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.
Leanne Wood seems to have disappeared down a virtual rabbit hole in cyberspace.
This week the Plaid Cymru Assembly Member’s blog disappeared off the face of the Net.
It is like a Lewis Carroll story with the eponymous heroine disappearing into another world.
So therefore we dub this news story, Leanne Wood’s Adventures in Cyberspace.
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Would the last Employer to Leave Aberdare please switch off the lights.
It’s no joking matter … Aberdare’s biggest employer is apparently a plastics-factory now threatened with closure.
The news that Everwhite Plastics are in dire financial straits has triggered a predictable political response.
Start of the Funny Season
Politicians have started making wild promises.
Unlike Pinocchio their noses will not grow longer.
They will, however, attempt to out-lie each other.
We can smell your Cant
If you can smell the Cant from Cardiff Bay it’s due to one fact : In May 2008, only four months hence, there are elections for the local council. Nearabouts the factory threatened with closure are some of the most marginal and contested seats in the County Borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf.
