A Wooden Spoon for the WRU

Sorry all, my dissertation is overwhelming me at the moment so ill have to take a break for a week or so, in the interim I shall leave you with my doodle of what a Welsh Parliament logo might look like. With a title of, “Is There Any Major Conceptualisation Of Democracy That Can Be Justifiably Applied To The European Union.” You can understand why there is a certain amount of doodling going on.

I’ll have a purge on notable stories when I return, I also hope to try and analyse in the light of this story, whether Welsh nationalism is automatically republican. But I’ll leave it at that for now.

Wish me luck

Taffia Don

In this episode of my series recording embarrassing faults with new buildings of devolved authorities we shall look at, the Senedd.

It appears that there was a patriotic option of leek’s (I mean leaks but this will help explain the title better) in the ceiling.

Not entirely sure what is going on, but I suggest that if there is a problem with water gathering on the roof during rain, a) move the building to a less saturated country, or b) have some one flushing the loo’s constantly in order to empty the grey water reservoirs and allowing swifter drainage of the roof.
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On a slightly lighter note, the BBC uses this picture to accompany its article, now I am assuming that this is a picture taken within the Senedd and not just one they have on file. Now my question is does this ‘Wet Floor’ sign conform to the assembly’s bilingual policy?

Aunty has reported today that the police are to start rolling out a new ‘101’ non emergency number to try and elevate the pressure on the ‘999’ service due to inappropriate calls (e.g. asking for directions etc…).

Now I’ll admit that this will probably vindicate my brother’s position that he has held for several years about having a non-emergency number (he suggested ‘888’).

But I can’t help agreeing with critics who say that this new number should be a free phone number, instead there will be a 10 pence charge for reporting misdemeanours, I think that there are ample funds to cover such expenditure. Especially as these crimes will most likely be given a low priority as a result and therefore not result in any prosecutions but merely contribute towards the compiling of the statistics.

However, there is one thing that I would be interested to know, if the ‘101’ number reduces the strain on ‘999’ emergency numbers, will ‘101’ encourage more irrelevant and inappropriate calls, which could tie up the operators just as much as non emergency ‘999’ calls as I expect that all these calls will go to the same control room.

I predict long waits if you use this number, as ‘999’ will have the priority and they’ll answer these calls when they have a spare moment.

The ban on exporting British beef stock, has finally been lifted by the EU.

Interestingly though there appears to be an attempt to brand Welsh beef separately to British beef, I doubt these are done for purely patriotic reasons and I suggest that they are trying to place Welsh beef (deservedly) into a niche market, of high quality food products, and secondly to avoid the negative connotations that will now accompany British Beef (wrongly) around the world. Allowing faster market penetration by Welsh beef.

Regardless of the reason I’m glad that Welsh goods are now growing in prestige around the world, and hope that we can retain the brand of Wales/Welsh for high quality goods regardless of their market sector.

I hope that every one will keep an eye out for Welsh beef and give it a go.

President Bush has in the past three days has indicated his incompetence in the post of president.

Firstly, the video conference images showing that experts including those from F.E.M.A. explaining that Hurricane Katrina was likely to break the levy’s and therefore flood New Orleans. All these warnings were received with blasé interest from Bush, no emergency evacuation was ordered no additional preparations were made for this eventuality.

The revelation of this video also shows that Bush has lied on several occasions to cover up his inadequacies a cover up which has seen the resignation / removal of the head of F.E.M.A. trying to indicate that the lack of preparations was his fault, while the video shows that he was one of the few that were trying to explain to the President that the Levy’s were going to break.

An absolutely disgusting situation, which he should be reinstated immediately.

Secondly, there is the new agreement reached either yesterday or today with India with regard to its civil nuclear programme. This is absolutely disgusting especially if you consider his position towards Iran.

He is allowing nuclear technology to be given to India regardless of the fact that they have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Where as he forbids Iran having Nuclear technology despite guarantees from the Iranians that they want it solely for civil power, remembering that India has Nuclear weapons, despite the fact that Iran has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

How can we explain this difference? Logic fails me, but this contrary approach will add to the speculation that Bush is treating Muslim nations as second class in the international regime.

The invasion of Iraq, the exploitation of its Oil fields, the withholding of legitimate technology from Iran, will all be lumped together as anti-Muslim action by the President of the United States of America.

This perceived overriding of Muslims will lead to greater alienation and increased distain for the country that could result in further terrorist action against the US which again will be displayed as unprovoked attacks, when clearly there is provocation that is self evident.

Yesterday Campbell delivered his first speech (apart from acceptance speech). He has swiftly set out key areas of policy; Fighting poverty; civil liberties; anti – ID; internationalisation; rule of law (international); anti centralism; and, environmentalism.

In trying to claim back liberal territories he said this, for “Liberal principles and liberal policies, there is one choice, to vote Liberal Democrat.” In fact reclaiming Lib Dem areas on the political spectrum was very effective without crassly attacking any other party or leader.

Campbell stated that his aim was further progress in the next local elections, I didn’t quite catch when they were going to be held, so I don’t know how much time he has to stamp himself onto the party before having to fight an election campaign so it is a distinct possibility that Kennedy might be drafted in to show continuation if the elections are sooner rather than later.

At this point I would say that Campbell made the one major mistake of his speech, his “I know where you live” remark was a poor joke of no relevance to the speech, or any thing he had to say for that matter. Unfitting for a party that promotes itself on liberal values and opposes the ID card scheme to sound so like the secret police, a poorly considered joke that should not have made it to the final draft of the speech.

He moved swiftly on to decentralisation, I think I caught a reference to greater devolution for Wales and Scotland in there but I was by no means explicit. But if it was such then it is certainly welcomed by this Welshman.

One thing that he did fall down on though was his assertion that the Lib Dem must be “representative of the UK not just represent” I would argue (I do International relations aka politics) that it is not the job of a representative to be the embodiment of the constituents (as this is impossible) but to be representative of the constituents is the important thing. Being accessible, Campbell in this speech put so much emphasis on developing or promoting good ideas it’s a shame that he does not support a meritocracy within his own party. It is my opinion that political representatives or prospective representatives (of all parties) should be the best person for the job, not just put forward to give the right statistics, we as citizens want competent leaders and representatives not ones that look like us, sound like us or are the embodiment of ourselves.

His determination to have representative representatives (as they shall be known here in) contradicts the next segment of his speech, as he announced a new acronym (that’s wrong word but I can’t think of the correct one) in: SOR meaning Skills, Opportunity, and Resources. As he stated the intention of a fund specifically for the purpose of women and ethnic to have support running for nominations. A point that I disagree with (see previous paragraph).

Then came his next subtle assault on Cameron, saying that the Lib Dems must continue to have the best ideas, and promoting open minds rather than open necks. A point that is hard to argue against. Reinforcing his argument and placating the party by stating that the party will not be changing its values and principles, values and principles that are proving to be increasingly popular I will add.

Again as I previously mentioned with regard to the next local elections he clearly defined the aim of the party this time a long term aim, to “move from a position of competence to a position of power,” and stating unambiguously that “nothing less will satisfy him”

All-in-all a strong speech from Campbell.

The Senedd was opened on Saint David’s Day (1st of March to avoid confusion) much to the miss of the London media. It’s a fact that most of us have known for a long time that Welsh affairs have been constantly overlooked by the London based press, normally this manifests itself in the fact that there are no Welsh rugby results in the newspapers or reports about welsh rugby on the television, the Welsh national football team being repeatedly overlooked for any comment on the news.

However, yesterday the lack of reports regarding the opening of the Senedd building was just shocking, possibly the biggest event in Britain was overlooked by bigoted London based media that persist in diminishing the importance of all events outside the London or the South East.

It is this that will effect the aim of nation building that is necessary for Wales to conduct now, if the only press coverage of Wales and Welsh politics is in the negative, and all unifying forces for Wales is ignored in favour of the wardrobe of the HM Queen, and the greeting that she gave to HRH the Princess of Wales.

We must now in Wales push for Welsh based media – an area that the internet has partially informed, but there still needs to be Welsh based newspapers on a par with The Scotsman, that is to educate and inform the Welsh people on Welsh affairs.

£431 million, and still that hasn’t bought quality, I would be melodramatic and say Conservative MSPs were nearly decapitated, but that would be a factual inaccuracy.

What really happened is that a roof rafter came loose from its securing and swung free above the heads of the MSPs nearly smashing the glass pain that was in proximity.

Lets’ hope that the AMs have better fortune, otherwise they might find themselves playing hoopla with the wooden trim.