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There is a goldmine of fascinating articles on Dave Raybould Welsh Bloggers website.
Many different types of Welsh blogger have contributed their own perspective on blogging and the Welsh blogging scene.
A wonderfully pithy article published today by Al Iguana catches the mood of the Welsh voter
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.
Aberdare’s Assembly Member, Christine Chapman AM, pays her respect at the Aberdare Cenotaph memorial on the recent Remembrance Parade Sunday in Aberdare.
Photographs courtesy of John Rees Photography (Aberdare) – Full Set of Parade Photos Available to Buy
Nice peoples the
Bevan Massive Crew is havin a Blogging Gig in Cardiff Bay.
It be happenin soon.
DJ Peter Black be there.
Boom boom, shake the room.
He big nice tie man, wear me shades.
Vicky W of the Bevan Massive Crew be there.
Betsan Bloop be there. She be be be by the sea woman.
Tea be there…. “re fresh ments provided”.
You be there ?
A Public Meeting will be held in Aberdare on Thursday 9th October 2008, at the Sobells Sports Centre.
At the Meeting Rhondda Cynon Taf Councillors will decide on the new Gloucesters & Ironworks site planning application.
All Welcome.
A Planning Application has been re-submitted to the local Council. The plans are for 130 houses to be built on the Hirwaun Gloucesters and old Ironworks site. This area is much valued and used by the community as an area for recreation and leisure and home to an abundance of wildlife and flora.
Councillors voted to refuse planning permission in July 2008.
Local Council Planning Officers are trying to persuade Councillors to change their minds and approve this application, despite overwhelming objections from residents over the last 3 years.
The people of Hirwaun are not opposed to building new houses.
They are opposed to inappropriate overdevelopment at the expense of the whole community.
Hoo-bloody-rah! for Hirwaun people fighting for their own Community.
It is with considerable sadness we announce that Huw Lewis AM has joined the Mumbo Jumbo Cult.
On 3rd July 2008, he announced on his blog that he has “joined the revolution”. This is a common phrase chanted by new Cult Members as they ritually affirm that they belong to their new ‘family’.
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”…
Arg! There be a grand, grand mutiny aboard HMS Senedd this week …
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Jane from Mountain Ash blogs here with a story on the proposed opencast plans for Mountain Ash…
We had a knock at the door last night from a nice man called Ian. It was -3*C and he was going door to door with a petition. Ian was collecting residents signatures for his petition to raise awareness of one anonymous landowners intent to dig for coal on a small plot of land behind the graveyard in Caegarw, Mountain Ash.
We had been wondering about the sounds of heavy machinery and the Apex Drilling vans seen on our street over the past few weeks.
It appears that the plot of land was sold by Lord Aberdare in the ’60’s to this man and he has twice been denied permission to excavate the coal from a 100 year old tip.
We understand that the land has a preservation order on it due to its environmental value following the tree planting which has occured on it. It is close to a hospital and two
schools, not to mention hundreds of houses.
We wonder why this is being attempted again, when the council and Welsh Assembly Government have spent over £20 million on cleaning up the Cynon Valley, when there are plans for a new community hospital less than half a mile from the site and when there are concerned residents, the authorities have done nothing.
Has planning permission again been sought? If so, wouldn’t the residents who live within 500 metres of the plot have been told? Where is our voice in all this? We understand that the land is an old tip. We don’t want a return to dust and smoke – we value our environment and hope that the council and WAG do to. Anyone know anything about this???
The residents of Caegarw are a vociferous bunch and we welcome any information that can help us get to the bottom of the drilling, digging and the looming threat of coal dust again…
The people behind Y Byd project had some not very nice things to say about Rhodri Glyn Thomas today.
Dyddiol Cyf. the company behind the project to launch a Welsh language daily newspaper today published a News Release today attacking the Welsh Assembly’s Culture Minister.
Rhodri Glyn Thomas’ decision not to give them the grant they wanted – around £1 million – to set up a daily Welsh language newspaper has irritated them. So they’ve hit back hard and low.
They invoke the One Wales political agreement of 27th June 2007 between Labour and Plaid Cymru, claiming that Rhodri Glyn Thomas has reneged on a “promise” within that manifesto.
And they claim (in Welsh) : Rydym fel cenedl yn haeddu papur dyddiol. Mae angen llais newyddiadurol ychwanegol ar Gymru er mwyn sicrhau plwraliaeth o fewn y cyfryngau. (We as a nation deserve a daily newspaper. Wales needs another journalistic voice to ensure pluralism within the media).
This is bunkum. Wales does not need a printed Welsh language daily newspaper subsidised by the taxpayer. The driving force behind this project is greed and vested private interests.
Today Rhodri Morgan celebrates eight years as the Welsh Assembly Government First Minister.
He seems like a physically fit man. We reported a film clip of him swimming around Cardigan Bay, in August 2007 not long after his heart operation.
The important question is, whether Mr Morgan is politically fit to lead Wales in 2008.
Journalist Patrick Hannan - raised near Aberdare – comments on Rhodri Morgan in his recent book, When Arthur Met Maggie (Seren, Bridgend, 2006) :
Mrs Thatcher brought a ball and crane and other items of demolition machinery into industrial Britain. Almost fifteen years after she left office, Rhodri Morgan, marking his fifth anniversary as Welsh First Minister, told the press : “My own personal ambition is to try to undo the damage that Margaret Thatcher did to Wales – that’s what I have a burning ambition to do.”
Morgan’s political ambition reveals the poverty of Labour’s vision for Wales : a Party which can only define itself in opposition to some body else’s achievements.
Oh, hallelluia. The Welsh Assembly Gets Tough on Bloggers this week.
We noted some weeks ago the sudden disappearance of a Plaid Cymru Assembly Member’s blog in mysterious circumstances.
We called for Guidelines on the use of the Internet by Assembly Members, especially after dastardly projects like Natwatch – an anonymous blog – apparently funded by a Labour Party Assembly Member and his young researcher.
Today, leading Assembly Member bloggers Peter Black AM (in Blogging AMs) and Glyn Davies AM (in Bloggers Beware) discuss a Guidance Note sent to all Assembly Members via the Welsh Assembly’s Standards Committee.
Although parts of this missive are being discussed online, there is no copy available in the Transcript of the Standards Committee meeting of 29 January 2008 on the National Assembly website.
Perhaps Jeff Cuthbert as Chair of the Standards Committee will reveal his blogging ‘Guidance’ given to Assembly Members.
At Prime Minister’s Question Time last week, Ann Clwyd the MP for Aberdare and Cynon Valley, invited Gordon Brown to congratulate the miners of Tower Colliery on their successful management of a coalmine … “despite the efforts of the Conservatives to shut them down” (
Source: Hansard via TheyWorkForYou).
Prime Minister Brown replied in kind … “I want to thank them for their efforts, proving that working people can get together and make a success of a project that other parties said would never work”.
The lack of leadership and statesmanship in the Labour Party in its present configuration remind one of Nye Bevan’s words given in speech to the Labour Party conference on October 4, 1957. Bevan warned of the perils of sending a “British Foreign Secretary naked into the conference chamber”.
And his subsequent question “Do you call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.”
The ‘emotional spasm’ in the UK Parliament last week came from a Prime Minister who has not been elected to lead his own Party. Moreover, Gordon Brown was unwilling to call a General Election after succeeding Tony Blair in 2007, as he did not want to become known as the shortest-serving Prime Minister since George Canning, who lasted a measly 119 days in 1827.
A fortnight prior to this spasmodic exchange in the House of Commons, the Labour Government renewed their committment to Nuclear Energy. This island is made of coal and thus, to borrow from Bevan again, it takes an organising genius to ensure a future energy crisis. Prime Minister’s Question Time last week should have been used to punctuate the history of Cynon Valley with something serious and statesmanlike, but instead, we got the Labour Party emotional spasm that Bevan warned about fifty years ago.
The Wikipedia article for Rhondda’s Labour MP Leighton Andrews is being vandalised.
Interesting elements of Andrews’ career are being removed from the article only to be restored by conscientious editors.
It is like a virtual tug-o-war played out publically in a small niche of Welsh cyberspace.
So what is this Wikipedia thing ? Wikipedia is the world’s largest encyclopaedia and it’s all available for free online.
The encyclopaedia was created by a collaborative effort involving people from across the world.
If there isn’t an article on a noteworthy subject, then create it.
If you want to contribute or edit an article, you can.
Thus in the example of the Leighton Andrews article, certain facts have been removed.
References to political researcher David Taylor and Andrews’ previous political career as a prominent Liberal have been deleted, albeit temporarily.
The attempt to delete certain aspects of the Wikipedia article is totally futile. It reminds one of John Gilmore’s famous aphorism about the Net ‘routing around censorship’.
Perhaps we should leave the last words to Michael Meadowcraft former Liberal MP, friend and fellow campaign colleague to Leighton Andrews. He wrote an excellent essay on Leighton Andrews entitled “What’s he doing there?” opening thus :
In recent times, on being told of Leighton Andrews’ defection to Labour I’ve consistently dismissed it as being for too improbable. Indeed, to have done otherwise would have been akin to emulating Lewis Carroll’s White Queen who “sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Leighton Andrews? The colleague who kept the rest of us in line. The solid, dependable comrade whose Liberal instincts and libertarian heart could always be trusted. The anorak wholly at ease with fellow Liberator revue satirists. The writer and editor whose solid work provided vital reference points. The intellectual Liberal prepared to take on David Owen and all comers at radical conferences. The friend as responsible as any for the tactics which got me elected in 1983. Impossible!
Leighton Andrews article on Wikipedia
At the
Bridgend Eisteddfod in August 1998, Ron Davies was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards in a special ceremony. He was Secretary of State for Wales at the time. It was rare praise for a politician and it came in recognition of his work steering through the devolution plans. In September 1997, the Referendum was won by only a whisker (around 6,000 votes). Without Davies’ contribution convincing the conservative British Nationalists within the Labour Party the Referendum result would have been a “no”.
Ron Davies had reason to feel confident at that Eisteddfod. He was truly the ‘architect of devolution’. Thus during the week he made a very confident appearance at a meeting organised by Cymdeithas yr Iaith (Welsh Language Society) to discuss the future of the Welsh Language. He spoke in Welsh for part his speech. And it was good Welsh too! He took the platform with, amongst others, some Cymdeithas veteran campaigners including Sian Howys and Angharad Tomos (as in the attached photograph). Later he was grilled by a variety of people, including Toni Schiavone. In the audience of around two hundred, were Lord Elis Thomas, and a variety other people from all walks of life.
That was nearly ten years ago. What did the man feel at this meeting ? It was a meeting billed as ‘Cymdeithas’ meets the ‘Welsh Secretary’. If only there was a video clip we could upload today in 2007 to convey Mr Ron Davies’ enthusiasm for Wales and his sincere interest in the Welsh language. Alas, there is nothing : a few photos and some memories.
Whatever were Ron Davies’ thoughts in August 1998, it is unlikely he felt that he was on the ‘eve of destruction’. Within a little over two months, his political career would be destroyed in London, and he would resign from the Blair Labour Government. Alun Michael took his place as Secretary of State for Wales, and subsequently as the first First Minister of the National Assembly for Wales. These kind of events usually happen in politics for a reason. In much of the media, Ron Davies’ downfall was portrayed glibly as something to do with an alleged predilection for – to use the modern vernacular – a little cock-fun. This was merely a distraction. Ron Davies had the temerity to think and this would lead to his downfall within a party and system that distrusted thinkers.
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In the photograph : (from left to right) Sian Howys (Cymdeithas yr Iaith), Ron Davies (then Secretary of State for Wales), and Angharad Tomos (Cymdeithas yr Iaith) at a public meeting with Cymdeithas yr Iaith, Bridgend, as part of National Eisteddfod week, August 1998.
Wandering around Abercynon a year ago we were struck by a small post office in Glancynon Terrace. The street scene we stumbled upon seemed like a typical scene from the post-modern South Wales Valleys. The terraced houses knitted together tightly with so very few shops… a newsagents on the corner, a chinese take-away, and – thank the heavens! – a friendly post office.
Now fast forward a year to the news announcing the list of Post Offices that the powers-that-be would like to close in Glamorgan and the Valleys. On that list is poor old Glancynon Post Office, in the village of Abercynon, Rhondda Cynon Taf. It’s almost like putting the heart of the village on Death Row for the Post Office is at the heart of the village.
There are a few weeks of “public consultation” however this is merely a public relations charade. The decision will be bulldozed through come what may by a corporation now being run into the ground according to ‘market imperatives’ (or whatever other jargon they are currently spouting in the name of economic rationalisation).
To their credit, the most vociferous political opposition to the Post Office closures – at least here in the Cynon Valley – has come from certain voices within Plaid Cymru.
Leanne Wood AM writes in her blog recently, thus :
“The Post Office Network Change Programme is the direct result of Labour Government policy in London, and is the latest stage in their rationalisation agenda. The Welsh Government can not intervene. This shows another example of the weakness of the current constitutional settlement. Plaid argues that not Welsh Post Office should close as a result of a Westminster driven policy agenda. 3,500 Post Offices closed under the last Tory Government, and over 4,000 have closed under New Labour.
Labour claim that the closures are needed to create a viable network. Plaid believes that that uninhibited competition in markets is not always the best way of securing the universal service provision of our public services, particularly in isolated and deprived communities.”
The “rationalisation agenda” that Leanne Wood refers to above leads to the centralising and monopolising of services, of power and of control. It is an argument Vandana Shiva discusses in her writings on Monocultures of the Mind.
“The primary threat to nature and people today comes from centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability, justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.” – Vandana Shiva
It is exactly a year since we wrote about
the forgotten people of Hirwaun. In our report we tried to convey the basic facts which went unreported by Trinity Mirror, publishers of the Cynon Valley Leader.
The willingness of working people to respond to the challenge of overdevelopment in Hirwaun was a story we could not ignore.
Events have moved on swiftly since then : the English housing developer seeking to build several hundred homes in the last remaining green space in Hirwaun (the Gloucester site and nearabouts) had their planning application rejected by Rhondda Cynon Taff Council. They have since appealed against that decision, and this has led to the decision being reviewed by the Welsh Assembly.
There will therefore be a public inquiry at Hirwaun on Tuesday 23rd October 2007, held at Hirwaun Community Centre. Starting promptly at 10am. The Public Inquiry may run for two days.
Why should you bother to attend such a public meeting ? Karen Morgan of Action for Hirwaun puts it eloquently and passionately thus : “Please, please give some of your time to help save the Gloucesters by attending some or all of the inquiry and having your voices heard. If we all continue to stand together as a community, we have a good chance of winning and we’ll have some kind of legacy to leave behind for our children and grandchildren to enjoy.”
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