The Presiding Officer causes chaos for the Press

THE EMPIRE-BUILDING engaged in by Lord Elis-Thomas seems about to back-fire, writes Clive Betts from the Assembly press gallery.

A couple of years ago the good lord engaged in a bit of furniture removal within what used to be called Crickhowell House.

For reasons which were never fully explained to us (perhaps because we never asked), the presiding officer decided to move himself from one end to the other of the unlovely office block that houses the Assembly’s administration.

In fact, he decided to take over part of the area occupied by the press.

To be more precise, he brought in the builders and gave himself a no-doubt lushish office next door to the press gallery.

To be exactly precise, he took over two press rooms. One was that occupied by the Trinity-Mirror group, and at one time was occupied by five journalists.

I was there representing the Western Mail, assisted by one colleague. The South Wales Echo had two desks. And then there was Tom Bodden, of the Daily Post (run from Llandudno, if you please, not Liverpool).

Lord Elis-Thomas made his move shortly after I was made redundant by the Western Mail; my colleague had already gone. As had the Echo pair.  For a full five years the Western Mail had no representation – except extremely rarely – in the Assembly.

So much for their belief in the Assembly.

The presiding officer also took over the room opposite the Trinity Mirror room – this was used for filing cabinets – mainly for my piles of press cuttings, indeed – plus a television for me to report on two or three committee meetings at the same time – and a teapot (not mine !).

Having realised (unlike the Western Mail !) how much news was being produced by the Assembly, after I was made redundant (with a payoff, still unspent but gaining interest in a good building society) I continued working fulltime in the press gallery, serving the weekly professional and technical press.

As I couldn’t really continue in my Western Mail desk having left the paper, I moved into a quite-large general press room. This housed at various times the Daily Mirror Welsh edition, the Evening Post (Swansea) and the Argus (Newport).

But, as these papers gradually gave up on the Assembly, I and my remaining fellow-journalists were left with plenty of room.

But now things have quietly changed. When the presiding officer took over the two press rooms, Mr Bodden was forced to move into the general press room.

And when the Western Mail saw sense at last and sent a reporter back to the Assembly after the 2007 election, that paper took over one of the empty desks for their reporter (David Williamson). And they demanded and got another empty desk in case the Echo should decide to turn up again (apparently some form of rental is involved).

Also occupying a desk in this room is the weekly Golwg. In other words, five people (although I myself am  not there that often, having given up serving the technical press after the disappearance of the old-style, information-heavy committee meetings about what the cabinet was really up to).

All well and good. Until things started happening in the television world in the last week or so. HTV (that was) decided to cut back on their political coverage. This meant that one of the HTV reporters for two days a week no longer had a desk in the big HTV room and studio.

On those days, he had to move to a desk in the general press room, where he contributed a column to the weekly Golwg magazine.

All desks were now occupied in that room – albeit with a ghost sitting at the Echo’s desk.

And then chaos approached.

Tinopolis, the Llanelli TV company, has decided to make moves to take over some work done by HTV. To do that they have started sending two journalists to the Assembly press briefings on Tuesday.

But they want more than just to attend briefings. They want two desks in the press gallery, in other words in the room we occupy. But there aren’t any desks spare any more, or any space, either. The presiding officer has taken over the space.

So what happens now ? My feeling is that Cambria (ie myself) will lose its desk. Not that anyone has had the decency to tell me.

Fortunately, I am giving up in mid-January and retiring.  And if necessary I can copy several other workers and work with my computer from the canteen, using one of two blocks of wall-plugs for electricity.

It’s good to see that so many journalists now want to try and cover the Assembly. It’s a pity that so few of them cover the printed press (Welsh evening newspaper editors are, sadly, not always the brightest of characters in seeing the importance of what happens beyond the county borough boundary).

Of course, we could send the Tinopolis reporters through the door into the area which once housed the Assembly’s committee clerks.  Once through the door, they could turn sharp left and occupy the first desk they find.

That would be Lord Elis-Thomas’s.

And if they want a breath of fresh air they could take a turn on the nice balcony outside.

That balcony used to be the “possession” of Trinity Mirror and the Press Association – both had access through sets of doors.

Once Trinity Mirror had lost its room, only the Press Association had an “interest” in sunning themselves outside there on our rare sunny days.  Unfortunately, PA do not seem to have put up much of a fight.

And Lord E-T has also gained control of that part of the former press empire.  Indeed, on hot and balmy days, E-T (the real man, rather than the skinny film character from another world)  can indeed be seen partaking of the joys of the outside world in what used to be a press balcony.

By the way the impending crush of media folk might perhaps be accommodated by doing away with the “posh” little kitchen Lord E-T provided us with during all these changes.

After all, there’s the main canteen just a lift-ride away.