Cambria Politico - The Political Blog

A night no rebel should miss!

Following their last triumphal visit to Cardiff more than three years ago the fierce and mighty Wolfe Tones, Ireland¹s greatest Rebel Band, return for an all-Wales tour, appearing for one-night gigs in Caernarfon, Aberystwyth and Cardiff.

Known for their uncompromising portrayal of Ireland’s troubled history -now often forgotten in Celtic Tiger euphoria - the Wolfe Tones repertoire features some of the great classical rebel songs and ballads in addition their own stirring compositions, celebrating the deeds of the heroic men and women who gave their lives for their country’s freedom.

Any evening with the Wolfe Tones will be a rousing, uplifting and electrifyingly emotional experience with music and song which goes straight to the heart. As Wales experiences her own rocky road to political freedom, the  art of the Wolfe Tones will open the eyes to the long, brave and resolute struggle of the Irish nation for independence and dignity among the nations of the world.

 Some politicians, in several parties, think that one Clive Betts is as much as they can handle.

They’re probably quite right. After all, my modus operandi all these years I have worked in Cardiff has been to enter a press conference with the aim of upsetting a few shibboleths.

It’s been great fun, and I think both sides have enjoyed it. Simply because I have always (well, almost) respected the person whose views I have been testing.

I’m the only person with my name in Wales, and the journalist of the same surname who has worked from Newtown is in no way related (at least, that I know). [Read more →]

It doesn’t need a mathematical genius to work out that this latest ‘tax bribe’ by Labour is not going to help the housing market.

There are few problems so bad that a government cannot make them ten times worse by intervening. The housing market is no exception. Much as it will cause pain to those who bought too late into the dream of home ownership, the only sensible policy is to stand back and let the market find its own level.

Source: Ross Clark Times Online

BBC’s Robert Peston has the best analysis… here

Here are some of the thoughts maybe going through people’s heads on this issue.

Stamp Duty. Ah yes. If I buy a house now I will make a saving of 1% in stamp duty.  Hang on…If I wait a month I will save 2% in house price devaluation and if I wait a year up to 30% - so what’s the point?

Gazundering. Ah yes. This is what I’ll do. I’ll make a reasonable offer on this house. When it is accepted  (and they will probably jump at it) I will proceed with the transaction until the day of exchanging contracts and then I will threaten to pull out unless they drop the price by 30%. Imagine the consternation!

Stop paying my mortgage. Ah yes. I think I will stop my direct debit to the building society (pay the money into a savings account) and see what happens. Maybe the government will bail me out. Worth a try.

Walk away. Ah yes. I think I will just go and live with Mum and Dad for a while and post these keys  (and deeds) back to the bank (building society).

Burn the house down. Hmmm… I don’t think so. Forensics are pretty good these days. They might lock me up.

A co-conspirator sent us this amusing little snippet that is going the rounds.

Gordon Brown was visiting a primary school in Carmarthenshire where he looked in on one of the classes.
They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.

The teacher asked Mr. Brown if he would like to lead the discussion on the word ‘tragedy’.
So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a ‘tragedy’.

A little boy stood up and offered: ‘If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field & a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a ‘tragedy.’
‘No,’ said Brown……..’ that would be an accident.’

A little girl raised her hand: ‘If a school bus carrying fifty children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy’
‘I’m afraid not,’ explained Mr. Brown ‘ that’s what we would call great loss‘

The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Gordon Brown searched the room. ‘Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?’

Finally, at the back of the room, little Dafydd raised his hand.
In a quiet voice he said: ‘If a plane carrying you and Mr. Darling was struck by a ‘friendly fire’ missile & blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy.’

‘Fantastic!’ exclaimed Brown. ‘That’s right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?’

‘Well,’ says little Dafydd ‘it has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss and it probably wouldn’t be a friggin accident either!’

HaHaHaHa!!! I know that Dafydd. Such an intelligent little chap.

New Labour allegedly plans to merge Wales’s national football and rugby teams into new “Great Britain” superteams in the wake of the successes of “Team GB” at the Beijing Olympics, a whistleblower on Gordon Brown’s political staff has revealed.

The whistleblower, believed to be a member of Gordon Brown’s Downing Street staff, who is Welsh, said she felt compelled to speak out in view of the “sheer madness” of policies aimed at creating a “new sense of Britishness” by  removing bodies such as the Welsh Rugby Union and the Welsh Football Association by creating Great British teams to replace “the sub-national/regional teams of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland”. These are, the official said, nothing less than “attempts to bolster support for an ailing Labour Party and the Prime Minister’s increasing unpopularity by pursuing a reinvigorated and naked ‘unionist’ agenda,” adding “This is not something I am prepared to support.”

The start of this process is seen as Brown’s demand for a “Great Britain” football team to take part in the 2012 London Olympics, described by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond as a “spectacular own goal”. “Instead of trying to brow beat the SFA, the IFA and the Football Association of Wales into a single team,” Mr Salmond continued, “Gordon Brown should abandon his campaign which threatens the identity of each of the home associations and their national squads.” There has been no comment so far from ministers in the Welsh Assembly. See here for more on this.

Wales, Scotland and the North of Ireland have already lost swathes of funding for sport and the arts as a result of the budgetary demands of London Olympics, whose facilities are being constructed against a backdrop of thinly disguised organisational chaos and deepening recessionary gloom.

The Government is reportedly putting pressure on football’s governing body, FIFA, to press for one major team to represent Great Britain in future international tournaments, which will mean the demise of independent Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland teams, first in football and then rugby.

If you don’t like what’s being planned then sign the petition … HERE

Update

“It’s great to be flying the Welsh flag on the world stage. My Dad’s born and bred in Wrexham and is Welsh through and through and so am I.” Says Olympic gold winner Tom James. -see article

Ed.Note: This post is by Cuneglas an occasional contributor to CP. Cuneglas is NOT Clive Betts who posts as Cambriapolitico. CP as stated in our terms and conditions do not necessarily agree with the views and statements expressed by their various contributors (some of whom are as mad as hatters).

GIVE THIS ITEM A - BLOOD BOIL - RATING (ie. does it make your blood boil when you read this!)

(6 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)  Loading ...

Even the formidable health minister Edwina Hart admitted she was surprised by some of the secretive ways of working that her civil servants operate.

Mrs Hart had launched a massive consultation operation over the future of the NHS, suggesting that she would abolish the local health boards and make various other changes.

Over 800 submissions quickly submerged her desk on the fifth floor at Ty Hywel. She read them all, she told us. After her initial decision in mid-July to merge trusts and LHBs into eight regional bodies providing most NHS services, she said she would spend the summer holidays reading some responses again to help her decide what sort of national board to set up.

Lib Dem health spokesman Jenny Randerson asked why these responses hadn’t been published - no doubt, she fancied reading them…. so she could advise the minister. Mrs Hart replied that her intention had been to publish - “I had envisaged that, as the responses came in, they would automatically go on the website, but apparently that is not how it is done.”

She found out that permission had to be sought from each respondee.

I am glad that point was news to the minister. It was also news to me.

For it contradicts what had seemed to be official Welsh policy. The general consultation website states clearly, “We will publish a summary of the responses we receive, or the responses themselves.  If you want your comments to be anonymous, you will need to tell us.”

[Read more →]

Gordon Brown’s obsession with “Team GB” is flogging a dead horse says Cuneglas

Gordon Brown’s obsession with creating of a British football team to take part in the 2012 London Olympic Games is yet another desperate attempt to flog the dead horse of “Britishness” in the face of looming Scottish independence and the steady advance of Welsh devolution. Responding to Gordon Brown’s proposal to ‘revive’ “Great British” men and women’s football teams, Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond said that Brown showed himself to be “seriously out of touch with Scotland.” He might have added: Wales too.

The dramatic sporting successes of the Welsh and Scottish athletes in Beijing (six gold and five silver medals between them: Wales three gold, two silver, Scotland three gold, one silver) demonstrates the disproportionate contribution (6 out of 19 gold medals by 8 out of a population of 60 million) these men and women made to the much-trumpeted success of “Team GB”.

Salmond has given his backing to the ‘good idea’ of a separate Scottish Olympic team and is to draft a formal application to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to that effect. Salmond plans to arrange a series of meetings with Scotland’s sporting bodies to discuss the issue. Heritage Minister Alun Ffred Jones should be thinking seriously about initiating the same dialogue on this ‘good idea’ in Wales. And Plaid Cymru should seize the initiative and press for a debate on the issue as part of the drive towards the goal of Welsh independence.

[Read more →]

Remember to Vote on Saturday!

To the two Welsh Choirs still standing in the final of the BBC show ‘Last Choir Standing‘. Pob lwc i chi!

Brilliant stuff!

A little table in the Independent on Sunday revealed the emptiness of claims that the Olympics in 2012 will be a festival that embraces the whole the UK - rather than just London and the southeast of England.

We were all told that the entire “country” would benefit from the event; that, in the words of a Statement of Opinion scribbled by a rag-tag gaggle of Labour AMs, “Wales looks forward to playing a full part in the 2012 Olympics”.

The truth as spelled out on Sunday is that the event and everything about it is being dominated by the home counties; and that the most Wales will get will be BBC TV pictures.

Wales - and the other regions of the UK - were supposed to be able to benefit in so many ways. The Independent looked at who was winning commercial contracts.

We already know how Wales - and the rest of the UK - has been skinned of national lottery funds to pay for the east London jamboree.

And that is not the only way we have been skinned. The Independent (print edition only, not on the web version) said 531 contracts had been signed. Of these, a massive 365 went to London companies; the south-east followed close behind with 102; then the east (ie east of London) with 53.

Beyond that, the figures are ludicrous. Wales has won only three; Northern Ireland, one (but as the UK is fighting as Team GB, the six counties have presumably already joined the republic); and Scotland nine.

Wales has of course by now won its own wee Assembly to fight for our rights. But don’t expect many of its members to expose the shame and sham of the rip-off that London - where our political masters live - has forced on us.

Peter Black is one of the few strong enough to speak out. He wrote on his blog yesterday, “London has sucked all the money and goodwill from the rest of the UK … leaving us with just a few crumbs. Now they want us to give more so as to match the Communist propaganda showpiece we have just witnessed.”

Surely our next job is to disinter the second Assembly’s committee report that was critical of the entire farce.

For, be sure of one thing - criticism of the London Olympics will from now on be viewed as anti-patriotic. And, as this State gets increasingly emptier in its beliefs, it will also get increasingly nationalistic, in the American sense. With the London tabloids screaming their best, rationality will totally quit these isles.

So, where will be the best place to book a holiday in August 2012 ?   There’ll probably be more sense found in Baghdad. Or, if you fancy some peace, what about a trip around the monasteries and churches of Ethiopia ?

GIVE THIS ITEM A - BLOOD BOIL - RATING (ie. does it make your blood boil when you read this!)

(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)  Loading ...

We all know the Western Mail (otherwise Llais y Sais) is losing readers, and that their reporters sometimes can’t find stories (after all, it is still the “silly season“).

But today’s effort on the future leadership of the Welsh Labour Party in the wake of Rhodri Morgan is peculiarly off-centre.

So peculiarly off-centre that it’s worth examining, for what might be behind it.

Examine first the author. Martin Shipton, chief reporter (never political reporter, although that is where his interest lies) hardly knows the Assembly, apart from over a phone line.

Although a Welshman, he spent some years in north east England, has been close to Labour up there, and sometimes displays the anti-regional assembly bias that seems to have been a bit too common within Labour in both that region and this.

When not much news is around, reporters will often be exceptionally receptive to the musings of their senior colleagues. If that colleague is Mail editor Alan Edmunds, a musing rapidly becomes a story - the pair have been extremely close ever since Edmunds headed Wales on Sunday, and Shipton was his political man. [Read more →]

Cometh the Hour. Cometh the Man. So? Where is that Man or Woman?

According to Simon Jenkins (see extract below) The Hour is rapidly approaching. And I believe him.

Is the world drifting towards a new global war? From this week the dominant super-power, America, will for three months pass through the valley of the shadow of democracy, a presidential election. This is always a moment of self-absorption and paranoia. Barack Obama and John McCain will not act as statesmen but as politicians. They will grandstand and look over their shoulders. Their eye will stray from the ball.

In Wales, the politicians and the commentariat (such as it is) have become distracted by the minutae of the parochial and politically correct. Welsh political discourse is reduced to the level of tribal village gossip. Now I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing and it may be in context with the level of global importance that Wales has, however we can contribute more than this, as numerous Welsh figures from the past have proved,

Labour’s Gordon Brown says again and again and again that it is the policies that matter to people not the the personalities. Well, he has been shown to be thumpingly resoundingly wrong on that.  When real tanks start to roll it is too late for policy think tanks. It is no longer a case of bolting the barn door when the barn conversion itself is about to be obliterated.

If Wales is to become ‘a Nation once again’ as the Wolfe Tones song says for Ireland,  then, politically,  it needs to do more than argue about the Language, devolved powers, who is to succeed Rhodri Morgan and some petty expenses. It must again contribute something of Global and Historic significance.

Now is not the time to batten down the hatches. Now is the time for the real clichés to stand up. And that’s a truism.

A Camelot Newydd must arise.