seren

According to today'sSun, new surveillance cameras could soon be taking snapshots like this in your high street in the "war against terror".

The proposal is contained in leaked documents drawn up by the Home Office and presented to Tony Blair’s working group on Security, Crime and Justice.

And every pervert in town will be signing up to be a surveillance camera operator as real life merges scarily with every schoolboy X-Ray Spex fantasy.

You have been warned.

The prisons crisis has thrown up some interesting anomalies.

Lindis Percy, a 64-year-old peace campaigner, has been sent to prison for non-payment of a fine imposed after she protested outside a US signal intelligence station in Yorkshire. She was given a seven-day sentence in a County Durham jail, despite appearing in court with a broken arm in plaster.

Meanwhile Derek Williams, a convicted child pornographer who admitted downloading 180 indecent images of youngsters onto his computer, was released by Judge John Rogers in Mold because the prisons are full. He fully expected to get a prison sentence and the crime warranted one. He's back home in Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Need cheering up on a Monday morning? This video of Stupid Americans will probably depress you as much as amuse.

A friend from San Franscisco writes: "You may be tempted to believe that these people are not representative, but the sad fact is that they are. The bourgeoisie have succeeded in stripping the average American of the capacity for understanding the world around them, to the extent that we now quite consciously seek immigrants for positions requiring any real thinking through the provision of special visas.

"Sadly, the US Left, rather than viewing this as a means whereby the ruling class maintains itself and therefore something that we are obligated to combat, has taken the position that we must retreat from presenting well reasoned argument in order to communicate with working people.

"America has become a nation of idiots, most Americans have embraced religious prejudice and magical thinking; have no knowledge of history, the world around them, or their own interests; are hopelessly in debt, but certain they will wind up wealthy; and devote more attention to the lives of celebrities to any aspect of their own lives.

"The only thing that makes it bearable at all is that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we generally exceed the rest of the country in just about any measure of open-mindedness, political orientation, and social values."

In the dis-UK the boom in celebrity culture and the glorification of stupidity (Jade Goody becoming a multi-million-pound star because she's a big-mouthed bully who thinks East Angular is "abroad") means we're probably a decade behind the States unless we offer an alternative.

The Roman emperors offered the restive masses bread and circuses to distract them from rebellion. We get Celebrity Big Brother and Hello! magazine.

Tory AM Glyn Davies is in a class of his own when it comes to blogging.

Not for him the petty point-scoring of compulsive blogger Peter Black. No, Glyn's world is full of confusion:

"I feel a bit like one of those Secord World War soldiers who emerges from the Borneo jungle after 40 years to find that the world had changed."

He's just been forced to take down a post showing two Scotsmen in kilts with one displaying more than just his haggis. Apparently he was advised to do so by some "adviser", who's probably bald from tearing out his hair at Glyn's quixotic pronouncements.

If it's possible to like a Tory, you'll like Glyn. Hours of entertainment from someone who clearly detests most of his own party and is looking vainly to Cymricise it.

(hat tip to Wales Votes)

Plaid's Adam Price continues his assault on Labour's debt to millionaires with this Early Day Motion in Westminster. It's bad enough that the "people's party" is so beholden to millionaires but Mittal is in a class of his own when it comes to exploiting his world-wide workforce.

The deaths of Mittal miners and the exploitation of Liberia's iron ore deposits make Labour's latest donation nothing short of "blood money".

LAKSHMI MITTAL AND THE LABOUR PARTY 25.01.2007

Price, Adam
That this House notes the £2 million donation by Lakshmi Mittal to the British Labour Party; deplores the deaths of 52 miners last year in Mittal-owned coal mines due to poor safety conditions condemned by trade unionists and public officials; denounces Mittal's decision to reopen an iron-ore mine at Omarska in northern Bosnia on the site of a former concentration camp in which hundreds of Croats and Bosnians were murdered; congratulates the government of Liberia on forcing Mittal to renegotiate a 25-year iron-ore concession widely regarded as unfair and exploitative; and calls on the Labour Party, in honour of miners who lost their lives and their health while working underground in the UK coal industry, to donate the money received from Mr Mittal to the families of the bereaved in Kazakhstan and the Ukraine as a gesture of solidarity with working people everywhere exploited by global industrial tycoons.

Signed:
Price, Adam
Llwyd, Elfyn
Williams, Hywel

On Monday, Wrexham FC's new owner Neville Dickens behaved like the used car salesman he is and lied in front of 300 fans. Today the fans hit back with this rebuttal.

It's now becoming obvious that history is about to repeat itself with a local businessman selling out to a developer intent on cashing in on a lucrative site, valued at £10-12m.

The only people who can stop that happening, once again, are the fans. The Wrexham Supporters' Trust - made up of 1000 fans - wants community control of the club and the Racecourse ground to ensure that individuals can never again wreck the oldest football club in Wales.

Interesting article in Golwg magazine about Hedd Wyn, the farmer-poet who died in the trenches of Belgium in 1917 and was awarded the "Black Chair" at the Birkenhead National Eisteddfod posthumously.

Iwan Llwyd has written a play about the poet called "Mae gynnon ni hawl ar y sêr" (We have a right to the stars) in which he explores Hedd Wyn's socialism and how it was affected by a chance encounter with a Russian soldier shortly before his death. The Russian, Hedd Wyn wrote in a letter home before he was killed, told him a new day was dawning in his country, the Bolshevik revolution.

Even for farmers from remote Trawsfynydd, this revolution lit a spark.

Llwyd also puts forward a strikingly modern conspiracy theory - that the Eisteddfod committee awarding the chair, the highest Eisteddfodic award, knew about Hedd Wyn's death and that the award was made for propaganda purposes. It should be remembered that Lloyd George, then Prime Minister and warmonger, attended the Eisteddfod and would have been keen to encourage more Welshmen to enlist as the war dragged on into its third year.

The Black Chair had a tremendous resonance in Wales and and is still today an incredibly poignant story of a generation cut down in their prime.

I'm not sure I buy the conspiracy theory - the relevant government papers would be available to check by now anyway - but I wouldn't put anything past a warmongering Prime Minister.

• Perhaps some readers might find it amusing that the top prize in the National Eisteddfod for a poet is a chair. I like the practicality of the idea - let's face it, you can't walk around with a crown on your head.

Wales's first blogespondent is fairly positive towards the Assembly's limited achievements in its short life.

To be accurate we should be asking "what has the Labour Assembly government ever done for us?"

There's no doubt it has done some things that are better - free prescriptions will make a difference to those who had to pay before, but it's little comfort if you can't get treatment for a serious illness because of a postcode lottery.

Bus passes for the elderly are another improvement but again depend on people having a bus service in their area.

This tinkering at the margins seems designed to gain headlines and photo opportunities rather than fundamentally altering people's lives.

Gimmicks like free school breakfasts have been a real con - one of those back-of-a-fag packet pledges that weren't costed and involved no consultation with the schools affected. Little surprise that only 28% of schools have introduced them. My kids went along for a while but a slice of toast and a drink is hardly the innovation promised. Many parents, I suspect, are using the breakfast clubs as an excuse to drop the kids off early to get to work on time. It'd be interesting to know how many children actually attend the clubs.

So eight years of Labour Assembly rule has seen minor tweaks in the system. We all know that substantial improvements are needed to turn Wales round from being a low-wage, high sickness, low-skilled society to somewhere that's far more dynamic, healthy and sustainable. New powers will only work if the people implementing them have the vision and drive to use them. Labour have no vision or drive left, except to safeguard their own privileges.

Rhys Ifans plans to burn his Burberry gear if the Rhondda factory is closed by company bosses.

I'd love to join the protest but have to confess to having a wardrobe that's more Primark than Prada. But, rest assured, I will be boycotting Burberry from now on.

One celeb, or even a dozen, does not a campaign make but the image-conscious fashion world should take note when stars come out for a cause.

More practically, the Reddragonhood has made an interesting and practical offer to set up a Welsh clothing co-op. If Rhys Ifans, Tom Jones and others really wanted to make a difference how about shoving two fingers up to Burberrys and dipping into their pockets to help set up a new enterprise controlled by the workers and making quality goods for a decent wage?

Little coverage so far of this new camp near Milford Haven, where a footpath is being used to block work on the 120-mile LNG pipeline across south Wales.

Plans are also afoot for a similar LNG exercise at Amlwch on Ynys Môn - although this pipeline will run under the sea to Lancashire. The initial idea was to land the LNG at Fleetwood, Lancashire, but local opposition was too fierce. The multinationals must see Welsh communities as a soft touch - or is easier to buy off Welsh councils with the promise of jobs?