Call For Wales to have power over alcohol pricing

Poor Labour`s Edwina Hart only suggested Wales might have the power over alcohol pricing in Wales and the ConDems went into overdrive to attack her with the Wales Office`s David Jones spitting fire about Wales never having the power over alcolhol licensing. Anybody would think she was proposing to lead an armed rebellion against England. If this is what the reaction is going to be over a proposal which Cameron has already said may be OK for Manchester, then hopes of breaking out of the colonial style government grudgingly accepted by the Tories for Wales are slim unless Plaid raises its game and drags UK Labour in Wales into a more constructive platform on self government.

Tories Want Asgar Our?

See Betsan Powys`s Blog for an update on Plaid/Tory defector Mohammed Ashgar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/betsanpowys/

Nuke Wales

Did anybody see the Evening Standards Richard Godwin article on Trident on Wednesday 18 August. While questioning the Con Dem governments enthusiasm for Trident he suggested Cameron might want to get rid of the existing missiles by "making a metaphorical smoothie of the old weapons, a smoothie of unilateral war, say, on China or Wales"
While accepting the bloke was not serious (I hope), the comment does again raise the question of how Wales is regarded in London by many English commentators and the impact this has on the public. If a Plaid supporter had suggested nuking England there would have been hell to play about racism and so on. When its against Wales, any protest is dismissed as a failure of Welsh people to have a sense of humour. Ho Ho, Nuke Wales, Ho Ho!

If Its To Do With Wales Cut it!

The Con-Dem s have adopted a very simple technique when making decisions on the cuts it will impose in the Autumn. You can just see Cameron, Osborne and their fag Clegg pouring over the details highlighting anything to do with wales and cutting it. S4C ...Cut ! A new English language news service for ITV... Cut! Electrification of the main line in S.Wales ... Cut! Arts Council Funding ... Cut! On the other hand in England, we here that they have to keep their projects. Crossrail..Essential! Olympics...Essential! Trident..Essential! etc... At the same time they are splashing out extra cash on their education and health plans for England.

Who Would Want to hurt William Windsor?

The people of Ynys Mon can rest at night knowing their police are hard at it keeping a watchful eye on William Windsor who has chosen not to stay on base with his colleagues but to rent a cottage so he can have relaxing nights on the pop with his mates and the odd romantic evening. They will be pleased of course that they will not have to bear the cost but merely lose some of their policemen. Cameron talks of all of us being in the economic mess together, of fairness and respect. As ever we pick up the tab for people who seem to be on one long holiday.

Elected Police Commissioners : Another Trap?

On the surface, it doesn`t sound too bad an idea. Locally elected police commissioners accountable to local needs. Whats more political partiy candidates can stand for election. Lets take a look at the candidates. The Tories will want to lock everybody up (excepting Kenneth Clarke) bring back torture and hanging and sack all the police. A volunteer force with nice black shirt uniforms will be enthusiastically recruited to round up the dregs of society to transport them to Tasmania with the permission of that nice girl from Barry. UK Labour will form a multitude of focus groups of stakeholders to get at the causes of crime and investigate as many strategies as possible to tackle crime. Focus groups will go home to find their homes have been trashed by new black shirted vigilante mobs. The Liberals will try to pick the best features of Labour and Tory plans and adopt a programme where middle class blackshirted (with nice tanker tops) mobs will ask permission before trashing your home. And this is Plaids chance to have a force which operates on a consensual basis with the local community and puts all those allegations of fit ups against Plaid activists in the past. The idea of the police being an organ of the UK state acting in the interests of the propertied classes and those with special privileges will be history. Time will tell. It could be that the poor sucker elected will just have take the rap for putting into action all the Con-Dem cuts of course.

Support Labour? Like Hell.

I came over all funny the other night. I was watching various UK Labour spokespeople attacking the Con Dem Coalition on health, education, spending cuts etc etc... They were pressing effective arguments with conviction. The idea that the a big mistake had been made at the General Election was being confirmed in statement after statement. However, though they are doing a good job in these early days of opposition without a leader as the spectre of Thatcherite Toryism return, 13 years of Blair and Brown cannot be forgotten. They treated Wales shabbily with Hain in the forefront. They took the UK to war and were going to maintain Trident. Big Brother identity cards and privatisation of services in England (and then Wales?) were continuing. Cynical Labour with all its trumpetting about defending Wales, will only be looking at power in Wales as a pawn in its strategy to return to power in Westminster. Once achieved, Wales will be forgotten again. Plaids strategy in all this? Hopefully, it will be to extract significant concessions so that they will be unable to forget us when they return to power in Westminster.