 2006
--------------------------

THE Big Lottery Fund has got lots of money. Loads of it. More than it knows what to do with.
Approach it with any hare-brained ‘artistic’ idea and they will LITERALLY throw money at you for you to fritter away on some ‘conceptual’ nonsense while NHS waiting lists approach 100% of the population and school roofs collapse due to lack of upkeep.
The latest people to cotton onto this is Capital Region Tourism, a previously unknown body who know exactly what the untouched green fields of Wales need - eight huge sculptures equivalent to the Angel of the North dotted across the country, distracting drivers.
The body has asked for £17m to build the sculptures, three in the north and five in the south. “The Angel of the North cost about £800,000 when it was put up.
“We feel to make that kind of impact we would need perhaps £2m per sculpture,” said the tourism body’s regional strategy director Peter Cole, who is therefore either (a) a qualified architect with intricate knowledge of current and future material markets; or (b) plucking a figure out of thin air.
And as for what they will look like, we don’t know, because they haven’t thought about that yet. Newport East’s Labour AM John Griffiths suggested a “huge, steel fire-breathing dragon”, which must have taken a lot of thought. How about a 10-ft leek?
In fact, how about these ideas for each of the locations the tourism chiefs have identified? The highly-paid bureaucrats can even have them for free.
CHIRK: “There are no compelling sights to draw you here,” says the Rough Guide to Wales about Chirk. An ideal place then, to build a 100-foot statue of a whip-cracking Indiana Jones, marking the greatest moment in the town’s history - when Harrison Ford briefly stopped off for a meal in 2004.
EWLOE: Footballer Michael Owen bought a whole street of houses in Ewloe for his extended family. The town could repay him with a statue marking the characterless striker. The Angel of the North Wales, they could call it.
LLANDUDNO JUNCTION: Already boasting such attractions as a 24-hour Tesco and North Wales’ biggest Kentucky Fried Chicken, Llandudno Junction is being greedy. Forget it.
MERTHYR TYDFIL: An artistic hillside montage comprised entirely of benefit cheques and doctor’s notes.
MONMOUTH: A statue befitting the people of Monmouthshire - a 70ft tall English incomer with a 12-bore shotgun in one hand, a foaming glass of Pimm’s in the other and huge speakers bellowing “Get orf my land!” anytime anyone comes within five miles.
NEWPORT: The obvious choice is a monument to the town’s favourite sons, Goldie Lookin Chain. Downside? Band likely to be long forgotten by the time the sculpture is finished.
SEVERN BRIDGE: A massive statue on the Welsh side of the bridge marking the traditional greeting to those arriving - a surly, miserable toll booth attendant bearing the face of somebody who’d really rather be doing absolutely anything else than this. The traditional greeting of “Have you got exactly the right money?” inscribed on the side in Latin.
TAFF’S WELL: Apparently chosen as it marks entry to Cardiff for those travelling south on the A470. Could be marked by something that sums up what North Walians think of Cardiff - what about, say, a huge public sculpture costing millions of pounds and benefiting nobody?
So there you go - you may well see one or any of these as you drive through Wales in the next few years.
Or alternatively, it might never happen because building eight sculptures is a really, really rubbish idea.

THOSE visiting the sparkling new Senedd building should beware: there’s a secret Lucozade drinker on the loose.
In fact, judging by theft figures released to this column under the Freedom of Information Act last week, there’s somebody on the loose who will pretty much pilfer anything not nailed down.
For, despite the Assembly’s strict security regime, there have been 16 thefts reported from Assembly property in the past two years, with tea-leafs making off with a staggering £14,974 worth of cash and valuables.
The painstaking document which lists every theft even mentions a “case of Lucozade” worth three quid - four bottles - stolen from the Assembly offices in Cardiff’s Cathays Park. So be careful where you lay your refreshing isotonic drinks.
It also includes:
• Two £10 notes taken from a female toilets. What people were doing with banknotes in the toilets is anybody’s guess.
• A rain coat snatched from Cathays Park in June 2004, at a value of £100. A hundred quid! Jose Mourinho’s probably didn’t cost that much.
• A personal pedometer worth a fiver nicked in March 2005 and reported to the police.
Of course, most of the reported thefts aren’t quite so frivolous - seven laptops, two flatscreen monitors, two PCs, two mobile phones and a briefcase have all managed to walk out of the Assembly in the past couple of years.
You really have to be grateful fighting crime isn’t devolved to the Assembly. It would be like Mad Max out there.

ALYN and Deeside’s Labour AM Carl Sargeant was mocking last week about the return of Dafydd Wigley to Welsh politics.
Claiming a vote for Plaid was as good as voting Tory, he said: “If the people of Wales want a Tory in charge of our schools and hospitals then they should vote for Wigley and Plaid.”
He is, presumably, completely unrelated to the Carl Sargeant AM who, commenting on Plaid’s Welsh language policies last month, told the Daily Post newspaper: “Bring back Dafydd Wigley.
“He was the only one who realised that winning the support of people from outside their narrowly-focused origins was the only way they would make any headway.”
Oops.

NOT strictly political, I know, but congratulations to former Welsh sitcom star Michael Neill, who has published the worst book of the year and it's only March.
'You can have what you want', gives readers ten ways to 'have a wonderful life'. These include: 'Do wonderful things', 'Eat wonderful food', 'Read wonderful books' and the brilliant 'A wonderful day is a day filled with wonder'.
Cost of this clap-trap? A not-wonderful six quid.

ALL of the parties at the Assembly take on American interns at this time of year to carry out valuable work on behalf of AMs: photocopying bits of paper, making tea for them, that kind of thing.
In the spirit of grown-up politics the Assembly so likes to espouse, most of these eager 20-somethings socialise together cross-party and chit-chat when they meet in the corridors of devolved power.
A triumph! Well, for all except Llanelli’s Labour AM Catherine Thomas, who chucked a Plaid intern out of her office last week for “spying”.

CARDIFF West’s Labour MP Kevin Brennan is, of course, not only a politician but a wannabe rocker, as the singer and guitarist in all-party parliamentary band MP4.
He even managed to wangle his way into this year’s Brit Awards, where he was spotted taking pictures of Coldplay.
But now MP4 have hit upon a problem - anybody looking for the band on the internet looking for their tunes may stumble across a Chinese hip-hop band who have adopted the same name - and fill their tracks with filth-ridden lyrics.
“We are a bit worried in case any of our constituents think they are our band and download the songs,” said Mr Brennan.
“Luckily all their lyrics are in Chinese, so hopefully no-one will realise.”

The strife of Brian

2006-03-14T10:35:00.000Z

Sunday, March 12 2006
--------------------------

EDDIE ‘The Eagle’ Edwards. Sid Little. Bobby Gould. Ruth Madoc. Chico.
These, off the top of my head, are just five people who could do a better job of running the Welsh NHS than Dr Brian Gibbons, the hapless Health Minister. The Norris from Coronation Street lookalike, you might recall, was the man brought in to replace Jane Hutt a year ago, and has done the unthinkable by managing to be even worse.
This week it was revealed he had never even spoken to, never mind met, the Westminster Health Minister, Patricia Hewitt. An Assembly spin doctor justified this by pointing out Gibbons had spoken to other UK health ministers. There’s only one: Scottish Health Minister Andy Kerr, who sounds more like a regional radio DJ than a politician.
In fact, the ill-starred Irishman perpetually wears the look of a man who accidentally wandered into the wrong room a year ago, was mistaken for the new minister and has been too embarrassed to tell anyone ever since.
You might think this bitter personal attack has been selfishly prompted by me having a bad experience with the NHS last week and abusing my position as a columnist to rant about it. And you’d be right.
It was reported on Friday that paramedics had been drafted in to help A&E staff treating patients at Wales’ largest hospital. Ambulances, the Western Mail breathlessly reported, were forced to queue outside the emergency department at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff as staff struggled to cope with an influx of patients.
I can verify this, following an unfortunate incident last week when I managed to split my head open and got bundled into an ambulance to be taken to UHW.
The scene at A&E resembled what I’d imagine a bunker in the Blitz to be like, except without a rousing cockney sing-a-long. People in various states of distress sat around comparing ailments. An electronic sign on the wall gave an estimated waiting time of 90 minutes. The walking wounded took a number from one of those dispensers you get on Asda’s cooked meat counter.
And then we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I’d arrived at half past midnight, when the sign was stating a waiting time of 90 minutes. It still said 90 minutes at 2am. And 3am. And 4am.
During this time people with injuries worse than mine were giving up and going home. One man who appeared to have broken his ankle hopped off forlornly into the distance after waiting six hours. It would have been a funny sight, were he not wailing with distress quite so much.
At 8.45am, a mere eight hours and fifteen minutes after arriving, I got to see a doctor, who informed me, without any irony, that my cut couldn’t be stitched because I’d left it too long after the accident to get treatment. Apparently it needs to be done within a couple of hours, the insinuation being that I’d been sat at home sipping tea and doodling rather than in a hospital waiting room with blood pouring out of my head like Niagara Falls and being forced to watch night-time BBC One.
Anyway, you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear I’m OK now, which is more than can be said for the Welsh NHS.
Perhaps Dr Gibbons could ask for advice on cutting waiting times next time he’s speaking to Andy Kerr. Or better still, quit and let someone more capable take over. Say, for example, Jane Hutt.

INTERESTING choices on the new Welsh Icons website, which seeks to list the people and places which best sum up Wales.
And particularly interesting to note the inclusion of First Minister Rhodri Morgan - under the ‘Welsh Entertainers’ section.

PROOF positive this column has at least one reader: Clwyd West Tory MP David Jones gets in contact after being a trifle miffed with my coverage last week of the Conservative Spring Conference.
Regular readers may recall how I compared Mr Jones to Jim Davidson for the line in his conference speech on homeland security: "I personally have many Muslim acquaintances and friends”, and offered a prize for anybody confessing to be both a Muslim and a pal of Mr Jones.
The man himself was not impressed.
“If you took an interest in politics north of Cardiff you would know that I have worked very closely with the Iranian resistance movement,” says his e-mail. “I am proud to call them friends.
“Why not check your facts before dashing off your formulaic 500 words?”.
Fair enough, apart from the fact it was a formulaic 700 words. And as that was the only response provoked, it means David is the winner of the star prize: a copy of Anne Widdecombe’s latest novel, An Act of Peace - described by The Times as “warm in tone and wryly observant” - is winging his way to his Commons office as we speak.

WHAT with the furore over Westminster Culture Minister Tessa Jowell and her laissez-faire attitude to personal accounting, word reaches Wales on Sunday of at least Welsh Conservative MP whose wife hoards cash in an offshore bank account.
“I think it is a fair question to ask of MPs so I shall come clean and say that my wife has,” confesses motormouth Monmouthshire member David Davies.
“It is a current account in her native country of Hungary with about £200 in it which we use when we go over to visit the in-laws.”
He’s a card, that one.

WICKED whisper: which AM left their brand spanking new Assembly computer on for all to see, so that visitors to the Senedd could see they were playing online Sudoku during a debate?
Clue: they appeared to have a good grasp of figures, so it couldn’t have been Finance Minister Sue Essex.

THIS column this week launches a campaign to save the career of Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood, who, if rumours are to be believed, faces a fight to save her seat at the next election.
According to reports, radical feminist/socialist/republican/arnarcho-syndicalyst Ms Wood has upset many of her own party by “fighting irrelevant battles”.
Ms Wood, for those not in the know, devotes much of her time to campaigning for an independent Welsh republic, including boycotting the opening of the Senedd, holding a demonstration outside and once getting the boot from the chamber for referring to the Queen as “Mrs Windsor”.
She has also vowed to go to jail for not carrying an ID card once they are introduced.
Irrelevant maybe. But in the often dull-as-ditchwater world of Welsh politics, she’s effectively a national treasure that needs to be protected.
As such, this column will continue printing Leanne anecdotes on a regular basis until she is selected to re-fight her seat.
Anybody who wishes to contribute can do so via the usual address - best gets a prize (which, eagle-eyed readers may have worked out by now, is likely to be any old tat sent into the office by a PR company). Get scribbling.

Follow the leader

2006-03-07T10:48:00.000Z

Sunday, March 5 2006
-------------------------

HATS off to the Tories for holding their spring conference in Llandudno, which is cold at the best of times, but in March is positively Arctic.
In fact, the inclement conditions have been the dominant topic of conversation among delegates at the Welsh Conservative Spring Conference, topped only by the fact that Llandudno is the only town in the western world where you can't get mobile phone reception.
The town has been full this weekend of middle-aged men waving Motorolas in the air.
Which, at least, has given people something to talk about. Because this weekend has been dominated by politicians boasting about how, under David Cameron, the Tory party is now racked with "Big Ideas" without actually exhibiting any.
Only one tangible new policy emerged yesterday, courtesy of Welsh Conservative leader Nick Bourne.
"We have some exciting ideas in place," he said. "I believe Wales should have its own National Art Gallery and National Records Office." As speeches go, Martin Luther King it wasn't.
He even tried some stand-up comedy, comparing Labour's bid to stop Assembly hopefuls standing as both constituency and list candidates to pre-revolution Ukraine.
"Ukraine's tyrant then poisoned the leader of the Opposition - I trust that fate doesn't await me!!" (Yes, those two exclamation marks were on the copy of the speech handed out to journalists).
Still, at least he wasn't David Jones, Clwyd West MP, who chose to do a Jim Davidson turn in his speech on homeland security.
"I personally have many Muslim acquaintances and friends," he said, before setting off into a rant. Here's a thought: does he? Are you a Muslim and a friend of David Jones? Let me know and I'll send you a prize.
In fact, much of yesterday morning was dominated by talk of foreign policy and the Middle East, which, for the Tories, is a bit like me fretting over which bar to take Scarlett Johansson to - all very well and good, but not a problem I'm ever likely to actually confront.
Still, the Tories ARE changing, as demonstrated by Jonathan Evans MEP - introduced as the "Chair of the Translatlantic Legislative Dialogue" - who told the assembled faithful: "To show the Conservative Party is changing, I can tell you I'm a huge fan of the American pop band REM." Gasps from the audience.
To you and I, REM may be middle-of-the-road stadium rockers who haven't released a decent album in a decade, but to the elderly Conwy residents in the aisles, he couldn't have been more shocking if he stood up and confessed to regularly injecting ethanol into his eyeballs.
Still, he ruined his on-the-ball bit a tad by castigating anti-terror laws and referring to the North Wales Police chief as Richard "Brunsdon" rather than Brunstrom.
Happily, there's always something to cheer up the misery of a party political conference, and this time it was the speech of Shadow Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan.
Plummy Gillan can't go more than 30 seconds without referring to the fact she was born in Llandaff, as if she was somehow trying to make up for the fact she's as English as a sexually-repressed Morris dancer.
"Unlike Peter Hain, Nick Ainger or even the Lib Dems' Lembit Opik, I was made in Wales, born in Llandaff and educated in Llanishen," she boasted. "I spent the first 11 years of my life here." Eleven years! I was still being breast-fed at that age.
So that's the Tory party conference for you.
It's cold, you can't get a mobile phone reception and you can't get a pint of Brains in Llandudno for love nor money. It's not all glamour, this job.
But I end with what, for those who saw it, is the abiding memory of this conference.
Alun Cairns, the Tories' spokesman on Economic Development, on Friday night in Fat Cat, Llandudno's trendiest bar, wearing bright red corduroys.
That's bright red corduroys.

PEOPLE in Swansea love the new Senedd building. There’s nothing the people of the second city like more than seeing another £67m being thrown on an extravagant building in Cardiff, a city they like and admire.
So it was a wise decision of the BBC to splash out several thousand pounds of licence-payers’ cash to install a huge screen in Swansea’s Castle Square last week to allow Swansea shoppers to enjoy all the pomp and circumstance along with those in the capital.
Except, astoundingly, nobody weathered the arctic conditions and bothered to turn up and watch.
“We’ve had success with screens in Castle Square before,” said a bemused Beth Winkley, Swansea’s City Centre manager, of the sporting events that have been shown. “They’ve been very popular.
“I think on Wednesday, given the snow and the ice and the extreme cold it wasn’t very well attended.“There were some people, I believe, for the opening of the Senedd, but I just don’t think it was that kind of day to stand around watching a screen.”
Jason Rogers from Swansea Council’s press office agreed. “My colleague saw something on the BBC saying it wasn’t very well attended,” he said, giving another good example of why press officers are paid so much.

WHAT AMs Do ALL DAY
(Part one of an occasional series)
NORTH Wales voters must be delighted their regional AM, Tory Mark Isherwood, is prepared to ask the big questions being debated in the pubs of Holyhead, Rhyl and Wrexham. During questions to the Culture Minister last week, Mr Isherwood demanded of Alun Pugh:
“A series of academic books, based on research in Mold library, on archaeological evidence and on the oral and written traditions of Wales, has highlighted the link between the old kingdom of Gwynedd and the Arthurian legend. This has been highlighted many times in the House of Commons, but not, to thebest of my knowledge, so far in this Senedd. What action can you take to maximise the opportunities presented by that unique cultural inheritance?”.
Good to see our ministers are being held to account on the issues that matter.

FINALLY, congratulations to Sir Menzies Campbell on being elected new Lib Dem leader, if only as it spared my blushes.
Regular readers may recall how, at the start of the campaign, I derided dark horse Chris Huhne as “hapless”, “obscure” and “hopeless”, and then sweated as he closed the gap over the past few weeks.
Following last year’s confident prediction Liam Fox would win the Tory leadership, I was all set to quit if I got it so spectacularly wrong again.
But now you’re stuck with me. Sorry.

Oh, you mean one should take a LEEK!

2006-02-28T11:14:00.000Z

Sunday, February 26 2006
------------------------------

TA-daaaaa!
This Wednesday sees the grand opening of the new Assembly building - or ‘Senedd’, if you’re that way inclined - in Cardiff Bay, and the nation’s great and good will be turning up to see just what we’ve blown our £67m on.
But what will actually go on at the Royal shindig that’s been planned for the opening ceremony on St David’s Day? Happily, your ever on-the-ball Wales on Sunday has been leaked the 'schedule', and it makes for interesting reading:

9.45am to noon: Assembly building is officially open with buffet of steak bakes provided by Gregg’s the Bakers and a special 9.5% Brains ale brewed for the occasion. Bonny Tyler performs with Steve Strange from Visage in what Assembly chiefs describe as “the cream of Welsh” in leaflets and “the best we could do, we couldn’t afford Tom Jones” in the pub afterwards. Rhodri Morgan unaccountably absent.

10.15am to 10.35am: Outside the Norwegian Church, Force’s top brass present St David Day leeks to servicemen taking part in the opening.
“I bet you taff boyos eat these things all the time down the mines, what!,” says the Duke of Edinburgh. “Do you still speak that silly language that makes you spit all the time?”.
Royal PR man collapses in pool of own sweat and Duke is gently led aside.

11.35am: Guard of honour from all the battalions of the new Welsh Royal Regiment is disrupted by an attempted coup by republican AM Leanne Wood. Plaid Cymru’s Shadow Social Justice Minister, who refuses to accept the sovereignty of the Queen, parachutes into proceedings yelling “Take that, Mrs Windsor!”, but is shot dead when cops mistake the pint-sized politician for a terrorist.
“We thought she was Al-Qaida or something,” shrugs a South Wales Police spokeswoman. “Can’t be too careful”.
Observers note a visible look of dismay on the face of political dissident Prince Charles.
The events are missed by Rhodri Morgan, who still hasn’t turned up.

12.03pm: Fly-past by four Hawk jets from RAF Valley on Anglesey is ruined when a twin-engined Britten-Norman Islander plane manages to entangle itself in proceedings, causing chaos. “Sorry,” says Lembit Öpik. “My involvement seems to have made something go badly wrong.”
A search party is launched for Rhodri Morgan.

Noon: National Anthem followed by a 21-gun salute fired by six 105mm guns. Followed by 68 guns salute by The Alarm (caution: obscure Welsh rock joke).
AMs file into the Assembly to hear the Queen give her speech. Some suspect Labour spin doctors had a hand in its writing as she wishes “a successful, gracious and propitious future to the Senedd and all who serve in it, except Peter Law, who frankly has messed it up for everybody. The turncoat”.
Two Jobs Peter Hain makes moving speech hoping the new building “brings lasting peace to this troubled province”, before aides alert him he has brought the wrong folder with him.

6pm to 7.15pm: Military personnel provide party for a gala performance at the Millennium Centre. Culture Minister Alun Pugh attempts to take personal direct control of the music they play, before being shot dead.
“Did we mistake him for a terrorist too?,” says a military spokesman. “No. He was just annoying us.”
Welsh legend Shakin’ Steven turns up to perform a specially written version of when of his hits. “This Ole House has got no windows, This Ole House has got no doors,” he warbles. “Because we spent all the money on flowers and a steel and glass reception desk.”
Rhodri Morgan is finally discovered in Newport hosting a meeting about the Ryder Cup. “Oh dear,” he says, when informed.

DISAPPOINTING news for those of us unable to sleep not knowing what First Minister Rhodri Morgan’s views on the Iraq war are.
Regular readers may remember how, earlier this month, Wales on Sunday submitted a request to the National Assembly under the Freedom of Information Act, demanding Rhodri’s views were made public. This followed his shambling performance on Question Time when he claimed it was nothing to do with him.
Last week came the reply - and sadly, we are none the wiser. A letter came from David Rich in the grandly-titled Office of the First Minister.
“I have interpreted your request to mean any information containing the personal views of the First Minister on whether or not military action should take or should have taken place in 2003,” he says.
There’s not getting much past him, is there?
“You should be aware that the Code of Practice on Public Access to Information and the relevant laws only apply to recorded information and no such recorded information fitting this description exists in our files”.
That’s a shame. Mr Rich does send information on how we can appeal against this decision, but we’ve probably wasted enough public time and money already.

DAVID Cameron steadfastly refused throughout his successful bid for the Tory leadership to be drawn on whether he’d ever taken coke.
This reticence, however, appears to have spread throughout the House of Commons, with MPs unwilling to say whether they like Coke. Or prefer its rival, Pepsi.
A blogger called James O’Malley decided earlier this month, for no apparent reason, to e-mail every single MP with the urgent request ‘Do you prefer Coca-Cola or Pepsi?’.
A grand total of 45 MPs found the time to respond, with around 80% opting for Coke.
Sadly, only one Welsh MP was willing to state his preference - Rhondda member Chris Bryant is a Pepsi man.

IS it time for hardline nationalists Cymdeithas to start protesting against knock-down supermarket Lidl?
The German chain has admitted it will only be able to deliver Welsh flags to its South Wales stores in the run-up to St David’s Day, as the depot that serves its North Wales stores is in England.
It means the firm’s nine stores in North Wales, and one in Mid Wales, will be bereft of Red Dragon flags for this week’s national day.
But it’s the comment from a Lidl spokesman that really rubs things in. “We are supplied from a depot in the North of England so we may not have any Welsh flags,” he said.
“But they should be OK for,” - wait for it - “England flags in time for the World Cup in the summer.”
They may be German, you know, but there really is no excuse.
I imagine Cymdeithas are already planning a boycott of 2p tins of beans.

Bard act to follow

2006-02-18T16:25:00.000Z

Sunday, February 19 2006
------------------------------

THE deliberations of the National Assembly don’t tend to get much coverage in the London papers, who strangely prefer to concentrate on celebrity tittle-tatle and global terrorism rather than Objective One funding and wrangles over what to call a building.
So hats off to Assembly chiefs, who actually manage to dislodge the likes of Pete Doherty and Chantelle from the tabloids’ garish pages this week by announcing plans to ban kissing scenes in Romeo and Juliet from school plays.
Under the guidelines for schools being considered, the star-crossed lovers will have to seal their romance with a brief peck on the cheek rather than a full-on lip-lock. Drama teachers may also have to edit plays for scenes of violence or fruity language.
The rules will also ban drama teachers for making videos or taking snaps of plays for posterity.
As Margaret Higgins of the National Association for the Teaching of Drama said: “You just can’t cut out scenes like the kiss in Romeo and Juliet. It is a crucial moment.
“If this isn’t a fit subject matter for children, perhaps they should put Eastenders on after the watershed.”
Good point. What would happen if AMs and Ministers were allowed to start editing great plays for violence, language and kissing? Or even took it one step further and started writing them to reflect the way things are done in the Assembly?
It’s a hellish nightmare. If they started taking their green pens to some of Shakespeare’s finest works, it might end up a bit like this:

MACBETH
What happens: Macbeth and his ambitious wife murder King Duncan to take over the throne, then incite murderers to bump off his key rivals before massacring pretty much everybody else. Is beheaded by Macduff after getting too cocky.
Assembly version: Macbeth and his ambitious wife brief journalists off the record against Duncan to take over the throne, then sees off all his other key rivals by making them chairs of meaningless committees overseeing heresy, witchcraft regulations and the supply of mead. Eventually loses vote of confidence after refusing to give his views on the invasion of Dunsinane Castle.

KING LEAR
What happens: Lear abdicates and divides kingdom between his three daughters. He then banishes one only for others to betray him. Goes mad.
Assembly version: Lear announces plans to step down halfway through the next term, only for critics to label him a lame-duck King. Loses majority when Cordelia defects in protest at all-Damsen shortlists. Goes mad and accepts non-executive position at Government quango.

OTHELLO
What happens: Othello goes to Cyprus to command Venetian forces against the Turks, but is tricked by the enemy into thinking his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful, killing her before topping himself.
Assembly version: Othello goes to Cyprus on expenses to visit a trade fair and has a very nice time, thank you very much. Desdemona goes shopping.

You see? It wouldn’t work. Thankfully the Assembly Government chooses to keep an arm’s length approach to the arts, and wouldn’t dream of taking personal control of arts bodies’ output for its own personal ends. What? Eh? Oh.

LEMBIT Opik, as we all know, has the reverse midas touch. He backed Charles Kennedy to stay on as Lib Dem leader. He quit. He backed Mark Oaten to succeed him. He also had to quit when details of his unorthodox nocturnal activities emerged.
So, given that everything the Monmouthshire MP touches quickly turns into a disaster, would you seriously want to be a plane piloted by him?
Well, the self-styled Politician with a Personality© hopes you will, because he’s sinking his own cash into launching an airline, the snappily-titled West European Air Services.
He already has a pilot’s licence, a twin-engined Britten-Norman Islander plane, and now reckons he can do a Stelios and enter the air industry - a hard task to combine with being an MP, the Welsh Lib Dem leader, appearing on every TV and radio show, watching out for asteroids and maybe one day getting around to getting married.
“The company’s registered and I’ve got pilots,” he said. “Now all I need is a new aeroplane and some customers.”
Mind you, Opik better watch out - Plaid Cymru researchers have already started examining the environmental damage done by his plane in a bid to discredit his green credentials.
And no, I won’t be flying with him.

WHEN is a news story not a news story? When the BBC says it isn’t, apparently.
All last week newspapers, ITV and commercial radio ran the saga about BBC Scrum V presenter, Graham Thomas, being blackballed by the Wales rugby captain, Gareth Thomas.
Oddly, the Beeb found no room for the story on any of its TV and radio shows, and only buried it away in a darkened corner of its website. And, on the morning after Mike Ruddock’s resignation, the Daily Mail’s rugby correspondent mentioned the affair on BBC Wales’ breakfast programme - only to be swiftly halted by the presenter.
Perhaps it never happened.

MORE rugby...following Mike Ruddock’s departure as Wales coach, which I’m contractually obliged to describe as “sensational”, WRU chief executive Steve Lewis took to the airwaves to rubbish any rumours of discord within the camp and said journalists were just “trying to create a story which isn’t there.”
So who is the irresponsible rumour-monger who came up with this? “I’ve got a feeling that some kind of split in the camp emerged after the Henson autobiography - it’s not been a happy camp since, but whether that’s the reason I’m not in a position to speculate.
“But I’ve sensed that things have not been right in the camp for some time.”
The man trying to create a story which isn’t there is...er, First Minister Rhodri Morgan. Tut tut.

Which AM recently turned up at a buffet dinner at the Welsh Language Board, ignored the savoury delights on offer but, at the very end, produced a plastic bag from her pocket, stuffed an entire cake in it and whisked it off home? Answers on a postcard.

FINALLY, while the likes of Question Time presenter David Dimbleby struggle to get a straight answer out of First Minister Rhodri Morgan about his views on Iraq, your super soaraway Wales on Sunday has gone the extra mile to find out.
Morgan blustered and flustered on TV when asked about his opinion on the War, claiming it wasn’t his business as he was no longer an MP.
So last week we submitted a request to the National Assembly under the Freedom of Information Act, demanding to know “the views of First Minister Rhodri Morgan AM on the US- and British-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003”.
No, we’re not holding our breath either. But at least it’ll give Assembly civil servants something to do.

BLEATING ABOUT THE BUSH

2006-02-14T11:16:00.000Z

Sunday, February 5 2006
-----------------------------

BAA-D week (is there any other sort these days?) for First Minister Rhodri Morgan, who managed to make a plonker of himself again on TV’s Question Time.
Pressed by a member of the Aberystwyth audience on what he thought about the Iraq War, Mr Morgan amazingly revealed himself as the only person on the entire planet who doesn’t have a view one way or the other.
“I don’t know because I have not looked at the issues because I’m not in the House of Commons – I left it to the MPs in the House of Commons,” said Mr Morgan. One member of the audience described him as “woolly”, and she wasn’t speaking about his hair.
It is a rum do. Even children’s presenters Dick and Dom have given their views on the most pressing issue around (Dick thinks it’s American neo-imperialism; Dom argues that a strong, democratic Iraq can act as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East).
But it’s not the first time the First Minister has um-ed and ah-ed when confronted by a thorny issue.
Here are a few others (which admittedly I made up, but he’s got a good sense of humour has our Rhodri)...

January 2006: Rugby lover Mr Morgan is asked by a newspaper about Welsh hopes and chances in the forthcoming Six Nations tournament:
“Well, the WRU is a separate entity, it doesn’t come under the National Assembly’s remit, and thus it would be remiss of me to be coming out and making comments about their team’s chances.
“I’m firmly of the belief that the Assembly should keep an arm’s length approach to the sports, and whether the team is successful or not is purely for the WRU to comment on. I’m not about to undermine Dai Pickering by stating whether or not I hope the team will be successful.”

May 2005: Cornered by a tenacious TV hack and asked how we would vote in the General Election:
“You know, I’m the First Minister of Wales – I’m not in the House of Commons anymore so it’s not really something I’m able to comment on.
“What I can say is there will be an election, and we will look at the outcome of that election, and the way it impinges on Wales. But it is not right for me to say which party I will or will not be voting for.
“Opinions are cheap, votes are not.”

October 2004: Asked by his assistant if he would prefer tea or coffee:
“Look, that’s not a question for me to answer. Wales has a long – I would say, a long and proud heritage – of drinking both tea and coffee. It’s something we can all unite on and always will. And I would not seek to undermine those tea or coffee manufacturers seeking to relocate to Wales – the dynamic Wales we are trying to build – by stating a preference one way or the other.
“I do not think it is the business of the First Minister of the Assembly to be going around, dictating to himself which hot beverage he wishes to drink. And I remain firm on that.”

IT’S A hard life being a member of the Commons Welsh Affairs Select Committee, which is currently holding a pointless inquiry into Wales’ energy needs.
Still, there are some perks. The 11 Welsh MPs on the Committee, keen to see how alternative energy production is achieved elsewhere, will shortly jet off to... er... Chicago for a fact-finding trip.
Oh, and it’s “Economy Plus” there and back – that’s business class to you and me.
Trebles all round for the MPs concerned, including chairman Hywel Francis, David Davies, Nia Griffith and Jessica Morden.
Couple of points:
Firstly, the Government appears to have already set themselves on nuclear power as the way forward, regardless of what the Committee says.
Although the Government remains officially “neutral” on the outcome of the review, opposition MPs and environmental campaigners say that Blair is convinced that building new nuclear power stations is the only way to secure future energy demands, what with him being an expert on this.
Secondly, they appear to have forgotten the ridicule of six years ago when the Welsh Committee went on a similar beano to Chicago, that time to look at a childcare centre, of which there are presumably none closer to home.
The mockery led to the Committee registering their displeasure: “Some Members of Parliament, and members of the press, ridicule the Welsh Affairs Committee’s visit to America, whereas they would never ridicule similar visits by the Defence, Foreign Affairs or other Select Committees.
“When it comes to Wales there is always such unfortunate carping about Select Committee visits abroad.”
Yes, why don’t people find it strange that members of the DEFENCE and FOREIGN AFFAIRS committees sometimes need to go abroad? Baffling.
In the likely event you don’t remember the childcare jaunt to the Mafia capital, there had been three days of thunderstorms over Chicago and six different flights were cancelled. The MPs annoyed everyone on the plane by singing Welsh hymns on the way, then once they got there, the cab from the airport broke down half way to Chicago and had to be towed off the freeway (that’s motorway in Americanese).
But it’s not all glamour. Next week the committee visits the Wylfa power station on Anglesey, before a meeting at Bangor University with academics and groups opposed to windfarms.
But you can excuse them if their mind wanders to other things... Lake Michigan, pizza restaurants, the Chicago Bulls...
Beats a trip to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth (admission: £5, discounts to those arriving by public transport), eh?

HAS the Curse of Lembit Opik, the Welsh Lib Dem leader with the reverse Midas touch, struck again?
I only ask because, following his disastrous backings of Charles Kennedy and then Mark Oaten for the party’s leadership, he was apparently spotted in a Westminster bar last week locked deep in conversation with dark horse Chris ‘Who?’ Huhne. Then, on Friday morning, the Montgomeryshire MP, who is a qualified pilot, tried to fly his colleague back to London from Aberystwyth after he appeared on Question Time.
The aircraft was grounded by bad weather and Mr Huhne ended up making the journey by car.

WHY all the furore over a British football team for the 2012 Olympics when some people think we’ve got one already?
Politicians going to a reception in London last week hosted by Franz ‘The Kaiser’ Beckenbauer, chair of the organising committee for this summer’s World Cup, received an invitation to an event celebrating the qualification of “the United Kingdom Football Association national team”.
Fortunately for the Kaiser’s blushes, fresh invites were sent out at the last minute, avoiding a diplomatic incident.
Lieber Gott!

SO FAREWELL then, to Swansea Council chief executive Tim Thorogood, who is leaving “to develop my career in a different direction”. Coincidentally, he had been suspended over a planning application row which has now been dropped.
Cost of Mr Thorogood’s ‘compromise package – a reported £45,000- £60,000.
And you wonder why council tax bills are so high.

ANYBODY on Anglesey seen their MP Albert Owen recently?
A WoS reporter tried to contact the Labour man two weeks ago to get his views on legal highs – see p4&5 in this week’s paper – a topic he’s signed an Early Day Motion on before. After three days of leaving messages for Mr Owen at both the Commons and his constituency, an assistant told the reporter the MP was “busy” and wouldn’t be able to talk about the topic. What, all week? Oddly, Mr Owen was very keen to give interviews prior to last year’s General Election, when he snatched the seat from Plaid.

High price of tax on sport

2006-01-31T12:43:00.000Z

Sunday, January 29 2006
-----------------------------

“WE shall provide more playing fields,” promised the Labour manifesto.
“We shall abolish the tax on sport and the living theatre.”
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the Labour manifesto from last year’s general election, but the 1955 election, which was won by the Tories. (The same manifesto also noted “television is a growing influence for good or ill” years before Celebrity Big Brother).
We mention this, because our minds are turning to sport, what with the Six Nations approaching and last night’s draw for the Euro 2008 football qualifiers. Oh, and the darts earlier this month.
What’s more, a conference was held in the National Assembly on Thursday on ‘Supporting Sport for all in Wales’, led by Tory Education Spokesman William Graham – Lemmy from Motorhead’s mate – and Welsh Paralympian John Harris.
“I support John’s commitment to promoting wider access to sporting activities to all people regardless of ability,” he said, possibly referring to the Welsh football team’s back four.
“Encouraging young children in particular to take an active interest in sport will improve their health and get them into good habits for later life.
“We need to promote the philosophy of sport for all which encourages people of all ages and backgrounds to take an active interest in sport and exercise.”
Noble words indeed.
Which brings us to the bigger question: why is taking part in sport still taxed when our kids are sat in front of TVs watching television and stuffing themselves with Doritos?
If you play for an amateur sports club, it gets lucrative tax breaks to encourage more people in. But if you pop for a game of tennis at your local leisure centre – in the unlikely event it hasn’t been turned into luxury apartments – it is hit by tax.
An hour of badminton at one South Wales centre costs £4.10 – of which 61p goes straight to the Treasury in tax.
The Assembly Government doesn’t have tax-altering powers.
But are our AMs likely to put pressure on Westminster to end the tax anomaly when so few of them show an interest in sport?
Of the 60 AMs’ biographies in The Wales Yearbook – the Who’s Who of Welsh politics – only 15 include sports among their outside-of-politics interests.
Admittedly, some of these are fairly borderline – I didn’t include ‘walking’, mentioned by both Janet Davies and Catherine Thomas. Walking’s not a sport. I walk to work everyday.
Nor John Marek, who represented Wales at bridge in international competitions.
But there are plenty of AMs who love sport – Health Minister Brian Gibbons is himself vice-chairman of Gwynfi Utd FC – so why isn’t anybody demanding tax-free sport, a call made by the Royal College of GPs as recently as September 2004?
As we mention elsewhere in this paper, there is currently an upward trend in childhood obesity in Wales, increasing with every generation. It’s small wonder our kids are so fat.
By the way, what’s on TV tonight?

LADIES and gentleman, we appreciate that, after Christmas, you may be struggling with debts and be in the doldrums.
But I implore you, this is also the time of year to be thinking of those less fortunate than yourself. Those treated as the lepers of society. Looked upon by the Government as little more than filth. With nobody to turn to.
I refer, of course, to the much-maligned second home owners, who last week announced they had set up their own organisation “to protect their rights”.
The Association of Second Home Owners “has been set up to provide a voice for the thousands of people who own second homes in the UK”, their press release announced.
“Britain’s 230,000 second home owners have become easy targets for the politicians, and we must make a stand and redress the balance.”
It is led by poor, downtrodden Paul Rouse, a former director of a string of blue chip companies.
“Various ministers are on record as saying that second home owners push up prices and deprive local people of affordable housing,” he fumed, apparently oblivious to the fact that second home owners push up prices and deprive local people of affordable housing, particularly in North and Mid Wales.
Well, boo, hoo, hoo. Forget tsunami victims and those caught up in the Pakistan earthquake, it’s these poor forgotten souls I’ll be donating to in the future.
My tenner is in the post.

CONWY'S Labour AM Denise Idris Jones was a teacher before moving into politics. But not, we presume, a geography teacher.
In the National Assembly's Register of Members' Interests, under the section headed Overseas Visits, Mrs Jones included trips to Holland, Ireland...and Caernarfon. Which, last time we checked, was in Gwynedd.
Additionally, the register also reveals the AM receives £2,000 a year from the Commercial Workers' Union - a body which doesn't actually appear to exist in this country.

LATEST AM to start their own blog is Shadow Social Justice Minister Leanne Wood. Plaid's Ms Wood marks the occasion by running a competition on her site - just tell her who should open the new National Assembly building instead of the Queen and one lucky person can win two tickets to sit in the public gallery for the first sitting in the new building.
Second prize is presumably four tickets. Boom boom!

"IT'S a unique sort of role, really, and the person who will be doing the job will aim to be helpful..." - a National Assembly spokesman announces the appointment of Cathy Owens as First Minister Rhodri Morgan's spin doctor on July 29, 2003.
"They're all ba*****s, all them them - not just the one journalist" - Cathy Owens, January 24, 2005
Hmmm, unique indeed.

END OF AN ERA

2006-01-24T12:32:00.000Z

Sunday, January 22 2006
-----------------------------

IF REPORTS are to be believed, this has been a sad week for public life in Wales.
For Robyn Léwis, the sane and rational former vice-president of Plaid Cymru, has quit the party in protest at harpist Elinor Bennett accepting a gong from the Queen.
Ms Bennett, wife of former Plaid president Dafydd Wigley, was given an OBE in the New Year’s honours list for “services to music in Wales”.
This brazen caving-in to the British imperial state has proved too much for Dr Léwis, the former Archdruid and Sole Guardian of Welsh Culture©, who has reportedly quit.
But Welsh public life will be a quieter place without Dr Léwis, who has delighted and enthralled us over the past few years with his reasoned and thought-out arguments in defence of Welsh life and values.
So farewell, then, Dr Léwis. We hope we’ve not heard the last of you. But, until then, we pay tribute to some of your finer moments over the past few years...

AUGUST 2003 (#1)

In an example of neighbourly friendliness not seen since a 1970s sitcom, Dr Léwis claims Wales was being “swamped” by those next door coming to live here.
“Go into a shop and people frown and glare at you because you speak Welsh,” he says, which seems a bit unlikely seeing as he lives on the Llyn Peninsula. “These people do not come in to absorb culture, to integrate,” he added, while holding a glass to the wall. “They come in to colonise.”
This particular rant comes as it is revealed that house prices in Pwllheli, Gwynedd, had risen by 85 per cent in the last two years. Oddly enough, the sales of green ink at Dr Léwis’ local stationers had risen by about the same amount.

AUGUST 2003 (#2)

Phew! Busy month for the pen of Dr Léwis. 593 years after the castles at Harlech and Aberystwyth were retaken from Glyndwr for the Crown, he spots a new threat to the Welsh nation – the Cheshire silk town of Macclesfield.
The North of England was “deliberately colonising” Wales, he fumes, turning it into “little Macclesfields and Wigans”.
This would presumably explain the massive rise in popularity of rugby league in the country in recent years.

JUNE 2004

The Sole Guardian of Welsh Culture© is quick to demand that Stonehenge is moved to Wales after tests on teeth found in a 4,300-year-old grave nearby suggest the prehistoric workmen were Welsh.
An official written request to move the stones – the heaviest of which weighs 45 tons – over the border is made to English Heritage “on behalf of my fellow druids, bards, ovates and the rest of my Welsh compatriots”.
Oddly, Stonehenge remains to this day in Wiltshire.

AUGUST 2004

The good doctor leads a walkout of Gorsedd members at the Eisteddfod after a speaker has the nerve to speak English during a speech. Temperatures in the tent reach boiling point as shouts of “fascist” come from the audience.
The move breaks the ancient festival’s strict Welsh-only rule, also broken that year by...Robyn Léwis, who makes an opening speech in Cornish (speakers: 400) and Breton.

SEPTEMBER 2004

Dr Léwis is angry that the National Assembly is spending £5m on repairing the ramshackle Welsh Highland Railway, which runs from Caernarfon to Rhyd-Ddu in Gwynedd, rather than giving the money to the National Eisteddfod.
“It is, in effect, enabling grown-up railway enthusiasts to play at toy trains,” he says.
Rather than, say, enabling grown men to dance around in white sheets singing.

AUGUST 2005

The ever-sensitive Dr Léwis, apoplectic with rage at the notion the National Eisteddfod could be held in Liverpool – as it was in 1884, 1900, and 1929 – uses the murder of black teenager Anthony Walker as an excuse to attack the city.
“We would be lost amongst the Scousers, who aren’t known for their toleration of minorities,” he says, adding that Boris Johnson MP, who criticised the city for mourning executed Ken Bigley, “had a point”.
Others feel that Rev David Ben Rees, the influential Merseyside Welshman who described Dr Léwis as bigoted, “had a point”.
With such an admirable track record of conducting public debate and preserving our national values, it’s small wonder Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones has called on the Sole Guardian of Welsh Culture© to reconsider his decision.
“I am very saddened by his comments,” he said, possibly crossing his fingers behind his back. “I hope he will reflect and reconsider his decision.”
Us too, Ieuan. Come back, Robyn. Your country needs you.

GGGGRRRRR! Two Jobs Peter Hain is angry.
His ire has been provoked by a suggestion by former Home Secretary Lord Baker, who has suggested that, because of devolution, Welsh and Scottish MPs should be barred from voting in the Commons on issues that only affect England.
This would be “dangerous and wrong”, warned Two Jobs, and “risks fanning the flames of English nationalism”.
He also adds that “To prevent Welsh MPs from voting on certain classes of parliamentary business...would disenfranchise Welsh voters”.
Yes, that’s right. It would disenfranchise Welsh voters from issues that only affect England. In the same way English voters are already disenfranchised from issues that only affect Wales. So by Hain’s logic, English MPs should be allowed to vote on Assembly matters.
Perhaps he doesn’t quite understand the notion of devolution.
Or, more likely, he understands that Labour has 29 MPs in Wales and 41 in Scotland – a grand total of 70 members who can happily vote away for Labour policies on issues like health and education which have precisely diddly-squat to do with the people who voted for them.
And when your majority is 67, that’s a very useful way of getting things through, especially when people in Wales and Scotland are more likely to vote for Labour than the English.
No wonder Two Jobs thinks changing things would be “dangerous and wrong...”

GEORGE Galloway's supporters have hit back at Labour MP Chris Bryant, who reported the Saddam-loving Scot to the Commons Speaker last week for managing to sign Early Day Motions while being in the Big Brother house.
"This is pants," said Galloway's representative on Earth, Ron McKay.
Which, internet users will be aware, is an unfortunate term to throw at Mr Bryant.

AT THE last count, I imagine, sales of The Guardian newspaper in Llanelli were actually in minus figures, so presumably the boss of TV company Tinopolis felt safe conceding to the paper that the town was "grim".
Ron Jones, whose company recently snapped up the Television Corporation for £36m, made the comments in an interview with the paper's media section. Grim it might be, but, as the paper points out, he pays the council a "peppercorn ground rent" for the company's 45,000 square foot HQ.

POP star Cerys Matthew has been head-hunted by the Assembly to front their campaign urging Welsh people to add up properly.
Matthews' cover of Len Barry's '1-2-3' is to be used on a TV ad encouraging people to sign up for adult numeracy lessons.
Also considered, apparently, was Catatonia's own 'I Am The Mob', until it was pointed out the lyrics - "it's not one for the money, two for the money, three for the money, am I your Easter Bunny?" - were utter nonsense.

IT'S fair to say the postman's back didn't collapse under the weight of entries to our Lembit Opik t-shirt competition last week.
In fact, we had one entry - from Elsie Hughes in Caernarfon, who wrote "since Lembit is a keen motorcyclist, I'd wear the natty T-shirt to a motorcycle rally." A racy pink number on the way to you, madam.

Party poopers

2006-01-17T09:58:00.000Z

Sunday, January 15 2006
-----------------------------

WE KNOW you can’t get enough of the Lib Dem leadership election, the battle of ideas between four men who probably aren’t even household names in their own household, which is set to drag on and on for the next seven weeks.
Indeed, even the most seasoned political hacks let out a collective sigh of ‘who?’ when previously unheard-of MP Chris Huhne threw his hat into the ring to become leader (he’s written four books, according to his website).
Still, at least it puts two of Wales’ brightest and best in the news thanks to their parts in the farrago that saw Charlie Kennedy ejected from office – TV’s Lembit Opik and Cardiff Central MP Jenny Willott.
First off Welsh Lib Dem leader Mr Opik, who, according to rumours doing the rounds, may be forced to postpone his wedding to weathergirl Sian Lloyd for the second year in succession.
The pair had to delay the nuptials, set for October 5 last year, due to the General Election, and were set to tie the knot early this year.
But one source said: “Apparently, with Lembit managing Mark Oaten’s campaign, he thinks he won’t have time to properly prepare for the wedding and might have to postpone it again.”
The asteroid-obsessed MP didn’t return my calls this week, so feel free to speculate what he was up to. He may have been talking to the vicar about the possibility of putting back the ceremony. Alternatively, he may just have been on every TV and radio show going talking up his man Oaten’s chances. Who knows?
And so to Jenny Willott, the newly-elected MP for Cardiff Central who proved the lady really is for turning as she showed last week in a spectacular about-turn over Mr Kennedy’s leadership.
On the morning of January 6, Ms Willott publicly backed Mr Kennedy, telling a local newspaper: “He is a massive asset to the party, and people should remember that the party has got the most MPs it has ever had for 80 years. He says he has been receiving treatment and has not had a drink for two months, and I don’t see why he can’t continue his job as leader.”
On the afternoon of January 6, Ms Willott was one of 25 Lib Dem MPs who signed a letter calling on Mr Kennedy to resign for the good of the party.
Ms Willott now claims she was “misquoted” by the paper which she is “not happy” about. But rumours circulate about other reasons for her about-turn.
Ms Willott couldn’t possibly have backed her leader in public under the impression that the signatories to the letter were going to be kept secret... could she? Seems like these new MPs still have a bit to learn.
Meanwhile, Mr Opik might not even be standing for the Lib Dem leadership, but that hasn’t stopped the website LibDemBlogs from selling these natty T-shirts bearing the legend ‘I pick Opik’.
They’re part of a series allowing ever-trendy Lib Dems to show their allegiance during the election, with others including the delightful ‘I’m a Minger’ for Menzies Campbell supporters, ‘I want a Hughes one’ for Simon Hughes and ‘Huhne’s your daddy’, in the unlikely event anyone backs the obscure Chris Huhne.
They cost around £15 a pop from website libdemblogs.co.uk, but I’ve got two to give away – a blue one for men and a pink one for the ladies.
To win, e-mail me on matt.withers@ wme.co.uk and tell me where you’d wear it.

THE new National Assembly debating chamber, the Senedd, is due to open on January 31, but AMs, their staff and the media will be given a week to try out the building beforehand.
“You can pretend to write articles and we can pretend to have debates,” First Minister Rhodri Morgan told reporters last week.
Which, cynics observed, is pretty much how the Assembly works anyway.

EXCUSE OF THE WEEK
"THE increase in complaints can mainly be attributed to increased awareness of the complaint team."
– Swansea Council explains why complaints about the authority
went up by 42 per cent last year.

THE genteel Welsh border town of Oswestry is a quieter place this weekend, following revelations in last week’s Wales on Sunday of a filth-ridden website giving the place a bad name.
The site has since been shut down and replaced with a message from its founder, claiming he “can’t be doing with this s**t at the moment” and that “those of you that were offended are no doubt the racist inbreds I referred to”.
Now Oswestry can return to the things it’s better known for, such as... er... being the hometown of Mott the Hoople singer Ian Hunter.

MUCH talk this week from Labour about the so-called ‘Respect Agenda’, cracking down on low-level crime, anti-social behaviour and street brawling.
Hmmmm... is this what they mean, Mr Prescott?

WESTMINSTER Labour Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong has launched a petition attacking the truly vile George Galloway for being in the Big Brother madhouse rather than concentrating on “things that matter”.
Do you know what? I really don’t have the energy to point out the hypocrisy here.

Who's been a busy bee?

2006-01-10T09:48:00.000Z

Sunday, January 8 2006
---------------------------

MY apologies to Labour MP Chris Bryant.
There, I said it.
Last week, I mocked the member for Rhondda for wasting his and his constituents’ time, signing up to 47 Early Day Motions in the House of Commons over the past six months, drawing attention to such fripperies as the need to congratulate ITV on its 50th birthday, and the financial travails of Hearts FC.
Admittedly, much of what Bryant signed up for it was nonsense. But, for the master of signing up to any passing bandwagon that comes within a mile of him, he has to look to his colleague, the MP for Gower - Martin Caton.
In the past half-year, Caton has signed up to no less than 764 Motions. That’s SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR...or four a day!
That makes Caton, for his inability to say no to anything, the political eqivalent of Kerry Katona.
So - drum roll, ladies and gentlemen - I bring you my top 10 Martin Caton issues of the past 10 months. In descending order...

10) Parliament reconvened in May, and just a month later Liverpool took the Champions League title. Quick to spot this as an urgent matter for people in the Gower, their MP called on UEFA to allow both Liverpool and Everton into the following season’s competition.

9) In late June, the MP was quick to spot another threat facing the nation - low letterboxes giving postmen a bad back. He demanded the government set a “minimum centreline of the letter box aperture” between 700mm and 1700mm. Oddly, they have yet to find any parliamentary time to push this particular proposal through.

8) Caton was concerned in the summer that people did not properly recognise the “enormous economic contribution made by bees” in Britain. As such, he demanded the Government reversed a financial cut to the National Bee Unit in York, and his honey-loving constituents breathed a sigh of relief.

7) Unfortunately for the organiser of National Gut Week, it came just a week after the London bombings in July. Surely they couldn’t find an MP willing to put the bombings to one side and speak out on the importance of gut issues? Oh yes they could...

6) As Autumn came and the dark nights began to draw in, Caton’s mind turned to next year’s summer holiday - hence his call for the railway line between Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford to be kept open.

5) In October, with the situation in Iraq fast deteriorating, the Gower man was quick to call on the Government to act - by “congratulating Stoke-on-Trent schools for achieving the best GCSE results ever”. What is it with him and Stoke-on-Trent?

4) November was a busy month for all politicians as Labour’s welfare reforms began to make their passage through the commons. Ever eager to help, Caton called on the government to “celebrate the fact that British horse racing is the second most popular sport in terms of attendance behind professional football”.

3) But later that month Caton was furious. Was it the ill-treatment of one of his constituents that raised his ire so much to call on the Government to take action? No, the replacement of Young’s bitter by San Miguel lager in the Commons bar.

2) Last month, Caton officially gave his backing to the Newcastle Evening Chronicle’s campaign for the drug Alimta to be available on the NHS in the North-East of England - a no doubt timely intervention.

1) A week later, the MP called on the House of Commons to mark the 35th Test century of Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar “to ensure that he will be forever spoken of in the company of immortal players such as Viv Richards, Jack Hobbs, Donald Bradman and Sunil Gavaskar” - a topic close to the hearts of his cricket-mad Gower constituents and its large Indian community.

So, can he top 764 in the next six months? Watch this space...

NEW year, new woe for the £70m new Assembly building. Following reports last month that its spanking new desks are falling apart, security staff are now complaining that the debating chamber at Cardiff Bay is far too hot to work in.
The chamber has been dubbed The Greenhouse by sweltering staff because it’s permanently stuffy, which should at least give AMs an excuse when they doze off.
It follows last month’s revelation that contractors had to be called back to carry out emergency repairs after wooden desks started mysteriously falling to bits.
Still, at least there’s one reason for AMs to bother turning up to debates in the new chamber - the new computer systems, unlike the old ones, will be hooked up to the internet, allowing bored members to book holidays and Google their own name rather than snore through terminally dull speeches on Objective One cash.
Members had moaned that, previously, the computers were only linked up to the Assembly’s internal intranet.
“One or two AMs may now actually start attending the chamber one,” mocked one member.
Music to the ears, then, of Lib Dem health spokeswoman Jenny Randerson, caught on camera writing her Christmas cards in the chamber last month while Tory leader Nick Bourne made a speech.

"I AM actually an extremely moderate and infrequent consumer of alcohol" - Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy, December 18, 2005.
"The first thing about Charles is that he has shown great personal integrity...that does not make him a liar, that makes him an ordinary human being" - Welsh Lib Dem leader Lembit Opik, January 6, 2006, after Kennedy admits he has been treated for a drink problem.
Which begs the question: precisely what does the Montgomeryshire MP think constitutes as lying?

WARNING: GIBBERISH ALERT
IT'S ONLY January 8 and already a contender for most unintelligible press release of the year arrives.
"The official public consultation launch of the framework for joint action, the draft West Cheshire/North East Wales sub-regional spatial strategy, has been launched," announces the Welsh Development Agency breathlessly.
"It will be an important step towards realising the vision for North East Wales, as set out in the Wales spatial plan, and will be used to inform the preparation of the consultation of the regional spatial strategy for the North-West of England," it continues.
No, me neither. Hats off to the head of PR at the WDA, who apparently earns £45,000 for this.

YEAR WE GO!

2005-12-31T20:09:00.000Z

Sunday, January 1 2006
---------------------------

WELL, what an exciting political year 2005 was, then?
What with a general election most people have already forgotten, Rhodri Morgan losing his majority after Peter Law took his ball and went home, and an Assembly building rapidly costing more than the GDP of an African nation, it was the most exciting year since... 2004, probably.
But what will 2006 bring for the great and good of Wales?
Well, I’ve looked into my cup of milky, weak, subsidised (40p) Assembly tea and this is what our lawmakers have to look forward to...

JANUARY
As the row over the Government of Wales bill rumbles on, the debate over whether AMs should be allowed to stand on both constituency and regional lists sparks violent riots in several parts of the country.
In Cardiff, a million marchers take to the streets waving banners such as “Not in my name”, “Don’t rock the vote” and “These proposals were not a recommendation of the Richard Commission.”
One protestor is slightly scuffed in a riot in Rhyl.

FEBRUARY
Peter Hain is appointed Ambassador to Washington on top of his jobs as Wales and Northern Ireland secretaries.
“This no way impinges on my commitment to driving forward a Wales fit for the 21st century,” he says, on the phone from his Capitol Hill home.

MARCH
The opening of the new Assembly building turns into a disaster. With attendees including the Queen, Prince Charles and Tony Blair, Assembly officials later concede booking Goldie Lookin Chain to perform 'Your Missus is a Nutter' as Charles looked on was “a bit ill-judged, with hindsight”.
Wales win the Grand Slam for the second year in succession, but most people are too pre-occupied with the Assembly voting argument to notice.

APRIL
A spring-clean of the old Assembly building reveals the Liberal Democrats trapped inside an unused cupboard. A probe discovers they have been there since June 2005. “Oh dear,” comments an Assembly press officer. “We remember them.”

MAY
An off-the-cuff remark about the French by media-friendly Monmouthshire MP David Davies sparks a diplomatic incident with tanks lined up along the Calais coastline and a France-wide boycott of Welsh beef and lamb. The incident is only resolved when Shadow Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan is offered up as a sacrifice.

JUNE
Ron Davies rejoins the Labour Party, wins an Assembly by-election and takes up a role in Rhodri Morgan’s cabinet.

JULY
Ron Davies is forced to resign from the cabinet.

AUGUST
Peter Hain is appointed Secretary-General of the UN on top of his other three jobs.
“Those people who say this makes me unable to deal with the pressures of Wales on a day-to-day basis are simply peddling old Tory lies,” he says from a summit in Botswana.
The Lib Dems go missing again.

SEPTEMBER
With the conference season in full flow, each of the parties use the affairs to unveil glamorous celebrity backers. Labour parade Gavin Henson, who surprises many with his strident views on the implementation of the Richards Commission reforms.
The Tories boast Windsor Davies, who describes leader Nick Bourne as a “lovely boy”, while Plaid show off Ivor the Engine. Sian Lloyd slightly spoils Lembit Opik’s big day by saying she “never really understood the point of the Liberal Democrats, to be honest”.

OCTOBER
An administrative error at a by-election sees a wasp elected to Gwynedd Council. Cymdeithas protest when it emerges it has flown over the border from Birkenhead.

NOVEMBER
A compromise is finally struck between Welsh police forces and the Westminster Government over the proposed merger.
North Wales will cover South Wales, except on Saturdays, when Gwent take over. South Wales will cover Gwent every other month, alternating with North Wales, with the two forces merging to cover both areas on the other months.
Dyfed-Powys will be left to fend for itself with all residents being handed whistles and cattle prods.

DECEMBER
The BBC attempts to make its political coverage more relevant to younger viewers. In the all-new Dragon’s Eye, David Williams asks viewers to text whether mooted NHS changes are “tidy” or not, and refers to Ieuan Wyn Jones as “butt” throughout an interview. The idea is quickly dropped.
Peter Hain sets off to be the first British man on the moon on a two-year mission.
“I remain fully committed to delivering Labour’s manifesto commitments for a better, bolder Wales,” he says by morse code from the Mir space station.

THE Lib Dems, who can't even manage to depose their own hapless leader, have been slapped down by asteroid-obsessed MP Lembit Opik for attempting top assassinate Charles Kennedy.
Perhaps the Montgomeryshire member has forgotten who sparked the current rumblings in the first place - him, with an article on a Lib-Dem website.
"We seem wary of developing a visceral habit to 'tell it like it is'," he wrote. "And I believe that timidity is driven by a very personal political syndrome".
With friends like these...

FUN and games at Swansea Council, where the Chief Executive, Tim Thorogood, faces suspension over a bizarre argument about what he intends to use the garage for he gained planning permission to build (parking a car? Building a time machine? Cockfights?).
The row has been rumbling on since September, but Mr Thorogood was escorted from the building on December 20 - entirely coincidentally, the day after the leader of the opposition phoned the council leader to demand his departure.
As Labour rushed to claim the scalp from the Lib-Dem/Tory-controlled council, the bosses said: “The idea that the Administration would wait for pressure from the opposition parties before taking action over allegations against the Council's Chief Executive is just ludicrous.
“Any responsible person in a position of power would deal with this situation in exactly the same way.”
And there can be no doubt Swansea is a responsible council. Discussing a separate argument over departing officers, the administration described the Labour opposition on its website last week as “self-regarding s**t-stirrers”.
Still, better than the usual council doublespeak. How about an award from the Plain English Campaign?

WHAT MPs DO ALL DAY
(Part one of an occasional series)
CHRIS Bryant, Labour's Rhondda MP, knows what's important to his constituents in the Valleys - the colour of cash machines, ITV's 50th birthday and the goings-on at Hearts FC.
Bryant has signed up to no fewer than 47 Early Day Motions in the past six months, drawing attention to these pressing issues and more.
People in Rhondda must be delighted to have a member prepared to call on the Financial Services Authority to investigate a Scottish football club a mere 400 miles away. Cheers!