Blog Standard

A strange email arrived in my in-box this morning out of the blue, entitled "GUIDANCE FOR MEMBERS ON WEBSITES FUNDED THROUGH THE OFFICE COSTS ALLOWANCE".

As far as I can tell, this is an attempt to shut down AM’s blogs like this one. I assume that even by writing this I am breaking these new and bizarre and unnecessary ‘guidelines’.

I understand that this edict flows from the Assembly Commission (I had to ask, because no one explained) and as far as I am aware, not one of my Assembly colleagues, of any party, was consulted on this change. As such this decision has by-passed the democratic process.

The idea that a politician’s blog or website should be apolitical is fundamentally absurd. Apart from anything else, the Assembly produces, twice a week, a taxpayer funded ‘Record’ of plenary business which is loaded with party political debate. If this decision is allowed to stand we will be in the ludicrous position of having comments by AMs banned in blog form, while they are freely available on the Assembly’s own website.

In my view, if a comment is allowable in plenary – it should be allowable in blog form. Perhaps we should be consistent in our logic and rule ‘political’ comments in the chamber out of order! No doubt we could engage the nation with fascinating discussions of the weather or the sports results instead.

This is also an unworkable proposal. What would happen, for instance to internet ‘links’? If I linked to a comment piece in the Guardian, or another politician’s speech – would that be banned?

What happens if a constituent of mine leaves a politically minded ‘comment’ on the blog? Do I erase it?

To reduce the web presence of AMs to a list of surgery dates and smiley photo opps – would not just make our websites boring (and faintly sinister, in a comment free, Eastern Bloc sanitised sort of way) it would damage the shot in the arm that blogging has given the Welsh body politic.

The commission must withdraw this proposal now and consult with the people who were elected to this place to speak out – not sit mute.

Devo-sceptic?

As a politician you get used to being called some strange things, but I was surprised to be described as a "devo-sceptic" in this week's Wales on Sunday. It is a tag which I have challenged the paper to justify given that: I actively campaigned for devolution in Wales and Scotland; chose to stand in successive Assembly elections – and have recently started a campaign to bring more powers on public transport to Wales through my Legislative Competence Order.

Added to this, I am committed to a future referendum on further powers, which is the right and proper way to develop the devolution settlement.

Frankly, I think I pass the test as a pro-devolutionist better than most! Indeed, the first leaflet I remember delivering was for the "yes" campaign in 1979. With that evidence in mind, you might say I'm devo-sceptic, the same way as the pope is agnostic.

I'm sure journalists and commentators come up with these labels like "devo-sceptic" or "Brownite" to help their readers, but just as often they confuse and distort.

Myfanwy Theatre Launch

I spent yesterday evening at the gala opening of Merthyr College’s new ‘Myfanwy Theatre’. £750,000 from the Assembly has created a state of the art 200 seat theatre primarily for the use of Merthyr students, as well as being a great asset for the town as a whole. The performance last night was just the beginning of what I am certain will be a long series of great events showcasing the talent of our young people in particular.

But we have to regard this development as just that – a beginning. Merthyr has been starved of Arts investment pretty much ever since there has been such a thing. This valuable step forward must be followed by others – most importantly the much discussed Arts Centre promised to the town. I know that Dai Smith, the Arts Council Chair, has given his full backing, but to get the best possible provision for performance and visual arts, as well as space for arts and culture based businesses we need to plan this well. It is essential that the University of Glamorgan, Arts Council and Merthyr Council work as one to deliver the best.

Even then we will have barely scratched the surface of what is possible. There is a huge reservoir of untapped potential for the arts in our community – whether you’re talking about artists and performers themselves, the technicians that will make it all happen – or the rest of us – a huge potential audience which has been denied local access to a night out at the theatre since the closure of the Theatre Royal.

Ah, yes – the Theatre Royal- I haven’t forgotten about that one, either. This gem of a building (if you’ve ever been inside you’ll know how beautiful this could be if restored) has only 2 possible futures – we can watch it slowly fall to bits, or we can invest in it and care for it as part of our heritage.

My suggestion would be to hand it over to the student body of the new University campus coming to Merthyr – to run, manage, train and perform in. It could also be a regular venue for the WNO, NOW, the new English Language Theatre company for Wales, as well as popular nights out (panto, anyone?).

If Merthyr is to become the regional capital of the heads of the Valleys, we have to act like it – providing quality entertainment venues is an essential part of that.

In lobbying for all these developments over the last 8 years I have hit at every turn the ‘yes, but it’ll never work in Merthyr’ brigade. They are closely allied to the ‘OK let’s have a small investment, but nothing too ambitious – it’s only Merthyr’ clan.

Sod them all, I say.

If we build these things, Merthyr people will respond. Valleys people will respond. They are the victims of underinvestment over decades, not the cause of it. We can set free their talent. Just ask the drama students at the Myfanwy Theatre.

Reversing the Decline

The Office for National statistics have just released the latest overview on Wales’s population statistics showing a steady growth in the national population – we should be breaking through the 3 million mark some time in the middle of this year.

Drilling down into the statistics gives us a crude but useful look at how the various parts of Wales are doing in the prosperity league. The population is growing fast in Cardiff, the Vale and Newport, while attractive rural areas like Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire show the same trend. It’s no surprise, then, that the least prosperous local authority areas (the Valleys plus Flintshire) show a pretty static picture with Merthyr and Blaenau Gwent showing an actual drop in population between 2001 and 2006 (by 1.3% and 1.0% respectively).

While this is a slow down in population decline for Merthyr (and in actual numbers, shows a loss of about 700 people from 2001-06), it is not, of course, good news. The truth is that if Torfaen, RCT and Caerphilly can turn decline into growth, then so should Merthyr.

I’m sure there would be as many prescriptions for halting this decline as there are bloggers on the internet, but this is my blog, so here are mine:

1. The economic regeneration measures Labour is taking forward are having an effect. They must be continued. Programmes like Want2Work are crucial. So is the Heads of the Valleys Programme – although the resources allocated to the HoV team should be boosted.


2. Infrastructure projects must go ahead unhindered and as quickly as possible. The prevarication over the dualling of the A465 must be properly exposed and ended. The ½ hourly train service from Cardiff to Merthyr must be introduced within the next few months. We’ve committed the cash – the engineering is almost done – it waits only for the go ahead from the Transport Minister.


3. Quality of life measures like the new sports centre will positively impact on confidence in the area, as well as people’s civic pride. The promised new Arts Centre must be completed, and be of sufficient scale to signal a turning point. Over to you, Rhodri Glyn Thomas.


4. The appalling skills level in the community, as well as the ‘leakage’ of the 16-24 age group must be pushed back further. Welsh Labour’s commitment to make Merthyr and Ebbw Vale ‘University Towns’ should be fast tracked as urgent WAG priorities.


5. Our promised new primary care hospital, which will make inroads into Merthyr’s chronic ill-health statistics, must be opened within 18 months to 2 years.


6. Community based programmes must be allowed to run their course with sufficient resources – Communities Next must be given its head and Credit Unions must grow.

All these things are in the pipeline and can be delivered in this Assembly term. The only thing required is the political will.

Masses against the classes?

It’s rare to hear a politician of any party use the term ‘working class’ these days. Why is that? Is it true that ‘we’re all middle class now’ or is there something else going on?

My grandfather, a miner, would unhesitatingly have described himself so. So would my dad, despite being a white-collar engineer. And even though my lifestyle has next to nothing in common with the daily struggle faced by my granddad George, raising a family in the 30’s and 40’s – so, strangely enough, would I.

In my case, I’d still use the term to describe my outlook and values – a lifelong mindset learned in childhood, and relearned with new perspective through encountering the ‘real’ middle class at University and thereafter through my working life. I represent a constituency that is almost homogenously ‘working class’ and I am acutely aware of the distinctiveness of that cultural outlook, as well as the virtues it endows on a community. There is also no getting away from the restrictions that identity imposes – not through the limitations of the people of Merthyr & Rhymney, but because of the pigeon hole they are stuffed into by the stereotyping of others.

Given that, according to the Guardian, 53% of British people still regard themselves as ‘working class’ – and that that total must be considerably higher in Wales – why is, in particular, Welsh Labour so shy of using the term, and appealing to the values that identity engenders?

Well the conventional wisdom is, of course, that Labour must break out of any ‘core’ base in order to win a coalition of voters big enough to win and election. Now this is of course true, and is something that didn’t just dawn on the party on the election of Tony Blair – Keir Hardie was doing this stuff, too. Building an alliance of progressive people regardless of social background is what the Labour Party always fights for – even if sometimes we have lost our way a little (like back in the dark days of the 80’s).

What give me deep cause for concern, however is the still (largely unaddressed) message being sent to Welsh Labour by the electorate at last May’s Assembly election – where we lost votes all over Wales - but nowhere nearly so badly as in the ‘core’ areas of the Valleys. With local elections on May 1st, traditional Labour supporters will be assailed everywhere by press hysteria on immigration, questions over our integrity on equality (re. taxing the super-rich) and in some areas by BNP hate-mongers. This, coupled with Lib Dem and Nationalist opportunism, ‘People’s Voice’ jibber-jabber and Tory resurgence will make these elections a door-by-door trench war.

But the real cause, to my mind, of core-vote disillusionment is delivery. Those hospitals still on track – but taking too long to refurbish or build, likewise school improvements, road building and train service re-vamping, action on child poverty, upskilling our workforce, low pay and agency workers rights. It’s all happening, alright. It will all be delivered by British and Welsh Labour – but the voters have told us clearly – it’s not enough and its too slowly done.

Labour is the party for progressive people, whether or not they think of themselves as ‘working class’. But one thing we should never forget – part, perhaps the larger part, of our ‘core’ purpose is to deliver for core communities, because to do so is inherently progressive, and to fail to do so is to walk away from the biggest, most consistent (and most patient) social force for progress Wales and Britain have ever seen. The working class. Lose permission from the electorate to deliver in the Rhondda or Rhyl, and you lose it everywhere.

Well done, Darling!

With the welter of press coverage of Alistair Darling’s first budget beginning to wane, now is a good time to take a cool-headed look at what he delivered. The media consensus, as near as one could define such a thing, seems to have settled on this being a ‘dull’ budget. I am not sure what this means, unless commentators are suggesting that politicians are meant to somehow be entertaining, as well as competent in their brief. Well I’m going to ignore that – in the sincere belief that if you want entertainment, you should tune into the ‘X Factor', not the budget coverage.

The measures that stood out for me, and that were anything but ‘dull’ were those impacting on child poverty. This budget will lift an extra 500,000 children out of poverty. That’s roughly 25,000 in a Welsh context. Dull? Only if you are (i) Not a child in poverty (ii) Not the parent of a child in poverty or (iii) You don’t care about the people mentioned in (i) or (ii).

Insofar as this historic piece of progressive politics was noticed at all it was simply as a way of illustrating that at the present rate of decline in the poverty statistics, Labour is on course to miss it’s 2010 target to halve the numbers of children in this life-stunting situation.

Targets are important – and we should strive to meet them – and commentators should, indeed, point out if they are not met. But let’s also do two other things as well:

Firstly – pay tribute to the progress made. In Wales, the 200,000 kids we started with in 1999 is down to around 170,000 now. These measures will bring us down to about 145,000 ( from 1 in 3 to more like 1 in 5). Labour delivered this.

Secondly – recognise that Labour delivered this almost alone. Big socially progressive measures like this should rely on allies in civil society backing the argument and giving support. These allies have been thin on the ground – which makes political progress on an issue which most journalists find ‘dull’ (i.e. irrelevant, as far as their agenda is concerned) – bloody difficult.

That’s why I’ve been so heartened but the joint working of the Bevan Foundation and Save the Children on this issue. They are starting to articulate the case that in order to get these numbers down its not enough to be a spectator, throwing rocks at Mr Darling – you have to get stuck in yourself. Herein being the lesson for WAG.

If Westminster gets us down to 145,000 children in poverty by 2010, what can WAG do to bring the numbers down further and perhaps actually hit the 100,000 target by 2010?

Well WAG has its implementation plan which I hope will help, because I wrote it. I sincerely believe that two measures alone from that plan – benefit take up campaigns and action on personal debt, would of themselves alone lift thousands of Welsh kids out of the statistics. The rapid actioning of the other elements of the plan over the next year or so gives us a chance of moving from spectating in the stands, to playing on the pitch.

I don’t care if people think Alistair Darling is ‘dull’, and neither should he. He’s a politician, not a song and dance artist. They called Attlee ‘dull’. Thousands upon thousands of working class families recognised a debt of gratitude to Clement’s politics – not his repartee. Maybe Darling will be able to claim something similar. But only if we back him. And that ‘we’ includes WAG.

St David’s Day – The People’s Holiday?

The case for St David’s Day to become a national holiday in Wales now has such universal backing, that it must be a case of "when" and "how" as opposed to "if". What other cause can you think of that unites Cerys Matthews and the Tory leader Nick Bourne – or Brace’s the bakers with leading teaching unions?

Scottish politicians, as is too often the case, seem to have beaten us to the punch and found a way of introducing St Andrew’s Day to the calendar without too many objections. I hope we will not be far behind in introducing a similar change here in Wales.

The idea that St David’s Day should become, indeed will become, a national holiday sooner rather than later got me thinking about the day itself and how we celebrate it. Like any Saint’s Day celebration, St David’s Day is an odd concoction of events related to the fragments we know or believe about the man himself. It’s a day which currently touches few people in a meaningful way outside our schools.

We may have an extra spring in our step, as we sport our leeks or daffs on the way into work, or if we are lucky enough to be given time to participate in a St David’s Day march – but so much of the day is tied to a small and distant part of our history that it feels that a great swathe of the national story we should be celebrating is missing.

Whilst the traditional elements of celebration: the bardic traditions, the Welsh dancing, the costumes and the lives of our saints have a place at the heart of a national holiday; that is not where our national story ends.

If we have a national holiday for St David’s Day, I’d like it to mean more and reach more people than it does today. It should reflect modern Wales too, and our more recent history.
The Scottish TUC for example support St Andrew’s Day as a day to celebrate Scotland’s diversity of cultures, faiths and ethnic origins – I would like us to do much more in this regard.

Like the Trade Unions, one of the most important reasons I support a St David’s Day national holiday is because I think our workforce deserve another day off. It is well documented that the number of our public holidays lags behind our European neighbours, many of which also manage to achieve greater productivity rates. It is equally well-known that workers here suffer more and more from anxiety, depression and stress which can lead to the direst of consequences.

The economic arguments against another public holiday do not hold water either when you consider the inevitable boost to the tourist industry. And anyway what kind of a progressive country are we if we allow the welfare of our workers to be second best in a debate such as this?

It is because it is the working people of Wales who deserve an additional holiday that I think the working people of Wales – and their history – deserve more of a starring role on our national holiday. Some of the most famous words attributed to St David speak of the importance of "doing the little things" – and I could think of no better phrase which could apply to the generous, giving spirit of our working class communities across the breadth of Wales. Whether we think about those who have worked on the land in Anglesey, the quarrymen of Snowdonia, or the miners of the Valleys – there are working people with a story to tell. Surely our national holiday of St David’s Day should be the day to do it.


This is not a renewed pitch for a bricks and mortar home for the new collection of People’s History being assembled by the National Museums and Galleries of Wales – though that remains an important campaign – but many of the arguments are the same. Perhaps we still feel too close to many of the heroic and tragic elements of our modern history to properly celebrate their radical and original nature – but we should be more confident.

We should square the cultural inheritance of St David’s Days past with the culture that is in reality common to working people in Wales – and recognise their long and continuing struggle to achieve the Good Society.

I fully support St David’s Day becoming a national holiday, but I think we should look to how we celebrate our nation’s people every bit as much as we celebrate our nation’s symbols. Let’s make St David’s Day a People’s Holiday.