Cool political video for your entertainment.
Apr 012010
Mar 012010
Video of the 7th Parade through Cardiff. Big Question? Why can we not have a similar bank holiday to St.Patricks Day?
Don’t expect much from the petition for saving the historic Vulcan pub in what was Newtown, in Cardiff.
The distinctive-looking building standing on one of the main roads into the city centre from the west is due to be demolished for a car park and associated developments….
A campaign to save the premises near the main city fire station has visited each of the party conferences and drawn much comment.
But will the petition now being considered by the Assembly’s petitions committee achieve much ?
The pub has long lost all the housing which once surrounded it. Without punters, what long-term hope is there for the business ?
In addition, planning matters at this level are decided by the city council. Attempts to find out from the council what their opinions are ran into trouble. The committee clerk intimated that the committee might be straying beyond its brief.
Even worse, the Labour chairman of the committee, Val Lloyd, Labour member for Swansea East, seemed strongly to believe that a “letter” to the council was far more in order than that officials of the council to attend the committee to talk to its members (and vice-versa) about its planning permission which would allow demolition and replacement by something which would be instantly immemorable.
Of course, the rights of local authorities should be preserved. But any organisation must understand that its rights do not exist in a vacuum. Other bodies have views. And they have to be reconciled, rather than ignored.
We have next door in Bristol more than a couple of examples of city council incompetence over redevelopments.
The problem here is simply that a developer has obtained what he conceived as a rectangular block of virgin (actually, extremely brown) land. To incorporate the pub would demand a massive redesign, which might be beyond the professional capabilities of his retained architect.
Perhaps more to the point, it might cost far more than the managing director of the company, Marcol Asset Management, wants to pay. Marcol are a massive international company, so they don’t lack of few pence (or zlotys, or any other currency).
You can be sure at this moment they regard what is happening in Cardiff as a mere local difficulty. Perhaps what is needed is a little less protesting and a little more constructive thinking about how this pub can be integrated into the re-development that will certainly happen.
In all the comment about Plaid’s performance in the elections, Caerffili has been almost ignored.
Certainly, it’s significant that Plaid lost Gwynedd – but as the seats went to another lot of Nats, there’s not much difference politically.
Far more important is what happened in the Valleys. From the insignificant mention in Plaid’s main comment on their election performance, you might have thought a couple of extra seats had come their way.
In fact, Plaid is almost certain to take control. And that should have been obvious to Ty Gwynfor last Thursday at 10pm. The brighter parts of the party hierarchy knew that a coalition with the resident Independents had been in negotiation for months.
All it needed was for Ron Davies – father of the activist sort of devolution that sometimes seems to be disappearing – to win in Bedwas, Trethomas and Machen. He topped the poll there, closely followed by colleague Colin Hobbs.
So Plaid will retake control of the council which they turned into one of the best run in Wales- although to be fair to them, Labour didn’t really let things slip in their time in control.
All Plaid will have to start to remember is that the party locally remember that Plaid is NOT primarily a vote-getting machine, but that it possesses a principle or two. One of them is that Welsh is the ancestral language of Wales – and that poetry was being written in Welsh not much more than a century ago addressed at occasionally-monoglot locals : for instance, a doggerel dealing with Piccadilly. Not in London, but the current five-way road junction and pub just north of the town centre.
Sometimes one wonders whether Plaid in Gwynedd and Caerffili are the same people.
Apr 152008
Perhaps Irene James, Labour AM for Islwyn, can relax a little after all over hopes to upgrade the rather-delayed full reopening of the railway to Ebbw Vale.
You may remember her toe-curling speech after first winning the seat from Plaid’s Brian Hancock, well renowned for his love affair with canals. She trumpeted that the constituency had returned to its one and only true owners. Very very much Old Labour.
Now she’s one of those who reckon the reopened railway past her home in Abercarn isn’t quite good enough. Although the Assembly has turned English ideas on their head – London has fallen out of love with new openings and seems not to be funding any – Mrs James believes there it would be worth reopening Abercarn station. That is one of those which Cardiff has forgotten about – together with Aberbeeg and Cwm.
The only problem is that the minister in charge of railways is the leader of the party which she so comprehensively ridiculed when she first won – Ieuan Wyn Jones.
In the old days, that would have been sufficient for a proposal to bite the dust. That may yet happen – but not because of that ill-judged speech. Mr Jones – as well as his adviser – totally rejects any animosity. “No, no, no,” the minister said.
Mind you, there’s still the small matter of a business case for a reopening; plus, whether an additional stop would prevent a train getting to each terminus in time.
Irene is by now exceedingly contrite about her speech. I was just an ordinary teacher fighting against the image of a sitting AM, she says. I’m surprised that she doesn’t know more about the image that Mr Hancock sometimes possessed within Crickhowell House. Irene seems to be saying she was exceedingly lucky to win.
Mind, her railway case should be strong. In Rhondda, the railway stops so frequently that it is almost putting the buses out of business; along the Ebbw, the train acts almost as an express, so few are the stops.
If the Assembly is to act on the global warming agenda, the line needs to give a proper service to the communities its passes; as well as running into the valley’s main community of Newport, instead of only to Cardiff.
