Plaid issues ultimatum over UKIP councillor

The Plaid Cymru leader of Ceredigion council has told independent councillors their coalition deal with Plaid will end if a UKIP member remains in their group, the BBC understands.

Ellen ap Gwynn sacked Gethin James from the cabinet for joining UKIP, but he remains part of the Independents group. 

It was councillor James who last year came up with this explaining of how democracy works.

"Sometimes when people vote in planning committee they don't hold their hands up high because they don't want the public at the back to see which way they are voting".

So probably no great loss.

I suppose amy ditching of councillor James  it will depend on how the Independents feel about a Ukip member joining their caucus as it is not unique for this to happen . I believe the Wrexham Independent group on that council includes two Plaid Member.

But in Councillors James' case he joined  UKIP after the coalition was set  up  and Plaid may well have never considered him in their coalition during the negotiations.

So have a case in their demands that he should leave the Independent group or face ending the coalition.


Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood launched a fierce attack on UKIP at her party's spring conference last week. So we may be entering into a war between Plaid and Ukip and it may intensify . worth watching.

A Partnership of Equals? Only with Scotland it seems.

The Wasting Mule reports that former UK Prime Minister  Gordon Brown has proposed the UK should become a “partnership of equals” to save the union. Though there seems to be no mention  of Wales Northern Ireland or Cornwall

The former prime minister yesterday gave a speech proposing six changes to transform the “unitary and centralised” system in the UK.

He called for a new UK constitutional law to set out the purpose of the UK as being to pool and share resources for the defence, security and well-being of all four nations.

• A new UK constitutional law to set out the purpose of the UK as pooling and sharing resources for the defence, security and well-being of the citizens of all four nations. 
• A constitutional guarantee of the permanence of the Scottish Parliament.
• A new division of powers between Scotland and Westminster that gives Holyrood more powers in employment, health, transport and economic regeneration.
• A new tax sharing agreement that balances the commitment of the UK to pool and share its resources with the need for accountability to the electors in all the places where money is spent.
• New power-sharing partnerships to address shared problems on poverty, unemployment, housing need and the environment. 
• A “radical” transfer of powers downwards from Westminster and Edinburgh to local communities.

And he suggested that the Scottish Parliament should raise about 40% of the cash it spends and said giving Holyrood more powers over income tax was the best way to achieve this.

Now you could argue that as a Scottish Politician  he rightly address himself to the current Independence debate

But he is  a former UK Prime Minister if he was serious about "a Partnership of equals " he would be addressing what this means to the rest of the UK.

It seems a case of the "Squeaky wheel gets the oil" and if we are being ignored its because we don,t call for more powers loud enough. 




We seem content to set up commissions which come up with proposals that only slightly move Wales forward and are still largely ignored by both the UK government in Westminster or put on the back burner by our sleepy assembly government.

 Let us be honest if Wales is not included in  a "Partnership of equals"  then the fault lies here .

We can't expect the likes of Gordon Brown who in his tenure as Chancelor of the Exchequer  and Prime Minister  1997 -2010 didn't seem to have promoted this, applying  this "Partnership" only to Scotland.and the rest of the UK

If there was no Independence referendum He and the rest of the Unionist would be still supporting what is by his own reckoning a unequal partnership.

a period of silence on your part would be welcome.

Plaid delegates  returning from thier spring conference will not be happy when they click on the BBC red button and see the only coverage being

 MP's Warburton comments mistake

 and
Ex leader  condemns leader's  Plaids UKIP attack

The first had Plaid Cymru's parliamentary leader saying  its MP Jonathan Edwards accepts his comments about the Wales rugby captain were a mistake.

Mr Edwards questioned how Sam Warburton could captain the Wales rugby team if he considered himself British.
It followed Warburton's remarks that he told people he was British when he led the 2013 Lions tour of Australia.

It was a Twitter gaffe  from Jonathan Edwards who over reacted to Warburtons  British comment but it is interesting the media haven't asked the Welsh captain if he considers himself Welsh .If his answer was Welsh and British then he reflects the view of many Welshmen and Women . Maybe not those of us who consider just Welsh  but acceptable. But if he considerd himself just British maybe that does call into question whether he should be leading our national team.

The swcond had Dafydd Elis-Thomas, (DET) the former assembly presiding officer, condemned  Leanne Wood's description of a vote for UKIP as a vote against Wales in her speech to the Plaid Cymru spring conference.

He said:

 "It is facile and assumes a kind of superiority that we decide who is Welsh and who is not Welsh.

In a direct message to Ukip ahead of May's European election, Ms Wood said on Friday: "Your politics have no place in our country, not now, not ever.

"Your values are not the values of Wales. A vote for UKIP is a vote against Wales - a vote against the Welsh national interest. We cannot and will not let their ugly politics divide us in May."

From here it looks like  a desperate attempt by DET to get in the headlines 

OK he would heave  had a point in that the Welsh electorate can be as xenophobic as their English counter parts.

But maybe he should have kept this within the party .

Only last month the blogger Syniadau has been pupblishing the correspondance with Plaid over following a complaint about what he had written on the subject of the Ynys Môn by-election last year.

Some people who agreed that Mike had a point  wished he had kept his disquiet to himself at least until after the byelection but he's an ordinary Plaid member who thought the Party was breaking its own rules he was right to speak out.

DET is not an ordinary member he's a former leader  who would have blown his top if  a Senior party member  had managed to grab the headlines by criticism it.

I'm remembered to quote Clement a Attlee leter to Harold Laski Chairman of the Labour Party, in 1946.

You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government. Foreign affairs are in the capable hands of Ernest Bevin. His task is quite sufficiently difficult without the irresponsible statements of the kind you are making . . . I can assure you there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of silence on your part would be welcome.

We should also ask Harman if she still believes in Civil Liberties.

The story in The Daily Mail  that Ms Harman and her MP husband Jack Dromey  while officials at the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) in the 1970s. may have approved the body granting 'affiliate' status to the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), who were  to have lobbing  for loosening of laws aimed at protecting underage children is not new and been brought up a number of times

 Former health secretary Patricia Hewitt, who was also involved in the NCCL, has also faced  similar accusations,

There are questions all thre and anyone involved in lettinf such a corganisation succh as PIE affiliate to Liberty need to ask .

But it was a long time ago and  it has more than a whiff of an attempt to smear Harman in particular with somethinf that happened 40 years ago.

BUt in In all this no one  seems to have queried how  Harman and Hewitt  can explain their support for Liberty and then be members of the Blair Government which did so much to threaten our Liberties and Dromey also  was a Trade Union Official who in his attempt to get a safe Labour seat adopted a Blarite position.

Patricia Hewitt did however,  notably once broke ranks whilst live on the BBC's Question Time, expressing her concern about government plans to introduce ID cards but for the most part a loyal Blarite.

Its not surprising really. For many a Labour Politician   their Parliamentary career starts with Student Politics then working for a cause or charity which they then abandon often after taking the oath of allegiance..

Remember  the Labour member when in opposition  instructing people at a CND rally that it will be Labour that removes nuclear weapons from these islands and who then remained silent when in power and quietly removed their CND badge  and then when on to back Blair's Illegal war.

I will give these three the benefit of the doubt over allowing a Paedophile lobby group affiliating to Liberty.

But perhaps they can answer  this question.

Was their support for Liberty a genuine belief in Civil liberties for Harman,Dromey and Hewitt  or was it simply a means of climbing the greasy pole of a parliamentary career?

A curse on both your houses .

It seems that at least the build up to the next General Election, will see both Labour and the Tories using Wales as an example of what Labour can or can't do in government.

Recent Prime Minister question Time has seen Tory MP's from English Constituencies posing questions on failings in the Welsh Health Service.

Now the Wasting Mule  today announces that 

The Welsh Government’s 'poor' performance on delivering public services will play a major role in the Conservatives’ general election campaign next year, party chairman Grant Shapps has confirmed.
In an exclusive interview with the Western Mail, Mr Shapps said the Tories would point to “service failures” in Wales in policy areas like education and health, and warn people elsewhere in the UK what they could expect if Ed Miliband enters Downing Street.

 He said:

“You can say to the rest of the UK, here is what happens if you get a Labour Government in at a general election and they don’t do what we did which is to protect the NHS budget in England and instead slash £800m off it.
“There hasn’t been an A&E target reached in Wales since 2009. People know they’re waiting longer. I was watching the 10pm news the other night and you saw people crossing the border to England to access services, even GPs, so they can get into the health system quicker. There’s clearly something going wrong with the way Labour run the NHS in Wales.

Interestingly the Mule also  reports that

The UK Labour party could look to roll out a flagship Welsh Government policy for its general election manifesto – as it seeks to hit back against a flood of criticism of the Welsh Government’s performance.
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Rachel Reeves, suggested the Jobs Growth Wales policy, often held up as one of the Welsh Government’s success stories, could be replicated across the UK during a visit to Cardiff.
Ms Reeves had joined Deputy Minister for Skills and Technology, Ken Skates, and Shadow Employment Minister Stephen Timms on the visit to Cardiff business IT firm Sapiens.
It came amid a brewing row over the alleged failings of the Welsh NHS and education systems, which UK Ministers have repeatedly pointed to as evidence of poor governance by Labour.

 Ms Reeves.  said:

“I think it is politically-motivated attack and I think that David Cameron, instead of criticising others, should get his own house in order.

“I see, as an MP in England, huge pressure on our national health service on our GPs’ surgeries, in A&E, in waiting times. We see huge pressure on school places in English schools. And David Cameron should be focusing on those issues, rather than trying to score cheap political points.

Without a doubt Plaid should immediately respond with   "A curse On Both Your Houses" and point the oddity that both Labour and the Tories seem to conducting ,if not their ideological battles (because theirs not much difference between sharp and Reeves) but one of administration.

Of course Wales is the only UK nation  to have a Labour Government  which quite frankly has done little to convince the likes of me that things will be that different if they and not the Con.LibDems were in power in Westminster.

Indeed for welsh voters we should look at Scotland where the SNP government seem to be running things better than either the Con/Libdems in London  or Labour
 in Cardiff.

The argument here should be that all tree major UK parties have proved that they are not to be trusted to govern Wales and the sooner all three are given the bot from out Nation the better.

Project Fear meets Buckaroo and is thrown off.

Project Fear took a new twist with the  BBC’s Robert Peston today, EU law (which Scotland would seemingly be subject to even though it wasn’t in the EU) might (yes might)  compel RBS and Lloyds to move to England (even though, as Peston goes on to note, both Lloyds Bank and Lloyds Banking Group are, um, already headquartered in London).

As the magnificent Wings over Scotland have pointed out there's a difference in how the media interpretate  words like might may could and will depending from whose mouth its coming from.



I wonder how much the EU law which Preston so gleefully informed us…which is seen by many to have dealt the greatest blow to 2Mr Salmond’s separatist ambitions.”  a view which hardly puts  him or the BBC in a unbiased  position has been completely implicated in this manner throughout  the European Union.

The idea of Project Fear is to present any real or (as in most cases ) imaginary case against Scottish independence and claim that this has damaged Salmond not the YES campaign but Salmond.

A few weeks back I made a comment on facebook  and my old friend Delme Bowen use the term Buckaroo in his comments.

I have taken this to heart and imagined Project Fear as the game of Buckaroo where rubbish is poured in the Independence campaign in the hope it will collapse.

But in the game of Buckaroo it doesn't work like that  and the mule (I hope no one is offended by comparing Scottish voters to a Mule) has had enough and

OK its probably not original but I do wonder how much ProjectFear which the BBC clearly has joined can go before even the staunchest NO supporter says "Stop insulting our Nations capacity" and start thinking that of a positive future for Scotland who CAN not one who can't  even consider one for themselves.


d

Mule undermines an important article with sensationlist byline.

The Mule reports  that  a  Government-backed report has concluded. Political parties should each sign up to a target of 40% female candidates in winnable seats at the next local council elections in a bid to improve representation,

It is Interesting  that they have the byline

'Too many are straight, white men in their 60s': How Wales should shake up local government diversity.

Because I can't see this quote in the article . indeed Chair of the group, Professor Laura McAllister, said the measures were “not about being politically correct or ticking boxes”, urging everyone involved in democracy to work to diversity town halls.

Clearly the figures speak for themselves 

 
Survey results found only 28% of councillors were women, more than half were over the age of 60 (57%), 99.4% were white, just 14% consider themselves disabled and just 2% were LGBT. 

Prof McAllister said:

“Increasing the numbers of people from under-represented groups is not just about being ‘politically correct’ or ticking boxes. Local government provides frontline services to the public which are vital for their everyday lives so it is vital the people who make decisions on our behalf about all of these matters are in tune with and representative of their local communities and understand their needs. Unfortunately, when taken as a whole, this is clearly not the case currently for local government in Wales.

Clearly the very nature of being a councillor attracted those over 60  as it it is not easy for someone in full time work to take this up

So it may be the best solution would be to reduce the number of Councillors by half and increase their pay making them full time.

The issue of female candidates is another issue and I doubt that anything than a compete change in attitude by our 
if our Political Parties in selection will resolve it.

It is however a pity that the Mule decided to report on a worthy report that all should consider, with such a sensationlist quote .

Where or Who did it come from? It seems to be designed to incite the "Political Correctness gone mad" brigade rather than initialise a rational debate on this and how we can work to move to meat at least some of the reports aspiration.

Political Correctness gone mad has been used by those who have no interest in seeing that those in power match in some ways the diversity in pour communities.

So I doubt if anyone at the Mule reads the Blog. But if anyone does can they pass this on Graham Henry who wrote the article  so he comment on why the Byline and where did the quote come from and how relevant it is to what he had written?