Bourne aims at wrong target

Tweet Nick Bourne displays his outrage today over the One Wales Government's legislative programme, choosing to target in particular the lack of mention of the Welsh Language. If he wants to attack people for a lack of support for the language, I can offer him a target much closer to home, where a few well chosen words from him might even have an effect.

It is standard practice for his party in this part of Carmarthenshire to issue all their literature in English only, and include a little note on the bottom saying that anyone who really wants it in Welsh can telephone and they will be sent a special version.

For all Bourne's fulminating, the Conservative Party in these parts remains very much an English party. If they want to start claiming to be reaching out to Welsh-speakers, they need to do a bit more than express false outrage in occasional press statements.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Tweet My Tory opponent tries to argue again this week in the letters column of the 'Carmarthen Journal' that the choice in this constituency is between Labour and Tory. I suppose I should at least acknowledge that he's no longer trying to base his claim on the mathematical absurdity that 1 is larger than 7.

Unsurprisingly, I still take issue with his claim.

Firstly, although I am not a great believer that either by-elections or mid-term opinion polls are accurate predictors of general election results, they can and do indicate a trend, particularly if they continue over a lengthy period. Volatility – or even collapse - in Labour support changes the nature of the coming campaign. And the Assembly result (the only other election fought on current boundaries) showed that this constituency can be seen as a three-way marginal.

Secondly, I really do challenge his assertion that Labour-Tory is any real sort of choice. Tories close rural schools; Labour close rural schools. Tories close 3,500 post offices; Labour add another 2,500. Labour launch illegal wars; Tories support them. Doesn't look like much of a choice to me. Given the Conservative reluctance to spell out what their policies are (on anything!) – and their refusal to commit to reversing any Labour policies – what is their basis for arguing that they will do anything different?

Finally, his suggestion that Plaid have only announced last week that we are in favour of Independence for Wales shows a lack of knowledge of Welsh politics which is truly staggering; although sadly not untypical of the English Conservative Party.

I doubt that anyone will be surprised if I say that my aim is to show people that there is a real alternative to either of the London-centric parties – and that is for us to take our future into our own hands by supporting Plaid.

Saving small schools

Tweet I'm no fan of Carmarthenshire county council's approach to the issue of small schools in rural areas. My own children attended a small village school, and I know how well they can work, and the sense of family and community ownership which they generate.

The county council are far too ready to close them, and whatever they say about the reasoning, I'm convinced that their primary motivation is financial. They are trying to replace them with what they call 'community schools' – a somewhat Orwellian name, given that their enlarged catchment areas often have little to do with any real sense of community.

When I first heard that the education minister had rejected a plan to close Llansadwrn school, I was delighted, as were, I am sure, all those parents who have been campaigning to stop the closure programme. It's in the next door constituency, so I haven't been aware of the detailed arguments for and against, but here was hope that this would be a precedent on which we could build. Looking at the reasons given, I have become, however, a little more wary.

The county council have claimed this week that the decision, far from saving small schools, actually endangers more of them. Now, Carmarthenshire County Council are masters of spin and selective quoting of fact; and I am well aware that this is, in part at least, an attempt to gloss over the minister's comments on the way in which Carmarthenshire County Council conducted the process.

But it does seem that the minister has also told them that the new school that they were proposing to create is still too small, and suggests that the Council should look at a wider merger involving other schools in the area. It's bad enough having a county council hell-bent on closing our schools, without having a minister egging them on – and giving them someone else to try and blame for what are, in the end, decisions of the ruling group on the county council.

The English Question

Tweet From my reading of what Kenneth Clarke had to say today, the Tories are continuing to struggle with the whole issue of devolution, and particularly with the question of what to do in England. It would be pretty easy for us here in Wales – particularly in Plaid – to say it's an English problem; leave them to it. After all, our argument is that we want Wales to be free to follow its own path; why wouldn't we be content to allow England to do likewise?

Easy, but mistaken in this case. If the Tories (or any other party come to that, but Labour have already been bitten once, and seem unwilling to come back to the question) were suggesting some sort of separate institution for England, either as a whole or else by establishing regional assemblies, then I would be quite content to leave them to it. But they're not; they're trying to tinker with UK institutions to achieve their objectives – and that makes it our concern as well.

The first question is why they are doing it. Their proposals bear little sign of serious thought about what the constitution should look like, and every sign of trying to play on – and foment – English resentment and anger as a tool for their own electoral purposes. In the short term, it may even work, but they are likely to find that they create as many problems as they solve in the process.

The second is that, since the extent and nature of devolution differs in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the issue isn't as simple - as they seem to think - as defining 'English-only' legislation. Some laws will apply only in England; some only in England and Wales, some only in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, some only in Northern Ireland - and just about every other possible permutation. That makes at least four different classes of MP, and deciding which MPs can vote on which laws looks like an absolute nightmare to me.

This confusion might also create an opportunity for Wales, however - if the Tories were ever to discover the concept of consistency. Given that devolution, particularly to Wales, remains incomplete in a whole host of areas, Westminster may still be passing some laws which apply only to Wales – and there are rather more which include clauses relating only to Wales. What about only allowing Welsh MPs to vote on these laws and clauses?

The Tories' proposal is aimed at preventing Welsh and Scottish MPs (predominantly Labour) imposing their will on England (which is generally predominantly Tory). Logic would surely dictate that English Tories should, in the same way, be prevented from imposing their will on Wales, wouldn't it? And, while we're about it, how about only Welsh MPs voting on Assembly LCOs...

More on Post Offices

Tweet Talking about post offices must be starting to look like something of an obsession, I'm sure. But with 25 down for closure across Carmarthenshire - a wholly disproportionate share of the 2,500 for the whole of the UK – and a six week consultation period, it is inevitably very high on the agenda locally.

Last night I was at a meeting in Llangathen, in the Carmarthen East constituency; this time as an interpreter to provide a simultaneous translation into English for the benefit of those not able to understand Welsh.

It didn't surprise me to find that the Labour parliamentary candidate was issuing a leaflet opposing the closure. What was a bit of a surprise, however, was to find that it used the same design and wording as those issued by the MP for Carmarthen West - only the village name and the name of the publisher was any different. I had naively assumed that it was a local campaign by Labour in one constituency; it now looks like a co-ordinated campaign across a wider area.

I thought it was bad enough in one constituency to be arguing in favour of the plan, but against every individual closure; to be doing so on a widespread basis across the country starts to look like pre-meditated dishonesty. And they wonder why people are cynical about politicians.

PS – As with any good campaign, there are always moments of comedy. My second favourite to date was Dai Trelech, the 'character' who represents the Trelech ward on the county council, referring to the outreach service as the 'out-of-reach' service. But the best has to be the report by the post office on Llansteffan post office which said that the nearest branch was only one and a half miles away – in Ferryside. That's one of those pieces of information which is perfectly true, but utterly useless (except to a crow) unless someone is proposing to reinstitute the long-gone ferry service.

Another day, another post office

Tweet On to Talog last night for another extremely well-attended meeting. Talog is another small village facing the loss of its post office. Taking the post office closure proposals as a whole locally (Llanboidy, Trelech, Talog, Blaenwaun), there's a huge sweep of the northern part of this constituency which will be left with no fixed post offices at all, just a travelling van.

We had the usual speech from the local MP about how he supports the plans and processes in principle, but the post office have got this particular one wrong. I now have a collection of three near-identical leaflets from him explaining why it's wrong to close _____ post office, and in all of them he claims that the post office is "forgetting the most important factor (...in the future of ___ Post Office...) - the wishes of local people".

Er, no, Nick. Not the post office – your government told them the criteria to use, and that wasn't one of them. The post office isn't allowed to take people's wishes into account – if it were they would never achieve the government-imposed target of around 2,500 closures, because no community 'wishes' its post office to close. Neither was the impact of the changes on the environment one of the factors involved – particularly the extra travelling that people will have to do.

Ultimately, that's why this whole consultation process is badly flawed – because the consultation isn't about the programme, or the decisions already taken on which that programme is based, or the criteria used to make those decisions. It's limited to which post offices should close, with the inherent danger that we end up pitting communities against each other instead of making common cause against a bad government decision.

What's in a name?

Tweet It wasn't just the Carmarthen River Festival which had to be cancelled as a result of raw sewage being discharged into the Tywi; the Laugharne Regatta suffered the same fate. And it has been claimed that four minutes of heavy rain is all it takes to trigger the problem.

Now a group of 15 organisations has come together specifically to campaign for a clean-up of the river. I wish them every success, and we will of course be supporting their campaign. It is unacceptable that our rivers should be so readily used in this way.

I do have a slight reservation, however, about the name that they've chosen for the group. Carmarthen Residents Against Pollution has a nice ring to it; but newspaper editors may wish to hesitate before shortening it to an acronym.

Independence

Tweet Adam Price makes quite a splash today with his story about the Independence Initiative. Adam also made very similar points in his article in Golwg last week, which is posted on his website.

I've said before that I'm personally not in the least uncomfortable with arguing for Welsh Independence, so Adam's comments certainly meet with approval here. But it is something that we've not paid enough attention to in recent years, a point which Adam makes well.

In fact, Adam brought a range of exciting proposals for future campaigning work to the last meeting of the NEC, and got an enthusiastic response to everything that he said (but no, I'm not going to reveal it all here), including his proposed Independence Initiative. So I was more than a little surprised at the suggestion in the Western Mail's report that "some in the party's hierarchy are likely to see it as an unwelcome distraction". Is there another party hierarchy outside the National Executive of which I remain blissfully unaware, or is this just trying to suggest dissent where there is none?

I've never understood why anyone in Plaid would be in the least afraid to argue for our vision for our nation – after all, the fact that we have such a vision is probably the one single thing which most marks us out as being different from the rest.

Many a slip

Tweet I found myself on Radio Wales' "Called to Order" on Friday evening, just before taking myself off to Trelech. One of the topics for discussion was the little verbal slip made by Alun Cairns a week or so ago.

There can be no doubt that what he said was unacceptable. He should have known better, even in what was a pretty light-hearted exchange, so no defence was forthcoming from this quarter for what he said.

But most systems of justice recognise that there are degrees of wrongdoing; some things are worse than others. In politics, however, it seems to be becoming the norm that any slip by any individual leads to the other parties, and the media, baying for blood; and there is a danger that people will be so afraid of being caught out saying the wrong thing that they will end up saying very little at all, unless it's been carefully scripted by Party HQ.

It is right that political parties should use their disciplinary processes to deal with transgressions; but are there also occasions when the electorate can be left to make their own judgement on an individual? And how should we decide between the two?

In this particular case, it seems to me that both the verdict and the sentence on Alun Cairns will have more to do with the image which Cameron wishes to portray than with any cold and careful assessment of the words actually used, the context, and the degree of offence caused. People may or may not feel that it is the 'right' verdict and sentence; but the process of arriving at it looks rather dubious to me.

From Llanboidy to Trelech

Tweet Another big turnout from the local community on Friday night, this time in Trelech, another village whose post office is earmarked for closure. The community centre was packed as people made their views known on the post office's plans. In the case of Trelech, it seems beyond doubt that, if the post office goes, so will the only shop in the village, which will become unsustainable without the post office salary.

Our local MP was there, ready to help the village oppose the closure. But hold on, isn't it his government that's behind the closures? His line is an interesting one, outlined in Llanboidy a week ago and repeated in Trelech. He fully supports the plans of the government to make the post office a viable business, and to oblige the post office to close 2,500 offices. But the post office have got it wrong by picking the wrong ones, so it's their fault, not the government's. Used for one post office in one village, it might be credible; applied to every village where there is a campaign to keep the post office open, it starts to look a bit like "I'm in favour of closing post offices, as long as they're in someone else's constituency".

The point is that we face a very simple choice. As long as politicians and governments are wedded to the idea that the post office must become a viable, profitable business as though it were in the private sector, then closures are inevitable. The debate we're having in village after village is purely about which offices will be sacrificed to achieve that. The debate we should be having is whether the post office is also providing an essential service for which we should be willing to contribute from our taxes. That would be a much more meaningful discussion.