If more people sign up for the free Hear From Your MP service, Aberdare’s MP will receive an invitation to contact her constituents via the service.
The Hear From Your MP service is free and it enables MPs to communicate with their constituents.
In the words of Tom Steinberg and the MySociety crew : “HearFromYourMP is a site which allows you, the constituent, to sign up to get emails from your local MP about local issues. When your MP writes to you and other constituents, we give you the chance to discuss what has been said in a simple online forum.”
Trust in politicians has reached an all-time low. You won’t gain votes by being some anonymous person knocking on peoples doors once every four years and waving a manifesto at people: they’ve already made their minds up. You will get votes by making friends with your constituents, by engaging with them, involving yourselves in their lives – you know, old fashioned community stuff. Time and distance is a factor, of course it is, but with new media you have the tools to do this easily, conveniently, openly. All you need to is get past this “them and us” mindset. There is no them, just us. Trust and respect isn’t earned by a glossy flier, but it might be earned with an email, a tweet. And the sooner we all sit down round a table, real or virtual, and talk like adults the better Welsh politics will be.
Aberdare’s elected politicians have chosen not to blog. That is a great loss to the people of Aberdare because the blog is an ideal medium to engage and connect with constituents. Al Iguana hits the proverbial nail squarely on the head.
What Expenses has Aberdare’s MP Ann Clwyd during the past few years ?
It seems many people are pondering this question at the moment.
According to the TheyWorkForYou website, Ann Clwyd MP claimed £144,000 in 2007/2008 as expenses. In 2006/2007 she claimed £136,000 as expenses and in 2005/2006 £135,000.
Ann Clwyd – Aberdare’s MP – has drawn attention to the plight of a local business suffering in the present economic downturn. In a Parliamentary debate she calls for support from Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and recounts the example of one of her constituents who runs the last medium heavy engineering firm in the Valleys …
Message via CND Cymru, Palestine Solidarity Cymru : We are holding a new years eve vigil at Nye Bevan’s statue, Queen St Cardiff from 5-6 this Wednesday. There will also be a vigil at the same place on Tuesday at 12 noon.
While we in Wales relaxed and enjoyed a peaceful Christmas, death and destruction rained down on the men, women and children of Gaza. We watched the painful images of screaming children, hysterical mothers, the injured grasping their Korans as they were carried to the Gaza Al Awda Hospital which Welsh charitable money helped to build.
The charity Middle East Childrens’ Alliance emailed us to say that, minutes after the attacks, medicine plasma beds, drugs had run out, unable to cope with the hundreds of casualties, the dead and injured.
As mealy mouthed politicians around t he world come out with their pathetic well balanced condemnation of the violence on both sides, people ask, “what can we do?”
Please channel your anger in a response to change the never ending cycle of death and destruction, and bring justice to both sides.
We in CND Cymru, Palestine Solidarity Cymru are holding a new years eve vigil at Nye Bevan’s statue, Queen St Cardiff from 5-6 this Wednesday.
Don’t let the anger and pain we feel this week fizzle out. Use it to put pressure on our government and the United Nations to take firm
The Mumbo Jumbo Cult has swept through the Welsh political landscape claiming many other Assembly Member casualties.
Symptoms of Cult Membership include excessive use of brand names and imagery in a not-very-subtle attempt to recruit more people to the Mumbo Jumbo ’cause’.
Huw Lewis History
On July 18th 2007, Huw Lewis was sacked as Deputy Minister for Transport and the Economy. Two months later he published his Winning for Wales pamphlet on the future of the Labour Party in Wales.
Huw Lewis forewarned that in 2011, the Welsh Labour Party will face its biggest challenge.
He claimed in Winning for Wales (pg. 11) “the only way to successfully combat these challenges is to create a self-sufficient genuinely Welsh Labour Party which can properly shape this next exciting phase of devolution.“
Today, eleven months later, Huw Lewis joins the Mumbo Jumbo Cult performing a public volte-face and completely ignoring his own advice. It’s goodbye to those ideas of a “self-sufficient” and a “genuinely Welsh Labour Party”…
Some time ago we discussed the importance of co-operation as the basis for a fair society. We used the example of a local village shop because the first Welsh co-operative store was established near Aberdare by working people.
Today we experienced something of an epiphanic moment reading the views of Paul A. Baran in his essay entitled “Better Smaller But Better”. It was published in Monthly Review in July 1950, originally under the pen-name Historicus.
Baran discusses ‘Co-Operation on the Left’ in a post-war American society where capitalism seemed unassailable and omnipotent. He discusses the methods used to preserve and strengthen capitalism in America as it was then, 1950.
Here’s how Baran puts it, any emphasis in the text is ours …
“The impotence of the American left cannot be understood without a full appreciation of the ideological stability of American capitalism. We have to understand the ideologically overpowering impact of bourgeois, fetishistic consciousness on the broad masses of the working population. The still-vigorous belief in the possibilities of individual advancement within the framework of capitalist society. The deep-seated acceptance of bourgeois values, especially the desirability of reaching the status of the next-higher group. The supremely streamlined, multi-pronged manipulation of the public mind. The heart-breaking emptiness and cynicism of the commercial, competitive, capitalist culture. The systematic cultivation of devastatingly neurotic reaction to most social phenomena (through the movies, the “funnies” etc.). The effective destruction in schools, churches, press, everywhere, of everything that smacks of solidarity in the consciousness of the man in the street. And finally, the utterly paralyzing feeling of solitude which must overcome any one who does not want to conform, the feeling that there is no movement, no camp, no group to which one can turn.
Is this going to last forever ? Social psychology and political experience alike suggest that the prospects are bleak. Quite possibly major changes will come only as the result of shocks; in the humdrum of slow evolution the status quo reproduces itself continuously with only such changes as the manipulative machine wishes to induce. The outcome may be fascism, but there seems to be hardly a chance of anything progressive growing in such soil. The ruling class knows this. It is aware of the fact that it does not face any serious dangers in the absence of shocks. It knows that the result of shocks is unpredictable. It will do everything within its power to avoid them….
Where does the Left and its cooperation come in ? Not very much, not very broadly, not very obviously. The main avenue of activity is to attack the ideological front – by clarifying the issues, by trying to cut through the cultural fog of capitalist society, by trying to break the notion of the “identity of interests” of the ruling classes with those of the working masses. This is not a program of mass politics, nor should it be the program of a sect. It is blueprint of intellectual activity, of enlightened economic, ideological, political thinking and discussion that should be free of dogmatic fetters and petty political considerations. It is a program of building cadres, of what Marx used to call Selbstversta:ndigung..
There is hardly any room for political cooperation on the Left at the present time because there are no politics of the Left. The time will perhaps come, possibly sooner than we think. But just now the issues are ideological problems, and ideological problems cannot be solved by organizational makeshifts. To the extent that so-called liberals are themselves fully and unreservedly subject to the prevailing obfuscation, to the extent that they serve as faithful soldiers of the Cold War army, to the extent that they debase themselves to the function of informers and stool-pigeons, to that extent “cooperation” with them can only be of the same nature as such cooperation between the murderer and his victim. Nor is such cooperation desirable. What is needed – let us say it again and again – is clarity, courage, patience, faith in the spontaneity of rational and socialist tendencies in society. At the present historical moment in our country – “better smaller but better”.
- Paul A. Baran, this essay is included in the ‘The Longer View’, a collection of Baran’s essays, first published 1969 by Monthly Review Press
Ann Clwyd – Aberdare’s MP – drew attention to the plight of starving people in Zimbabwe yesterday in a debate in the House of Commons. She contributed a persuasive anecdote concerning her recent trip to South Africa…
While I was in South Africa a few weeks ago, Zimbabwean refugees handed me a note for 10 million Zimbabwean dollars. That buys a bag of tomatoes in Zimbabwe. Now Mugabe is prepared to starve his people to death for their votes. What kind of human being is President Mugabe ?
- Source Hansard, via TheyWorkForYou. Click the link to read Mrs Clwyd’s full contribution to the Parliamentary debate.
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On Friday morning, upon hearing the news that much of Aberdare and Rhondda Cynon Taf would still be represented by the same old faces, our hearts sank.
With a bird’s eye view of the Official Count at Michael Sobell’s Sports Centre, near Aberdare, we witnessed sombre scenes.
The whole Local Election was a quiet, subdued affair. There was no ostentatious campaigning. With an economy unravelling and spiralling out of control, both the electorate and politicians were somewhat confused.
We left this scene of uncertainty for the rocks and hills of the Brecon Beacons, and a walk to Pen y Fan, the highest summit in South Wales.
This was a balm for a troubled Welsh soul.
We searched for metaphors as our muscles ached. But none came. Stealing rest after rest, we listened to the mountain birds and sat quietly as the wind blew gently to cool our brow.
Near the summit, we reminisced on the words Aros Mae’r Mynyddoedd … the mountain they remain and endure, from the Welsh language poem Alun Mabon by John Ceiriog Hughes :
Aros mae’r mynyddau mawr,
Rhuo trostynt mae y gwynt;
Clywir eto gyda’r wawr
Gân y bugeiliaid megis cynt.
In our personal vanity we may magnify our struggles and tribulations… but these Welsh mountains give one perspective. The dominance of foreigners and their foreign political ideas on Welsh politics will one day come to an end, blown away in the wild winds of history like a fleck of dust.
Join the demonstration against the proposed military academy in South Wales.
Saturday 26 April, Assemble 1.30 pm, Cathays Park (opp. City Hall & National Museum)
The Military Academy is funded by defence multi-nationals like Raytheon, the manufacturer of cluster-bombs, £14 billion is being spent on this huge complex when we need hospitals & schools.
Needless to say the multinationals will be making a large profit on the scheme. It is also the biggest PFI (Private Finance Initiative) in history, and probably the biggest ever award of taxpayers money to Wales:
Why is there always a blank cheque for war, but no blank cheque for vital public services?
Called by the Stop the St Athan’s Military Academy Campaign and supported by UK Stop the War Coalition, CND Cymru, Cynefinywerin and many other organisations. People will be coming from all over Wales and beyond.
This wee story spotted via Peter Black AM’s blog … Andrew Grice writing in the Independent Newspaper on Labour’s crafty decision to delay publication of poverty statistics until after the Local Council Elections.
Message via CND Cymru, Palestine Solidarity Cymru : We are holding a new years eve vigil at Nye Bevan’s statue, Queen St Cardiff from 5-6 this Wednesday. There will also be a vigil at the same place on Tuesday at 12 noon.
Nice peoples the 
It is with considerable sadness we announce that Huw Lewis AM has joined the Mumbo Jumbo Cult.
On Friday morning, upon hearing the news that much of Aberdare and Rhondda Cynon Taf would still be represented by the same old faces, our hearts sank.
Join the demonstration against the proposed military academy in South Wales.
