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29/12/2006
Eight years
Official figures confirm the yawning gulf between rich and poor in Wales, with men in Blaenau Gwent dying an average eight years before their counterparts in Chelsea and Kensington.
It took a Liberal Democrat (for once not sitting on the fence) to sum up the difference: "This is the class divide at its most stark."
And Wales' chief medical officer, Dr Tony Jewell, said the gap between those with the best health and those with the worst is widening.
The gap between rich and poor, the haves and have-nots, is even more evident in people's life expectancy - a boy born in Chelsea and Kensington can expect to live to the age of 82.2 years, compared with just 74.2 in Blaenau Gwent.
Ten years of Labour has seen inequalities rising between rich and poor, seven years of devolution have done nothing to reverse that trend.
A New Year's revolution to abolish inequality seems appropriate.
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!
09:55 Posted in Cymru Fach | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
27/12/2006
SEREN awards 2006
Awards for politicians usually mean bungs in brown paper envelopes. Well we don't want any of that around here, thank you. Pure as the driven snow.
Oh no, our awards are drawn up strictly on merit and will only be influenced by wit and wisdom (and a bottle of Jamiesons):
Cheekiest politicians of 2006 - Lembit Opik. Let's face it, if he didn't exist you'd have to make him up (and judging by his name, somebody did make that up). Anyone who puts up with Siân Lloyd for eight years deserves an award of some kind but he's opted for a new challenge - relationship with one of the Cheeky Girls. When not hang gliding underwater or single-handedly dealing with visa applications for young Romanian talent (ahem), Lembit can be found displaying his musical talents with a mouth organ. Please feel free to insert own gag here (and there's plenty who'd want a gag on Lembit).
Dog lover of 2006 - Glyn Davies (Tory AM) for describing how he once wooed a young Montgomery girl by kicking her dog firmly under the chin. I think it's called tough love in deepest Powys. Glyn deals with disgruntled voters in the same way.
Saddest politician of 2006, part 1 - Peter Black (Lib Dem AM) for admitting to delivering leaflets on Christmas Eve ("I was feeling rather virtuous yesterday so I decided to go and deliver a few leaflets"). Christmas Eve?! A time when families gather and men wander aimlessly and often drunkenly in search of a last-minute prezzie for a loved one. What was he thinking? Given that 99% would have gone straight in the bin, it's clear Peter Black doesn't qualify as the Greenest politician of 2006.
Dog lover of 2006, part 2 - Peter Black (Tory AM) We might never have known about Black's fruitless leafletting had he not blo-moaned (having a winge on a blog - new word) about being bitten by a dog on the back of the leg and ended up in casualty. No, mustn't laugh. Luckily he saw the funny side, I'm sure. Er, no, he phoned the police to give the dog's owner a warning.
Stealthiest politician of 2006, part 1 - Martyn Jones (Labour MP) has to wear dicky bows to get himself noticed due to the lack of a personality, but he was back to his stealthy best over the Hafod quarry protest. Despite being MP for 20 years, Jones has managed to keep his head down for much of that time. So when he was pressed by constituents to come down to the daily picket line he protested "but I've already been". Puzzled protesters don't remember seeing him but that's not the same as saying he hasn't been there, is it?
Most pointless feud of 2006 - Dafydd Elis-Thomas v John Marek The Presiding Officer and Deputy Presiding Officer in the Assembly have been at loggerheads all year, refusing to talk to each other and even touching on true farce in the Senedd with Marek's "Are you asking me to sit down?" routine. C'mon guys, it really does amount to custard creams versus hobnobs at the House Committee, doesn't it?
Mathematician of 2006, part 1 - Dafydd Wigley (Plaid Cymru AM) is making a comeback in the North Wales regional list elections. His mathematical calculations on how he can win are a reminder of why you should concentrate in school so that you don't get bamboozled in later life.
Humourless tw*t of 2006, part 1 -Chris Bryant (Lab MP) said he was amused by a spoof diary of his that appeared in the Guardian during the Labour Party conference. It was full of New Labour flannel and fluff, but nothing as damaging as - say - a self-shot photo of him appearing in his grollies on a gay website. Within days of being "amused", Bryant decided he was in fact quite upset and claimed £10,000 in hurt feelings for this light-hearted piece. Amazingly, the humourless git got it.
Party of 2006, part 1 - People's VoiceAlthough the party at which Plaid MPs Elfyn Llwyd and Hywel Williams went to with the Bishop of Southwark sounds a good 'un, the undoubted party of 2006 was People's Voice. On a shoestring budget and even smaller set of policies, it has captured a slice of that huge discontent with Labour in its traditional heartland. Building on the legacy of Peter Law, it now has an AM and an MP elected against the Labour machine at its most ruthless. After a decade, whole swathes of Wales are still not signed up to New Labour.
Dark horse of 2007 - Alun Davies will be the only Labour list member in next year's Assembly if his party does as badly as expected in Mid and West Wales. He'll follow in the not-very-inspiring footsteps of Alun Michael (who jumped ship) and Delyth Evans (who retired after a couple of years). Davies, a former Plaid Cymru candidate, has metamorphosed from a rather unlikeable nationalist grub into a totally unlikeable Labour hack and his blog manages to combine pomposity, bad spelling and a love of English cricket in equal parts. Surely he's not trying a bit too hard to convince his Labour brethren that he's renounced his nationalist past?
More to come - please feel free to make your own nominations in the comments box.
11:59 Posted in Cymru Fach | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this
19/12/2006
Redwood's rallying cry for England
The Vulcan is back, albeit looking more like a Dr Who extra these days...
John Redwood was once Tory Secretary of State for Wales. He famously mimed the words to the Cheeky Girls' latest hit (shurely shome mishtake?) at a Tory party conference, while everyone else was singing the Welsh national anthem. More seriously he also returned £100m to the Treasury in London because he couldn't spend it all in Wales.
Now he has decided to say something about the need for an English Parliament because, in his words: "I do strongly believe that England should be treated fairly within the Union."
His novel solution to this "inequality" is:
"the return of the English Parliament to Westminster. Everything which is an English matter, including health, education, local Government, planning and law and order, should be considered only by English Members of the Westminster Parliament meeting as the English Parliament. This would give England the same devolved powers as enjoyed in Scotland, create a stronger sense of English identity around the traditional Parliament of England, and avoid any extra costs and hassles associated with devolution in Scotland and Wales."
Mmm, so does that mean the Welsh, Scottish and Norn Iron MPs get shut out of this cosy lock-in? Well, only for part of the week.
"My view is that all of us elected to the Westminster Parliament for English constituencies should perform a dual role. We should work with colleagues from Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland on Union matters for part of the week, and for the rest of the week, the Westminster Parliament itself should be the English Parliament, where we, English representatives, settle all the matters that are devolved Scotland ourselves at Westminster, without the help or interference of our colleagues from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The English Parliament at Westminster would therefore create a much more fair and balanced United Kingdom.
The Tories are getting quite frothy at the mouth over English "independence", especially with the prospect of unsettling Gordon Brown (who represents a Scottish seat) at the next election. A bit of push from the English right and some pull from the Welsh and Scottish left could produce some very interesting results in coming elections.
16:57 Posted in Cymru Fach | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
What has the US and Afghanistan got in common?
Bizarre as it may seem, the most obvious thing the USA and Afghanistan have in common is that their main cash crop is drugs.
In Afghanistan, the fall of the Taliban has seen opium production for heroin soar. In the USA, the government's own figures now show that cannabis is the main cash crop.
This morning's Independent reveals the scale of the trade:
Decades of government efforts to crack down on both the cultivation and consumption of pot have had a counter-productive effect, since even the most conservative government estimates suggest domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past 25 years. It is the leading cash crop in 12 states, and one of the top five crops in 39 states.
The report's author, Jon Gettman, says it is "larger than cotton in Alabama, larger than grapes, vegetables and hay in California, larger than peanuts in Georgia, and larger than tobacco in South and North Carolina".
California accounts for almost a third of all US production. It is a major economic force in the state, especially in the redwood forests in the north, where the smell of weed wafts unmistakably down the streets of several towns.
Marijuana remains popular with the baby boomer generation, which first experimented with it in the 1950s and 1960s. And its use is booming among teenagers and young adults, especially as alcohol cannot be sold to under 21s. US marijuana cultivation is worth more than $35bn (£18bn) per year. And that is a conservative estimate, based on government price surveys, Mr Gettman says.
Corn, the largest legitimate crop, is worth just over $23bn and soybeans around $17bn. "Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they're not getting rid of it," Mr Gettman told the Los Angeles Times ahead of his report's publication yesterday in The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform. "Not only is the problem worse in terms of magnitude of cultivation, but production has spread all around the country. To say the genie is out of the bottle is a profound understatement."
09:54 Posted in Rhyngwladol - International | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Feeling safer now?
Proponents of ID cards and CCTV always emphasise that they will increase people's safety. We know that ID cards are rubbish at stopping serious crime, because serious criminals (as well as suicide bombers) can get ID cards to suit their needs.
But what about CCTV? The UK has 100,000 of them and we're likely to be filmed 300 times in any one day. Yet the brutal killer of five women in Ipswich is able to wander about with impunity with no CCTV footage to give a hint of his movements.
09:49 Posted in Leisure | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
17/12/2006
Tony Blair opposes Trident (unfortunately in 1983)
The only comfort you can take from this election leaflet is that being a murderous, imperialist bastard means you lose your hair.
23:51 Posted in Gwleidyddiaeth - Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
14/12/2006
Was Litvinenko selling Polonium?
The Polonium poisoning of Andrei Litvinenko may have been straight out of James Bond. The finger of blame has been pointed at Putin and his KGB contacts. Secret services usually mean red herrings and lots of dead ends, which is why most sane people steer clear of trying to explain the whole episode.
But there may be a simple explanation, as suggested in the classic Richard Rhodes book The making of the atomic bomb . This has interesting stuff about polonium, which was and probably still is a vital part of the initiator of all atomic weapons because its a particularly strong alpha emitter.
Apparently it's such a strong emitter that it ionises the air around it so permanently appears to glow blue. Particularly relevant is the paragraph about shipping the Polonium to the US nuclear facility at Los Alamos on page 579:
Thomas shipped the Po on platinum foil in sealed containers, but another nasty characteristic of polonium caused shipping troubles; for reasons never satisfactorily explained by experiment, the metal migrates from place to place and can quickly contaminate large areas. 'This isotope has been observed to migrate upstream against a current of air,' notes a postwar British report on polonium, 'and to translocate under conditions where it would appear to be doing so of its own accord.' Chemists at los Alamos learned to look for it embedded in the walls of the shipping containers when Thomas's shipments came up short.
This explains why polonium keeps getting found in unexpected places. But it does also suggest Litvinenko might have been trying to sell some polonium, but was unaware of its strange properties and a bit too mucht migrated into his body.
(much of this was nicked wholesale from www.timhunkin.com - my CSE in Chemistry isn't up to doing much more than chucking iron filings into bunsen burners and admiring the effect)
14:06 Posted in Rhyngwladol - International | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
The privatised war
One consequence of the various ongoing US and UK military adventures is the increasing use of mercenaries in what is becoming a privatised war. There are reckoned to be 50,000 mercenaries in Iraq, compared with 7,000 UK military personnel.
For oil firms and other companies profiting from the chaos in Iraq, security firms run by ex-military men (often on the same stratified class lines as the Army - officers taking the glory, squaddies taking the bullets) are in great demand.
The rewards are huge - $12,000 a month tax-free pay - but the risks, as outlined in this story are huge.
Schnews, as ever, has a better analysis of this phenomenon.
11:26 Posted in Rhyngwladol - International | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Paper profits
Isn't corporate speak wonderful? Trinity Mirror newspaper group is going to hold on to its Welsh regional titles while offloading less profitable papers in the English Midlands and London.
The official line is that this will allow it to focus on its UK titles and "key" regional titles in Scotland, the North of England and Wales, which include the Welsh Daily Post, Western Mail and South Wales Echo. The company's board has decided that in order to "maximise shareholder value for the medium to long term" it should "rationalise" its portfolio of titles.
In normal speak this means "we make vast profits from these papers - 65% return on the Western Mail for example - and so we're going to continue to screw the workers for the medium to long term."
The thought of re-investing the profits in providing a better product (e.g. by employing more journalists) doesn't occur to the profit-obsessed capitalist class.
09:23 Posted in Cymru Fach | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
12/12/2006
"So conform to it or don't come here"
"So conform to it or don't come here" - Tony Blair
Blair called for six "practical and symbolic measures" to help people establish what these shared values were, which included ensuring all new immigrants and all visiting religious preachers spoke English and understood British values and history.
The growing intolerance towards immigrants to the UK continues to enjoy governmental support. Blair's latest message - a crude "conform or fuck off" - will delight the hate mongers of the BNP and Daily Mail.
It is also emboldening right-wing journalists to produce the kind of propaganda masquerading as news on tonight's Newsnight (an attack on translation services for minorities).
You don't have to Welsh to appreciate the irony of Blair's word. When Gwynedd councillor Simon Glyn called for English migrants to Welsh-speaking communities to learn Welsh, a language at the brink of a precipice as a living community language, it was the Labour Party who lined up to label him a racist. The English language continues to be the "lingua franca" (now there's an irony, having to turn to Latin) of the global village and hardly seems to be under threat from Poles, Pakistanis or Portuguese migrants.
That "racist" storm lasted two years and helped Labour claw its way back from an electoral abyss in Wales in 1999. A more sustained, cynical campaign is hard to imagine with the "Welsh Mirror" reflecting every spin cycle of the New Labour machine. It launched immediately after the catastrophic elections in 1999 when Plaid took the Rhondda and other Valleys heartlands from Labour, as well as almost pipping them in the popular vote in the Euro-elections. When the results rolled in for the 2003 elections (and the heartland seats re-gained), the "Welsh Mirror" was quietly put to bed. Job done.
The call from Simon Glyn remains valid. So too are the ongoing calls for local people to be able to afford housing in their own communities rather than be at the mercy of a housing market skewed by the buying power of London and the south-east of England. A low-wage economy coupled with high housing costs is crippling many Welsh communities, both Welsh and English speaking.
To learn the language of a community you choose to live in is a matter of respect - something alien to too many of those moving to live in Welsh-speaking communities (as well as the Costas it has to be said).
Tony Blair isn't asking for respect with his diktat. The most powerful politician in the UK is issuing ultimatums to those who choose to make the UK their home. I wonder how he'd feel if the Spanish Prime Minister started making the same demands on the 700,000 Brits living there?
23:26 Posted in Cymru Fach | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
07/12/2006
Seren praises Labour shocker
This could be a first - but Welsh Labour has got it right on Private Finance Initiatives.
Hospital trusts in England and Scotland are facing massive overspends and having to divert cash from frontline services to finance debts to private companies because of the over-dependence on PFI schemes to build new hospitals.
In Wales, by contrast, PFI has been used sparingly. The new community hospital at Chepstow was built with PFI but no major contract has taken place.
By contrast, a report by the Centre for International Public Health at Edinburgh University says these controversial contracts will go from costing the NHS in Scotland £107m annually to £510m over the next five years.
This will have to come from revenue budgets which cover staffing, equipment and clinical services. The study, by Mark Hellowell and Allyson Pollock, predicts disastrous consequences for the NHS.
"Without a major increase in public expenditure, more of the NHS budget will be diverted away from services to private companies, making already serious financial problems more severe and creating new pressures for hospital, community and primary care service closures in the medium and long term," the study concludes.
Mr Hellowell said: "The report shows the impact of large PFI hospital schemes in Scotland on health board budgets. Funding is being diverted away from clinical care, staff and supplies, to pay 'rent' to the private sector."
The reason for the looming crisis is the gap between the annual running costs paid to PFI operators – between 11% and 18% of hospital turnover, say the authors – and the costs of non-PFI facilities at between 5% and 8%.
"This extra cost creates an affordability gap which can only be met by diverting revenue from clinical services, staff and supplies. Thus PFI schemes are associated with service cuts even before contracts are signed."
The report says there is evidence from England that this saddles NHS trusts with growing deficits. These PFI projects are said to create a debt which is far greater than the original investment it provides. In Scotland PFI has brought the NHS projects with a capital value of £602m. But the cost of the debt created is in the order of £2.4bn.
In Lothian and Lanarkshire health boards have to spend 4% of total revenue on buildings, compared to less than 2.5% in other boards that are not so exposed to PFI.
The authors also point out that all health boards with major PFI schemes are also planning major hospital and service closures and the crisis is set to worsen.
Mr Hellowell said: "Few people are aware of the scale of the Scottish Executive's plans to expand the PFI programme across the NHS. The planned capital cost of £1.7bn will bring the total value of PFI schemes in the NHS to £2.2bn over the next five years.
So there's no doubt that Welsh Labour's decision not to go for PFI schemes has proved to be a major benefit for the NHS in Wales in the long term. Of course, Labour in Wales has messed up in so many areas that it's still not fit to govern but on this issue Rhodri Morgan can justifiably claim there is "clear red water" between him and Blair.
Such revelations make it all the more remarkable that the Institute for Welsh Affairs, a think tank apparently devoted to privatising public services in Wales, suggests that the NHS in Wales is in crisis because it does not rely on PFI schemes. The NHS is in crisis because of a failure to get money to frontline services rather than bureaucrats and accountants. It is a failure of management at national and local level not
08:35 Posted in Gwleidyddiaeth - Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Army colonel wants it both ways
The former Army Colonel Tim Collins was on Newsnight recently attacking Plaid Cymru for exposing military targetting of deprived Welsh schools. He denied that such schools were targetted because there was no need for unskilled recruits.
Is he in any way related to the ex-Army colonel Tim Collins who told the Guardian:
"The adverts on TV will feature a woman, leading a platoon of men, doing an interesting logistics task. What that doesn't do is attract the knuckle-draggers who you need to defend the country"?
08:07 Posted in Gwleidyddiaeth - Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
05/12/2006
Rhys Mwyn - cultural catalyst
Rhys Mwyn has an awesome track record in Welsh music - a founder, with his brother Sion Sebon, of pioneering punk band Anhrefn, promoting Welsh-language music with John Peel, touring Europe as part of an underground anarcho-punk network, discovering Catatonia's first manager and still here 20 years later promoting Welsh music at the grassroots.
But he's also a self-confessed stroppy big-mouth who has managed to wind up most of the people who admire him, let alone those that don't.
His autobiography Cam o'r Tywyllwch (A step from the darkness") is a typically uncompromising rant against the establishment - in particular the safe, conservative Welsh establishment and the fake radicals who effortlessly moved from youthful direct action to middle-aged comfort in the corridors of power.
Rhys admits his purpose was to be a thorn in their side and they will take no comfort from this book - he ends with a calls to (metaphorical) arms: "To create, you have to destroy".
As well as being the same age and sharing some of the same politics (he's an anarchist, I'm a socialist) we like a lot of the same music and DIY attitude that sparked the punk revolution. Significantly, Rhys was an outsider from the Welsh scene partly because he came from Maldwyn, a rural border county, rather than the language heartlands of Gwynedd or Dyfed. His horizons, as a result, are a lot wider than many in the Sîn Roc Gymraeg (Welsh rock scene) and they were to be extended by his politics.
For someone who lived through the same period, organised gigs (mainly fundraisers that never raised any funds) and knew some of the bands, it's a glorious nostalgic romp.
From the unlikely setting of a ex-Hawkwind band member's studio in deepest Powys came the seminal "Cam o'r Tywyllwch" compilation that launched Y Cyrff, Datblygu and Gruff Rhys on the world... it was a great record with a fanzine-style paper sleeve. Cheap but not nasty. And, as Rhys himself says, "No Cam o'r tywyllwch, no Catatonia, no Super Furries."
This was to be a dawn of a great golden age that would later spawn English-language crossovers that "made it big" - something Rhys has mixed feelings about as someone passionate about the Welsh language but equally passionate about breaking out of the cosy ghetto. Anhrefn toured the world but never compromised by singing in English.
Throughout the book, he refers to himself as a catalyst - the spark that makes things happen. He tracks John Peel down to a bar and gives him a record. Two days later, Peel is playing tracks from that LP and it sparks a long-standing relationship between Peel and Dave Datblygu, one of the brightest and most original stars that shone in that particular scene.
But Rhys was never one to rest on his laurels. He consciously understands the need for permanent revolution in the music industry and is furious with the musicians of the 'golden age' of Welsh rock from the 70s who did nothing to promote the future generations of music that would supercede them.
Rhys is generous in his praise of bands like Maffia Mr Huws - the first full-time Welsh-language band who gigged across Wales and laid the foundations for Anhrefn's epic journeys. But don't cross him. He bears a grudge and the book opens with a furious attack on the farmers' boys who made his schooldays a misery with their bullying. Never forgive, never forget as those who have a "fatwa" (his word) declared against them will testify.
But, for all the tough-guy image, he's genuinely chuffed when Catatonia (with whom he'd fallen out after being frozen out) sent him a platinum disk. But that motormouth is soon back in action - and to be honest his grievances against the rest of the world start to pall towards the end. A book by all the people mentioned here (both those he loves and loathes) would make for interesting reading!
The Powys punk has come a long way and counts Jamie Reid and Margi Clarke among his best friends but he's still on the lookout for the next big thing. A great read - and it got me thinking where the Welsh music scene and indeed the Welsh language would be without this cultural activist constantly kicking against the tresses.
16:38 Posted in Llyfrau - Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
03/12/2006
Army targets deprived schools
Not content with targetting Iraqis, Afghans and other people who didn't invite them to their countries, the British Army is now targetting poorer Welsh schools in a desperate attempt to boost recruitment.
Documents obtained by Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood AM under the Freedom of Information Act show that the more deprived a school is, according to the government's own definition of deprivation, the more recruitment visits children will receive from the army.
Figures from the Headquarters of the Army Recruitment Division for 2005-6 show that the most deprived schools are visited almost fifty per cent more often than the less deprived. There are also stark regional variations: school children in Swansea were visited more than 10 times on average between January 2005 and May 2006, while those in the more affluent Vale of Glamorgan had none at all.
Leanne Wood AM, who wants the Education Minister to ban army recruitment in schools, commented: "The army is clearly targeting the most deprived areas in Wales because numbers of soldiers are down - 14,000 left in 2005. I believe that young people in Wales should not be subjected to armed forces propaganda. Pupils should make up their own minds with all the facts to hand. Joining the army could, after all, mean taking in part in a war illegally entered into which has so far claimed the lives of 126 British soldiers.
"I want the Education Minister to stop the army recruitment in schools."
The news follows latest figures which show a rise in army recruitment from Wales, which is on course to hit 1,000 recruits by April 2007, compared to the annual average 900 from Wales. Wales supplies a higher number of recruits in proportion to population, with around 5% of the UK's 16 to 24-year-olds, but providing nearly 9% of recruits from that age group.
Leanne Wood added: "I have had complaints from school pupils who believe it is wrong for the army to recruit in schools. They have pointed out to me that if an army recruitment event is organised in school time and on school premises, the impression is given that it is endorsed by the school. Schools should not endorse a career in the military by allowing them to recruit there."
• The British Army has had to step up recruitment tactics among schoolchildren with the "Dragon's Teeth" recruitment fairs across Wales, to which pupils are bussed in by schools.
19:28 Posted in Cymru Fach | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/12/2006
More holidays please!
Fed up with the half-hearted holiday that is St David's Day? Want more than a bit of stale bara brith and cold cawl? Want to make it a proper holiday that shakes off the cobwebs of winter on March 1st?
An online petition has been launched here to get a public holiday declared on St David's Day. Signing up takes 30 seconds so go and do it now.
St Patrick's Day is known throughout the world and St Andrew's Day is soon to follow after the Scottish Parliament recently backed the move to make it a public holiday. St David's Day could be a chance to celebrate all things Welsh and have a well-deserved holiday too... the UK has fewer public holidays than any part of the EU.
16:10 Posted in Cymru Fach | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
Nurse, the curtains!
If the Assembly was a soap opera, Brian Gibbons would be its Jack Duckworth - a hapless lump forever brow-beaten by Edwina "Vera" Hart and given to making some very stupid mistakes.
The dozy Labour Health Minister has once again accidentally voted against his own government.
In June, Dr Brian Gibbons helped trigger an inquiry into the ambulance service when he pressed the wrong button on his voting console in the chamber. That gaffe tipped a knife-edge vote against the Labour Government.
The Assembly's voting record shows this week he voted for a Plaid Cymru amendment which accused Welsh Secretary Peter Hain of making "unhelpful comments" about changes to devolution. But even if Dr Gibbons had pressed the correct button Labour would not have won the vote.
Do you think it's a cry for help or just sheer incompetence? At the very least the poor doctor needs to lie down in a darkened room for a while.
00:06 Posted in Gwleidyddiaeth - Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this