René Kinzett

LibDem Cowardice in Swansea

2011-12-01T10:53:00.001Z

This article originally appeared in the South Wales Evening Post...

THE global financial meltdown and the crisis in the Eurozone have created a precarious situation in which whole countries are on the brink of budgetary collapse.

The knock-on effect of all this on the UK is that we have to keep our national debt under control and keep a tight hand on public spending. This is true locally as it is nationally.

The rejection by the leading councillors on Swansea Council of a few sensible and relatively modest proposed spending cuts means that other proposals to save the projected £500,000 savings will have to be found elsewhere.

I cannot believe that the council has rejected the proposed cut to the £100,000 trade union grant.

Union members already pay subscription fees, so why can't the union provide workplace representatives out of their bulging coffers instead of local taxpayers?

The proposals to turn off about one-in-three streetlights across Swansea has been assessed by professional officers as a sensible cost-cutting exercise, as well as a good energy saving measure, too.

Despite this advice, the Lib Dems have U-turned and have waved goodbye to a potential saving of £250,000.

Professional advisors at the civic centre have also objected to the U-turn by the politicians on the proposal to close some of the smaller rubbish and recycling centres for a few days each week.

This modest proposal would have saved £100,000.

The proposed car parking charge for car parks in Morriston and Gorseinon would have brought in £100,000 and would have been in line with charges already paid by shoppers in Sketty and Mumbles. The U-turn on these charges was also opposed by the professional officers at the council.

It is easy to reverse cuts and to give in to every objection when you bring forward your proposals to save money.

It is not easy to find another £500,000 from an already pressured budget. Where will these savings have to be found? From our schools, our children's services or our highways maintenance budgets?

What is really worrying is that Swansea Council's professional advisors have sought to so publicly distance themselves from the decisions of their political masters.

While the Lib Dems are running scared from the voters and prioritising the popular over the sensible, at least we can also see the recommendations and opinions of those who are struggling to keep our council's budget under control.

Defying those who wanted to destroy

2011-09-22T13:34:00.000+01:00

This article originally appeared on Dale & Co...

On the afternoon of the 11 September 2001, I was at my desk in Tavistock Square, London. I had been told that a flying accident had taken place in New York and that it was suspected that a light aircraft had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre. It seemed as though a tragic accident, certainly resulting in some loss of life and injuries, had taken place, but not something that needed to detain international intention for too long. Setting out for lunch under the clear blue skies of leafy Bloomsbury, I met up with a friend who then worked at BMA House, just across the square from my offices at Woburn House.

We chatted about the usual things - life, the universe and everything. We briefly mentioned that aircraft strike on one of the towers in New York and speculated in a vague way about the threat of terrorism and recalled the earlier light aircraft crash in the grounds of the White House on 11 September 1994, in which an intoxicated man attempted to crash a Cessna into the White House as an attention seeking suicide stunt. The damage to the World Trade Centre exactly seven years later appeared to us, at that time, to be not hugely more serious than the impact on the South Lawn of the White House.

Returning to my desk after lunch there was a considerable amount of hubbub, the usual "have you heard?" conversations, all just tea room chat. But when one colleague looked a little more serious in response to my "yes, I know a small plane crashed in Manhattan", I stopped dead in my tracks as she pulled up the BBC News website on her PC. The sight of a huge fire, billowing smoke and BOTH towers having signs of commercial airliners have struck them made me feel sick and not a little scared.

Our office had a conference room with a screen and video projector and quickly the whole building seemed to be gathered just watching the unfolding events, trying to piece together the events, grappling to come to terms with the evidence before our eyes. The second plane strike, the attack on the Pentagon and the downed fourth plane (flight 93) in woodland in Pennsylvania, seemingly en route for another major target in DC, made us all realise that accidents, technical failure, the acts of lone lunatics or drunks could not explain what we were witnessing.

Once it became clear that a coordinated terrorist attack on the world's most powerful capital city had been executed with such devastating success, the feelings of fear, anxiety and concern for loved ones and friends took hold. Whilst not knowing what to run from, the instinctive nature of the primal brain takes over in moments like these and the desire for a bolt hole, to be far from any sources of danger and to be with people who could provide comfort, kicks in. It was soon decided that employees would be able to leave for home, should they wish, given the exceptionally distressing nature of the incident. I, too, took the decision to leave work and get home.

Living in London, the sound of aircraft overhead is never far away. However, during the afternoon and evening of 11 September 2001, the eerie silence that hung over London was really noticeable. The absence of vapour trails from higher altitude aircraft and the drone and whining of planes on final approach to Heathrow was both welcome and unnerving. It was certainly the right decision to ground aircraft and close UK airspace, but it was also a sign that the situation seemed out of control and that the security services had been defeated. The fear that things could never be the same started to dawn on me. The debate about our civil liberties, as a trade off against security, was already beginning.

Jumping forward four years to 7 July 2005, I was by then living in Swansea. The feelings I had on the day that suicide bombers killed 52 innocent people in strikes on the tube and a bus in London, were perhaps more personal, more tangible, than when I had watched via television the attacks of 9/11 on a nation I have never visited and on locations I had only ever seen in films. I was watching the attacks from my office in Swansea and held my mobile, nervously waiting to hear back from friends in the capital who I had texted and called to check that they were ok. When the Number 30 double-decker bus exploded, it took me straight back to my feelings on 9/11 and of course to my former colleagues, many of whom were still working in my old office in Tavistock Square. Fortunately none were hurt, although shaken and unable to leave the building for some time whilst the emergency services attended the horrific scene across the road outside BMA House.

I was due to be in London the next day, Friday 8 July, for a friend's birthday party weekend. At no point did I feel worried about going to London, in fact I wanted to rush there, to show solidarity with the Londoners who had stoically walked home that Thursday evening and had come into work the next morning, on trains, on tubes and on buses. The feelings of running and hiding that had swept over me on 9/11 were replaced by a determination to defy those who wanted to destroy our free and open society.

Lest we forget those who toil

2011-09-22T13:32:00.000+01:00

This post originally appeared on Dale & Co...

The media coverage of the tragic mining accident at the Gleision Colliery in Cilybebyll has been questioned by fellow Wales-based blogger, Alison Goldsworthy. I agree that the print media hasn't given enough space to the disaster during its unfolding horror and much of that is due to geographical bias. I also think that there is a massive disconnect between the South East of England/London-based media and the economic and social conditions in "far away" places like the South Wales Valleys.

Comments in the media and indeed in discussions with friends and colleagues in London and even in Swansea, proved to me that so many of us forget the realities of life working at the front-line of industrial Britain. South Wales is not just the land of call centres and EU-sponsored "regeneration" projects and the landscaping of former chemical works, but of dangerous jobs in factories, steelworks and mines. Only last week, an inquest in Swansea was hearing evidence about the death in 2006 of Kevin Downey, a worker at the Port Talbot steelworks, who fell into 1,400 Celsius molten slag and was conscious when pulled out by colleagues. He had also risked his life to try to save three colleagues who perished during an explosion at the same steelworks in 2001.

The industrial workers of the UK only come to our attention at times of hardship and horror. The end of steel making at Redcar became an issue during the 2010 General Election and the ongoing scare stories about closures or drastic cuts in productions at the UK's remaining active steel mills, keeps the steel industry in the news. The other times I read and hear about Port Talbot steelworks, just across the other side of Swansea Bay to my office at County Hall, is when there are investigations into accidents and deaths at work.

Coal mining, by contrast, is now all but never mentioned in the media, not even in South Wales. Mining is seen as an historic issue, with museums and virtual theme parks dedicated to the memory of the industry. At Big Pit, near Newport, families can don reflective gear, put a helmet lamp on and descend down the entrance shaft of a former mine. All very jolly and a very interesting day out for the family. And clean and safe. I am not sure whether there will ever be a visitor attraction that aims to give tourists an experience of drift mining, crawling through tunnels in searing heat, with dirt, damp, noise and danger all on hand. If I am perfectly honest, I did not know that these working conditions still existed and only a few miles from Swansea's air-conditioned, health and safety checked offices of the local authority, the university and the DVLA.

The economic realities that force people to work in such dreadful conditions really need to be appreciated. My late grandfather, Stanley Hughes, left Merthyr in the mid-1920s, a boy of 16, to escape the back-breaking work and dangerous conditions of the mines. The local police force wouldn't take him on (on account of his flat feet) but the army was keen to recruit, so he went off round the world to serve King and Country in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. His diaries describe his time mining in Merthyr from the age of 14 as simply horrid. The dirt, the injuries and the sheer exhaustion suffered by those who toiled underground to keep our factories running, our homes heated and our empire defended come across in his accounts so vividly. Reading the accounts of the colleagues who worked with the dead men at the Gleision Colliery, you would not think that some 90 years have passed since my grandfather's time down the mines.

The conditions may be tough, but what choice is there in an area that has been left out of any major efforts to retrain the workforce or to attract new industries? The piecemeal "regeneration projects" (a term which now engenders cynicism and disappointment) and gimmicks like Communities First have done nothing to improve the prospects for workers in South Wales. Friends of mine have had to uproot a number of times to move where the work is; sometimes coming full circle, having started their careers in South Wales, moving to the North East of England, only to have to come all the way back to where they started in South Wales.

It is fashionable for white-collar workers to scoff at the 'Elf'n'Safety culture. But families in industrial areas such as South Wales rely on rigorously applied work-place standards. We don't yet know what has happened in Gleision Colliery or what caused the horrific accident which has claimed the lives of four men, but it is a telling reminder that the British economy is not solely based on the distributive sectors and the City of London. Whilst our current focus is on that Square Mile and banking reform, we must not forget the communities that send their men to risk their lives every day to earn a living.

'Thatcher legacy hurting'

2011-09-16T10:56:00.001+01:00

THE legacy of Margaret Thatcher's government is stopping people voting Conservative in Wales, a Welsh Tory has said.

Deputy presiding officer David Melding said he believed his party still carried "a lot of baggage" from the 1980s.

Read more here...

Bid to create new centre-right party

2011-09-16T10:54:00.001+01:00

SWANSEA Tory councillor Rene Kinzett has said the Welsh party should become independent of the Conservatives in England.

He said the Welsh Conservatives would never challenge Labour in Wales without change. They should instead lead a new centre-right political movement wholly based in Wales.

His comments come after the Scottish Conservative Party approved a new constitution with its leader taking overall responsibility for performance.

Read more here...

David Melding repeats his call for an independent Welsh centre-right party

2011-09-13T12:50:00.000+01:00

Am glad to see David Melding repeating his previous calls for the Welsh Conservative Party becoming a new, independent force to lead a broader-based movement for the centre-right in Wales.

His views expressed in an excellent Wales Home article and further outlined on the BBC, are well thought out and in the best interests of those who support Conservative Party principles in Wales and indeed are in the best interests of Wales as a whole.

As I've advocated in previous posts here and elsewhere, Wales needs a more pluralistic polity and one in which a centre-right party has a decent chance of forming a coalition at the Senedd. Without radical change and a shift of power away from a London-based party constitution and the establishment of a pro-Union but separate party in Wales, I fear that Labour will not face a credible direct challenge as the primary party of government in Wales.

Instead of dismissing these ideas with rallying calls to defend the Union, those opposed to David's ideas within the Welsh Conservatives need to engage in a sensible and thoughtful debate that thoroughly examines the real threats to the Union and properly assess the new party solution as the real saviour for Wales' place within the UK.

Wales and the future of conservatism - Part II

2011-09-09T15:07:00.000+01:00

This post first appeared on Dale & Co...

In previous posts elsewhere, I have clearly outlined what I see as the things that can still make the Welsh Conservative Party often seem like a shop front for the main gig in Westminster. I have reflected on some of the comments I've received, negative and positive, and attempt here to tackle some of the more interesting charges against the proposal for a new pro-Union, fully independent party for Wales.

To be perfectly clear, I want a truly independent centre-right force in Wales, not a branch of a brand that can be easily attacked by opponents as being "Westminster-based" or "London-centric" as the Welsh Conservative Party is oft used to, especially from Nationalists. Such things as a Welsh Conservative Policy Forum, a Welsh Conference and so on are still, in practice, not enough to overcome the image problem - note the relative precedence given to the UK Party Leader, the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Welsh Party and the Group Leader of the Welsh Conservatives at the National Assembly.

A Unionist Party of the centre-right has a massive role to play in Welsh politics. There is no dichotomy between being a unionist party and a party based wholly and solely in Wales. It is a legitimate goal for any Unionist Party of Wales to want Wales to remain a part of the UK and to have a good representation in the Westminster Parliament and at the Cabinet table of No 10 Downing Street. There is no real difference between a Welsh Unionist Party wanting Wales to be in the UK and Plaid Cymru wanting Wales to be a full member of the EU or the UN. The UK is a supra-national club, and Welsh membership of it has proved to be mutually beneficial for Wales and the rest of the UK.

To be both a Unionist and a deeply committed to the Welsh nation, its culture and heritage is not a strange position to take. Many politicians and political parties have taken this line across the political divide for generations. Equally, I totally respect the line taken by Plaid Cymru, since its inception, to advocate for full independence, regardless of whether this is done in sotto voce, directed at one group of electors or another, or with full vigour across the political divide, depending on the politics of the day.

The charge by Plaid Cymru that a move to create a new centre-right party in Wales, committed to the Union, but nevertheless totally independent from any other UK party, is just about vote grabbing is laughable. Of course the idea about creating a new party is about providing a broader based movement for centre-right politics in Wales and thereby winning more votes for the cause. That is why political parties exist, otherwise you may as well set up a pressure group.

I think the real motivation for attacks from Plaid Cymru against those proposing a new centre-right party in Wales is shown by their charge that such a party would only be possible if a total realignment in Welsh politics occurred at the same time. Well, that is true and it is my opinion that the creation of a truly independent party of the Union in Wales would be the catalyst for such a process. Plaid Cymru are scared about such a prospect as they know that their narrow sectionalism, their base appeal to voters that to vote Welsh Conservative is to vote for a London-based political party, would be blown out of the water by this. A broad-based centre-right party of the Union, independent, run and led by its Members in Wales would be a very attractive proposition to many people who, had they been living in England and not Wales, would be natural conservative-leaning voters.

For Welsh politics to fully mature and for pluralism to flourish across Wales and for the only real prospect of ending Labour's near hegemony of the political landscape, the pro-Union forces of the centre-right must build a new vehicle to carry forward conservative ideals and policies into a new era.

Wales and the future of conservatism - Part I

2011-09-09T15:02:00.001+01:00

This post first appeared on Wales Home...

The debate about the future of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party (SCUP) is more than about a name, a leader or a logo. The experiences of those who fight the good fight for centre-right politics in Scotland and Wales shows us that an English-centric identity is a serious challenge to progress.

Murdo Fraser's call for a new party to advocate the centre-right cause in Scotland is a mature and politically astute challenge to the orthodoxy of carrying on regardless under the SCUP banner in the face of woeful polling and a downward spiral in electoral fortunes. Whilst some have painted Mr Fraser's plans as "just a name change" or dismissed his ideas as "ludicrous", others, notably former Scottish Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP, have welcomed his proposals a "refreshing new start" and indeed Michael Gove, the only Cabinet Member to have made any comment on the story thus far, has branded the debate as a "revival, political and intellectually" of the centre-right in Scotland.

Murdo Fraser's plans strike me as much more than just a name change for SCUP. He speaks of a new party, a new vehicle for the expression of centre-right sentiment and for the development of policy and ideas for a Scottish conservative movement over the coming decades. The fortunes of SCUP do not seem to be in any immediate hurry to travel along an upward curve and May's Scottish Parliamentary elections show another drop in support amongst voters. Fraser's alternative to banging their collective heads against the brick wall of public opinion is to forge a new alliance for the Scottish centre-right, to reach out to sections of the Scottish polity who, whilst holding conservative-leaning views on economics, social policy and public services, would find it very difficult to identify themselves as "Conservative and Unionist", "Tories" or even just plain old "Conservatives".

The Tartan Tories across Scotland, who must be voting for other parties at the moment, desperately need a new home to build up a new support base, create policies in Scotland and for Scotland. SCUP is seen by many as little more than the Tories with a slight Scottish accent. What the voters of Scotland really need is a party wholly rooted within Scotland, whose policies are created, developed and validated in Scotland and whose leaders are truly accountable to a membership in Scotland. I am sure that the likes of Murdo Fraser, his supporters at Holyrood and others who support his calls for a serious debate about the future of Scottish Conservatism have in their sights huge chunks of the SNP, LibDem and even Labour votes north of Hadrian's Wall and I hope that the Conservative Party Leadership in Westminster allow our friends and colleagues the space to decide this matter for themselves.

The debate also has very relevant parallels to Wales. For too long the Welsh polity has been dominated by the Labour Party, with votes for Labour seeming to trickle out of the very soil. Apart from in rural and north Wales, the record of success for the other parties in terms of winning Parliamentary, directly-elected Assembly seats or a smattering of Local Government Councillors has not been good. The Welsh Conservative highpoint of 13 seats in 1983 has yet to be beat and the waxing and waning of the nationalist left-leaning Plaid Cymru seems to elude even the most canny of psephologists. As for the Welsh LibDems (the only Party to have never increased its representation in the Assembly since the first elections in 1999), the best that can be said for them, as Jesus said of the poor, "they will always be with us".

The common cry amongst so many in Wales, including many within the Labour Party, is that we need "pluralism" in Wales. The excitement during the aftermath of the 2007 Assembly Elections, when the prospect of a non-Labour led Welsh Government was tantalisingly close, showed huge amounts of goodwill amongst much of the electorate, the media classes and wider civil society towards a proposed rainbow coalition of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Conservatives and the LibDems. When will we ever get close to that prospect again? The 2011 Assembly Elections, whilst not giving Labour a blank cheque for Government (but then again, which form of PR election would do that?), did put them in the strongest position they've been in since the Assembly was formed. The cause of pluralism has gone backwards and their seems little to indicate that this is going to change any time soon.

In a commentary regarding the Scottish Question, the former Leader of the Welsh Conservative Group at the Assembly, Nick Bourne, says that whilst a proposal to change the name of the party in Wales was discussed, it was dismissed as being "about as sensible as the Royal Mail changing to Consignia". Nick goes on to state that the success of the Welsh Conservatives over his time as Leader of the Assembly Group (the only party in Wales to have grown in strength at each successive Assembly Election) validates his decision not to press ahead with a full debate about a name change. However, even Nick goes on to say that "more needs to be done on many fronts" to grow the Welsh Conservatives beyond its current levels of support. I agree with Nick that a name change in of itself would not have been enough to make any discernable impact on the Party's fortunes in Wales, but that is exactly the point that Murdo Fraser and his team are making in Scotland. It is not just a name change that will make the difference, but the creation of a new party and the propagation of a new political movement based on broader centre-right principles and ideals.

My colleague, friend and Chairman of my local Conservative Association in Swansea West, Harri Lloyd-Davies, made his call for a separate Welsh Conservative Party back in January and I fully supported him then and I do now. His analysis that "a lot of people out there would agree with a lot of what the Conservatives in Wales are saying, but because of the name" are put off from voting for us is correct. There is an image problem and there is also an issue of substance. For example, the Leader of the Welsh Conservative Party is, in fact, David Cameron. The next person in the civic line of importance for the Welsh Conservatives is the Secretary of State for Wales (or indeed the Shadow Secretary, should we not be in power in Westminster) who is currently the extremely able and very lovely but nevertheless very Buckinghamshire MP Cheryl Gillan. Then and only then do we see the Leader of the Welsh Conservative Group on the National Assembly for Wales.

The fact that our current Assembly Group Leader, as Nick Bourne before him, is the Official Leader of the Opposition in a Welsh Assembly context, our own Party structures give the impression that the position is reduced to being merely a Leader of a Council Group (and before any such office holder screams in indignation, I am in that bracket myself!). My own preference, as expressed during the recent contest to succeed Nick Bourne as Leader of the Assembly Group, I told BBC Radio Wales that I wanted the person holding the position to actually be our Party Leader in Wales and not just the Leader of the Group. It may seem a minor thing to some, but when one picks up the Welsh Conservative Manifesto or Welsh Conservative Party Conference Handbook and one has to flick past the Prime Minister's foreword, a page for the Secretary of State for Wales and even a supporting role from the Chairman of the Party in Wales before getting to the person who really ought to be the front man for the centre-right movement in Wales, it speaks volumes about our structure, outlook and direction.

It is time to acknowledge that whilst the United Kingdom is an institution worth fighting for, the Conservative and Unionist Party may not now be the best vehicle to lead the campaign to preserve it. We need a new, vibrant and relevant centre-right movement in Scotland and in Wales, not as a sign of weakness in the face of nationalist movements. Rather as a way of building new coalitions of support for conservative ideals based on a party that is accountable to and led by the membership in Scotland and Wales. This direction may prove to be the only way to guarantee the survival of both the Union and the existence of centre-right mainstream parties in our nations.

Brown, your time is up...

2010-05-11T17:35:00.000+01:00

BBC are now reporting that Downing Street is admitting that the Prime Minister has failed to form a working majority in the Commons.

The final constitional duty of the Prime Minister over, Mr Brown is now preparing to leave Downing Street.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government seems to be the most obvious and (for my money) the most attractive option now on the table. I wrote yesterday about how important is was for the national interest that a robust and sustainable government was formed out of the result of the general election.

More blogging tomorrow regarding the details of the deal between Cameron and Clegg, or as it emerges. There is so much the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats can agree on in terms of fixing our economy, mending our broken society and renewing our political system.

Exciting and happy times.

An hour or two is a long time in politics...

2010-05-10T19:23:00.000+01:00

Blimey. I go away for a few hours of work and come back to see the news that the LibDems seem to have cobbled together a deal with the Labour Party. In principle. Well, maybe....possibly.

Whilst details are sketchy, my take on the decision by Gordon Brown to announce that he will relinquish his post as Labour Party Leader is that he would not have done so had Lord Mandelson not reassured him that such a sacrifice was not in vain.

If Brown has offered himself up as the price for the Lab/LibDem coalition proposal to have any chance of success, the General Election of 2010 will go down in history as the time when the Liberal Democrats ducked and failed to grasp the great opportunity presented to them by the electorate to change British politics and society for good. If the LibDems fail to recognise the judgement of the British people that the Labour Party, top-down government and the big state has had its day, then the Party is finished as an effective force in UK politics.

However, a large part of me remains somewhat unsurprised by actions of the LibDems. Being a former Liberal Democrat member myself (sorry!), I know the visceral, almost familial, hatred for the Tory Party held by so many activists and MPs within the LibDems. It also remains a fact that the LibDems continue to fight most of their local battles with Conservatives and the seats where they slug it out with Labour remain anomalies, subject to complex and almost impenetrable local (and personal) factors.

I can also see that LibDem strategists will have eyed up the 19 or so marginal Labour/Tory battles and seen that the Conservatives were only 16,000 votes off winning an overall majority in the Commons. With this in mind, they may have calculated that the attraction of a Cameron-led Conservative/LibDem coalition going back to the country pretty soon into this Parliament might have been too great a pull, in spite of all the talk of "national interest" and "stable government".

For my money, I think such calculations (if indeed these are/will be the basis of any calculations) are wrong and overly cynical. There is a huge and serious job to be done in terms of fixing the economy, mending the broken society and rebuilding trust in our politics and that cannot be left to the vagaries of partisan game-play.

I still contend that a Conservative minority government is less in the national interest that a Conservative/LibDem coalition. But the prospect of a failed Labour government being propped up by a desperate, scared and divided Liberal Democrat party is something which fills me with a real dread.

Now is the time for leadership

2010-05-10T14:36:00.000+01:00

I will make further comments on the post-election fallout especially in terms of the local situation in Swansea West (where I stood for the Conservatives) but as time is marching on I need to make some comment on the current talks between my Party and the Liberal Democrats. Even before I finish these words, they may become obsolete, so I better type fast!

In short, I support the idea of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat formal coalition. The UK needs a strong, determined Government, with a full four-year plan to tackle the debt crisis, deal with the deficit and rebuild the economy. As the economies of Europe look set to fall like dominoes, it is vital that the British people have a Government that is strong, robust and sustainable.

Moreover, the new Government must renew our political system and take action to confront a failing society, protect our vital public services and return pride and self-determination to our local communities.

David Skelton has written eloquently and with passion about the need for a coalition of the progressive centre and I do not need to add to his fine words at this juncture.

Tim Crockford, Chair of the Tory Reform Group, had also issued a call to the Party to embrace the idea of a formal coalition with the Liberal Democrats and I fully endorse his position (I will declare that I am a vice-chair of the TRG Cymru).

We stand on one of the most important junctions in the political history of this nation. Down one road lies isolationism, petty partisanship and a missed opportunity to profoundly affect the destination of this nation. The other fork will lead our Party to delivering change for Britain, renewing our democratic institutions, creating a new economic model, developing a new approach to the protection of our environment and helping the most deprived communities of this land to enjoy a greater share of this nation's wealth.

Now is the time for leadership and for courage. The Leaders of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats need to make bold decisions and grasp this historic opportunity with both hands. For them the prize is to build a government of the radical and progressive centre ground, one which can turn our country away from top-down, state-centred solutions to one which will truly introduce the concepts of localism and the big society. My Party and the Liberal Democrats may disagree on some details, but we are united in opposing the Labour Party's obsession with Whitehall-imposed targets and the centrist instincts of Brown & co.

For the sake of this great nation, the Conservative Party must step up to the plate, grasp this opportunity and seek to govern in the national interest and head a strong and purposeful government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

We shall see which fork in the road has been taken later today (we hope!).

Swansea University Husting

2010-04-28T11:51:00.000+01:00

Off to Swansea University shortly to take part in the hustings being organised by the joint Campus Trades Unions and the Students' Union.

Should be interesting given that the Labour candidate is a former MP who voted strongly in favour of fees and the LibDem candidate who will struggle to explain how the warm words spouted by his party fail to translate into real and credible policies.

Will update more on the campaign so far later today!

BNP try to hoodwink electorate

2010-04-21T00:13:00.000+01:00

The BNP have really gone beyond now.

They have registered their party's candidates in Swansea under the description "Support Our Troops Bring Them Home". The "description" on a Ballot paper/statement of persons nominated is where political parties describe themselves - Labour Party, Conservative Candidate, Liberal Democrats, etc, etc. In one or two instances I have seen descriptions such as "Liberal Democrat Focus Team" or "Blogsville Conservatives", but this really is a bizarre use of the description box as it gives no hint as to the party banner under which the candidate is seeking to be elected.

I have, however, checked the Electoral Commission website and found that the description "Support Our Troops Bring Them Home" is indeed an officially recognised "description" for the BNP, along with a number of other interesting euphemistic and slightly odd terms.

What is worse is the blatant hijacking of the current military conflict in Afghanistan for political ends and what really makes me angry is the contempt shown to our troops by the BNP by using their name in vain on a ballot paper. How low, how shallow and how sickening.

The troops I have met at Homecoming Parades, Freedom Marches and Remembrance Parades over the last few years do a job that no one else would envy. They serve with distinction, tremendous bravery and without question or resentment. They are not political pawns to be played with by any party.

If the BNP candidates in Swansea (and I a guessing, elsewhere) are so ashamed of placing the words "British National Party Candidate" in their official description, they should at least be brave enough to put a more accurate description, something along the lines of "BNP coward not worthy of cleaning our troops boots" perhaps?

Start of the second week of the campaign

2010-04-12T10:48:00.000+01:00

It's really easy for any candidate to say "what a fantastic campaign - positive feedback from residents and loads of literature delivered across the constituency". But in my case, this is totally spot on!

I am so grateful for the huge amount of support being given to my campaign by Tory stalwarts and total political newbies. This election is the best chance for the Conservatives to win in Swansea West since our last Tory MP won the seat in 1959! The mood for change is out there and people know only the Conservatives can deliver the change we so desperately need.

To get more updates on my campaign please visit www.swanseaconservatives.com or the Facebook Group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6491542995&ref=ts

Now let's go win this thing!

When is a crime not a crime?

2010-03-11T21:44:00.000Z

I am getting increasingly frustrated with the use of the term "Anti-Social Behaviour".

I first came across this phrase as an "official term" when I worked in the Policy Department of Victim Support and was working on some of the initial attempts by the new Labour Government to reform the criminal justice system. Back then I could just about see what the Government was aiming to do: streamlining youth justice through the use of ASBOs, freeing up police time for "higher level crime".

But many of us were wary that what people in communities saw as "crime" might be downgraded by the authorities, further damaging public confidence in the police, especially in certain communities. To a certain extent, that is what appears to have happened.

Today we learn of the death of a 64-year-old man in Hattersley, Greater Manchester, after he confronted a group of youths who had been harassing him regularly and over a long period of time, according to his neighbours.

There have been other instances of where vulnerable peope have been targetted in campaigns of hate and intimidation, some of which I find too upsetting to read about again, especially the case of Fiona Pilkington who killed herself and her daughter, Francecca (who had learning difficulties), after constant and sustained abuse which the police failed to act on in any meaningful way.

Now, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary has stepped into the debate about how the police deal with anti-social behaviour, saying that police forces had a very patchy record in properly recording complaints and not adequately identifying vulnerable people. Shockingly, it was found that in 23% of anti-social behaviour, police simply failed to respond.

I think it has now got to the point where it can be concluded that the experiment with spliting incidents into "crimes" and "anti-social behaviour" has failed. The police need to get back to basics and concentrate their resources on real neighbourhood policing by keeping officers in situ longer so that they can learn more about the communities they serve.

LibDem/Plaid Council force through Budget

2010-03-11T20:05:00.001Z

Swansea's LibDem/Plaid-controlled Council forced through their Budget, with a £1 million cut to education and the closure of the popular Tennis Centre.

I outlined my response to the proposed Budget in an earlier posting.

Am glad to see that the local paper picked up on the issues surrounding this shameful Budget.

In Defence of the Robin Hood Tax

2010-03-10T00:59:00.000Z

The following article appeared on ConservativeHome and provoked a good number of comments, mainly in opposition to my points, from the right. I believe in free thought and freedom of expression and that political parties are, by their nature, broad-based coalitions with different strands of thought running through them and my advocacy for the Robin Hood Tax is a personal and considered opinion and does not represent Conservative Party policy.

One of the lines we keep hearing from the Right is that a Financial Transaction Tax (aka Robin Hood Tax) is a good idea but it would never work. Sorry to break it to you all, but we already have lots of transaction taxes and they're working just fine. There's a 0.5% tax on buying and selling shares in the London Stock Exchange. In the US, a small tax on transactions finances the securities and exchanges commission.

So we know it works - and it's already bringing in billions of dollars to governments around the world. The question is really rather simple: do we want to do it?

Let's remember where we are. The actions of the financial sector have wrought havoc around the world. It goes far beyond the trillion pounds or so that the UK Government used to prop up the banks here. People have lost their jobs, export markets painstakingly built up over years have been decimated, and social spending worldwide is set to be slashed. Ideas like the insurance levy are just about setting up a new fund to bail out the banks again should they hit another pothole - it would do nothing to redress the harm that's been done to society as a whole.

As our party’s candidate in Swansea West, I know full well the impact of the economic recession on the poorest people in our communities here in the UK. Swansea has two of the poorest ten wards in Wales, generational joblessness, low educational attainment and a loss of hope for the future are crippling such communities. Without new ways to raise money like the FTT, sooner or later, the people, like my constituents in Swansea, who have already paid once for the crisis through lost jobs and public service cuts will be asked to pay again through rises in income tax or VAT. This really isn't fair.

A financial transaction tax is the only idea on the table that would make sure that banks pay back some of the costs of the financial crisis. The Robin Hood Tax campaign calls for a tax designed in such a way, that banks pay the majority of the tax. It would be charged on 'wholesale' financial transactions - that's the big trades made by banks and other institutions. People changing money at the airport - the so-called 'retail' market - would be exempt. We already know that when prices change in wholesale markets they tend not to be passed on to the retail markets, years of real-life experience bear that out.

Of course it would have an effect on the financial markets. For some people, like Lord Turner and former HSBC Chief economist Roger Bootle, that's exactly the point. Far from increasing volatility, it would dampen down the most risky and volatile trades, and go a small way towards bringing finance back to what it is actually for, which is oiling the wheels of the bits of the economy that make and do things. The sector might shrink a bit too - but given how much it grew before last year's crash, that would just mean getting us back to where we were a few years ago.

In the end some people will always rail at the idea of taxation to help those most in need. Those people probably won't like a financial tax any more than they like any other tax. But for those of us in the real world, where today's politics are all about where the public spending axe should fall and how the government is going to put up taxes to plug the deficit, a transaction tax is a real option.

The Robin Hood Tax - sounds fair to me, not fairytale.

Budget article for Evening Post

2010-02-23T12:05:00.000Z

Article I prepared for the South Wales Evening Post (Wales’ most read newspaper) and which was published yesterday, the day of Swansea Council Budget Meeting:

The way in which decisions have been made over the past six years has made the effects of the current economic downturn even worse for Swansea. Swansea Council has failed to invest to attract new private sector jobs, no significant retail development has taken place in the City for well over two decades, our roads are crumbling and chocked with traffic. According to the Centre for Cities Report, Swansea relies on the public sector for over 38% of its jobs and could face around 2,300 job losses on current predictions for public spending.

This Budget is not a fit response to the crisis we are now facing. It cannot be right to slash spending on schools whilst the Welsh Assembly Government has actually INCREASED funding to Swansea Council by 1.9%. Add to this the requirement on the schools to fund a 2.3% teacher pay increase and inflation now running at 3.5%, then the real losers from this Budget are our school kids.

Swansea Conservatives would immediately implement a recruitment freeze across the Council - something which my Deputy Councillor Paxton Hood-Williams has been calling for since 2004 and reduce spend on "back office" functions like project managers (where we currently spend nearly £400,000 per year), charge Councillors and Council staff to park at County Hall and other Council buildings, slash the "PR" budget for the Council and get rid of the "Leader" propaganda sheet and freeze the pay of senior staff.

There will also have to be some tough decisions such as reducing non-recycling waste collections to fortnightly to cut the amount of waste we currently throw into landfills and which costs local residents as the Council has to pay a "landfill tax". Other decisions which may not be popular, like turning off street lights in the dead of night could save the taxpayer another £500,000 a year, but this coalition is only proposing to save £100,000 a year.

I would also want to see the amount of perks to councillors slashed by cutting the bonus of £8,000 per year to all the vice-chairs of committees and I would abolish the positions of Presiding and Deputy Presiding Officers and go back to having the Lord Mayor chairing Council Meetings.

The previous Chief Executive challenged Councillors to find about 8% of savings a year between 2004 and 2008. This was never done. In short, there are plenty of ways in which this Council can save money which does not involve slashing spending on schools – we currently have over £350 million a year to divide up and it’s all a question of priorities. My charge is that the current coalition running the Council has the wrong priorities and no moral compass to guide them through these difficult economic circumstances.

Canvassing

2010-02-18T10:10:00.001Z

Tory-supporting Blogger A Stratford Conservative has posted up a new article regarding canvassing and voter engagement, arguing that the traditional forms of campaigning need to be replaced by more technological methods and that canvassers are only seen on the doorsteps once every 4 years or so. Here is my response....

In Wales canvassing happens all year round in effect - for example, this year we have GE, next year Welsh Assembly elections, the year after local elections and of course last year we had Euro elections. Scotland will be in the same position.

In many parts of England there are similar patterns of multiple elections, depending on whether you live in a unitary or still in a two-tier local government area.

The effect of all these elections is that most parties have adopted a "seamless campaign" strategy - that uses each election as a building block for progress to the next, using indicators like new members, increased share of vote, new council seats, new candidates/activists, etc as a way of measuring success.

Engagement is key to this process. Traditional methods of surveying, street surgeries, etc are being supplemented by new technologies - as you say, Facebook Groups and Twitter accounts are limited and only reach a small percentage of the people who are actually eligible to vote for you. Online surveys, texting and email newsletters all need to be developed into more readily used campaign tools.

But doorstep campaigning will be with us for many decades to come and in my (getting quite long) experience in these matters, people really DO expect to see candidates and campaigners calling on them at election time - which nowadays can be every flipping year!

Sir Richard backs Osborne

2010-02-16T14:58:00.000Z

All those attacking the Tories for calling for a quick and deep cut in public spending in order to bring the UK's run-away debt into check have been dealt a blow by Sir Richard Branson's public backing to George Osborne's economic strategy.

Without cutting the deficit and slashing the money we're spending on servicing this debt over the course of the lifetime of the next generation, any hopes of greater investment in public services is just pie-in-the-sky thinking. Without the cut in spending NOW, the UK will lose the confidence of world markets and our access to much needed investment and any new finance will be severely limited.

Branson had this to say over the arguments about when spending should start to be cut:

"We are going to have to cut our spending and I agree with the 20 leading economists who said we need to start this year. The next government, whatever party that is, must set out a plan to reduce the bulk of the deficit over a Parliament by cutting wasteful spending and must not put off those tough decisions to next year."

One step forward....two steps back

2010-02-16T12:42:00.000Z

Since last week's Commons vote for AV, there have been many arguments put forward by ERS and others that a vote FOR AV is a form of progress, as though the journey to reform of the electoral system is linear.

The vote for AV is actually a block to reform, an attempt to deliberately limit and divert progress to real reform. I will concede that some people who want to see the AV proposals do well are indeed supporters of real reform and DO see the step to AV as being part of the journey to full PR (much like the adherents to "devolution is a process, not an event" crew, who have, strangely enough, been proved to be correct!). However, the forces AGAINST real voting reform in Westminster want to use the AV vote as a barricade against more reform.

The vote in the Commons was meaningless, the Bill will never receive Royal Assent and the Conservatives would repeal it even if it did pass into law before the General Election. It is easy to scrap and ignore poor attempts at reform, it would have been a lot harder to set aside any proposals which could generate cross-party support, but Brown's Government is incapable and unwilling to bring forward such reform.

The best way through this mess is for a Royal Commission to be established to properly consider the case for Reform. There is so much material out there for any Commission to use as a starting point, including Roy Jenkins' inquiry, which was the basis of Blairite proposals for an AV + system of electoral reform (blocked by Brown).

Let us have real reform, discussed openly and with honesty and integrity.

Swansea LibDem Candidate Backs Tory Rival

2010-02-10T15:55:00.001Z

The following news article appeared in the South Wales Evening Post after an email sent to a Conservative in Swansea West from the local LibDem Parliamentary Candidate who is "impressed" with the campaign being run by the Conservatives in the next door seat of Gower. In fact, so impressed with the "intensive" campaign being run by the Tories in Gower, the LibDem PPC urged the Conservative Party member to go and campaign for the Tories.

We wonder of the LibDem Candidate's colleague in Gower is equally impressed with his opponent's campaign and perhaps he will be leafleting for the Tories, too?

Candidate is "Liberal" in his support of Tory

Alex Brown,
council reporter

A LIBERAL Democrat election candidate has been thanked for his support by a rival Tory.

Gower Conservative candidate Byron Davies has welcomed an apparent endorsement from Lib Dem Peter May. In an email, Mr May, who is the Lib Dem candidate for Swansea West, seems to urge a member of the public to support Mr Davies.

After Mr May, who is also a Swansea councillor, sent an election leaflet to Jason Gazeley, of Heather Crescent, Sketty, Mr Gazeley replied that he was a Conservative member and would be backing his party's candidate in Swansea West, Rene Kinzett.

However, Mr May replied that Mr Gazeley should offer his support to Mr Davies.

He said:"I must say that I have been equally impressed with the literature going out in your area's target seat of Gower. In the Assembly elections in 2007, the Conservatives came a very close second and in the 2009 Euros they won the seat.

"I know that Byron Davies is running a very intense campaign there. I often speak with (Conservative) Councillor Tony Colburn, who is currently distributing them, and could always do with extra hands.

"I'll put you two in touch."

The email has, unsurprisingly, been welcomed by the two Conservatives.

Mr Kinzett, who is also a Swansea councillor, said: "It's extraordinary for anyone from a political party to encourage someone to go and campaign for the opposition, let alone a Parliamentary Candidate.

"Despite all their hype, the Lib Dems are obviously worried enough in Swansea West that even their Parliamentary candidate is trying to get Conservative campaigners to go and deliver leaflets in Gower. Have the Lib Dems given up in Gower? According to their Swansea West candidate it would appear that they are impressed with our campaign and may have just rolled over. I suspect that the Lib Dem Candidate in Gower (councillor Mike Day) may have a different view to his Swansea West colleagues."

Mr Davies, said: "While I welcome most endorsements for my campaign to become Gower's next MP, I think it must be unprecedented to get such glowing support from a political opponent. The Conservatives are in the lead to replace Labour in Gower, even the Lib Dems say so."

Mr May said he was offering advice on how Mr Gazeley could gain the best "election experience". He said: "I am saying the Tories always finish third in Swansea West.

"To make his experience more worthwhile he should go to a more realistic campaign. The Conservatives aren't going to be running a campaign here because there's no money - it's going into Gower."

Beware the siren call of a "step in the right direction"

2010-02-09T13:53:00.000Z

I urge every Conservative, LibDem and even Labour MP who believe in electoral reform to vote AGAINST the Government tonight on the Bill to bring about a referendum on the Alternative Vote system by the end of 2011.

On the face of it, perhaps opponents (like me) of the current First-Past-The-Post system should welcome any reform and embrace the proposals from this dying Government as being a "step in the right direction".

It is rather funny to think that Labour are serious about electoral reform when Brown blocked every attempt by Tony Blair to move the agenda forward back in the post '97 discussions with the LibDems around the Cabinet table.

The reason for this Damascene conversion to electoral reform is nothing but a sham, a grubby attempt to curry favour with LibDems and moderate reformists who have been desperate (and rightly so) to see a reform in how we elected the Commons. I would not trust Brown to honour any pledge given now if he were, by some disaster, to hold onto the reins of power after May 6th.

The proposals being put forward for approval in a referendum are no less a sham. The Alternative Vote is a sham of a compromise. It does not tackle the fundamental problems associated with the current FPTP system and indeed emebds them further. The result of an AV election is not proportional to the votes cast across the country and the system offers no more choice to the elector and instead still invests most power with the politcal party machine.

For those keen on the "first step" to real reform and who are minded to press their MP to vote for this shoddy proposal, they should remember that the 1911 Parliament Act, designed as a temporary measure to allow the passing of the "People's Budget", before more radical reform of the Lords could be brough forward, has been with us now for nearly a century.

Let us not go forward with a reform we will regret. I want to see real pressure applied to the leadership of my Party to support fair votes and to be persauded of the case for electoral reform as part of a wider agenda to return power to the people. A Bill to save the skin of a failed Prime Minister is not a step in the right direction, but a false siren which will smash all hopes of real and principled future reform on the rocks of expediency.

In defence of the Union

2010-02-09T01:49:00.001Z

There was an interesting debate on the Union over on Andrew Gwynne's blog earlier tonight. Andrew is a decent Labour MP (yes, there are quite a few!) who writes an honest and thoughtful account of himself and his views both on the blog and via twitter.

The Union being debated was not the kind that boilermakers and railwaymen join (before the humourless Labourites pounce on me here, I am joking! I myself am and have been a Trade Union member throughout my working life), but the far greater Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

It didn't really surprise me when I saw that Andrew Gwynne had launched a full-on defence of the Union on his blog under the equally unsurprising but somewhat provoking title "For England & St George!" This call to arms from the Labourite was not welcomed by the forces of "Little England", those opposed to Great Britain and the political Union of the United Kingdom. For the English Parliamentarians clarion cry was not for England, England but rather for why England should remain proud of its position within the UK.

I, for one, agree. The fact that I, a liberal Conservative Parliamentary Candidate (a "Liberal Unionist" as Mr Worthing rather nervously described himself to the stern Lady Bracknell in Wilde's "Importance of Being Earnest") in agreement with a centrist Labour MP on this vital constitutional question shows how vital this issue is.

I also write as one who chose to make Wales my home back in 1994. I am English, but Welsh in so many of my outlooks these days. I am proud that my father's father was a coalminer in Wales and fought at Dunkirk and during the D-Day landings under the badges of Welsh regiments. I am a local councillor and now a Parliamentary Candidate within Wales and hope to be representing a Welsh constituency after the general election. I remain as committed to Wales remaining a part of the United Kingdom as I am for England to continue to invest in the importance of maintaining this special bond between the four constituent nations.

The comments left on Andrew Gwynne's blog from the Little Englanders appeared to be mostly just emotional piffle, more telling of their own view of themselves in the world as about the state of the nation of England. Most English people get on with their lives, are industrious, open and fair minded. They are glad that the Union with Scotland (and the much older coupling with Wales), as well as the continuing importance of Northern Ireland, gives our Sovereign Nation State of the United Kingdom a total far greater than the sum of its parts – whether in terms of economic prosperity, international significance, a proud military tradition and a diverse cultural mix.

England, by far the most populous nation in the UK, is secure both in its own existence and its role in the family of nations in the British Isles. Due to its size, it does not need the special recognition afforded to both Wales and Scotland, with their (albeit diminished) existence at the Cabinet table. England feels no real need to adopt "regional assemblies" and there is no popular movement for any form of English Parliament. The self-confidence and strength of the English nation is shown through its rejection of petty nationalism and tribal delinquency. England is a mature nation, having decided long ago to move beyond its borders and create a Great Britain and a United Kingdom.

The success of the UK as a collection of uniquely individual and often competing (not just on the sports field) nations is a wonder to behold, especially given the sad experiences in other parts of the globe when experiments to hold nations together within a sovereign state collapse into anarchy and warfare. That is the key with the United Kingdom. Whilst its creation at times owed more to the sword than the ballot box, it is the consent of the peoples of these islands that holds the Union together now and in the future.

My hopes for the election

2010-02-08T01:03:00.002Z

The election will bring with it the real possibility of the first Conservative election victory since 1992 and the first time the Tories have defeated an incumbent Labour Government since 1979. The Conservatives were in power for about 70 years of the last century, dominating the political landscape, being out of power was the exception. The fact that we are now on the verge of getting back into power, ten years into this new century, means that at least we are ahead of where we were a hundred years ago – it took the Tories until 1922 to wrest the reins of power away from the Liberals.

As well as having an eye on the electoral history of our Party, we must also ensure that we learn the lessons of those past battles. The Conservatives win from the centre ground, when our policies chime with the hopes and ambitions of the British people. Whether it was Baldwin reshaping Conservative attitudes to social issues, Churchill reversing Tory antipathy to the welfare state or even Thatcher modernising the nation's economy, Conservatives govern best and win elections when battling over the centre-ground, not when indulging in cult-like reverence to fringe issues.

I know that the modern, liberal and progressive Conservative Party will campaign positively for real change in the election. We have a duty to fight for the poorest in our society, to fix Britain's social problems, provide excellent public services and target extra help and support to those who need it most. I want to see more emphasis on a fair taxation system, one which removes the burden from the lowest paid. I want to see our Leadership prioritising the protection of the NHS, education and children's services from the worst of the inevitably large cuts in public spending. I want our Party to be seen by working people as being "on their side".

Digitising our memory

2010-02-06T17:28:00.000Z

For those that are not that aware of my life outside politics, I work as the Head of Public Affairs for the National Council on Archives, an NGO funded by The National Archives and MLA to promote the archives sector to government, the public and to develop the capacity of the sector to deliver better standards in public services.

Some of the most interesting bits of my job (apart from setting up and running the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Archives) involve finding out about areas of public policy and developments in practice that I was not aware of before. One big area of development in policy and practice is digitisation. This falls within two major bits - the archiving of paper-based records and the archiving of born-digital record. A third over-arching theme is the issue of digital continuity - the preservation of these digital records for use in the future.

I was invited to write an article for the Museums & Heritage Magazine on "archiving in a digital world" and here is the result....

The Mugabe-isation of Swansea

2010-02-01T23:47:00.001Z

The LibDem Leader of Swansea Council showed his full commitment to liberalism and democracy back in the summer of 2008 by shopping the collective ranks of the Conservative and Labour Opposition Groups to the Ombudsman for a breach of the Code of Conduct.

The crime of these wrongdoers?

Nothing less than democratically-elected Councillors voting against discussing a report behind closed doors.

It strikes me that the LibDems in Swansea are so keen on winning, that the ballot box has become only one tool in their armoury (after all, they've never won a majority of votes across Swansea and had to team up with a bunch of very odd bedfellows to seize power). Now, they seek to use the Ombudsman to make spurious and often vexatious complaints against their opponents. Despite more sensible LibDems in Swansea, like Peter Black, not being happy with all this running off to grass to the bureaucrats, his view is overruled by his Leader in Swansea.

The LibDem Leadership in Swansea seem to be about as committed to pluralism, liberalism and democracy as Robert Mugabe. Certainly they are seeking ways of denying democratic choice by challenging the rights of elected Councillors to vote in a free and fair manner.

I often wonder how anyone could be a LibDem in Swansea these days and not be embarrassed by the incompetence of those who lead the party in these parts. At the Swansea West Conservative AGM, there were three former LibDem party members in attendance and that doesn't even include me! I look forward to welcoming many more over the coming months.

The Evening Post covers the story online today and some background to story from 2008 here.

Who Governs (local) Britain?

2010-01-29T20:56:00.002Z

The amount and nature of complaints I am seeing about Councillors is becoming a total joke.

Here, in Swansea, I am currently subject to two separate investigations by the Ombudsman in response to complaints made against me. Not by members of the public concerned about whether I have not declared my interests or that I am acting contrary to the public interest, but by other Councillors (LibDem and Independent - the two groups running Swansea in coalition).

Not happy with failing to beat me at the last elections, the LibDems and their fellow-travellers (including a councillor who distributed BNP-designed literature in the 2004 elections in support of his candidacy) are now resorting to grassing up every perceived wrongdoing to the authorities. Several previous complaints against me have already been dismissed or otherwise discontinued. These complaints included accusations that I was bullying (or not taking the first answer I got from highly paid officers on important issues of public expenditure) and that my aggressive style in the Council Chamber (or holding to account the lead group for being a bunch of incompetents) was upsetting other Members (awww, poor darlings!).

Of the two ongoing complaints, one concerns a Council Meeting some 18 months ago where an officer of the Council advised that the public should be excluded from a part of the meeting and Opposition Members, who voted against the meeting going into closed session, are now being accused of a breach of the Code of Conduct by not following that "advice".

The other complaint concerns whether my views that the Council is not representative of the population of Swansea (i.e. Members are just too old) or that some of the Cabinet Members of the Council are just plain inadequate (i.e. the views of my electorate) also breach the Code of Conduct in terms of "bullying", "harassment" and "discrimination".

Is this really how we want local government to go on? With petty complaints being made to a bureaucratic and unaccountable body such as the Ombudsman for Wales or Standards England? With any luck, the next Conservative Government will do away with all this wretched nonsense and put the electorate back in charge.

The Conservative Party Policy on Local Government "Control Shift" deals with this very issue in one, neat bullet point:

put the power to judge the behaviour of councillors back in the hands of their citizens by abolishing the Standards Board, and repealing rules that prevent councillors representing their constituents’ views on local issues

I hope that the Labour/Plaid Cymru coalition running the Welsh Assembly Government sits up and takes notice of this change in policy from the new Conservative Government in Westminster and takes the lead in proposing that the National Assembly for Wales abolishes the role of the Ombudsman to interfere in the democratic workings of local government here in Wales, too.

Tweetminster Report

2010-01-28T00:14:00.000Z

Interesting report from Tweetminster, the online service which, in its own words:

tracks UK politics in real time, showcases Members of Parliament and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates on Twitter, and ultimately promotes better and more transparent communications between voters and Members of Parliament

I was very surprised to be in the top 3 of all Parliamentary Candidates across all parties to be "mentioned" in tweets and a strong fourth place across all PPCs to be "Re-Tweeted".

Perhaps this is a good thing? Maybe it means I leave many hostages to fortune in the things I write. Indeed, only this week a journalist in Swansea was sent one of my Tweets by an opponent in an attempt to damage my campaign to become the next Conservative MP for Swansea West.

I like Twitter, I trust that the people who follow me, who mention me and who Re-Tweet me enjoy what I say and appreciate the not overly partisan way in which I present my own views and my take on the policies of all the political parties, including my own.

State-sanctioned murder is WRONG...whoever the victim

2010-01-25T15:16:00.000Z

The news that Ali Hassan al-Majid has been executed following his third death sentence handed down after his latest trial.

al-Majid, more popularly known as "Chemical Ali" was partly responsible for the shocking death for ordering the gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. It is believed that about 5,000 people died in the attack.

Whatever the crimes, no matter who the perpetrator, I cannot find it within me to support the death penalty.

A rose by any other name...

2010-01-24T17:04:00.000Z

In my attempts to stay only a few steps behind the IN crowd, I have now purchased a DOMAIN in my own name!! How exciting.

So now readers of this blog can find it at www.renekinzett.com

This replaces the less impressive looking www.renekinzett.blogspot.com

The content won't change much, you'll be disappointed to learn.

Go to the back of the class!

2010-01-24T14:29:00.000Z

The LibDem/Independent-led coalition at Swansea Council is yet again prevaricating over proposals to close secondary schools across the city in an attempt to tackle the issue of falling pupil rolls, under-used classroom space and the resulting inefficiencies in the education budget.

Add to this the estimated school buildings repair bill of £147 million, it become clearly apparent to even the most casual observer that Swansea's secondary schools are in need of a much needed and long overdue shake-up.

The initial options to deal with the problems of excess school places were presented to Councillors and the public in March of last year. Yet Councillors won't get to see any progress report until March of this year. What on earth can of been happening in the intervening 12 months? If your guess is "sweet Fanny Adams" then I think you would probably not be too wide of the mark.

The problem facing the Cabinet which makes these decisions at Swansea Council, is that whilst it is made up of ostensibly one one Political Group (the so-called "Swansea Administration Group"), this Group is a confection. It is made up of alleged Liberal Democrats (most of whom on Swansea Council wouldn't know one end of a LibDem manifesto from the other and if they did they would probably shriek with suburban horror and run a mile), "independents" (made up of the ultra-right, the ultra-left and the rest of the political flotsam and jetsam of Swansea) and not forgetting the one Plaid Cymru candidate to survive the cull of nationalists in the 2008 election.

These warring tribes come together like Afghan war lords, but minus the charm, to decide on our city's future. Yet their collective understanding of any strategic priorities, or their grasp of governing in the city's wider interests, are dashed on the rocks of self-interest, parochial concerns and love of their Additional Responsibility Allowances. To get any of the Cabinet Members to swallow the prospect of a school closing in their ward, for the sake of a more efficient and better quality education service for the rest of the city, would make the search for peace in the Middle East look like a piece of cake.

So,whilst the cerebral Cabinet Member for Education, Councillor Mike Day, may come forward with proposals for radical and far-reaching reforms of our city's schools, making them fit for purpose within the next ten years through his grandly named "QED 2020" (Quality in EDucation) plan, the chances of him steering it through the shark-infested waters of his own Group look about as likely as Councillor Rob Speht making a plausible case for him being allowed to vote on last Thursday's wind farm planning application.

My challenge to the Swansea Administration is simple: put the kids of Swansea first, make a decision on the best way to provide efficient, good quality schools across our city and implement it, NOW!!!

An ill wind....

2010-01-23T20:42:00.000Z

Poor old LibDem Councillor Robert Speht was forced t leave a Swansea Council Planning Committee Meeting on Thursday because one frightfully nasty Labour Councillor stood up and dared to question whether or not the Member for Landore had "prejudicial" interests relating to the application for a wind farm near the city.

Councillor Speht angrily denies that he had anything other than a "personal" interest in the matter at hand, but Labour rival Councillor John Miles informed the Committee that he had evidence from Speht's own entry in the Register of Members' Interests, that the level and nature of the relationship between the LibDem and the company submitting the application would mean that such an interest was "prejudicial". For the avoidance of doubt, the two terms are defined within the Code of Conduct for Councillors which appears on Swansea Council's website and reads thus:

10. (1) You must in all matters consider whether you have a personal interest, and whether this code of conduct requires you to disclose that interest.
(2) You must regard yourself as having a personal interest in any business of your authority if —
   (a) it relates to, or is likely to affect —
   (i) any employment or business carried on by you;
        (b) a member of the public might reasonably perceive a conflict between your role in taking a decision, upon that business, on behalf of your authority as a whole and your role in representing the interests of constituents in your ward or electoral division

12.(1)...where you have a personal interest in any business of your authority you also have a prejudicial interest in that business if the interest is one which a member of the public with knowledge of the relevant facts would reasonably regard as so significant that it is likely to prejudice your judgement of the public interest.

The words, meaning and sentiment of the above, whilst in legalese and somewhat verbose, area clear. If you think you have more than a passing relationship with anyone involved in any matter being considered by you Authority, or if you think any member of the public might reasonably arrive at the conclusion that you might, then you have an "interest". Moreover, if you think that the public might reasonably conclude that the nature of that interest is so great that your judgement of what is in the public interest becomes impaired, then you have a "prejudicial interest". Clear so far? Good, then let's move on...

Councillor Speht believed that his "interest" in the matter before the Council (the application for a wind farm to the north of the city) amounted to a "personal interest" and he had previously judged that he could stay and speak at meetings concerning the applicant (npower renewables) but NOT vote. Apparently he had done this at a Planning Committee concerning an application for another wind farm by npower renewables in the neighbouring authority of Neath Port Talbot (in which Swansea was a statutory consultee and Councillors had to decide what would be the Authority's response to the consultation) and this had not been challenged by any member of the public or fellow elected Members.

However, given that the application before councillors on Thursday directly affected the City & County of Swansea, a greater deal of attention was paid to how Members conducted themselves during the decision-making process. It should also be noted here, that due to the ridiculously slow way in which the Planning Section of Swansea Council works, npower renewables put in an appeal on the grounds of "non determination" to the National Assembly for Wales, so Swansea Councillors are again now only acting as consultees, rather than decision-makers in this application process.

Such was the level of attention given to Councillor Speht's involvement in the the progress of the application, Councillor John Miles had read through Speht's entry on the Declaration of Interests and found reference to hospitality received by him courtesy of npower renewables going back to 2005-6 and evidence of his employer, a company also involved in developing wind farms (as detailed on Cllr Speht's LinkedIn page), having links with npower renewables projects and Speht's own membership of the British Wind Energy Association - the body which lobbies in favour of wind farms.

Now, going back to the wording of the Code of Conduct, given the information before you, as a member of the public, would you think that Councillor Speht had either a) a personal interest, b) a prejudicial interest or c) was up to his armpits in it? Only YOU can decide! Answers on the back of an envelope to: The Public Sector Ombudsman of Wales...

For the record, I declared in writing to the City's Head of Planning and to the Head of Legal & Democratic Services that I had a Personal & Prejudicial Interest in the matter before the Committee and thus did not attend and asked for my Declaration of Interest to be reported to the Committee. My interest being that I used to work for a PR agency that used to advice npower renewables and I had also previously accepted hospitality from the company in the form of attending rugby matches with them at the Liberty Stadium.

Welsh Conservatives continue to progress on devolution

2010-01-13T01:06:00.000Z

I am very pleased to see the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly of Wales, Nick Bourne AM, continue to stress the progressive attitude of our Party towards devolution in Wales.

In responding to enquiries as to how the Welsh Conservatives would vote when the Assembly considers an Order to requesting that Parliament agrees to a referendum on further powers for the Assembly, Professor Bourne confirmed the Party's pro-devolution position:

The leader of the Conservatives in the assembly, Nick Bourne, has indicated that most, if not all, Tory AMs would vote in favour of a referendum poll, following a debate in the Senedd on 9 February.

Mr Bourne said that although his AMs would be given a free vote, they were all likely to vote in favour of the motion to trigger a referendum.

He reiterated his party's position that there was "no way" the Conservatives at Westminster would block a referendum - whether or not they win the forthcoming general election.

As a Welsh Conservative Concillor and Parliamentary Candidate, I am delighted to see that my Party continue to champion decentralisation from Westminster and is committed to making devolution work for Wales.

Cameron Promises Cross-Party War Cabinet

2010-01-02T12:12:00.000Z

David Cameron today launched the Conservatives General Election campaign with a series of commitments which show that of the three party leaders, only he has the clarity of leadership and purpose to put the national interest above the petty partisanship that has put so many people off politics over the past decades.

Of particular note is Cameron's promise to extend his idea of a National Security Council (NCS) to include leaders of the other parties when Britain is involved in conflict.

On 9 November I welcomed Cameron's previous announcement to set up the NSC and called upon the Party to consider the idea of extending this to include leaders from the other parties. I am pleased that Cameron has shown that he is genuinely committed to executing his conference speech promise that under a Conservative Government, when our armed forces are at war, then our political institutions ought to be fully engaged in the conflict.

Cameron is doing exactly what is needed during this period of the electoral cycle, setting out clear policy ideas and extolling the underlying principles of a future Tory Government. I think this quote from the speech neatly sums up the Conservative approach to the 2010 General Election:

"Let's make this the year for change - the year when the positive defeats the negative".

Crossing the Great Divide: Reflections on Defections

2009-12-18T10:38:00.003Z

THIS article first appeared on Wales Home

“ANYONE can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat,” remarked Winston Churchill around the time of his return to the Conservative Benches in the 1924 General Election, having previously left them for a stint as a Liberal some 20 years previously.

While such return crossings of the floor are rare, the tradition of the defection in British politics took a new twist last week with the first ever switch between parties within the National Assembly for Wales. While sitting Members have left or have been kicked out of their parties and have sat as independents between elections (John Marek and Peter Law from Labour; and Rod Richards from the Conservatives), it was not until Mohammed Asghar left Plaid Cymru and crossed the floor of the Assembly Siambr to join the Welsh Conservative benches that a proper defection had ever taken place down at Cardiff Bay.

Mr Asghar’s decision took many by surprise, but the defection would undoubtedly have been weeks in the planning and must have taken a great deal of patience, organisation and above all discretion to ensure that the switch happened at a time and in the manner of the choosing of both the Conservatives and Mr Asghar.

I know from first-hand that the party to which one is switching approaches the prospect of capturing a defector very carefully indeed, with a mix of motivations and competing priorities – to get the deal done as quickly as possible, but doing so while making sure the new recruit is not scared off, nor allowing the prospect of the catch to get out beyond a few select people within the party.

My own experiences cover my role as a defector in my own right, the organiser of a defection and working for a high profile politician after they had defected.

At local council level, defections are relatively commonplace and are often based on rows and fall outs between colleagues in the very personalised and febrile world of local politics. In fact, when I discussed my defection from the Liberal Democrats to the Conservatives back in 2006 with a former Lib Dem MP, she asked me what committee chairmanship I had lost. It is indeed these affronts to pride – or, more accurately, the pocket – which drive councillors across the floor in city, town and shire halls all over the country, almost every single week. Offers made to potential recruits from the other side will most probably be made up of lucrative ‘extra responsibility allowances’ for chairing one of the overview or scrutiny committees, or an even more financially rewarding job with a seat on the authority’s cabinet. It has even been known for defectors to be enticed with the prospect of lording it over their communities as the all-important planning committee chairman.

I had to meet with the Shadow Secretary of State, the director of the party in Wales, the Welsh Conservatives chairman to satisfy all their investigations into me, while my reasons for wanting to join the Party all had to be vetted by party HQ in London. For Mr Asghar, a similarly in-depth process was undertaken. No party should immediately rush into accepting converts – as UKIP found to its price when taking on the flamboyant Mr Kilroy-Silk.

The defector will invariably be described as a walking embodiment of cant hypocrisy and arch disloyalty, or a paragon of virtue, the living example of principle over partisanship, depending whether you’re speaking for the defector’s former or new political party.

One thing that the defector can never be is an unquestioning drone of the party machine, either for the party they leave or indeed the party they join. Perhaps the defector had shown signs of “disloyalty” before the final jump, questioned party policy and indeed may have voted against the party line on more than one occasion. This in turn poses a problem for the party managers in the defector’s new home: will this truculent behaviour continue after the move?

Emma (now Baroness) Nicholson stunned the political world in 1995 when she crossed the floor of the Commons to sit as a Liberal Democrat after representing Devon West & Torridge in the Conservative interest since 1987. She had also held the position of Vice-Chair (Women) of the Conservative Party. Soon after her defection, a small Guardian piece quoted her as saying that the most over-rated personal virtue was “loyalty”. Having had ancestors in both Houses of Parliament since the 17th Century, Nicholson’s family had only been proper Conservatives since one of her great-grandfathers crossed the floor to them from the Liberals in 1871. Perhaps Nicholson saw a longer game approach to political parties and transitory “loyalties” to them?

In the early development of political parties or groupings within Parliament, it was commonplace for Parliamentarians to shift between groups, either because of a specific issue, or to gain advantage, or to help to thwart an opponent. The two great forces of Victorian politics, Gladstone and Disraeli, had both started out as Tory MPs until a mixture of policy issues and conflicting personal loyalties led the two men to become sworn enemies. This famous enmity helped lead to the creation of the first modern political parties.

Gladstone’s journey from Conservative politics, once seen as “the rising hope of those stern unbending Tories”, to the founder of the Liberal Party is not so odd in British politics. Roy Jenkins, the former Labour Chancellor and reforming Home Secretary, went on to found the Social Democratic Party, while his fellow SDP convert and former Labour Foreign Secretary Dr David Owen eventually ended up supporting the Conservatives in the 1992 General Election. None can, in modern time, top the record of John Horam MP, currently the Conservative Member for Orpington, who started out as a Labour MP before stopping by at the SDP and eventually and finally alighting at his current home. Mr Horam certainly could give the Vicar of Bray a run for his money in the adaptability stakes.

One thing remains constant throughout defections: the impact on one’s personal and family life can be intense. Old friends and associates may quickly become new political enemies and often such conflicts are adorned with all the bitterness of familial disputes. Local activists who worked hard to get the defector elected will feel betrayed. There may even be an air of lingering mistrust about the defector, with their new party perhaps not quite knowing where the new boy or girl sits on various issues. The warning that Mr Bligh gave to Mr Christian on leaving the Bounty, that the mutinous crew would be liable to further acts of betrayal may, perhaps rather unfairly, continue to ring in the ears of all those who seek to profit from the acts of a defector.

Defections are part of the very fabric of the British political system, with all parties benefiting and losing out to decisions by politicians at all levels to switch allegiances. It creates a sore feeling among the party that has lost out, and a feeling of euphoria for the party which has gained. But both these feelings remain transitory as most defectors and the parties concerned usually agree that the switch was, perhaps, the best for all concerned.

Now the BBC is Carter-Rucked!

2009-12-15T23:56:00.000Z

Two months ago the blogosphere and Twitter was awash with justifably righteous outrage when super libel law firm Carter-Ruck, acting on behalf of their petro-chemical company client Trafigura, manged to threaten to overturn hundreds of years of Parliamentary transparency.

Now, the BBC has caved into pressure and removed from their website the Newsnight article which explained the events leading up to the exposure of the super libel against the Guardian as exposed by Parliamentary proceedings. The New Statement carries the story on their website.

Thanks to Iain Dale for supplying the video of the offending Newsnight clip, which I embed below, and urge other bloggers to do likewise. As some may know, my day job is in lobbying for the archives sector and when people like Trafigura, aided by Carter-Ruck, try to airbrush uncomfortable matters of record, frightening visions of Orwell's 1984 and the Ministry of Truth come to mind.

Big Society in the Welsh Economy

2009-11-30T11:07:00.000Z

Despite the Welsh Assembly Government trotting out stats showing that the vast majority of those who have used business support services in Wales have been satisfied with the service, a group of influential businessmen in Wales have set up a rival non-for-profit enterprise to help deliver prosperity to the nation.

The businessmen have cited instances of bureaucracy and red tape getting in the way of efficient support for start-ups and major assistance for growing companies. From my own experience of working with businesses in Wales, it is not a surprise that frustrations with the myriad of public sector business support organisations have finally forced a private sector alternative.

I think this is a great example of the "Big Society" that David Cameron is keen to propagate across the UK should he become Prime Minister. At a time when indepth business support is so desperately needed to help the Welsh economy to ride the downturn and prosper ahead of the recovery, it is heartening to see these businessmen take a stand and declare that reliance on the public sector will not stimulate wealth creation.

This should be an example for other would-be social entrepreneurs in Wales.

Absence of facts and partial reporting is spin by any other name

2009-11-28T14:40:00.000Z

"Teenager who tried to rape girl, 11 avoids jail in 'pathetic' ruling" screams the Daily Mail this week.

These kind of stories make me so fed up. No because I think that hordes of criminals are being let off lightly by our courts - they are not. I get fed up because the absence of facts in these article is just as bad as any piece of spin dressed up as a news article.

The writer wants us to believe that a violent sexual criminal has been let off and poses a huge threat to his victim and society at large. He does this by leaving out any of the relevant details.

For example, why did the judge in this case believe that a non-custodial sentence was more appropriate? What mitigating facts might the defence have put to the court? What was the position of the prosecution in this regard? What were the personal circumstances of the boy (the defendant) and his family?

I used to work in the policy department of Victim Support and have sat on Home Office Committees and worked on the development of the Victims Charter. I entirely support moves to strengthen the position of victims and witnesses of crime within our criminal justice system.

What I do no think is helpful are the shrill and partial accounts of the businesss of our courts being paraded around by the Daily Mail as factual reportage. If I were the judge in this case I'd seriously think about bringing the author to court and asking him to explain why his reporting of the case was so full of holes as to render the article meaningless.

Lord Pearson and UKIP moderates

2009-11-28T13:43:00.000Z

Lord Pearson's election as UKIP Leader has caused a stir. The media love factoids that can be lazily appended to stories - "first leader of a Party to sit in the Lords for a century".

The interesting thing about the UKIP leadership campaign was how hotly and bitterly it was conducted. Accusations about the outgoing leader (the delightfully nutty Nigel Farage) giving unfair endorsement to his preferred successor, accusations of racism and the threat by party members (including a local councillor) to leave the Party if Lord Pearson was elected.

UKIP may have beaten Labour into third place in June's Europarl elections, but in terms of it being a proper national, broad-based political party in the common understanding of the term, the Party still languishes far behind even the LibDems.

Bald men fighting over a comb comes to mind.

Be that as it may, the fact that mega-rich Lord Pearson becomes the poshest leader of a political party in quite some time has sent many commentators off into a frenzy about how this will potentially scupper Tory chances in marginal seats.

I will stick my neck out on this one and state that Pearson, as connected to the Tory establishment as he is, with as much success in the international insurance industry as he has, will go down like a lead balloon in Northern towns and cities - the teritory he is supposedly marking out as his own, with messages of anti-immigration and fear-mongering about "Sharia Law" high up on his agenda.

If UKIP become BNP-lite, then so much the better. I have long viewed UKIP as a release valve for the Tory Party...let the loons, racists and fruitcakes (to paraphrase Cameron's description of the UKIP party faithful) who are not happy with the Conservatives, go off to take their part in a fringe group.

However, there are plenty of other people who joined UKIP as a genuine reaction to what they saw (sometimes rightly, other times wrongly) as the excesses of the "European Project" and their lack of faith in other parties on these issues. I think these people will be rightly disgusted if Pearson takes their party to the far-right and shares common platforms (if not vocabulary or indeed accent) with the BNP.

UKIP's message has always needed careful presentation lest their anti-EU stance gets mistaken for xenophobia. By moving onto the BNP's ground of whipping up tensions over the "Islamification" of the UK (which is total twaddle) this message will be lost in the hubub of reaction and internal dissent.

Long my Pearson reign over them.

Boris of the Yard....

2009-11-28T13:01:00.000Z

...and why not put Boris in full charge of the Met as its first-ever elected Commissioner?

I see that Peter Black thinks this would be a disaster for the safety of Londoners and others.

I say rubbish.

As the elected Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, under Conservative Party plans, Boris would be responsible for holding the police to account, for overviewing the budget and the appointment of senior operational officers. He won't be the one making operational decisions. I reality, his powers will be a more defined and tranparent version of his current role as Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

From the Damian Green incident and the way Boris handled that, we can clearly see that his commitment to freedoms and liberties mark him out as an excellent firt-ever elected official in charge of scrutinising the Met Police.

Are care homes failing the elederly in Wales?

2009-11-27T22:42:00.000Z

Two Conservative Members of the National Assembly for Wales have called for an independent inquiry into the state of care homes in Wales.

Their call follows revelations made by the BBC Wales TV programme Week In Week Out, which included secret filming of apparent mistreatment of elderly residents.

This is such an important issue for the Welsh Assembly to get right. It is vital for the Assembly to take their responsiblity seriously in this matter and if calls on the Auditor General for Wales to carry out an independent review of care standards are not heeded, then it is incumbent on Darren Millar AM to direct the Health, Wellbeing & Local Government Committee to conduct its own investigation.

Shadow Culture Minister Ed Vaizey MP, speech on Archives in the Digital Age

2009-11-26T19:56:00.001Z

In 2006 we created another 161 exabytes of digital data – more than the sum of all data created up to that point.

YouTube now hosts 100 million video streams a day and London's 200 traffic surveillance cameras transmit 64 trillion bits a day to the data command centre.

In Government, a relatively small Department like Culture, Media & Sport were even ten years ago adding a volume of data equivalent to the Complete Works of Shakespeare to its computers every day.

Five years ago, the same volume was being added every hour.

Today, they are doing so every minute and by next year it is estimated that they'll be doing so every second.

Our very concept of archives and records has changed. The explosion of digital information means that new ways of keeping records, of archival practices and user interaction are being developed to meet the new digital challenge.

The challenge is simple but huge. In short, archivists need to find ways to ensure that born-digital records are useable in 25, 50, 100 or even 200 years time and that the records we have from the last 200 or more years are available to a wider audience via electronic means.

Digital continuity and digital preservation are now as essential to the framework of the archival profession as parchment conservation and traditional cataloguing.

There is a real challenge to the archive and record keeping profession, especially as resources both in the public and private sectors get squeezed in the coming years.

Whilst digital archiving and working with born-digital records can be spun as creating smarter working and leading to cost reductions, in the short-term there can often be front-loaded costs, such as with digitisation of paper documents, or the development stages of new archival software.

For many in the archive sector, the additional burdens placed by the digital agenda can seem like they are being asked to do more stuff with the same or less resource.

The National Archives in Kew has looked after Government records going back to the Domesday Book. One thousand years of our nation's official history, mostly in paper record form and telling the story of the development of our society.

These records have had to be catalogued, preserved and made accessible over a long period of time and there is an expectation for this to continue during our lifetimes and well into the future.

The same challenges exist for digital records, but they cannot be addressed in the same way as with traditional archival materials. Digital data cannot be file away like paper and for it to be assumed that it will still be readable and useable in 30 years time, because it won't be.

Digital data is not just more vulnerable to obsolescence than paper records, but also there is just so much more of it to keep track of, store, catalogue and make accessible. The digital revolution has created so many different types of record – from the basic document which my speech was written with, to the email it was sent to me and the website and blogs it may appear on and the Tweets which will be generated in an attempt to get people to read about what I have said here this morning.

And not to mention all the texts (or SMS) messages, wiki sites, and discussion forums and so on. There really is a huge question mark over what even constitutes a "record" in the digital age.

The growth in demand for online archives continues apace.

270,000,000 online documents are now accessible through the UK Government Web Archive. Ranging from the Magna Carter through to records of the National Coal Board.

1,680,551 free copies of records have been downloaded from The National Archives Documents Online service in 2008-09.

Yet even after all this, only 5% of government records are selected for preservation in the collections of The National Archives.

Expectations of growing content and availability of the rich holdings of archive repositories across the UK do not relent. Examples such as the letters of David Lloyd George, held at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, being digitised and made available online is a fantastic way to widen access to an important collection beyond researchers with the resources to travel and study in West Wales.

Whilst traditionally access to the archival holdings in our local authority and national repositories have been free of charge to the user (at the point of delivery, at least, if one ignores the general taxation which has funded their development), the online market is different and where value and convenience are enhanced, users are willing to pay for certain content.

The huge popularity of the 1901 and 1911 Census online services shows what the market can sustain in terms of charging for access to archives. Local authority archivists are also reporting similar trends, with an increase in demand for online information there also comes a willingness to pay a charge for the service. This pay-as-you-go approach to using archives in itself provides an interesting challenge to the traditional working methods of the archivist and changes the relationship between user and provider of archival services.

The recently published Government Archives Policy "Archives for the 21^st Century" identifies a number of key themes which seek to address the digital challenge facing the archive sector. The policy recognises how important it is for the archive sector to work collaboratively with other sectors, including higher education, local authorities and the private sector to enable the delivery of more comprehensive and better quality services to the user.

The growth in the networks and systems to share digital information securely across sectors has led to a rethink as to how services are offered to the user. From the user perspective is matters less as to where the information originated as opposed to how easy it is to access and use. This new way of thinking is leading to a situation where it is Digital Partnerships which are breaking down the old Analogue Silos.

Archive services across the UK are also facing the challenge of how to provide excellent service standards with stand still or decreasing budgets, a situation which will no doubt be exacerbated by the expected continued pressure on public spending over the coming years.

The sustainability of smaller local authorities offering archive services with only one or two qualified practitioners is under question in the "Archives for the 21^st Century" policy document. The case for fewer, bigger and better services can be made across many areas of public service delivery, but in archives there are sensitivities related to geography, local history, culture and political concerns.

The digital revolution can provide many opportunities for local authorities to deliver archive services which benefit from the efficiencies and savings of centralised service organisation, whilst also taking into account local needs.

The UK has, uniquely amongst the nations of the world, a fantastic opportunity for leadership in the area of partnerships between the cultural and archival worlds. Already world leaders in the way we collect, preserve and make accessible our nation's rich and diverse history, the United Kingdom also contains institutions showing the way in terms of new approaches to archives.

To pick just three of our largest players in this field – The National Archives, the British Library and the BBC – we will all already have some ideas as to how these bodies use and present their archival holdings.

The BBC news site and educational website; The National Archives providing a gateway to the nation's official history and the British Library's recently launched online newspaper archive are all examples of how archives have been used in creative and user-oriented ways.

The perspective of the user is also highly important when it comes to considering the access issues connected with digital archives. A digitally literate audience has expectations in terms of usability, access and interactivity, as well as value and quality of provision.

Web 2.0 technologies have opened up different ways for information to be shared online and the formats in which user participation can be enabled.

The National Archives stand alone website "Your Archive" allows for users to make their contribution to the record. The site provides a forum where people can share their knowledge of British history and archival sources held by The National Archives, and by other archives throughout the UK.

Whilst these initiatives are all to be welcomed and have undoubtedly improved access and quality, they continue to be created and developed by the organisation itself and do not, as yet, add up to a coordinated attempt to marry together archival holdings, new technologies and the wider cultural sector.

The challenge for government in this area over the coming years will be to provide the environment within which a more coordinated approach to delivering user-oriented digital services in partnership across the whole range of cultural domains.

The United Kingdom's strengths in this area include our long history of developing traditional archiving methods and our long established network of national and local archive services. Countries from the EU-bloc, Africa and beyond often use the UK as a model for the development of their own networks and institutions.

The UK benefits from English remaining, to date, as the global language of commerce and culture. Coupled with the 1,000 years and more of recorded history in our archives, the very records of our nation serve as a reminder of our role and responsibilities in developing access and re-use of this kind of data.

What we need now is the leadership to take full advantage of the wealth of assets built up by our nation's history and to provide the vision within which our cultural sector can work with our archivists to create an even more enviable record of digital success which will last well into the next several decades.

The impact of this work will not just be to offer users the types of services and delivery options they are demanding, but the wider impact on society will be immense.

The Big Society idea, which draws a big distinction separate from ideas of the big government or the big state, shows us that communities are extremely interested in the records and archives that tell a story relevant to them.

The growth in online family and local history research projects and the opportunities for non-geographic communities of interest and shared heritage to exchange knowledge make digital archives even more relevant to a bigger agenda.

Archives play a huge role in promoting a sense of place, a sense of belonging and a sense of national, local and community history.

I remember when I went to The National Archives and was presented with the 1911 Census return, written by my grandfather
who was a barge builder on the River Thames – at Vaizey Wharf indeed – I had my own Who Do You Think You Are moment…the spine tingling sensation of coming into direct contact with one's own family history.

I know how important this personal interaction with the archives is and will do all I can to ensure that as we move into more digitally-based ways of providing these services, the unique user experience is not lost.

It is clear that the nature of generating records continues to change at breakneck speed and this poses a huge challenge to how professional archivists develop and manage archive services that remain relevant and accessible to a wide range of user groups.

At the same time, the opportunities for partnerships within the archive sector in terms of delivering better, more efficient services seem obvious; whilst the potential for partnerships with the cultural sector have barely been scratched beneath the surface.

South West Norfolk Tories Support Liz Truss

2009-11-17T00:43:00.002Z

I was so pleased to see the news that Liz Truss was supported by the Constituency Association of South West Norfolk to remain as their candidate for the 2010 general election.

The row threatened to undo so much of the good that David Cameron and other leading Tories have been doing to "detoxify the brand" and to end the "nasty party" image that the Conservatives had (unfairly) acquired over the years.

Well done Liz and, more importantly, well done to South West Norfolk Conservatives!

7 out of 10 want out of war

2009-11-15T15:32:00.002Z

The Independent on Sunday runs with a poll putting 71% in favour of a pull out of Afghanistan within a year.

The litany of deaths, abuses, displacements and the failure to deal with burgeoning corruption all paint a depressing picture of the war in Afghanistan and will have no doubt contributed to the results of this poll.

However, there is a wider point about the ability of this Government to properly articulate WHY Britain is involved in this war, WHAT our aims and objectives are and WHEN victory will be likely to be achieved or even what such victory would look like.

I have also made a short speech in the presence of the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff, Lt General Simon Mayall, on the importance of the Military Covenant to the operations of the armed forces. There is now a huge and dangerous risk that the current Government have effectively broken this Covenant by allowing such a gulf of understanding and mutual support to develop between the public and our armed services.

I am worried that the commitment we have shown thus far to the Government of Karzai is fast becoming untenable, given the questions of democratic legitimacy and unchecked corruption. I do not, however, believe that any settlement can be arrived at with the Taliban and have said so before. This leaves us with a huge challenge - how to continue a war, to fight against evil, whilst losing support at home and being let down by the foreign government we are trying to support.

There is now a huge challenge on the political establishment in responding to the collapse in public support for the war.

I have made these points and speculated about what the political establishment (regardless of party affiliations) could do to help rectify the current situation. I understand that my call for a cross-party War Cabinet is NOT the current the Conservative Party line.

However, in my previous posting on this matter, I also made it clear that support 100% Cameron's commitment to setting up a National Security Council/War Cabinet to oversee Britain's efforts in Afghanistan. Only David Cameron as Prime Minister will have the authority and credibility to set this War Cabinet up, sadly this current Government has lost the ability to continue this war to victory or even an honourable withdrawal.

Wasn't football supposed to have cleaned up its act?

2009-11-10T16:05:00.000Z

Very depressingly I learnt today that the damage done to Swansea's magnificent Liberty Stadium, allegedly by away fans, during Saturday's football match amounts to "thousands of pounds".

The Swansea v Cardiff game (which resulted in a 3-2 win for Swansea City) saw fifteen people arrested and the South Wales Police are investigating the criminal damage occasioned to the Stadium.

After all the public money spent building this fantastic resource, this wanton destruction is a disappointing reminder that mindless acts of vandalism and violence have not yet been eradicated from the national game.

Cameron Must Set Up a Cross-Party War Cabinet

2009-11-09T20:06:00.001Z

At the start of October, David Cameron pledged that an incoming Conservative administration would take steps to create a War Cabinet (or National Security Council) to include key ministers and defence chiefs to coordinate the mission in Afghanistan.

Away from the details of the proposals, I was taken by the phrase he used in a pre-conference interview with the Sun:

"The military are fighting that war, but I want Whitehall fighting it too."

Whilst Cameron is not suggesting that the nation should be placed on a "total war" footing, with factories being requisitioned, there is a big problem with fighting this war (and it should be properly classed as a war) in Afghanistan on a peacetime budget.

Last week a House of Lords debate, including contributions from a number of former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, contained heavy criticism of Government policy and resourcing in the Afghan war. Lord Guthrie, in particular, attacked the Government on the lack of helicopters, an issue which Brown & Co have consistently (and outrageously) downplayed.

I want Cameron to go further than he has. I think the future of Government/Military relations are on a knife-edge. Never before has there been such a wedge between the soldiers, their commanders and the political masters. It is dangerous and needs to be tackled.

The war is in a mess. The politicians are unable to set out in any clear way what the objectives are. Military chiefs, serving and former, are openly critical of Government policy and we all know that resources for the operations are limited.

The current situation calls into question the basis of the Military Covenant. I addressed similar remarks to the current Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff, Lt Gen Simon Mayall, when he attended the ceremony marking Freedom of the City of Swansea to the 1st Queen's Dragoon Guards earlier this year.

I think nothing less than a War Cabinet, with cross-party representation, will ensure that the current Afghan War will be given the priority it needs and turn Whitehall and Westminster towards the serious endeavour of setting out a proper strategy and commit the resources to ensuring that British troops can withdraw from this war as soon as possible.

From what I heard about Lord Guthrie's remarks during his speech at the Oxford Union this evening, the cross-party War Cabinet proposal has certainly caught his imagination.

Local Government & Local Communities

2009-11-08T20:40:00.000Z

Tory blogger OxfordSpring gives his thoughts on how the finery and pomp of the local Service of Remembrance today inspired him to think on the nature of local government and localism.

Whilst I have a lot of sympathy with his view that local government should mean just that - government at the local level. Sounds like a simple statement of the bleeding obvious, but I think that his view is a sound one: that local authorities should be more than mere administrative centres, given local accent to Whitehall or Brussles-formulated policies, but bodies making real decisions.

I do genuinely think, however, that many of the areas listed in the article are already well within the powers of local councils. I also think that local government needs a great deal of reform before more powers should be handed to them.

This issue also links in with the points I've made in my review of the Daniel Hannan/Douglas Carswell book "The Plan".

Less is more

2009-11-02T23:20:00.000Z

The soon-to-be-former First Minister of Wales Rhodri Morgan has used his regular press conference, sitting alongside Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, to warn of the dangers of reducing the number of Members of Parliament representing Wales in the House of Commons.

The duo make an absurd claim that plans, set out by David Cameron, to reduce the number of Westminster MPs throughout the UK, would lead to a reduction in the ability of the National Assembly of Wales to do its job properly.

This is utter nonsense. First, the Government of Wales Act may link the number of Westminster Constituencies directly to the number of Assembly Members, but such details in legislation can be amended. Second, Cameron hasn't outlined in any detail what his plans for an overall UK reduction in the number of MPs would mean for Wales. Third, I find it bizarre to claim that a reduction in the number of Assembly Members would actually lead to the kind of gridlock and paralysis in Cardiff Bay painted by Morgan and Hain.

Of course, Assembly Members will cry out that they are so busy and that they couldn't possibly do another hour's more work a week and that a reduction in their number would be catastrophic and an end to all the wonderfully good things that the Assembly does for education, health and the economy in Wales (ahem!).

As Boris might say, what piffle!

Experts v Knee-jerks

2009-10-31T15:42:00.000Z

Professor Nutt knows more about the issues concerning drug misuse that I, the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister. Yet, the Government has forced him to resign as Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for daring to put forward scientific arguments against the proposals to reclassify cannabis as a more serious substance (from its current classification as “C” to the more serious “Class B” definition).

Yes, I accept that some people will come at this from a moral perspective, given whatever experience one may have had of observing those who have abused drugs. But the scientific evidence has, for some time now, given a clear picture of cannabis and ecstasy being no more harmful MEDICALLY speaking than either alcohol or smoking tobacco.

But, the issues are far more complex than those who suggest it’s simply a matter of “zero tolerance” to drug taking. What should we have a zero tolerance attitude towards and how would this be manifested? I agree, the illegal trade in drugs is harmful to national security and international relations. Drugs wars spill over into the streets of the world's major cities, blighting lives. But what comes first? The criminality or the illegality? IF the drugs were not illegal, then there would not be a criminal trade it in, running up billions in profits for international criminal companies.

However, that's even before we consider WHY people take up drug taking. Should we have a zero tolerance on poverty, hopelessness, the most dire housing conditions, poor education and lack of opportunity? For the people using drugs as an escape route or as a route into the glamour of a lifestyle celebrated in pop culture, then help and support is needed, not criminalisation. I have supported the local drugs project in Swansea which looks at practical ways to help drug users and the police have been very supportive, too.

Then there is the question of recreational "middle-class" drug use and clubbing culture. How much better would it be for drugs to be regulated, like other harmful goods such as alcohol and nicotine? Or should the police waste their time raiding nightclubs and apartments in Hoxton?

Yes, let's deal with criminal behaviour, but for heaven's sakes let’s have a rational debate based on scientific expert opinion and not make policy based on whether the Daily Mail or the Sun will support it.

UK Youth Parliament Meets in Commons – good job, too!

2009-10-31T00:29:00.002Z

I was very pleased to see that the UK Youth Parliament got their day in the Chamber of the House of Commons on Friday.

At a time when interest and trust in politics is on the slide, it is heartening to see so many young people taking part in a series of interesting, serious and topical debates in the heart of our Parliamentary democracy.

The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, true to his word as a modern and reforming Speaker, welcomed the Youth Parliament from the Speaker's Chair.

This year's event follows on from the Youth Parliament's Annual Sitting last year in the House of Lords.

I have seen some, frankly, childish, snobbish and (mostly) jealous comments from people who were unhappy about the Youth Parliament meeting in the Commons Chamber. Comments have ranged from criticism about the attire of some of the MYPs (which display a lack of awareness of some of the backgrounds of the Members...indeed, I didn't own a suit until I was 21 years old!) to claims that somehow the democratic "spell" over the Commons would be broken if a bunch of kids were allowed to sit on the green leather. Seeing as the Chamber is a hastily built 1950's room doesn't seem to dawn on some people.

The Commons is a body of people, not a room, not a building. It is as much a concept as a physical thing. The Commons represents the nation, the people and its current home being used as a place of debate for the nation's Youth Parliament seems highly appropriate and desirable.

In fact, the Commons soon needs to go through a major refurbishment. This work will take years to complete. So, the body of the House of Commons will need to decamp elsewhere...in the Second World War, after an incendiary device destroyed the Victorian Commons Chamber, the House moved down to the other end of the building and squatted in the Lords Chamber (their Lordships, in turn, meeting down the road in Church House). Cromwell held meetings of the Commons in Oxford University during the Civil War.

Perhaps, as a quid pro quo with the UK Youth Parliament, the Commons could find a perfectly decent school hall in which to debate the nation's issues during the rebuilding of their main home?

Goodbye Welsh Labour

2009-10-27T10:06:00.001Z

A poll published in today's Western Mail delivers a huge blow to Welsh Labour, putting them only 3 points ahead of the Conservatives.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/10/27/poll-predicts-labour-trouncing-91466-25020815/

With Labour placed on 34% and the Welsh Conservatives just behind on 31%, the General Election result in Wales could see Labour slip to holding just 20 out of Wales' 40 Westminster Constituencies. Plaid Cymru and the LibDems currently trail with 15% and 12% respectively.

Labour are certainly facing their biggest challenge in Wales and across the UK since their 1983 debacle and this poll would see them sink to their lowest ebb in Wales since 1918.

The great thing about this poll is that it reflects not only what we are hearing on the doorstep, but it's also in line with the rise in Tory support as evidenced in June's Euro elections, which saw the Conservatives beat Labour in Wales.

Welsh Local Government Needs to Pay Up!

2009-10-25T22:51:00.001Z

News that most Welsh Local Authorities fails to pay its bills to local suppliers within the 30 day target is another blow to the fragile state of the economy. It's bad enough for small businesses to stay afloat in these choppy economic times without major clients like local councils failing to pay their bills on time.

Figures obtained by interest group Forum of Private Business show that 30% of all invoices are not paid up by local authorities within the current 30 day target, but Welsh Assembly Government Minister Dr Brian Gibbons now wants councils to pay within a new suggested target of only 10 days.

I note, sadly but with no real surprise, that Swansea Council features as one of the poor performing authorities - with around 20% of its bills NOT being paid within the 30 day target.

I will be placing questions on this matter and will seek answers as to WHY this situation has arisen (the Council blames "IT problems"!) and what is being done to rectify it. I also want to know how Swansea performs on the new 10 day target. Watch this space!

All-Women Shortlists in the Tory Party

2009-10-24T15:10:00.001+01:00

I was very pleased to learn that my blog supporting All-Women Shorlists for certain Parliamentary Candidate selections was picked up by the Tory Reform Group blog.

Whither democracy in Swansea?

2009-10-24T15:02:00.001+01:00

The Coalition Administration running Swansea Council - made up of alleged LibDems, "Independents", and actual "Independent Party" (!) and other political flotsam and jetsam - has long had a reputation for saying one thing and doing the complete opposite.

For example, the Council leaders have promised "open government", then set up a Committee called "Open Swansea Working Group" which, errrrr.....met in private behind closed doors in County Hall!

Another, picked out of a hat full of similar examples, is the oft claimed pledge of the LibDems to get rid of the Cabinet-style government in Swansea (and indeed across Wales according to Welsh LibDem AM and Swansea Councillor Peter Black's press release in 2004)...i.e. to end the system whereby ten out of Swansea's 72 elected Councillors make most of the decisions. This lot came to power in 2004 and we are STILL waiting for them to bring forward proposals to make local decision-making more democratic.

The attitude show by this Administration in terms of breaking election promises on openess and democracy is reflected in how they run the Council Meetings. The Constitution of the City & County of Swansea states that the Council is where the Executive (i.e. the Leader of the Council and his nine Cabinet stooges) is supposed to be held to account. The Constitution also provides for extra time, speaking rights and status for Opposition Group Leaders. The Presiding Officer of the Council, who chairs the meetings of Council, is supposed to allow Members to properly question those responsible for spending £350 million pounds of taxpayers money every year.

Yet, if the Council Meeting on Thursday is anything to go by, this Administration is hell-bent on denying the rights of Opposition Leaders to properly hold them to account. They appointed the Presiding Officer - the current incumbent is the failed Social Services Cabinet Member, Councillor Wendy Ftizgerald. Her refusal to take any responsibility for Swansea's children's services getting into such a poor state is well documented. It is little wonder that Opposition Groups on the Council and even some on her own side have been insulted by her elevation to the status of Council Chairman.

The Presiding Officer's conduct on Thursday was utterly outrageous. Her patronising voice (much mocked by Councillors on all sides) is perhaps an unfortunate facet of her personality, however, her physical displays of disapproval whenever Opposition Leaders tried to speak, raise Points of Order or otherwise try to exercise their Constitutional rights went beyond a joke. Far from protecting the Main Opposition and Minority Opposition Group Leaders' rights to speak, in my case she tried to prevent me from asking a supplementary question to the education inspectorate, who had just presented an important report on local schools standards.

I was also disappointed that the senior public servants appointed by Council to ensure standards such as legal and democratic regulations are adehered to, refused to intervene except when pressed by Opposition Leaders. The Chief Executive and the Council's Head of Legal & Democratic Services both have a duty to protect and promote the rights of ALL Members of the Authority, NOT just the rights of the Executive. I will be raising these important points with the Authority's Chief Executive on Monday.

I have also written to the Council's Presiding Officer outlining why I believe that this situation cannot be allowed to continue. I note that the Leader of the Main Opposition (Labour) Group has also written publicly about this matter.

Moir opens mouth...and foot firmly back in place

2009-10-23T10:30:00.002+01:00

Dear, dear, dear. The old maxim that when one is in a hole, the trick is to stop digging, seems to be lost on Mail on Sunday columnist, Jan Moir.

After her nasty, spiteful drivel about the death of Stephen Gately, Ms Moir has published an...errrr...well, I hesitate to call it an "apology", more a compounding of the original mistake. A friend of mine from Swansea, who has a very wise head on very young shoulders (yes, it does make me jealous!) has posted the following comment on my Facebook profile and it needs no further amendment or addition from me:

Moir writes: "I can't help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged? Or was it a failure of communication on my part?"

No dear, neither of the above, it was because your exceptionally offensive article was not merely ill-timed but rancid drivel with no-basis other than your own prejudice and remarkably the follow-up 'apology' is a self-pittying save-my-own-ass sympathy plea which makes it abundantly clear this woman still fails to get the point.

I've offended scores of people in my time (regularly deliberately, sometimes not) but at least I realise when I have gone too far and when I am genuinely sorry I am capable of a sincere apology. The problem with this bint is that she's capable of neither recognising where she's gone wrong or apologising sincerely. She'd have done well in a New Labour Cabinet.

Thank you, Scott!

All-Women Shorlists and the Conservative Party

2009-10-23T00:43:00.002+01:00

At this evening's Swansea Council Meeting, we briefly debated the recommendations of the Welsh Assembly Government Panel looking into how councillors are selected and elected across Wales and how we should all be working towards making councillors more representative of the communities they represent. For example, across Wales, 75% of councillors are men.

I have made my views known and given more analysis on the WalesHome website.

This debate reminded me about the issues surrounding the debate within and outside the Conservative Party on All-Women Shorlists. Currently, only 28% of all selected Tory Parliamentary Candidates are women. Whilst the number of female Tory MPs looks set, at current estimates, to rise from 18 to around 60, the trends for women being selected in currently held Conservative constituencies (where the sitting MP is retiring) is not very satisfactory at all.

Of the last 8 selections for candidates in these seats, all 8 have selected male candidates, even after rules were implemented ensuring balanced shorlists in three of those selection battles. Interestingly, the only Tory-held seat to select a female candidate recently has been Totnes, which selected a local GP after an open primary selection procedure.

Now, the John Maples MP, the Deputy Chairman of the Party with responsibility for candidates, has posted his views as to why All-Women Shortlists, in Tory-held seats, is now vital if the Party is to seriously address the historic (and continuing) under-representation of women in our Parliamentary Party.

I have to say that I do agree that we MUST press ahead with All-Women Shortlists. It cannot be the case that we are selecting only the best candidates when under one-third of our PPCs are women. It simply cannot be the case that selection committees are weighing up in a fair and even manner the respective skills of all candidates of both genders and coming up with conclusions that appear to virtually exclusively favour male candidates. There are problems with selection procedures and approval systems for candidates in ALL parties, but we have to act NOW and not wait another four years or more before we can move decisively towards a more balanced and representative Parliamentary Party.

I would propose that open primary selection procedures should now be brought in for ALL selections for Parliamentary candidates across ALL political parties - conceivably this could be enshrined in law. This seems to have been the one initative within the Party that has had some success in selecting women in winnable seats.

Conservative HQ have challenged local parties to take the issue of selecting women candidates more seriously and they have failed. The Party may express that it is "reluctantly" going down the road of All-Women Shortlists, but to quote one famous Tory lady "there is no alternative".

Daily Mail publishes a humane voice, for once!

2009-10-19T22:46:00.000+01:00

Janet Street Porter's excellent article in today's Daily Mail is a real antidote to the hate, bile ans spite published by Jan Moir.

Street Porter's piece needs no further commentary and it shows up all that was objectionable, offensive and homophobic in Ms Moir's column.

PCC bows to pressure of "record complaints"

2009-10-19T13:36:00.001+01:00

The Press Complaints Commission have bowed to the inevitable and have agreed to investigate complaints made by third-parties in the case of the Jan Moir article which appeared in the Daily Mail on Friday.

See the article from today's Press Gazette. http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44487&c=1

21,000 complaints were received by the PCC, making this the most complained about article in the Commission's history. With Paul Dacre (Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Mail) as the Commission's Chairman, will anything actually be done about this serious matter? If nothing comes of these complaints, then surely the credibility of the PCC and of self-regulation in the newspaper industry will be in tatters, much like Ms Moir's career.

Press Complaints Commission and Jan Moir

2009-10-17T13:34:00.000+01:00

It seems likely that the Press Complaints Commission are desperately trying to fend off having to take any action of the hideous little piece of bile printed in the Hate Mail by food critic turned social commentator Jan Moir.

I have today received a pathetic autoresponse from the PCC outlining why they will not be taking up my complaint about the article, despite the fact I gave them chapter and verse as to why "third party" complaints should be investigated in this case (thanks to LibDem Voice).

Does self-regulation of printed media really work? Why not have a body similar to Ofcom (which regulates TV output) for newspapers?

I urge anyone else thinking of making a complaint to the PCC to use the same arguments when replying to any autoresponse from the PCC and use the following email address to do so:

MOIRComplaint@pcc.org.uk

The autoresponse I received was:

Dear Councillor Rene Kinzett

Thank you for sending us your complaint about the Daily Mail article on the subject of the death of Stephen Gately. We have received numerous complaints about this matter.
I should first make clear that the Commission generally requires the involvement of directly affected parties before it can begin an investigation into an article. On this occasion, it may be a matter for the family of Mr Gately to raise a complaint about how his death has been treated by the Daily Mail. I can inform you that we have made ourselves available to the family and Mr Gately's bandmates, in order that they can use our services if they wish.

We require the direct involvement of affected parties because the PCC process can have a public outcome and it would be discourteous for the Commission to publish information relating to individuals without their knowledge or consent. Indeed, doing so might unwittingly add to any intrusion. Additionally, one of the PCC's roles is dispute resolution, and we would need contact with the affected party in order to determine what would be an acceptable means of settling a complaint.

On initial examination, it would appear that you are, therefore, a third party to the complaint, and wemay not be able to pursue your concerns further. However, if you feel that your complaint touches on claims that do not relate directly to Mr Gately or his family, please let us know, making clear how they raise a breach of the Code of Practice. If you feel that the Commission should waive its third party rules, please make clear why you believe this.

Press Complaints Commission

To protest, or not protest?

2009-10-17T00:15:00.001+01:00

The curiously titled "Welsh Defence League" will be holding a demonstration in Swansea tomorrow (Saturday 17 October) and the Unite Against Fascism Group will be holding a counter demonstration.

The South Wales Police have written to Councillors, businesses and community leaders outlining what powers they have to control the demonstration by the ultra-right WDL. The Chief Superintendent of Police has already confirmed that the Assistant Chief Constable for South Wales has issued interim orders under Section 14 of the Public Order Act, affecting two areas of the City Centre at specific times during the day. These Orders can be amended verbally by senior officers on the ground.

The Home Secretary has also written personally and directly to the Leader of Swansea Council, which has been copied to all Councillors. In it, the Home Secretary seeks to reassure us that all is being done to ensure that public safety is prioritised and that whilst peaceful demonstrations will be facilitated, for both sides, any behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace will be dealt with appropriately. Pity Mr Johnson got his Swansea East MP confused with his Swansea West...I mean, Alan Williams has only been the Labour MP for Swansea West since 1964....

The question we, as community leaders, must now ask ourselves is, do we counter-protest, cause the police more work in terms of protecting public safety and, as an unintended consequence, give the forces of fascism more publicity than they might otherwise have got?

Hate Mail goes too far

2009-10-16T22:24:00.001+01:00

Long known by the sobriquet the Daily Hate Mail, the right-wing tabloid the Daily Mail has really lived up to its name and sparked a Twitter and media fury over an article penned by popular columnist Jan Moir about the death of Boyzone star Stephen Gately.

The article is homophobic, bigoted and salacious. It intrudes into the grief of Stephen's family and friends and the author has the audacity to quote the poor man's mother and challenges her in the most undignified manner.

Reading the article is like going back in time at least twenty years. I cannot honestly remember when I have read something so shocking in its shameless use of innuendo, sarcasm, patronisation, belittling language and general vitriol. All this against a man who has died from natural causes (Ms Moir even attempts to contradict the pathologist), with a grieving family and partner left behind to make sense of all this.

Where do people like Jan Moir get off writing this kind of drivel? Is her own life so sad, so lonely, so tragic and so devoid of warmth and emotion that she has to resort to peddling crap like this?

Perhaps it is because the article was written by a woman that I am even more shocked. I do not know whether Jan Moir is a mother, or has any maternal instincts whatsoever. Perhaps I am being sexist in some way in even expecting a female writer to show more compassion, more feeling and more humanity towards people in these sad circumstances. But Ms Moir comes across as downright heartless, mean, vindictive, callous and somehow almost violent in her attempt to condemn Stephen Gately, his life and the manner in (she supposes) which he died. How can she, at the most basic of human levels, write from such an uniformed perspective, knowing what hurt it would cause to those who knew and loved Stephen Gately.

Charlie Brooker of the Guardian offers a much more erudite and charming riposte against this pathetic woman's bile.

If anything positive has come out of this it is the furious reaction shown by the users of social network Twitter, which erupted in spontaneous outbursts of revulsion and condemnation. Journalists, celebrities and general users united to show their opposition to this vile and hateful article. The last week has shown the power of Twitter and the blogosphere to give shape to the feelings of millions of people and media outlets, libel lawyers and multi-national oil companies have all this week learned that the safety they used to enjoy when news outlets were more tightly controlled, no longer exists in the digital age.

Also, companies who advertise with newspapers who peddle this twaddle have also found their voice over this issue. Led by Marks & Spencer (their Chairman Sir Stuart Rose was awarded his K for services to CSR, as well as to retail), online ads have been pulled from the page on which the Moir column appears.

If moral arguments cannot get to the Daily Mail, then hitting them in their advertising revenues might have more of an effect.

Speaker Rebukes Minister for "rank discourtesy" to the House

2009-10-15T14:54:00.000+01:00

Commons Speaker John Bercow has reprimanded Bob Ainsworth, Secretary of State for Defence, over the publication of the Gray Report - the inquiry into the state of equipment being used by our armed forces on the front line.

Mr Ainsworth approved the publication of the Report just one hour before MPs were due to debate it, despite it being completed and on Ministerial desks for some time.

Tonight's Evening Standard reports on the clash between the new Speaker and the senior Minister:

Mr Bercow told Mr Ainsworth it was a “rank discourtesy” to the House, claiming the report had been completed “some time ago”.

Mr Gray, who compiled the Review of Acquisition for the Ministry of Defence, warned of the dangers which equipment problems could pose for soldiers on the front line. He said: “Where we have been called upon to use our military capabilities in anger, we have been at risk because our plans have not, in some cases, brought forth the equipment needed for the battle.”

If any good comes out of this incident, I hope that those who were critical of Mr Bercow's election as Speaker (from the Tory benches), quickly come to realise that a good choice has been made.

West Wing's new credits

2009-10-15T12:22:00.002+01:00

75 year-old escape court to be repaired

2009-10-14T10:17:00.000+01:00

The BBC are reporting that the Guildhall Crown Court in Swansea is undergoing maintenance work.

The scene of an escape by a convicted killer nearly two weeks ago, the Guildhall accommodation would appear to have failed in its task of holding dangerous offenders during trials and transfers between court and prisons.

I have questioned the suitability of the Crown Court in the Guildhall being used for very serious cases and we still await a report into the incident which saw a convict escape from the room he was being held in by exiting through an unlocked window. He is still at large.

Send Trafigura a postcard!

2009-10-14T01:19:00.000+01:00

In a bipartisan spirit, I must make a tip my hat in the direction of LibDem Voice for their marvellous idea of sending cheery little postcards to those pleasant people over at Trafigura, you know, the people who are suing Newsnight over allegations that toxic waste dumped by one of their ships off the Ivory Coast caused deaths and injuries.

I must admit, I had never heard of Trafigura, but their website and "current news" section don't tell me much more than I have now picked up in the news, thanks to the botched attempt by their solicitors, Carter-Ruck, to gag the British press from reporting Parliamentary proceedings in respect of questions asked about the hushing up of a report into the toxic waste washing ashore on the Ivory Coast.

So, we should thank the good people of Trafigura for bringing to our attentions not just the true nature of the murky world of the super injunction, but for also bringing, unwittingly so, to greater public prominence the extremely serious nature of the contents of the Minton Report into the alleged toxic waste dumping off the Ivory Coast.

The text of the postcard to send them could read as follows:

Dear Trafigura,

Thanks for making sure the actions of your lawyers mean I got to hear about your record today, 13th October, 2009.

Previously, I had heard almost nothing about the publication of the Minton report you commissioned on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast. As a result of your injunction against The Guardian, I now know much, much more.

Much obliged,

[Your name]

Fall out from Carter-Ruck

2009-10-14T00:58:00.000+01:00

The BBC news website has been surprisingly low-key in its reporting of the lifting of the gag on the Guardian reporting Parliamentary proceedings in respect of Carter-Ruck clients Trafigura.

This could have something to do with the fact that the very same Carter-Ruck are suing BBC Newsnight over their coverage of the alleged dumping of toxic waste off the Ivory Coast by Trafigura.

The rise of the "super injunctions", which prevent news organisations from revealing the identities of those involved in legal disputes, or even reporting the fact that reporting restrictions have been imposed, are relatively recent phenomenons and publications such as Private Eye have been complaining for months about the mendacious way that "privacy laws" are being perverted to serve the ends of corporations and individuals who want damaging facts kept out of the public domain.

Whilst it was the tabloids who were the first to feel the force of Carter-Ruck, Schillings, et al (presumably protecting philandering football players or celebrities with a penchant for visiting dimly-lit premises in Soho), it is now the more respectable end of Fleet Street feeling the pinch. It is also the massive increase in the use of these super injunctions that is causing concern, as the Guardian reports, the newspaper has been served:

"with at least 12 notices of injunctions that could not be reported so far this year, compared with six in the whole of 2006 and five the year before"

Whilst there has been a clear victory for the forces of free speech in this case, the unusual nature of the gag applying to the reporting of Parliamentary proceedings (which, I believe, the High Court would NEVER have upheld) and the avalanche of protest from Twitter users and bloggers across the world, means that this is very atypical. How many more of these super injunctions are currently in force on matters of real public interest? I don't care about the kiss and tell shockers, but what about the stories of antisocial and potentially criminal activities of major corporations?

At least Carter-Ruck have had the smug smiles wiped off their greedy faces on this occasion. And we also know where to get hold of the Minton Report, which was the report that Trafigura wanted to keep hidden all along....

Contempt of democracy

2009-10-12T22:53:00.005+01:00

The Guardian have been blocked from reporting on the proceedings of Parliament due to an injunction imposed by the courts after action from Carter-Ruck solicitors, the firm specialising in keeping embarrassing facts about their clients out of the public eye.

Carter-Ruck act for Trafigura, a company specialising in "the sourcing and trading of crude oil, petroleum products, renewable energies, metals, metal ores and concentrates for industrial consumers."

Greenpeace has been campaigning to bring to light all the issues surrounding Trafigura's out of court settlement following an alleged dumping of toxic waste off the Ivory Coast. Last Month a United Nations report (the Minton Report) suggested a strong link between at least 15 deaths and the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast. A link that is strongly denied by Trafigura.

It said in a statement after the deal was reached:

“Today’s settlement completely vindicates the position held by Trafigura since the beginning of this litigation. Throughout that time, the company has been the target of an enormous volume of misinformed and defamatory attacks in the media, by Greenpeace and, most recently, the UN Special Rapporteur, who unfortunately carried out no proper analysis of the scientific evidence and rejected Trafigura’s repeated offers to share that evidence with him.”

Now Carter-Ruck have taken the extraordinary step of taking out an injunction against the Guardian from reporting on Parliamentary proceedings. The Guardian cannot even say what the matter relates to, only that Carter-Ruck are the instructing solicitors. A totally bizarre gagging order when anyone can go onto the www.parliament.uk site and find the following question tabled by a Labour MP:

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

This case has serious implications for the ability of the press to report on Parliamentary proceedings and calls into question Lord Denning's ruling in the 1970s that "whatever comments are made in parliament" can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.

UPDATE

Carter-Ruck withdraw their injunction against the Guardian at the 11th hour. Victory to the "court of public opinion" and all the bloggers and twitterers!

Read the latest here.

It's that time of year....so it must be Local Democracy Week!

2009-10-12T20:59:00.000+01:00

This blog entry is part of my contribution to Swansea Council's Local Democracy Week.

Before we kick-off, just a quick introduction from me. If you've never visited my blog before, I should just tell you that it's a mix of political, cultural and personal commentary on the various happenings that affect me, Swansea and the wider world!

I am René Kinzett, the Leader of the Conservative Group on the City & County of Swansea. That means I lead one of the opposition groups and it is my job to pose questions to the people who run the Council and to ensure that the concerns of local voters are put to the Leader of the Council and the other senior Councillors (the Cabinet) who make most of the decisions about what the Council is doing and how it spends local taxpayers' money.

When I was asked to take part in this year's Local Democracy Week, my mind raced back to the activities I have undertaken in previous years, including the "I'm a Councillor Get Me Out Of Here!" event, participating in classroom-based exercises and even speed dating at Swansea College!

Whilst taking part in initiatives such as "Local Democracy Week" are very important in terms of raising awareness amongst residents, of all ages, about the work of their elected representatives, it can be very time consuming and, ironically, can eat into the time that one is meant to be putting aside to actually do the job of "being a councillor".

Therefore, when I realised that the extent of my involvement this year was to keep a blog for a week, I was rather pleasantly surprised. It's not that keeping a blog is easy, nor that it's not time consuming (it is). Simply, I was glad to be asked as I already run an active blog and have done so since April of this year. So to continue to do something I a) already do and b) quite enjoy doing was very welcome indeed.

It also puts me at an unfair advantage to my four colleagues as I alone amongst the five Swansea Councillors taking part in Local Democracy Week blogs actually run a blog already. The only other Councillor in Swansea I know who keeps a blog, at least a well maintained one, is Liberal Democrat Peter Black (who is also an Assembly Member). My only gripe against my political opponents so far is that the Lord Mayor's blog is non existent and the Leader of the Council's blog is so far devoid of any content. Come one guys, get a move on!

I am also one of only two out of the five blogging councillors who work for a living (my views on the unrepresentative nature of the elected Councillors who make up Swansea Council are well known) and therefore my blog will not all be about which Council Meetings I have attended. Much of the work I do as a Councillor tends to be in the evenings and at weekends. I meet with local residents and talk through issues they may want me to take up on their behalf, such as traffic calming measures, investment in our parks or improvements to street lighting.

So, I hope that over the coming week, those of you who are new to the world of local government and who want to find out more about local democracy can find something interesting and useful in what I have to say. My blog is fully interactive and you can leave comments and join in a discussion on my Local Democracy Week entries, or any of the other blogs I have written. You have also keep up with my updates through twitter - something I have also been in trouble for recently!

Cheryl spells it out - the people will decide

2009-10-09T00:48:00.000+01:00

Just arrived home from the Conservative Party Conference. Having attended to the most important issues (Chinese takeaway, wine, BBC Question Time, This Week, etc), I now turn my thoughts to the happenings of the last four days.

The Leader's(excellent) Speech, Boy George Osborne's coming-of-age, sobering message of economic reality, a row-that-never-was over Europe, Champagne, Boris and Grayling...all and more to be discussed over the next few days.

But I wanted to firstly turn my attentions to Wales and the Conservative Party's position on a possible referendum. Before my departure from Swansea on Monday, I blogged on the growing pressures being applied to the Welsh Conservatives (mainly from nationalist extremists) to make our position clearer on a possible referendum for more powers for the National Assembly.

On Thursday morning, Cheryl Gillian made it absolutely clear that if the Assembly were to propose a referendum on new powers, the position of a future Conservative Government in Westminster would leave it for the "people to decide". The Shadow Secretary said she would make her position even more stark in the coming months, but her statement on the Conference floor on Thursday morning was clear for all to understand.

Cheryl's performance over the past few years as Shadow Secretary and her popularity in the Welsh Party and her ability to inspire confidence amongst the Welsh media, increasingly points towards her certain appointment as Secretary of State, with responsibility for Wales, in a Cameron-led government.

The question's the thing

2009-10-04T21:43:00.000+01:00

The political air is buzzing with argument, counter-argument and rumour about the referendum.

But WHICH referendum? The Irish, who have said YES (on the second go - perhaps it ought to be best of three)? The prospect of the British people being allowed to have their say on Lisbon? Or, rather, is it the continuing saga of the referendum on "further powers" for the National Assembly for Wales?

The All Wales Convention is yet to report on its findings (presenting its first draft to WAG next month), but that doesn't stop the nationalists and other devolution extremists from demanding to know what position the Welsh Conservatives will take, despite any questions being totally hypothetical.

The Convention is essentially considering whether or not the current arrangements relating to Legislative Competence Orders, and so on, are appropriate for the future, or whether full law-making powers for the Assembly, within the prescribed list of devolved policy areas, would be more efficacious.

The Convention will report to the Welsh Assembly Government next month. It will then be up to WAG to decide whether to press ahead and hold a referendum on further powers. There is a commitment from the Labour-Plaid coalition running the Welsh Government that a referendum will take place by 2011, asking the people of Wales to decide if they want their National Assembly to have full law-making powers, or not.

What bugs the hell of out me about the nationalist extremist position (as espoused over at Guerilla Warfare) is that they think the Welsh Conservatives should say NOW whether or not they would support a referendum on law-making powers, despite the fact that a) no findings have yet been presented by the Convention; b) WAG would still need to make up their mind as to what options will be considered; c) the referendum will need to be proposed and the question to be asked would need to be debated; and finally d) a campaign on the referendum question will need to be fought.

Given all these ifs and buts, the questions being posed to the Welsh Conservatives leave the realms and hypothesis and are more about mischief-making and political posturing on the part of nationalists feeling already sold-out to the soggy socialism of Welsh Labour - a movement never terribly keen, deep down, on devolution and certainly still openly hostile to independence.

I would suggest that nationalist extremists stick to upping their efforts to keep WAG to its (mostly already broken) promises on healthcare, transport, jobs, housing and economic development.

So bad, it's good

2009-10-02T15:23:00.000+01:00

Posted yesterday re teaser of Boris in the Queen Vic. Well, have since seen more of it. Between Barbara Windsor's gawd 'elp us nonsense and Boris doing an impression of a man with a stick up his butt, I was lost in comic heaven.

I DO hope this will be a regular cameo on the part of Mr Mayor.

The Plan - a review

2009-10-02T13:26:00.002+01:00

I've finally got round to reviewing "The Plan", the book by Daniel Hannan MEP and Douglas Carswell MP, which outlines an agenda to "renew Britain". This review has been published on Wales Home to launch their coverage of the Conservative Party Conference next week, but I have reprinted below in full:

CONSERVATIVE Party policy has been influenced over the past 150 years or so by some great thinkers and political strategists, from Disraeli’s One Nation theory via Hayek’s warnings of “serfdom”, through to Keith Joseph’s monetarist agenda, influenced by Milton Friedman and the Chicago school.

Written by Speaker-slayer Douglas Carswell and NHS-bashing Daniel Hannan, The Plan does not add to the sum of philosophical discourse around the nature of conservatism, but that is not its aim. It does not offer a critique of the tenets shared between the co-authors. Rather, it takes as its starting point a series of assumptions that will be familiar to anyone who knows libertarian politics: an untrammelled belief that the market will always deliver goods and services better than the public sector so long as that market is properly free from government constraint. Another familiar theme is the assumption that the disposition of British Government and politics has never been worse and that nothing other than a radical redesign will rescue the British state from certain failure.

The Plan proposes to bring about a revolution around the following key points: clean up Westminster; devolution of power to the lowest practical level; make public services work for the user; bring foreign and domestic policy in line with public opinion; replace the quango state with genuine democracy; promotion of localism; and the use of referenda.

The Plan gives readers a glimpse of the “failing British state” in the opening pages, painting a picture of underperforming schools, hospitals that infect more than they cure, a crumbling and congested road system, unreliable railways, unbearable airports and unsecured national borders. If the reader manages to escape from the bout of depression that this exaggerated assessment of Britain may induce, then they will be treated to an outline of the prescription that Hannan and Carswell believe will cure the current ills of the nation. That cure is, in short, major surgery on our public services, turning them into market-driven providers, led by consumer demand and needs, and a transplant for our political system that will prove to be a “revolution the like of which this country has never known”. Which does really beg the question as to what the regicide of 1649 was all about.

Readers of this review will know that it comes from a Conservative, and a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate and local councillor at that. But that is some way from being on the libertarian right of the party. The Tories have a proud tradition of reform, in all senses: constitutional, economic and social. While Margaret Thatcher’s government transformed the UK from its 1970s doldrums into a stock market-fuelled and property-owning financial powerhouse, the Tory tradition inspired by Disraeli’s 1867 Reform Act has also had major impact on both the party and the nation. Heath’s decision to take the UK into the EEC, for instance, has had huge effect upon our lives. So many Conservatives do not sign up to the NHS-abolishing, EU-leaving tendencies of The Plan’s authors, and neither does this reviewer.

One interesting theme in The Plan is the consumer interest idea. It’s easy to share the frustrations expressed in the book about a lack of responsiveness or customer service given by many state agencies with which citizens interact on a regular basis. Anyone who has had to endure local authority planning services or has endeavoured to get one’s child into a preferred school will know how deeply irritating it can be to deal with public services, especially as the recession has refocused the private sector upon driving up responsiveness and emphasising customer-oriented service provision.

Not every bank call centre or airline offers a hassle-free service to its customers. But the innovations now being introduced in the public sector (sometimes a little too slowly) originated in the private sector. While it may now be possible to tax a car online or submit end-of-year tax returns at the click of a mouse, it is still difficult to find a universal approach to customer service either across national agencies and, worse still, at local authority level.

The Plan contends that real choice and consumerism in public sector service provision requires (or perhaps would even lead to) a totally different political system, one that questions vested interests, no longer places blind trust in the Whitehall “experts”, and places the citizen at the very heart of decision-making at all levels of government.

Underpinning much of the “new politics” envisaged in The Plan is the concept of localism, the shift of decision-making from the centre to the lowest practical level. While most of us are in favour of devolution and the strengthening of local government, the ideas put forward in The Plan are far more radical. Such is the extent of the authors’ belief in a shift of power away from the centre that they would see county and municipal authorities take control of vast areas of responsibility currently reserved in Whitehall and Westminster, including the social security system.

Viewed at first glance, the suggestion that this country should return to a pre-1911 period of social welfare administration might seem alarming. However, the idea of municipal responsibility for the relief of poverty was a familiar feature of Britain’s political landscape from Tudor times onwards. Allowing local government to deal with issues relating to social security, benefits and unemployment would actually be extremely beneficial. I have long since given up on the ability of local authorities to properly devise and deliver anti-poverty initiatives in their areas, as they have so very little control over the tools that are required to do the job properly. Local government has far more power over our physical environments compared to what it is allowed to do with the social and economic environment. It’s about time we went back to the future on social policy and returned responsibility back to local communities.

There are other areas of real interest within the localism agenda of The Plan, such as the establishment of directly-elected sheriffs, responsible for policing, prosecutions and sentencing policies. All placed together, The Plan envisages that the transfer of power to local authorities will be on a par with the powers given to the Scottish Parliament. Wales, either in terms of local government, or the Assembly, does not get a mention.

What is confusing about the localism agenda is that it draws on experiences in the USA for some of the examples the authors employ to illustrate their proposals. While The Plan assumes that small is beautiful where the state is concerned (and this of course extends to withdrawal from the EU), it excepts the United States on account of its fundamental attachment to decentralisation. However, when arguing for Parliamentary sovereignty over the courts and when pressing for the abolition of the Human Rights Act, the authors seem to forget that the sovereign power within the USA is that nation’s constitution. It sets out the rules of engagement between every level of government within the US and, subject to amendment, the judiciary referees any disputes over its provisions. An outdated and, frankly schoolboy-like attachment to the principle of “Parliamentary sovereignty” seems oddly placed in The Plan, given its other proposals and praise for the US system of government. It also jars with this week’s establishment of the UK Supreme Court, sitting in the old Middlesex County Hall, facing the Palace of Westminster from other side of Parliament Square.

The authors of The Plan do not limit their options to all or nothing, but instead treat anything emanating from the States as an a la carte offering, from which one can pick and choose, preferring some aspects over less agreeable ones, and ignoring Leonard Cohen’s observation that “American is the cradle of the best, and of the worst”.

The localism agenda would strip not just Whitehall of administrative functions. It would also severely limit the responsibility and powers of Parliament in legislative framework and policy oversight. Like Lenin’s plans for the early Soviet Union, The Plan’s authors could be wishing for UK-level politics to “wither in the vine”. Indeed, book envisages a (somewhat distant) future in which the need for full-time Members of Parliament has been done away with, due to the lack of business left for them to transact in Westminster.

In the interim, The Plan calls for a full-scale row back of expenses, both personal and political. Written in the wake of this summer’s scandal, its proposals are understandable, given the public’s high emotions over moat cleaning, duck house building and house flipping. However, now that tempers have cooled somewhat, we have to ask if we really want to end entirely the additional costs allowance and a cessation of funding for opposition parties through short money arrangements? The Plan goes so far down this route that it proposes an end to party political broadcasts and a freepost system for Parliamentary elections, leaving even the most strident anti-political reader to wonder if this level of horsehair-shirtism is entirely necessary. But given that Carswell and Hannan want an eventual end to full-time MPs and their replacement with ‘citizen legislators’, this cutting back on the apparatus of state support for Parliamentarians and their parties seems a logical first step.

Do we really want citizen legislators, however? What do we mean by that? The mind wanders to bucolic scenes of Cromwellian squires, turning up to Westminster to attend to state business, before returning to the peace of their estates. Prior to the remuneration of Members of Parliament, local authorities were responsible for paying their representatives, but this system ended in the mid-17th Century and in its place there developed a complex structure of appointments to various commissions and other bodies which paid salaries, in order to provide the representatives with an income.

Why do the authors want to clear out the career politicians? The argument goes that politicians are held in such low regard that we must now do away with the whole of the Commons. According to Electoral Commission research, MPs are now regarded by the public as a “separate caste”. However, this is not new. In the 1880s, Jerome K Jerome mocked Parliament in his Three Men in a Boat, noting, that when Parliament and the courts fled to Reading in times of trouble, it must be “worth while having a mere ordinary plague now and then…to get rid of both the lawyers and the Parliament”.

One of the most repeated criticisms of the current Parliament is that it is unrepresentative, in gender, ethnicity and social class. It is hard to see how setting the clock back a couple of centuries, to a time when MPs were not financially supported, will deal with this very modern problem.

During the Parliament Bill debate in 1911, the Postmaster-General Herbert Samuel closed for the Government by outlining why he believed that the introduction of salaries for Members of Parliament (a modest £400 per annum) would be a good thing in terms of promoting the efficacy of the House of Commons:

“The House of Lords is more picturesque, the Privy Council contains perhaps a greater number of illustrious names, the Government Departments have within their ranks a greater number of experts on the details of government. But this House is strong, and stronger than all of them all because it is the Commons House, and the more it can be made truly representative of the whole body of the nation, the greater will be its authority for the masses of our countrymen.”

The Plan is an enjoyable read. It outlines clearly and succinctly a vision for a new type of politics in Britain and contains some quite exciting proposals for a most radical shift in power between central and local government. But its proposals for withdrawing from the EU are disagreeable and the concept of rowing back on judicial oversight of government is a regressive move. And its answers as to how MPs are remunerated and how a more representative Parliament should be provided require a more realistic approach. However, as a pick and mix of reforms, The Plan demonstrates that some of the most radical thinking on political, constitutional and social reform is currently being done on the right. The left looks innately conservative and rather timid by comparison.

THAT tackle...

2009-10-02T00:56:00.000+01:00

Whilst we're on the topic of Boris as entertainer, I couldn't resist linking to THAT tackle!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWIUp19bBoA

Boris pops into the Vic

2009-10-01T23:25:00.000+01:00

Fantastic! This is exactly the thing I LOVE Boris for! His delivery of his lines is truly awful and with his awkwardness and self-conscious half-acting makes him indistinguishable from the the actors supping bitter in the Vic! More, please, more!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8283570.stm

Gordo's really cracking under the pressure now...

2009-10-01T00:50:00.002+01:00

Gordon Brown's fury with the media for daring to discuss anything other than his hopeless rehashed and frankly incoherent speech at Labour's Conference, is all to apparent when he was interview by Sky's Adam Bolton. Is this really a man capable of leading the governing party into the next election?

Will it be The Sun Wot Wins It?

2009-09-30T00:19:00.000+01:00

The biggest story of the day tomorrow will be the momentous switch in political allegiance of The Sun newspaper from Labour to the Conservatives. I nearly said "back to" the Conservatives, but the last election in which the nation's most read newspaper last backed the Tories was over 17 years ago now....making it near archaeological in political terms.

The 1992 General Election was characterised by The Sun campaigning hard for John Major to hold on to Number 10, even though the polls consistently predicted a Tory defeat. The famous headline asking "If Neil Kinnock wins, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?", was followed with the self-congratulatory "It's The Sun Wot Won It" front page on the first full day after the election.

Barely five years later, The Sun was appealing to its readers to "give change a chance" and back the new, fresh-faced "New Labour" leader, Tony Blair, for Number 10. This dealt an already failing Tory re-election campaign, under an unpopular Prime Minister, a fatal blow.

Fast forward to the present day and the parallels with 1997, whilst easy to overstate, are all too apparent. The Conservatives have a fresh, new leader, who is popular and gaining ground on key trust and policy issues in opinion polls and in focus groups. Labour had their chance to go with a new Leader both at the time of Blair's departure and during Brown's summer of discontent.

The Labour Party now goes into the next election, barely eight months away, with a discredited leader, lacking in discipline and with the most popular newspaper now supporting the Opposition. A familiar story, which will have an all-too familiar ending for Brown and not-so-new Labour.

Those that know me will not be surprised to learn that I am not an avid reader of The Sun, but I will be buying my souvenir copy later this morning, for sure!

Bankrupts paradise?

2009-09-26T00:59:00.003+01:00

Sky News reports that debt-ridden Europeans are coming to the UK to live and work for the required period of time prior to using our insolvency laws to declare themselved bankrupt, thus clearing their debts in other EU member states.

Whilst some may see this is a yet another "oh my god, time to leave the EU" story, there does not seem to be any harm caused to the UK economy through this practice. Indeed, a company based in Kent is arranging for these bankruptcy tourists to come and live and work in Britain and arranges the necessary legal procedures.

In fact, one City accountant said:

"Most people coming to do this seek to work whilst they're here. They come here looking for work, so they contribute to the economy in some respect."

Whilst the right to reside in the UK for EU citizens is based on our membership, any arguments against allowing this practice needs to be based on a reform of our insolvency laws and not used as yet another spurious "time to leave the EU" argument.

Biggest laugh of the week

2009-09-25T22:30:00.003+01:00

Am touched by the genuine nature of the Lord Mayor of Swansea's comments re the City's bendy buses, but to say that we have a transport network that will be the "envy of the world", is rather pushing it somewhat, even for our first citizen!

I hope that the public investment in new infrastructure and the years of disruption to the city centre is worth it in the end...

Runners and Riders in Carmarthen East & Dinefwr

2009-09-21T21:34:00.008+01:00

Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price this evening notified his local constituency party that he will step down as their candidate for the next Westminster General Election.

Adam tells us that if all goes to plan, Plaid Cymru will be looking for a new candidate in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, a vacancy which the Party will hope to fill sometime within the next six to eight weeks.

The outgoing MP gives us a teaser about the names he has already heard having put their hats into the ring. Well I am on tenterhooks and have been undertaking indpeth research into the matter and have found amongst all the chatter some interesting little gems.

By far the most sparkly gem I heard from a journalist is that newly-appointed Plaid Westminster press chief, Elin Haf Thomas may be being persuaded to have a punt at the nomination. What with Simon having been out of the picture for a while (having departed on grounds somewhat less than voluntarily) and with Adam soon to depart, the young Ms Thomas will certainly win points for adding glamour to the otherwise rather dour PC regiment on the green benches. She also started her job at the height of the expenses scandal and such a successful baptism of fire has certainly not gone unnoticed either by the press corps or the Party's high command.

Also been hearing about some wonderful top flight celebrity candidates, ready to hang up their fame and public adulation, for the life of a Plaid Cymru Member of Parliament. Whilst no celebs have officially been mentioned by name, I was getting a series of nods, winks and nudges when I floated the following names after heavy prompting:

Derek the weatherman - the housewife's choice, the charming Mr Brockway will certainly bring some sunshine into the life of the Party during Adam's year abroad

Owen Money - PC could do with some laughs and a change of music away from those frightful dirges by Dafydd Iwan. Panto season could be kicked off for Owen at Plaid's autmumn conference, too.

Chris Needs - another favourite with the floating voter, the first "big tent" politician, or rather "big garden", Chris will certainly broaden the appeal of the Party.

Lembit Opik - Wales' most eligible bachelor, Mr Opik could quite easily give up on holding Montgomeryshire and the LibDems on account of them both being lost causes and Plaid are sure to see the potential in snapping him up if only to piss the LibDems off even more than usual.

Plaid MP's possible desertion?

2009-09-19T13:09:00.001+01:00

Adam Price, Plaid Cymru's only credible campaigner and orator with any appeal outside of Gwynedd, has announced he is to take a year out in the US as a Fulbright Scholar, prior to contesting a National Assembly for Wales seat in 2011.

I would like to congratulate Mr Price on being accepted on such a prestigious programme.

However, what will happen to Adam's Parliamentary seat whilst he is away? When you look at the programme options for this year, transposing it to the study year 2010/11 it would appear that Mr Price's intentions to stand down from Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, before embarking on his studies in the US, just don't add up. This timetable seems even tighter when you consider his ambition to contest an Assembly seat in 2011.

Could Mr Price clear this up? Will there be a Parliamentary by-election before the General Election (expected in May/June 2010) to enable him to jet off to America in time for the commencement of his studies? Or will he be selected for an Assembly seat and have people campaign for him by proxy before he returns just in time to take up his place in Cardiff Bay? Or, as seems more likely, will he just have a leave of absence from Westminster, still being paid to be an MP whilst in actual fact undertaking studies in the US?

Philosophically challenged

2009-09-16T10:27:00.001+01:00

I am quoted in today's Western Mail in relation to an article about a new text information service for clients of the excellent Swansea Drugs Project.

The service essentially entails texting information to drug users and alcoholics to help keep them as safe as possible and to avoid certain unsafe practices and overdoses. Examples of the messages that might be sent out include:

OVERDOSE: Don’t panic. Put them in the recovery position, dial 999, ask for an ambulance and stay with them until the ambulance arrives;

NEVER SHARE cookers, spikes, spoons or filters. Identify your own works to avoid any mix-ups;

HEP C/HIV – free confidential advice from nurse at Swansea drug project every Wednesday morning.

I think this new service is a welcome initiative and coupled with Swansea Drugs Project's education and awareness programmes, aimed at breaking the cycle of addiction, this service will help to keep drug users as safe as possible.

I am disappointed that LibDem Assembly Member and fellow Swansea Councillor Peter Black has decided to take the opportunity to stoke up some imagined disagreement between Conservative Assembly Member Alun Cairns and I over this matter. Alun is also quoted in the article and nowhere does he say that the service should not be introduced and, like me, he believes that the best outcome for drug users is to end the destructive dependence on narcotics.

I must admit, it didn't help that the Western Mail chose not to publish my quote that I felt that the primary purpose of drugs awareness projects should be to help drug users get clean, but even so I cannot see that any "philosophical" divide exists between Alun and I.

European nonsense again

2009-09-16T00:37:00.001+01:00

The curious case of Mr Edward McMillan-Scott rumbles on. The urbane Tory has served for 25 years in the European Parliament and as a Europhile, he has also repeatedly warned against the dangers of leaving the mainstream European Peoples Party in favour of a new grouping of right-wing parties from various shades of political ideologies.

I cannot say that I am overjoyed with the decision to expel Mr McMillan-Scott from the Conservative Party, as I think he has been making a principled stand in accordance with his genuinely held beliefs and his motivations should be taken into account.

His long service both as a Party Member and as an MEP need to be taken into account, too. His victory in standing for a position as a Vice-President of the Parliament, against the official candidate from the European Conservatives and Reformists bloc, should not count as a reason to expel him from the Party.

I am concerned that Mr McMillan-Scott's point about the Conservative Party joining in with some very dubious people within the European Parliament's (albeit loose political groupings) has not been properly debated within the Party and need much more of an airing.

But, for now, the Conservative Party seems unwilling to call a truce and accept a workable compromise on the issue of our place in Europe in general or the position of our MEPs in the Brussels Parliament in particular.

Socialist Republic - Wales under Plaid

2009-09-13T14:04:00.006+01:00

We all knew that Plaid Cymru's odd mix of socialism and romantic nationalism was the worst mix of left and right wing humbug, but this year's Plaid Conference has thrown into starker contrast the nonsense they spout as against the reality of everyday life for people who live in Wales.

Ieuan Wyn Jones, the man who makes a rural solicitor look exciting, has set out his vision for the Party - which essentially says "we are not who you think we are, we are actually quite sane and not nationalistic or obsessed with the Welsh language and some notion of independence". Unfortunately, Plaid's own polling says that public perceptions are quite the opposite. Plaid have gone from arch-enemies and the real socialist alternative to Labour in Wales, to a party which is now propping up a failing and out of steam Labour government in Cardiff.

I loved the quote from Mr Wyn Jones, when he expresses what people now think of his party: "They think, my God, those people are part of running the country." Never a truer word said, Ieuan, most people still can't quite believe it and those I speak to in Swansea are not very convinced that its a good thing at all!

Plaid are panicking about the likely Conservative general election victory next year. Adam Price, Plaid's only real campaigning firebrand with any appeal outside of Gwynedd, has been on the offensive and labelled Tory Assembly Leader, Nick Bourne, as a man "who betrayed his country" for daring to campaign for a "no" vote in the referendum on Welsh devolution in 1997.

Putting aside the fact that Nick has said that the Welsh Conservatives are committed to supporting a referendum on full law-making powers for the National Assembly, surely any one's decision not to support devolution in 1997 was a perfectly legitimate act of democratic participation and only a socialist republican with no real interest in pluralism in the Welsh polity would seek to describe at a traitorous act? Errrr....yes, so it was!

I really cannot fathom what place narrow, sectional parties like Plaid Cymru have to offer anyone in the UK in the 21st Century. The aim of "independence" for Wales is a pipe dream, shared by only the most committed nationalists, even within Plaid itself. The whole concept is daft, given the interdependence between Wales and England, the European context and the economic backdrop. It's a total non-starter.

What if independence ever came? Would that put Plaid out of a job, remove its raison d'etre? Or would they continue onwards, to create a Socialist Republic, where the politics of economics, choices and real ideological differences are cast aside, to create a state where loyalty is to the idea of the "nation" and where those who oppose this notion are labelled traitors. What a thought, but it is only the logical extension of what Plaid have said this week.

Cutting the cost of politics...or politics on the cheap?

2009-09-11T22:36:00.002+01:00

I am not going to say that David Cameron is wrong to raise the issue of the rising cost of our democracy, especially given the expenses scandal from before the summer.

To come forward with proposals to cut Ministerial salaries by some 25% is, at first glance, rather attractive. But digging deeper, I am left feeling rather uncomfortable. It is very easy for those sitting in comfortable and well-appointed accommodation to make policies about the salaries that others depend on rather more fundamentally for living costs.

Salaries for politicians are a touchy subject. No one would contend that politicians, Minister or otherwise, should be paid at a commensurate level to chief or senior executives of blue chip companies, however much people be drawn in terms of responsibilities.

To "go into" politics is very similar to entering other worlds which require a serious sense of "vocation", such as sports, entertainment, music and so on...where mostly the rewards are modest, but if you make it big the rewards are rather more generous. Think of the book deals, speaking fees, consultancies and so forth that serving and former top-end politicians can rely on and you get the idea. How many other bands started up in Liverpool 50 years ago and thought themselves just as good as Paul and John? How many other 16-year old kids tried out for a Manchester United contract in 1991, only for one boy called David to get the call? Only a few can go on and make it into the premiere league.

My fear is that to talk up the populist argument of cutting the cost of politics - reducing ministerial salaries, cutting back on support for MPs to run a second home - could end up being slippery slope to politics on the cheap. The Commons could be reduced to the seriously committed (or those that really ought to be committed) or the leisured classes.

Sir Patrick Cormack, the grand independently-minded Tory MP, sums it up best "What we do not want in this country is a parliament of political anoraks and extremely rich people".

Children's Services still not improving fast enough

2009-09-10T23:06:00.003+01:00

Swansea Council's Children's and Family Services remains in a precarious position this week as the latest in a series of official visits by the Welsh Assembly Government appointed Intervention Board come to an end.

The Chairman of the Board, His Honour Judge Graham Jones, has written to the Council in no uncertain terms, outlining his Board's concerns about the lack of progress in turning around a crucial service.

Swansea's Children's and Family Service was the subject of a damning report from the CSSIW in 2007, a re-inspection in 2008 found that there was still much work to do to rectify the problems identified and the Deputy Minister decided this year to appoint an Intervention Board to help drive up standards. This was the first ever such appointment in Wales under the Children's Act 1989 and only the second time the powers had been used anywhere in the UK.

The Board told the Authority in the letter discussed at the Council Meeting this evening that:

"The intervention board believes some progress has been made. The board also believes the issues facing the council can be resolved. The pace of change, however, is not adequate.

"While the board does not expect all tasks to be completed fully in a very short time, it does expect to receive clear and firm evidence that the authority-is moving in the right direction.

"The authority, therefore, needs to show far more urgency and accelerate, in particular, its resolution of organisational problems and staffing issues."

There has been a welcome improvement in terms of cross-party working on the issue, but the lack of real and speedy progress is a real worry for all of us on Swansea Council. Whilst all 72 Councillors are "corporate parents" for all of our looked after children and those we are trying to safeguard, it remains a fact that in Cabinet-style local authorities, some Councillors are more responsible than others.

Keep Thursdays Special!

2009-09-07T19:47:00.006+01:00

I am supporting the cross-party campaign to keep alive a wonderful British tradition - election night!

The traditional form of counting votes in the UK at general elections has been for all constituencies (well, virtually all - there are very few exceptions, for instance, in very rural areas) to count up the votes cast and declare the results from soon after polls close (at 10pm) until whenever the Returning Officer, in consultation with the candidates and agents, feels able to declare a result. Depending on the size of the constituency and the efficiency of those counting the votes, declaration times can vary between about 11.30pm and 3.30am, or thereabouts.

Proposals from a growing number of local authorities (who are responsible for the organising of elections) have now put at risk this traditional way of voting and instead will see election counts not held until the morning after voting has taken place. This will end the excitement of election night and will delay the outcome of the general election quite unnecessarily.

The British system of government has not needed a "handover period" from one administration to the next, British Government continues without pause and the prospect of whoever is Prime Minister early in the morning on election day having to tender their resignation sometime during the early morning of the day after (with perhaps three hours rest in between), with the next PM driving up the road to the Palace in hot pursuit, is a wonderful end to election night drama. The smaller stories of victory and loss are also well played out during election night....where were you when Portillo lost?

Jonathan Isaby of Conservative Home has put the arguments for keeping the traditional election night count much better than I in a few short paragraphs (his full article can be found here):

We want to know who won as soon as possible. Quite simply, once the polling stations have closed I want to know the result as soon as possible, and I imagine most activists and candidates who have been pounding the streets for a month feel the same way, as well as voters who have cast their ballots. And this argument holds on two levels. Firstly, on a constituency level, but more significantly on a national level: if the general election is going to be close, then it is possible that if lots of seats are not counting until Friday - especially marginals - then we will not know who is going to be Prime Minister, form the Government etc until Friday lunchtime.

It would be a backward step. In the digital 24-hour media age when we are used to getting news quicker than ever before, it would be a backward step to delay election counts. If anything, we should be seeking to persuade the few constituencies which historically count on a Friday to bring their counts forward to Thursday night.

Fewer people will be able to follow the results coming in. Sitting around the television into the early hours is an election night ritual for people across the land, many of whom do not perhaps follow politics as closely as some of us. But if there are fewer results to announce - and the potential of not getting a national result to boot - they are less likely to bother tuning in and when the remaining constituencies declare and the national result becomes apparent on the Friday, anyone at work is not going to be able to witness the climax of the electoral process.

The TV coverage of the election will suffer. The outside broadcasts (OBs) at counts up and down the country have provided many a memorable moment over they years, and they bring the results to life. However, the reason why broadcasters are able to provide such a variety of OBs is that there is no other call on the satellite trucks and outside broadcast units during the night. If there were an increasing number of counts on Friday during the day, fewer of them would have cameras present, thereby reducing the ability of the broadcasters to give full coverage of the results.

It's a tradition, dammit. The traditional British way of doing elections is to have people come out to vote and then count the ballot papers immediately afterwards. It's how we do it and what we're used to.

Threats to the integrity of the ballot. Security is a less important concern, but worth a mention all the same - I am just a little uncomfortable about increasing millions of ballot papers being left overnight before being counted.

I have already written to my own Council's Chief Executive and he has assured me that Swansea's three Parliamentary Constituencies (Swansea East, Swansea West and Gower) will be counted from when polls close through the night. I am very pleased with this and I hope that other local authorities across the UK follow suit.

I would urge anyone wishing to find out more about the campaign to save election night to join the Facebook Group, which has been founded with cross-party support.

You take the high road...

2009-09-07T14:43:00.005+01:00

WAG Ministers have been caught out in a classic case of "do as we say, not as we do" when it comes to the use of the motorcar.

The Labour/Plaid coalition bosses have been so keen to get around the country electioneering in the run up to 2010 (sorry, I mean attending vitally important openings of envelopes and anything else where there might be a local newspaper article or even a BBC Wales news 5 minute piece) that in 2008 Ministers travelled some 214,376 miles in their limos – almost double that from the previous year.

The prospect of these pampered Ministers being shuttled around Wales in comfy leather seated cars whilst the rest of us contend with inadequate public transport is undoubtedly a source of embarrassment for a Government which preaches environmental sustainability and pays lip service to public transport - or at least bullies the rest of us into using buses and trains that are overcrowded, overpriced and unreliable.

Sure, some use of Ministerial limos is unavoidable if diaries are to be adhered to and our Ministers aren't to arrive at official meetings feeling as dishevelled and stressed as I normally do when grappling with a journey by public transport. However, there must be cost savings to be found and the 62% increase in miles travelled by limo by Ministers between 2005 and 2008 shows that this little perk may be being just a little misused.

UPDATE

BBC Wales online picks up on the story....

I am told that there is more to come on Wednesday, apparently.

Missed the bus...

2009-09-05T19:19:00.004+01:00

...but not the opportunity to splash a sales-swelling headline.

The Evening Post declared across its front page today "Bus hero saves passengers after driver collapses at wheel", in relation to the story that got national radio and TV coverage about the 73 year old bus driver who suffered some sort of blackout whilst working.

I had no idea the incident happened in Swansea and was only assured it hadn't when I got to the fourth paragraph when I read that the 30 year old hero of the moment had come from Swansea but had lived in Manchester for many years....and it was in Manchester where this unfortunate incident occurred.

I know that Swansea may not be the most exciting place on earth, but with hugely important issues such as the City's Children's & Family Services on the brink of being taken over by the Welsh Assembly Government and news that the local health trust has some 73 vacancies for doctors which are not being filled, one might have thought that there were more pressing matters for the Evening Post to be filling its front page headlines about.

Now for change

2009-08-31T16:16:00.002+01:00

Conservative progressives from Sir Robert Peel through to David Cameron are celebrated and saluted in this rather nice 8 minute video launched by the Conservatives.

The video has been released as part of Conservative History Week and more images and materials can be found on the Conservative Party website.

Having visited the Conservative Party Archive at the Bodleian last year, I have to say that the Party really does know how to conserve its past and values its heritage, which is a great thing, speaking as a lobbyist for the archives sector. However, the Party also, more importantly, knows how to use this wealth of information and shared corporate memory to great effect.

The Conservatives are Europe's oldest and most successful political party for one simple fact: the ability to adapt. This does not mean jettisoning long-held beliefs and values (like Labour and Clause IV), it does not mean endless name changes and hopeless re-brands (like the LibDems - or SLDs or Liberals, or SDP, etc). It means that the urge to conserve and cherishing what is good in society is balanced by a strong tradition of progressive, reforming tendencies which seek to improve the lives of the less well off and to share wealth and power more equitably amongst those who have faced vested interests or the abuse of power by others.

I also visited Chartwell over the bank holiday weekend and can highly recommend this pilgrimage to anyone with an interest in the life and times of Sir Winston Churchill. I was heartened to see that much space was given over in the various exhibition areas of the house to Churchill's time as a Minister in the Liberal Government under Campbell-Bannerman and then Asquith and his phenomenally successful partnership with Lloyd George, who with whirlwind force worked together to introduce Old Age Pensions, National Insurance a more equitable and progressive taxation system and other improvements to health and social welfare. Churchill's commitment to social reform stood him in good stead when he returned to the Conservative fold under Stanley Baldwin's Premiership and when Churchill himself at last became Prime Minister and Party Leader, he committed the Conservatives to supporting lasting social reforms and even got the Party to support the NHS, prior to his return to power in 1951.

I think that many people will sneer at the idea of the "Conservative Progressive", but it is an indisputable fact that so many of the social and political reforms which have benefited this country since the early 19th Century have either come from or been supported and protected by the Conservative Party.

Whither Democracy in Doncaster?

2009-08-24T16:16:00.006+01:00

Having only late last night blogged about the potential for reforming how we select local government candidates in Wales in an effort to create a more representative body of elected councillors, I stumbled upon this article in the Daily Express (the paramilitary wing of the Daily Mail and NOT my choice daily reading matter) about cutting down on the number and improving the quality of councillors...something we should all be interested in debating.

But then I read on....and it got much, much worse.

This man sounds like an utter git. English Democrat/BNP sounded much the same to me when I saw their Party Political Broadcast in June.

As for the Mayor's wish to "get rid of two thirds" of the borough's councillors and just allow him and his "cabinet of six people" to run the place, whither accountability? To whom would the Mayor and his six mates be answerable in terms of setting budgets, how will decisions be properly scrutinised? Most importantly, how will Mr Mayor and his stooges be grilled in public, to defend their actions? No, the whole thing in this case smacks of provincial fascism. A "democracy is too expensive" argument that panders to the Daily Express readership's prejudices that all politicians do is to fight amongst themselves.

Tell you what, on that logic, just let a one-party state run the UK from Whitehall with a directly-elected PM and a dozen cabinet ministers, no need for all that shouting and bickering in the Commons, its only a waste of money and all that do is argue amongst themselves.

There is a big debate to be had about the quality of our local councillors, action needs to be taken to attract candidates from a wider range of backgrounds. I have been in trouble for daring to say that the Welsh local government scene resembles a scene from Jurassic Park, only just a little less entertaining. However, if we are going to seriously debate having few councillors (which as an overall aim I do not have a problem with), we must approach it from the premise that the work that councillors SHOULD do IS important and that we need to find ways of helping them execute their duties better.

We also need to ensure that those who now hold these executive roles in local government (whether a directly-elected mayor or the Leader & Cabinet) that the role of backbench and opposition members are valued, properly resourced and that the principles of checks and balances and executive power being held to account in a representative democracy prevails.