Stop digging

Tweet The first law of holes is that when you're in one, you should stop digging. It's a law which Carmarthenshire county council seems not to fully understand.

I've mentioned before the curious way in which the council takes some of its decisions. The strange case of Christmas car parking raised its head again at last week's council meeting, when one of Plaid's team drew attention to an apparent inaccuracy in the minutes of the previous meeting. At the time, on 9th December, she had asked whether parking would again be free, and was clearly told that it would be. That is not, however, what found its way into the council's minutes, which read:

"In response to a question as to whether free parking would be introduced in the Authority’s car parks over the Christmas period, the Director of Technical Services stated that a recommendation would be made to the Executive Board at its meeting on the 14th December to approve the introduction of free car parking after 10.00 a.m. in all towns in the two weeks leading up to Christmas 2009."

When asked how the decision was therefore implemented on 10th December, and publicised in the council's propaganda sheet on 25th November, the Executive Board member responsible for this area rose to his feet to declare that he had signed off the decision, but thought that he was in order to do so after the Executive Board had agreed the matter on 14th December – completely missing the point of the question.

His answer may also have caused some concern to the council's Monitoring Officer who quickly intervened to confirm that no councillors had taken the decision at all; it was an operational matter delegated to the Director of Technical Services. Fairly clearly, both explanations cannot be correct, but the Monitoring Officer's version is the one which keeps the council legal.

One has to ask why the Director of Technical Services would tell full council that he would take a recommendation on the matter to the Executive Board if, as the Monitoring Office claims, the said Director had already taken the decision himself at least two weeks earlier.

I can only speculate. Unfortunately, the potential for falling foul of the law of libel rather restricts me from doing so.

Visions and diatribes

Tweet Sadly, Peter Hain's essay on the economy yesterday read more like a pro-Labour and anti-Tory diatribe than a serious contribution to discussion of the way forward for the Welsh economy.

His assertion that he is determined to progress the Cardiff-Weston barrage will only add to the concerns of those who believe that the decision has already been taken on largely political grounds, and the feasibility study looking at the environmental impact of this and other schemes is mere window-dressing.

The commitment to the South Wales LCEA is encouraging, certainly, as are the jobs being created in Chepstow and Ynys Môn.

My biggest concern with what there was of an economic vision, however, is whether government - at all levels - is really managing to struggle free from the idea that the way forward for Wales is to compete in global markets and start looking instead at a re-localisation of the economy. I detected no sign of that, just a continued concentration on large schemes and competitiveness.

Internalising problems

Tweet The difficulties being posed to the Euro by the serious economic woes of certain countries within the Eurozone has led to some people questioning whether a single currency is sustainable without the existence of a single state. At this stage, the issue may appear somewhat esoteric to many, but it is of more than passing interest to those of us who believe that we should enter the Euro at some point (whether as part of the UK or as an independent member state).

The question of whether a single interest rate (and therefore monetary policy) set centrally would suit all the different members was an issue from the outset, but as long as the economies of the member states were all growing, the problem didn't really manifest itself. In recession, the problem has become acute.

However, simply turning the EU into a single state wouldn't make the problem go away; it would merely internalise it. In some ways, the position of Wales within the UK mirrors the position of, say, Greece within the EU. Monetary policy and interest rates set in London for the whole UK frequently do not match the needs of Wales. It's not unconnected with the fact that even when the UK economy was growing rapidly, Wales was lagging behind.

Whilst that lag has been, and remains, a serious problem for Wales, it was never something that worried the international money markets, because the problem was internalised within a single state, the UK. It's easy to see, in consequence, why some are arguing that the EU should also internalise the problem by developing into a single state.

That might keep the money markets happy (basically, because they would then know that the larger countries, particularly Germany, would be underwriting the smaller countries such as Greece), but it would not resolve the underlying problem of a series of economies performing at different levels; it would merely hide the problem as far as those outside were concerned.

Internalisation may solve one problem, but it creates another, as Wales' experience shows, because it reduces the incentive to rectify that underlying inequality. I have never understood why so many people seem not only willing to accept Wales' underperformance, but to use it as a reason why Wales should not control her own destiny. It drives me in the opposite direction – to a position which says that the best way (and perhaps the only way) of tackling our underperformance is to take responsibility ourselves.

Countries such as Greece and Ireland are going through difficult and uncomfortable times - it's something which we should watch carefully, and learn from as well.

More on jargon

Tweet Not long back after sitting in the public gallery through a rather epic meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council. I've mentioned before the way in which official reports tend to over-use certain words, and we had another example today when the council discussed its "Supporting People Operational Plan".

The title was ominous enough to start with. Plaid's Cllr Emlyn Dole asked if someone could define the phrase 'floating support', which he said was used at least 76 times in the document. (I haven't checked his count, but on a quick flick through, it looks like an entirely plausible statistic). This support, whatever it is, comes in a variety of guises, including something called 'low level floating support', which, as Emlyn pointed out, sounds like it might no longer be afloat at all, even if not yet entirely sunk.

The Director of Social Care, Health, and Housing was first up with an attempt at an explanation. He assured the meeting that the term was one which was well-used and understood in the 'supporting people community'. I concluded that he was probably trying for his first mention in Private Eye, but that he hadn't exactly spread a great deal of light.

The Chief Executive followed, telling the meeting that the primary audience for the report was not the ordinary reader, but the civil servants in the Assembly Government. This is the sort of terminology they use, and if the council didn't use the same terms, the Government might not understand the report, and might withhold funding. He went on to say - and I paraphrase only slightly - that if the council wrote reports in plain language, they'd only have to explain the terms they used in jargon before submitting them to the Government.

Is it me?

PS - the explanation eventually forthcoming was that 'floating support' is support which is not 'fixed'. So now we all know.

Red Tape

Tweet Red tape is a little bit like sin – everyone's against it in the abstract, but not necessarily so certain when it comes to the specifics. For politicians, it's far too easy to make a glib commitment to abolishing red tape (and, yes, I know that some of my lot have done it as well), but I'm not sure it's always a terribly meaningful statement.

As a fresh young systems analyst, I was designing a new computer system and having enormous difficulty duplicating one of the reports being produced by a clerk in the engineering department. I sat down with her and looked on in some awe at the processes involved in producing the report, taking a full two days every month.

So I asked what happened to the report then, and was shown the drawer in the filing cabinet where it was stored every month. But who looks at it, I wanted to know. The answer was that nobody looked at it, but about three years previously, the director had asked for the information and it wasn't available, so they had continued to prepare it every month, just in case he ever asked for it again.

Unnecessary and irrelevant clerical activity – that's one of the things which most people think of when they talk about red tape. And I'm sure that lots of organisations have examples of something similar to that I described above. The other favourite is 'unnecessary rules and regulations'. But how much of what is so readily dismissed as 'red tape' really falls into those sorts of categories?

I'd hazard a guess that the answer is 'not as much as people think'. Far more often, one person's red tape is another person's protection.

I've heard some employers, particularly, complaining about the burden of red tape on their businesses. Things like European Directives about Environmental Protection, or Working Hours. Things like Maternity Pay, and discrimination legislation. Of course it would be so much easier for companies to compete with the rest of the world if they didn't have to worry about treating their staff fairly or safeguarding the environment around them.

But that isn't what I'd call red tape.

Jack Straw got into trouble recently for suggesting that some police officers would prefer to sit at desks doing paperwork than getting out and solving crimes. He made his point in an unfortunate and cack-handed fashion. The Tories love to talk about freeing police from red tape, and seized on Straw's remarks. Of course, life would be easier for the police if they didn't have to record details of the people they stop and search for instance. But it would be a lot harder to deal with suggestions of bias or prejudice in the way that the individuals being stopped are selected, or about heavy-handed policing.

That isn't what I'd call red tape either.

So, like everyone else, I'm against sin. But before I try and abolish it, I'd like to make sure that it really is sinful.

Fiddling the figures

Tweet A few days ago, I mentioned the Tory leaflet being distributed locally with a somewhat misleading front cover, and some rather dubious solutions to the problems we face. The credibility of the leaflet was further undermined yesterday by the UK Statistics Authority telling the Tories that the way in which they have been using crime statistics was "likely to damage public trust in official statistics".

Yes, indeed – the local leaflet uses the same dodgy figures which the Tories have been using elsewhere, claiming that "Since 1998 violent crime in Wales has increased by 53%". As was made clear by the Statistics Authority, any such claim is completely baseless, because the method of recording was changed significantly in the period concerned. Yet the claim is simply repeated in the Tory leaflet with no explanation, and no context.

Violent crime is a serious matter, and it is a matter which greatly concerns people on a day to basis. The causes and solutions deserve proper and thorough debate – and it would certainly help if the government did not keep changing recording methods so that we could all see whether the trend is increasing or not.

But simply playing on people's fears for political advantage by quoting meaningless figures is an irresponsible thing for any politician to do.

Elin Jones visit

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Nerys Evans and I hosted a meeting in Llanddewi Velfrey last week at which Elin Jones spoke to a group of farmers. We had a really good session with Elin outlining the policies which she and the government are following, and then an opportunity for questions and debate.

There was lots of praise for the way in which Elin has approached the job, and her knowledge and understanding of the farming industry, although there's always more to be done of course. Those in the industry certainly understand how Plaid can and does make a real difference in government.

One of the biggest concerns for farmers locally remains the question of getting a fair price for the produce they sell, and the way in which the large supermarkets are able to dominate and control the market, because four or five large companies are effectively pitted against thousands of small farming businesses.

Even for those who believe in the free markets from an ideological perspective, the current process doesn't operate fairly, and on this issue, the charge was led by Sir Eric Howells, who lives locally and frequently writes on this matter to the local papers and the Western Mail. When the market is distorted as heavily as it is in this case, we need government intervention to fix prices at a fair level.

Misleading People

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This is the front cover of a communication which is being widely distributed locally. Looks very official and ominous doesn't it? But official it is not – although ominous may well be a suitable word to apply. It's actually an election leaflet for the Conservative and Unionist Party, not particularly cunningly disguised in an attempt to get people to open and read it.

It's monolingual of course, apart from the two words "Ceidwadwyr Cymreig" in the logo. Not so Cymreig at all really - and they've even abandoned their previous practice of inviting those who might be stroppy enough to want a copy in Welsh to contact them for an under-the-counter service.

The inside lists the problems caused by decades of Labour-Tory rule in Wales; you know - the usual stuff about how London rule has made Wales the poorest part of the UK, and Wales having the highest levels of unemployment of any UK nation. It doesn't really explain why they think more of the same is the answer, of course. But it does make it clear that one of the Tories' solutions to the problems faced by Wales is "to oppose Plaid Cymru's policy".

It's not immediately clear to me why opposing another party's policy is a 'solution' to anything.

Labour's Nationalists

Tweet I was more than a little surprised to read yesterday that one of the leaders of 'True Wales', Rachel Banner, apparently believes that there are 'nationalist sympathisers' in her party, who want Wales to become an independent state. I'm not convinced about that; I think that she, like many others, is confusing identity and politics, an issue on which I contributed an article to WalesHome last week. Mind you, if the Labour Party want to spend some time looking under their own beds for dreaded nationalists, I'm hardly going to complain.

Perhaps she's just read too much into the story a while back suggesting that Plaid's strategy revolved around splitting the Labour Party between its nationalist wing and its unionist wing. In reality, I've never been happy with that idea, for two reasons (apart from the obvious one of why we would ever want to broadcast our strategy to the world in the first place!).

The main reason is that I think it doesn't represent the reality of the Labour Party, any more than does the 'True Wales' view of a party containing 'nationalist sympathisers'. There are those in the Labour Party, certainly, who are suspicious of anyone who has a strong sense of Welsh identity – or even anyone who speaks Welsh – and on occasions such people get treated as some sort of crypto-nationalists. That has tended to strengthen the view of a Labour Party which is somehow divided over the issue of Wales' constitutional future.

But I think that misses the point. Certainly, they have disagreements about the pace and extent – or even the principle – of devolution, but that is not the defining issue of politics for any of them. And there is a great deal more which unites them than divides them. It's easy for people who see the constitutional status of Wales as the defining political issue to project that view onto others; but it just ain't reality.

The second reservation that I've always had about the alleged strategy is that it predicates Plaid's progress on what happens inside another political party. A strategy which makes us the prisoners of a misreading of the internal dynamics of another party hardly sounds to me like a basis for progress.

Question Time in Saundersfoot

Tweet Friday night in Saundersfoot was the first time that the four candidates for this constituency came together for a debate. The meeting was organised by the Pembrokeshire South East Energy Group, who did a good job of getting a large crowd together on a cold evening (and in a cold hall!) to discuss matters environmental and energy policy.

We had a great range of well-thought questions, many of them coming from young people in the audience, who were obviously concerned and engaged with the issues which we face. Andy Middleton was a good and fair independent chair for the evening, and gave all of us the opportunity to put our views across.

From my point of view, I thought that the session went well, and I enjoyed it.

There was one very detailed question on which I was clueless – what does the Marine Bill do for Pembrokeshire? I didn't know, and said so; it's difficult to be knowledgeable on everything. From the answer he gave, I don't think that Simon Hart, the Tory candidate, had much of a clue either; he just wasn't up to admitting it.

It turned out that the sitting Labour MP, Nick Ainger, knew exactly what it was all about, because he had been a member of the parliamentary committee scrutinising the Bill. Curiously, the question was asked by his next-door neighbour and former Labour AM, Christine Gwyther. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

Apart from that, we had questions on climate change, nuclear energy, tidal power, population, transport policy, and farming methods. A very wide range of topics indeed. One thing that I particularly liked – and I think that the audience appreciated it too - was that there was no political point-scoring; all the answers stuck to attempting to answer the questions and set out the views of the four parties on the issues, rather then denigrating each other.

I hope that we'll have many more similar sessions.