I have been asked whether I knew Christopher Glamorganshire, the civil servant who blogged from the inside on the Labour-Plaid coalition talks. But the truth is that for journalists the Assembly is a bit like a jail.
Once we enter it, we are tightly restricted as to where we can go, by passes which open (or usually don’t) open doors. In Ty Hywel (the old Crickhowell House), we are allowed onto one corridor on the same wing in each of the ground and first floors, into the canteen, the members’ bar (not worth using now, as AMs usually eat in an adjoining new restaurant, so there’s no one to chat to), our suite of five press and TV rooms, and the mini-corridor alongside.
A jailbird can only speak to his fellows and to the warders. Ditto in Ty Hywel. We seldom pass AMs in our corridors; the only time we usually get to chat to them is in the three weekly press briefings.
Civil servants, we are sure, are programmed to look straight through journalists. This has got far worse since the present Government of Wales Act came into force immediately after last year’s election. I feel pretty sure that they are instructed not to speak to or acknowledge the press.
Their terms of employment as to how they deal with the press (and, indeed, the public) are probably a state secret; but you must remember that sending emails to the Press is a sackable offence (which was found out by the gentleman who sent something to the BBC in the early days of the Assembly).
He was captured, by the way, through the UK Government and secret service communications centre at Cheltenham (beside the main Gloucester down there) which automatically highlights certain words in every email which passes through, and it seems that BBC is one such. If you want to know whether an email is destined to be read in Cheltenham, check if the address contains the acronym “GSI” - meaning Government Secure Internet.
Under the new GOWA, civil servants are purely servants of the ministers (and you can be sure the ministers want to keep it that way !). And remember that civil servants are by law anyway ultimately servants of Number 10. Under the old Act, they served every AM, as local government officials still do (but, I wonder whether that will eventually change, with Blairite alterations to council governance methods, through introduction of Westminster-style cabinets).
It’s a bit dispiriting that the bad old ways of the Welsh Office – when civil servants were not much more that the best-paid postmen in Wales, and could afford to be totally colourless, and to know little – seem to have been perpetuated even among the former civil servants who now work for the Assembly itself (rather than the AG). Some of them seem positively terrified at talking to the press.
In other words, I didn’t know Christopher Glamorganshire.
Clearly, there is an Almighty need for changed attitudes in Cardiff Bay !
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He said he met the Queen at the airport and when the group were then embarked on a journey, he and another took their caps off.Sir Norman said it was pointed out to him that, even when you are in the Queen’s presence, you must keep to the uniform.
