La Pasionaria climbs in the Lists

There are two posts on Subordinate Center which are of note

The latest is that La Pasionaria has jumped 19 p;aces in the Daily Telegraphs in its list of the top 50 most influential Liberal Democrats, placing the Welsh Party Leader at 31 this year.

So champagne all round From last to number 31 most impressive.

Subordinate Centre, in its usual manner copy in full the Telegraph's citation without comment here it is

A vocal member of the Welsh Assembly, Williams became Wales’ first female party leader when she was elected at the end of 2008. Having joined the Liberal party at the age of just 15, Williams is clearly something of a die-hard: she was a staunch campaigner for a Welsh Assembly in the 1997 referendum, and became an Assembly Member in its first ever election in 1999. She is struggling to give the Welsh Lib Dems a new identity but by comparison to her Celtic colleagues in Scotland the Welsh Lib Dems did well in the 2011 Assembly elections and Williams can take the credit for that, even though they lost one seat overall.

So that's the measure of LibDem success not doing as badly as their colleagues in Scotland and since when loosing thousands of votes and having only I AM directly elected out of 40 (La Pasionaria) and therefore relying on the Top up system ever be counted as success.

Subordinate Centre also give us a reprint of La Pasionaria interveiw in Wales on Sunday in which she claims Liberal Democrats at a UK level must not repeat the mistakes made by Plaid Cymru as a junior partner in a coalition

Suspend your disbelief when you read it . You may agree with her on her analysis of Plaids's campaign for this years Assembly :elections but to suggest that a party that is facing wipe out in the elections leading up to and including the next Assembly elections can learn from this.

But La Pasionaria seems to be making the case not for the LibDems in the Toxic Westminster coalition but to join the government in Cardiff bay.

In a obvious overture to Carwyn and Welsh Labour she said

, Lib Dems will not try and wreck First Minister Carwyn Jones’ budget if he brings forward plans for health and education which they can support.
She said: “We won’t pull any punches where we feel the Labour party are going wrong but nor will we create tensions where there is no need for them to exist.”
Stating that Wales needs “stable government,” she said: “Carwyn said himself his party hasn’t a monopoly on good ideas.
“He has to work with others and we are ready to play that constructive role if we feel the Labour party is serious about tackling educational outcomes, tackling the health service [and] making sure we’ve got good value for the budget that we’ve got.”ays..

But her problem is such is the lukewarm legislative programme that Carwyn and his Government have proposed so far . He can easily wait a few years or at least until after next May where local government elections will probably see the LbDem hemorrhaging Welsh councilors. further weakening La Pasionaria position where she will agree to almost any condition in order to escape the toxic effect of tier coalition with the Tories.

So will La Pasionaria have a higher influence in the Telegraph pole next year .She might well but only because some of those above have decided its time to desert a sinking ship.

Watching the watchers,

The good people at Subordinate Centre have been entertaining us on a regular basis by their waste watchers column they are now on day 13 One can only wonder how long they can keep it up and relevant with out getting to the level of questioning the number of paper clips used at the Assembly?.

To be fair they haveat times  actually a exposed a lot of waste at  the Assembly but much of it is small in comparison with Westminster Departments and one one wonders if the good people at Subordinate Centre can turn their eyes to these departments perhaps even ones run by their LIbdem Westminster colleagues in the coalition.

The disclosure do show that the Libdems in the Assembly probably have the best research department in the assembly and certainly this has helped La Pasionaria over the last difficult year , with her successful attacks on the way the NHS is run in Wales and it could be argued that it would be a pity to lose such a team if the Libdems do exceptionally badly in the forthcoming poll in Wales.

The trouble is that the Subordinate Centre revelations  reek of desperation of a Party that for the first time in memory finds its own roll in power of a legislature being criticised ,and its one thing for "a much vaunted " research group to come up with statistics to criticise the Welsh assembly government but its another to come up with policies  which will see us through the austerity measures that their colleagues at Westminster are imposing on us,

So in reality  all Subordinate centre can do is criticise (and rightly so) government waste. Though the seldom offer coherent solutions and when not commenting on waste are reduced largely to looking for the occasional  small victory granted to Nick Clegg by his Tory master

Meanwhile Peter Black has the effrontery to use a column . in the Wales on Sunday to attack Labour for Negative campaigning.

Perhaps the loss of some pretty useful researches  will be worth it, if it reduces a hypocritical, dishonest party to the numbers it really deserves to have say 3.

La Pasionaria popular with 36% of Lib-Dems

A recent post on Subordinate Central caught my eye.

Kirsty praised by Lib Dem members

It read

 

“Lib Dem Voice has again published the results of their Liberal Democrat member survey, focusing on the performances of the leading Liberal Democrats.

They report that  “Kirsty Williams’ ratings have had a boost this month, perhaps thanks to her visibilty at conference”

So I followed the link  which explained.

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of a variety of key issues, and what you make of the Lib Dems’ and Government’s performance to date. Almost 600 party members have responded, and we’ve been publishing the full results of our survey over the past few days.

So what was La Pasionarias  result?

Kirsty Williams, Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats
Very effective 12%
Quite effective 24%
Quite ineffective 7%
Very ineffective 2%
Don’t know / No opinion 55%
Net effectiveness +27% (+18%)

Pardon ; With only 45% having an opinion I hardly call 36% of the total thinking she was quite effective or very effective a ringing endorsement. The post’d headline should have been.

 

Kirsty praised by SomeLib Dem  members

Actualy I think La Passionaria has ben quirte effective lately, particularly on the NHS in Wales (OK education and Peter Black’s Badgers as well) and compared to the rest of the Lib-Dems in Wales she’s  pretty formidable but in the same way a  Third  Division Player would look playing for a pub team , But important as the NHS  is with the Welsh public  it will not be the only topic on the agenda in the build up to the next Assembly elections. She  and the rest of the Lib-Dems will try to make it a plank on which to gather support but I’m afraid that it will not be enough and no amount of spin from Subordinate Central will be able to hide the verdict of the electorate next May.  

Freedom or Subordinate Central

 About a month ago Insidious Produced this brilliant critique

 of Subordinate Central. I hope they don't mind if I reproduce it because it needs a further airing because of recent events.

Insidious' Guide to Subordinate Central

 A recent posting on the Subordinate Centre Blog entitled.

"Minister rebuffed on Alcohol" which was a comment  on Wales Office Minister David Jones intervention to rule out  a transfer of powers over the the licensing of alcohol has led to a number of comments from other bloggers including  Borthlas,  Syniadau, jaxxland and Ramblings.

Now you could argue  that We are the usual suspects in our criticism of "Subordinate Central" but the extraordinary thing is the reaction of Peter Black.

In a number of the Blogs he has posted the same comment.which I will save him some time in repeating below.

 "What is bizarre is how the neutral reporting of a story by an independent though Lib Dem inclined blog is taken as a sign of party policy. Official Lib Dem policy is to devolve justice powers to the Assembly along with administrative control of police and prisons. Licensing would be included in that package. We cannot do Edwina's bidding via an LCO as she well know because licensing falls outwith the 22 areas of competence in the 2006 Act".

Strangely (Perhaps because it is a Plaid Blog and in a similar position) Rambling somewhat accepts Peter's claim that Subordinate Centre is "Independent Blog".

But you only have to look at it, to realise that the main contributors are the Lib-Dem Am's (all 5 of them). Only yesterday there was a post by La Passionaria  on the first 100 days of the coalition.and as I pointed out in my post on Welsh Party Websites it seems at times  to have more official  press releases than the official Welsh Lib-Dem website.

But for a supposedly  for a Independent blog can anybody tell me when a Lib-Dem supporter posted a a piece contrary to  the party leadership?.

If Subordinate Center caries on in its present guise then I'm afraid that Peter Black and the rest of the Lib-Dems must take some responsibility for the posts and the criticism that goes with it.