Category Archives: Uncategorized

I see that Rhodri Morgan’s new Welsh Assembly cabinet contains not a single North Wales member. In fact, every minister comes from the old county of Glamorgan.

This underlines Labour’s failure to understand the general view of the Assembly here in the North as a remote and South Wales centred institution, a state of affairs compounded by the 2006 Government of Wales Act, which repealed the requirement for a special North Wales committee.

It may be, of course, that Mr Morgan does not expect Labour to enjoy a long tenure of office in Cardiff Bay, and therefore does not give a stuff about what we Gogs think. However, if he really did care about the perception of the Assembly north of Merthyr Tydfil, he might have given passing thought to including at least one North Walian in his frontbench team.

Spent a frustrating 20 minutes driving along the unbelievably congested promenade at Llandudno. The season has not really started yet, so heaven knows what it will be like in August.

Llandudno is now a major shopping destination. The problem is that it is built on a peninsula, so traffic can’t really circulate as it does in most towns. Basically, you come in and leave by the same route, hence the congestion.

The tedium was relieved more than a little by the presence on the prom of contestants in the Three Castles Welsh Classic motor trial. These included a Ford Anglia, an Alvis, a Jaguar XK150, a Lancia Fulvia and several Triumph TRs. It was a pleasure to see them.

There was a period of about 15 years in the 1950s and 60s when the world made great cars and people had the space – and some the means – to enjoy them. Think of Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, putting his Alfa Spider Duetto through her paces across the Golden Gate Bridge in The Graduate. Or Rossano Brazzi cruising through the Alps in his Ferrari in the opening scenes of The Italian Job. Or Paul Newman lazily piloting his pink Caddy Series 62 convertible single-handed in Hud.

Now it’s Toyota Yarises and speed cameras. Oh, and the congestion charge, of course. How long, I wonder, before Llandudno gets that?

Bad news for Peter Hain in his bid to become Labour deputy leader.

Just as he was contemplating ripping out the old Aga at Dorneywood and replacing it with a new, state of the art job that not only marinates tuna but also runs the central heating and makes toast, we hear that Gordon Brown may have already decided to ignore the election result and appoint Jack Straw as deputy Prime Minister.

This news will also come as a disappointment to Peter’s financial backers, who have forked out big bucks in support of their man (see this blog passim). According to this week’s Private Eye, the latest recruit to this select band is Terry Johnsey, the 41st richest man in Wales, who has stumped up £5,000.

Peter, we hear, has also engaged the services of a lobbyist, Steve Moore, to run his campaign. Moore apparently has represented such mega multinationals as Coca-Cola, Bechtel and Merck Shape and Dohme, so Peter is in excellent company. I’m sure the brothers will be suitably impressed.

Attended the launch of the 2007 North Wales International Music Festival, held at the magnificent Bodelwyddan Castle.

The Festival will run from 21 to 29 September, and feature such well-known artists as Catrin Finch, the King’s Singers and Llyr Williams. There will also be a Beatrix Potter concert (appropriate, since Miss Potter was inspired to write her Peter Rabbit books when visiting Gwaenynog Hall, near Denbigh) and the world première of a new work by Gareth Glyn, celebrating the “unique relationship between North Wales and its unofficial capital city, Liverpool”.

The Festival’s artistic director, Ann Atkinson, introduced three excellent artists from Ensemble Cymru, Peryn Clement-Evans, Harvey Davies and Heather Bills, who gave a brief but excellent recital.

Ann also mentioned her concern that lottery funding diverted to the London Olympics would turn into a loss to the Festival. I fully understand her worries. It looks like the Olympics are turning into a bottomless money pit, and good causes up and down the country, such as the Festival, will be the losers.

The Energy White Paper was published today. I shall comment on it soon, but not tonight.

Liverpool are playing AC Milan in the final of what I still call the European Cup, so I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

The Government has got itself into yet further difficulties over its ludicrous Home Information Packs. It has now postponed their introduction until 1 August and announced that they will apply only to the sale of houses with four or more bedrooms.

What a farcical situation! Every professional organisation you may care to mention, from the Law Society to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, thinks that they will do nothing to improve the house selling process, but may in fact damage a housing market which is already under threat from rising interest rates.

If the Government was less interested in saving face and more interested in real consumer protection, it would abandon the hare-brained scheme without further delay. As it is, it will probably take a few more months before it finally yields to the pressure and throws in the towel.

Entertained a party of impeccably-behaved French school students who were visiting the House. They had already been on the conducted tour, so I was left to field the detailed questions they had prepared beforehand and neatly written down in their exercise books.

These were remarkably varied and intelligent, and ranged from the war in Iraq, via my views on M. Sarkozy, to which football team I supported. I answered “Girondins de Bordeaux”, which seemed to perplex them, since they had clearly already trawled through my website.

The session ended when one of them asked, “Are you glad that Tony Blair is going?”

“Yes,” I replied.

Their teacher, obviously disapproving of such brevity, said, “Can you expand on that answer, please?”

“Yes,” I said, “I am very glad he is going.”

Seemingly satisfied, they went off for their packed lunch, followed by a visit to the London Eye.

Whatever has happened to David Cornock’s blog? The acerbic BBC journo hasn’t posted a single pixel since 4 April.

If David doesn’t recommence blogging pretty soon, I shall be obliged, regretfully, to strike his name off my links list – one of the most coveted niches in the whole of cyberspace.

So Gordon Brown is to be anointed Labour leader, and hence Prime Minister, without a contest. This is, of course, unsurprising, but nevertheless rather disappointing. I think that a contest would have been good for the Labour Party, just as ours was for the Conservatives. It gives time for argument about ideas, and the selected leader enjoys the legitimacy that comes from winning a contested process.

Now the attention moves to the issue of the deputy leadership, where there will be a contest. My own preference would be Peter Hain. It would be good to see a man who appreciates the finer things in life – five star hotels and marinated tuna – as second in command of the people’s party. However, I fear Peter may not pull it off, despite a well-funded campaign.

My guess is that the deputy will be a woman, if only for the sake of balance, and my money is on the chipmunk-like Hazel Blears. She is a good Commons performer and possesses a personal warmth that is completely absent from the only other female candidate, Harriet Harman.

Monday and Tuesday this week were spent in North Wales with the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, as part of its inquiry into globalisation and its impact on Wales.

The tour concluded with a visit to the Airbus factory at Broughton. It was the second time I have been there and I was just as bowled over by the sheer scale of the project as I was on my first visit, some four years ago.

Airbus is the jewel in the crown of Welsh industry – and of British industry, for that matter. It is smart, high-tech and high value. It is exactly the sort of industry we must encourage if we are to have a future in manufacturing – which I believe is essential to the wellbeing of our country.

Important as they are, we can’t rely on the service industries as the foundation of our national wealth. We need to make things.

Ten days after the Welsh Assembly elections, and a government has still not been formed.

It is very obvious that Labour have no option but to do a deal of some sort with either the Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru. They had better move quickly; if a new First Minister is not appointed by 31 May, there will have to be another election, which is probably more than anyone could bear, least of all the electorate.

The most ironic aspect of the saga is that, for months before the election, Peter Hain, Nick Ainger et al. were issuing dire warnings of the consequences if the voters rejected Labour: a “rag-bag coalition”, led by the Tories. Labour were indeed rejected, yet what we are clearly going to get is still a rag-bag coalition – but led by Labour, so that must be OK.

Remember Peter’s criticism of the old Government of Wales Act: that, under it, “losers became winners”?

What, exactly, has changed? Or am I missing the point?

Gordon Brown has embarked on his imperial progress around the UK, aimed at showing the electorate that he is fizzing with ideas and is not in any sense encumbered by the minor technicality that he has been Tony Blair’s estranged Siamese twin since 1997, and before that.

So far, the big ideas have been rather thin on the ground. I had hoped that he would announce the abandonment of the wasteful, intrusive, dangerous nonsense that is the ID cards scheme, but, only yesterday, his spokesman poured cold water on that notion.

No, according to this morning’s Telegraph and Times, Brown’s major announcement this week is to be the building of five carbon-neutral new “eco-towns” on brownfield sites in the south and east of England.

There are a couple of points to be made about this. First, the idea is not new; it was first flagged up about twelve months ago. Brown is simply recycling old policy announcements, his modus operandi for the past decade; so no change there.

Secondly, the proposal is nakedly political, intended simply as an attempt to out-green the Tories, who have opened up a huge gap ahead of on Labour on environmental issues. I can’t really complain too much about that, because Brown is bound to do his best to try to give Labour a greener image, and there is a lot of ground to make up. In any case, we should indeed be building more environmentally efficient homes, and the planning regime and building regulations should be designed to help achieve this.

However, the mooted eco-towns are not the answer to the housing crisis that is engulfing us. House prices have rocketed over the last ten years and affordable housing is now but a distant memory. It is all but impossible to get on the property ladder. Lenders are now offering mortgages calculated at up to seven times income, but that only makes matters worse for borrowers at a time of rising interest rates.

This applies as much in the country as in the towns and cities. In North Wales, the rural areas are experiencing significant outward migration of young people, creating an increasingly elderly population profile.

Brown is, in large measure, himself responsible for our housing problems. His huge increases in stamp duty have significantly increased the overheads associated with house buying; the ludicrous Home Information Packs will only add to the burden. Council tax inflation – even higher in Wales than in England, because of revaluation and rebanding – has been stoked up by Brown’s use of the system as another stealth tax.

The eco-town idea (if it is indeed ever developed beyond the leadership campaign period) will not address the crisis in any way; what is needed is affordable housing in the areas where people want to live and work, not in cantonments remote from the major commercial centres.

I have a friend who is expecting her first baby in a few weeks’ time. Whilst excited at the prospect, she tells me that she is truly concerned that her child may never be able to afford a home to live in. That is deeply worrying, and is the big issue that Brown – and every other politician, for that matter – should be addressing. Posturing simply won’t do.

Well done Michael Howard, for telling Alastair Campbell the way it is in this clip from Thursday’s Newsnight. Campbell looked stunned and even Paxman seemed flabbergasted.

The BBC News website’s Have Your Say column asks of its readers, apparently in all seriousness: “Would Gordon Brown be the right choice?”

Choice? What choice?