Insidious

Unnamed and unashamed

2011-12-07T11:49:00.001Z

The media report that a 41-year-old is being held at a southLondon police station on suspicion of conspiring to intercept voicemailmessages.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said officers from Operation Weetinghad "arrested a man in connection with phone hacking and perverting thecourse of justice".

He added: "At 7am officers arrested the man at an addressin London on suspicion of conspiring to intercept voicemail messages, contraryto Section 1 (1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of pervertingthe course of justice contrary to common law."

No further details have been released.

For myself I can't help feeling very annoyed that this individual’s privacyis being rigorously maintained when he is held on suspicion of actively denying thesame right to others. I'm also sure that he would have felt professionally obliged to publish a name himself under different circumstances.

Con-job TV

2011-12-05T20:57:00.001Z

And while I'm on the subject of the BBC Wales' double standards I do wish someone could pull the sodding plug on X Ray - that amateurish joke of a "consumer" programme. It is cheap, patronising sub-prime bollocks fronted by a pair of presenters with about as much working knowledge of trading standards as my pancreatic duct.

An "investigation" for the female involves nothing more demanding than picking up a phone while her equally untalented other half gobs off in front of a street scene back-drop pretending that he understands the stuff on the auto-cue.

It's television like this that gives crap a bad name.

BBC hypocrites

2011-12-01T08:43:00.001Z

Just been listening to that prize prick Oliver Hyde (BBC Radio Wales) laying into a trade union spokesman over yesterday's strike. Hyde insisted that the "savings" to be made on pension contributions would not be going to repay public debts caused in turn by excesses in the banking sector. The TU guy put him right.

I have no idea of whether BBC journalists like Hyde are staff or freelance. But it pisses me off that they put themselves above the fray despite being paid out of the public purse and going on strike themselves last year over pensions.

Plaid's convenient political correctness

2011-11-30T19:17:00.001Z

Call me a cynical bastard if you like (OK, not everyone at once) but I do feel that the very prompt suspension of NeilMcEvoy by Plaid Cymru smacks more of payback and just a little too much political correctness for my liking.

McEvoy dared to challenge Chris Franks for secondspot on the South Wales Central regional list – one of the seats that Plaidmanaged to lose. The party hierarchy have been looking for an excuse to givehim a kicking ever since.

Would they have suspended a woman for making the same comments?

Be on the lookout

2011-11-29T15:32:00.001Z

The thing I liked most about the news story of the car caught in the tide off Mumbles was the detailed warning from the Swansea coastguard. They helpfully explained that it was a 61 registration. Really useful in case there happened to be another silver Vauxhall Corsa bobbing about in the water.

About as radical as changing your nail varnish

2011-11-25T16:29:00.001Z

Plaid AM Bethan Jenkins might like thinkthat the idea to temporarilynationalise the Western Mail is “radical” step but I’m sure that hercolleague will consider her suggestion daft.

Having read her views on the WalesHomeblogsite I really have to wonder if the proposal actually comes from one of herstaff who is a former WM employee.

Either way it is a timely reminder of the mindsetwithin the Party of Wales.

A silver lining of sorts

2011-10-23T09:59:00.001+01:00

Overheard at the Bogarth Arms the other night (as to why there is one small benefit from Wales not reaching the RWC final):

"Well at least I don't have to listen to that fucking stupid Frances Donovan and her fucking stupid irrelevancies."

Whatever our limitations, we're still world class as misogyny, at least.

Max Boyce was right all along

2011-10-15T12:24:00.002+01:00

Several coffees later (more of an accompaniment to breakfast Stella than an antidote) the consensus at the Bogarth Arms is that Irish referees not only remain the curse of Welsh rugby but are considerably lower down the social evolutionary scale than politicians, journalists and fucking estate agents.

Wheels come off the chariot

2011-10-08T17:31:00.001+01:00

I am usually such a well-balanced individual but I can't seem to stop myself gloating over this morning result(s).

C'est cowin' epic, n'est ce pas?

Who are the opposition?

2011-09-01T07:43:00.001+01:00

I find myself asking this question after reading today's BBC Wales story about "back-door" reorganisation.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but the largest party after Labour following the recent Assembly elections are the Conservatives. After that came Plaid Cymru.

So why does the BBC Wales news website political reporter go seeking comment from a Lib Dem spokesman on the matter?

Western Mail spam scam

2011-08-29T11:41:00.000+01:00

I was intrigued to see this question flashing on the Western Mail's website. I know that they run several polls and, like a lot of people, I think it's important to register my opinion - especially on something with big social implications. And it makes a change from being asked who should be dumped from Big Brother.

But then I found that it was actually a link to an outfit called Aldaniti International Network Ltd who pride themselves in providing clients with a “quality & volume sponsoring system”, in other words it's a poxy database for more poxy spam mail.

Perhaps I'm a bit naive, but you would expect a newspaper website to make it clear when something is an revenue generating advert - and is also a just short of being a scam. Bastards.

More of the same

2011-08-14T16:47:00.003+01:00

Black is back - blogging will be lightweight.

Reality catches up

2011-07-31T16:30:00.003+01:00

A popular joke aimed at the South Wales Valleys is the one about the bedsheet stretched over park railings bearing the hand-painted message: "Happy 30th Birthday, Nana"

Today's Sunday People takes the humour off things a bit by revealing that Shem Davies (purportedly from the Maesteg area) has become a grand-dad at 29. I am unable at present to come up with anything profound to say on the matter. Give me time.

Dynasty

2011-07-27T09:04:00.003+01:00

The more things change in Wales, the more they stay the same.

Rhodri Talfan Davies named director of BBC Cymru Wales

Warnings from England

2011-07-20T09:23:00.000+01:00

I see the BBC is reporting how education secretary Michael Gove has refused to reinstate a string of school revamps which the High Court said he scrapped unlawfully.

He was ordered to review his decision to axe 58 school rebuilds in six council areas, on the grounds that he failed to consult them. Gove told the Commons that the judge had found against him on procedural grounds but insisted that his department won on the substantive points.

Mr Justice Holman, who heard the case back in February, said Mr Gove had acted unlawfully in the way he scrapped the schemes. The minister has only conceded however that this will meet the councils' legal costs.

Is this the kind of ‘screw-you’ approach we would expect if ConDems ever ran education is Wales?

That's entertainment!

2011-07-19T18:25:00.000+01:00

Where do you start? Rupert Murdoch eating humble pie - or custard pie as it turns out. Then the revelations of Wallis & Grommit, er Coulson.

I have never watched a select committee hearing before. Like most people, I would normally have preferred to have my eyeballs tatooed but who would have thought that the newspaper business would make such riveting TV?

Pinch me, someone

2011-07-09T11:20:00.002+01:00

Like a good many others, I have taken a subjective glee in watching the purveyors of dirt at News International eating their young in an effort to escape parliamentary payback. “There is worse to come”, say Rebekah Brooks. Oh I do hope so.

Gathering together the spectacles of a squirming David Cameron, a contrite Andy Coulson and a shifty James Murdoch – a man for whom the word “disingenuous” could have been invented - has given my Sky+ a migraine but it was worth it just to capture the treasured moments.

Of course it is also an excellent opportunity to bury other bad news and I for one really appreciated the irony of a hair-shirted print media hovering on the back foot as they allow the latest batch of parliamentary expenses to go unremarked.

We are indeed living in fascinating times.

Questions, questions

2011-07-03T12:17:00.002+01:00

For me, the burning issue is not whether Wales should have its own time-zone but if the Western Mail who devoted 750 words to such inconsequential drivel really deserves to be taken seriously as a newspaper.

Losing Llanelwedd, I hope

2011-05-29T12:51:00.000+01:00

I see that the pro-Welsh content caucus are getting animated at the possible loss of home-produced items such as Week-in, Week-out. I can't really get too excited about this if only because the viewing figures get articifialy boosted by second-slot news prelims on Good Morning Wales or Wales Today. Dragon's Eye is a more intelligent vehicle for political insight and Felicity Evans has pretty much made the show her own.

If there are to be cuts, and there is no reason why BBC Wales should be spared, then I would recommend that the annual week-long live lluvy-fest of politicians, pundits and D-list celebs at the fucking Royal Welsh is dumped forthwith.

It's all gone quiet over there!

2011-05-22T12:20:00.003+01:00

Non-political post –

Just to comment that it is so typical that when the Championship play-offs brought a quietus for Cardiff’s chances, the Welsh sporting press went into semi-hibernation.

A series of pundits, including the dismissive prick who provides the ‘expert’ opinion on the Football League show, have downplayed Swansea’s chances of even getting into the final four, let alone making it to Wembley. Their current lack of commentary must be down to the large amount of crow lodged in their throats.

In denial

2011-05-20T10:20:00.003+01:00

Star Trek, viagra and God knows what else. It seems that Peter Black is willing to blog about everything except how he made a prize pratt of himself in his first weeks as Lib Dem business manager.

Having described his scraping through the elections as a "humbling" experience, he subsequently showed precious little humility by claiming that he would secure all-party support for expedient measures to sort out his party’s pre-election cock-up over the eligibility of two members.

This proved to be crap judgement by Black on a number of counts, I fear. Anyone with a bit of political nous would have sensed how the situation would allow Labour a minumum three month window to deploy an artificial majority in order to push through the early unpalatable measures. Secondly, few in the Senedd actually think the Lib Dems deserve five seats and a reluctance to help them settle into a comfort zone is understandable. And while Freedom Ce

Plaid Wrecsam have also highlighted how Kirsty Williams should have been on the lookout for such potential problems after a meeting of the Assembly constitutional affairs committee flagged up similar problems. A few weeks ago, she was probably wondering what was a suitable asking price for propping up a minority Labour administration. Today, it looks like she’s already paid it.

Breaking point

2011-04-26T18:49:00.002+01:00

It’s essentially a rhetorical-type question but is it possible for the bloody BBC to be any more pleased with itself than at present? Nothing is more certain to get me sizing up the nearest petit-bourgeois for a spot of lamp-post suspension than a patronising twat on the 6 o’clock news inferring that I should countenance and even embrace the spectacle of a smug south-eastern establishment indulging itself at the expense of us poor provincial schmucks.

Time that someone shouted very very loudly into the earpiece of Nichloas Witless that there are people out here who really don’t give a flying fuck about royal weddings or the sodding London Olympics.

Jurassic by inclination

2011-04-21T20:23:00.000+01:00

One of the popular put-downs these days is to label someone as a "dinosaur".

Yet it's worth remembering that dinosaurs were actually around 160 million years and successfully adapted through half a dozen different climatic periods. Most experts agree that they died out 65 million years ago due to an overwhelming external (possibly extraterrestrial) event.

Humans on the other hand have been on the planet for something like 2.6 million years and only started running things roughly 80,000 years ago with domination of the environment over the last millennium or so. Based on current evidence, their eventual extinction is very likely to be of their own making.

If that's progress then I'm a stegosaurus.

Investment takes flight

2011-04-13T18:34:00.000+01:00

I wonder how many Welsh politicians who backed a subsidy of Midlands-based BMIBaby airline over Air Wales are keeping their heads down tonight. The budget airline is pulling out of its operation at Cardiff Airport from this autumn, putting 69 jobs at risk. The firm blames the economic climate and says is will now focus on airports with strong growth opportunities.

In other words it has taken the Assembly’s cash, made its profits and is now pissing off back to Brum. Meanwhile, Swansea’s Roy Thomas has seen his property empire dissolved because his inspirational dream of a Welsh airline was left high and dry by mealy-mouthed shit-kicking local politicos who for all their so-called industrial background could not distinguish a business opportunity from a broken bucket.

Next time one of them mentions supporting Welsh indigenous companies in my presence I am likely to spit in his fucking eye.

Numbers games

2011-03-25T11:54:00.000Z

I see that the techno-gnomes at Conformance Control are doing twitter traffic over inferences that Plaid’s conference is light on numbers. This is dodgy ground for Lib Dems if only because it is not too long ago that a wonderful news item appeared about how a lunchtime “Meet Peter Black” event that had to be cancelled due to total lack of interest.

Look out for dragons

2011-03-18T13:25:00.002Z

Dragon’s Eye presenter Felicity Evans had evidently decided to ensure there was no scope for her to be accused of “not doing her homework” when she interviewed Plaid’s Eurfyl ap Gwilym last night about the party’s plans to raise £500 million through City bank bonds.

Ms Evans’ previous training to be a barrister definitely came through has she persistently interrupted a clearly defensive economics expert in order to nail down some ambiguity or demonstrate her own impressive grasp of the subject at hand.

The upshot was that she ended up doing a better demolition job on the slightly deficient policy idea than any of Plaid’s political opponents, and was warmly endorsed for her efforts by BBC Wales' political editor Betsan Powys who most likely provided the background.

I'm just wondering if the dynamic duo will be giving the other parties similar treatment over their manifesto proposals.

What is the point?

2011-03-15T23:58:00.001Z

One of the questions which went through my twisted mind this evening is how much it is costing for the BBC to have at least four separate UK presenters plus camera, sound and production staff shipped out to Japan to "cover" the disaster and what the same amount of cash would have produced as relief for the affected population.

I do not need Andrew Whatsit standing in front of upturned vehicles to enable to "visualise" the devastation any more than I need the other prize patronising twat who looked earnestly to camera tonight before telling me that radiation is a danger "we cannot see or feel"?

Crass insensitivity

2011-03-11T12:37:00.000Z

It's probably just the way that the BBC work when news like this hits, but I was left spluttering when I saw that the headline which followed breaking news of the Japanese earthquake was how the Nikkei Index was down a few points as a result! I'm sure that this was the first thought for UK families - especially those with relatives in the affected area.

An exciting new era for Welsh politics? I’ve known breakfast cereals with more zing.

2011-03-05T11:19:00.003Z

It’s says little for the impartiality and the intelligence of the Welsh press that Martin Shipton can ask “What lies ahead in exciting new era for Welsh politics?” and expect to be taken seriously.

Did he miss the fact that two-thirds of the Welsh electorate were left so unstirred by this epic constitutional change to the extent that they couldn’t even be bothered to get a postal vote?

As for the patronising crap that “the question in front of the electorate was a technical one which baffled a large proportion of the population”, it’s no wonder that the paper’s circulation is dropping like a stone.

It is only an accident of my upbringing which obliged me to walk down to the polling station to vote. Otherwise I would surely have stayed at home like the rest of my neighbours. I voted ‘yes’ but with the same amount of enthusiasm as I did up my shoelaces that same morning.

But if I had somehow seen the garbage penned by Shipton on how it has been “necessary to widen the [Yes] appeal by appealing to people’s sense of patriotic fairness and by constructing a narrative based on a view of the Assembly as a bulwark against severe public spending cuts imposed from Westminster”, then not only would I have taken understandable offence at such crass statements but symbolically returned the sentiment by shoplifting a copy of the Western Mail in order to set it alight and then piss on it.

I take considerable exception to someone in a newsroom wrapping themselves in the flag and telling me to exercise some social conscience. I stood outside Cardiff Arms Park in the rain to protest against the Springboks, was spat on by fans and the Western Mail called me scum along with hundreds of others who believe in social justice. I joined pickets at Cynheidre, got thrown on the ground & kicked by Met thugs and was called a lot worse for my troubles by the Newspaper for Wales.

Pardon my ignorant opinion but it's not any constitutional limitations which have been the cause of Wales slipping behind the rest of the UK in health and education standards. Neither is it an inability to set its own laws that has allowed an overall decline in recorded economic activity. The underlying causes are less ephemeral and far more about priorities.

Wales was only marginally convinced of the need to have an elected Assembly in 1997 but what we have today, even with law-making powers, largely remains a county council on stilts. This opinion is not based on any settlement status but a perception gained from witnessing a depressingly mundane mindset among politicians and press who clamour to be the only big fish in a very small pond called Cardiff Bay.

As my old rugby coach used to say, we should be satisfied about the ability of the players before we change any of the rules.

What was that all about?

2011-03-03T10:25:00.002Z

Been to vote – I ticked the yes box in case you’re interested. But I was left thinking what a pointless exercise it was. Would there have been rioting in the streets if the UK government had passed an Act stating that the Assembly had full law-making powers? I doubt it.

Far more important and telling impacts on our day-to-day lives are made by ministers in Whitehall and Brussels. We either trust them to do it properly or we don’t care.

I’m nor ungrateful for a chance to have a say, I just wonder what actual difference a referendum makes in the wider context

Stuck in the station

2011-03-02T07:51:00.002Z

Having just listened to the fuckwit leader of Cardiff council saying how the electrification of the railway line from Paddington to his city is "good for Wales", I found the following on my newsfeed:

RAIL passengers will see a new generation of cross-border trains enter service from 2016 after the Government gave the green light to a troubled £4.5 billion order.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said around 100 new trains will be built to run between from London to Scotland and Wales, replacing the Intercity fleet which dates back to the late 1970s.

The Intercity Express Programme was initiated by the Department for Transport in 2005 and a consortium led by Japanese firm Hitachi named preferred bidder in 2009.

Sounds good but read on and you find that Wales is not scheduled to see actual investment before 2019. Meanwhile, the announcement paves the way for the creation of more than 500 jobs in the north east of England, where Hitachi is expected to locate a plant to build the trains.

Late news

2011-03-01T19:31:00.002Z

The only surprising thing about the headline on the Telegraph website which states “Nick Clegg runs out of credibility” is that it bears today’s date. Where have they been?

Well foxed

2011-02-18T17:14:00.000Z

I'm not usually one to watch daytime TV but an unplanned half-day off had be watching BBC News 24 as I waited for the delivery guys. Anyway, one of news items was how the government is spending £300K to transfer civil servants who are looking into the Sky buy-out deal from one department to another. The move is necessary because Vince Cable mouthed off about being "at war" with Rupert Murdoch. OK, the man's an idiot for saying something so stupid, let alone saying to people in his surgery.

But what pissed me off was how presenter Tim Foxwell then turned to his colleague to comment on how it was "such a lot of money". Something about the smarmy bastard reminded me of how the ITN Reginalds used to creep up any available tory ministers' backside. It also got me wondering how much it cost license payers to have Foxwell and a band of co-presenters standing on some Cairo hotel rooftop for a fortnight telling us what we could already see on our TV screens. I'm told he gets around £92K in salary so we can start from there.

Europe ain't all bad, y'know

2011-02-17T12:11:00.002Z

Anyone out there with a John-Bull beef about European courts needs to recognise that it was the European General Court (EGC) which has told money-grabbing officials at FIFA to go take a flying free-fall.

The international football outfit was challenging an earlier UK government decision to designate the World Cup and European Championships as free-to-watch events.The EGC ruling is that an EU member can stop these two events from being exclusive broadcasts on pay-TV.

So stuff that one Blatter (and you ‘n all, Murdoch)

Losing your job is always bad news

2011-02-15T12:32:00.001Z

It is not my intention to come over as anti-military but I must declare myself offended by the gasps among the media of how armed forces personnel were told of their pending dismissal by e-mail. As far as I can gather, the individuals involved are mostly long-serving specialists who have been kept on through renewable annual contracts (much the same sort of arrangement exists in the police force, I gather).

Defence spending cuts mean that their contracts are not being renewed and they have received 12 months notice. The fact that they got the news via some faceless jobsworth at the DoD is regretable and even distasteful, but I don't remember similar outrage among media commentators when women employees have turned up for work one morning only to find the factory gates locked and their wages shunted off to some off-shore tax haven.

Losing your job is always bad news - no matter what the circumstances.

And another thing ....

2011-02-14T00:12:00.000Z

The Jaxxlanders, bless their little pointy heads, have come up with a few questions aboout the March referendum that I don't recall anyone asking previously. It will be instructive to see they get an intelligent reply.

Labour's dead hand steers the Yes campaign

2011-02-08T09:22:00.000Z

What the hell is the purpose of all these worthless endorsements from yesterday's men who suddenly feel the need to proclaim a hitherto undisclosed enthusiasm for Welsh devolution? I read - but only because I couldn't avoid it - that Paul Murphy has become a convert to the idea of extra powers for Cardiff Bay and that the Yes campaign has Lord Kinnock's blessing. Well, whoopee-fucking-doo!

What's next? A seance to check how Nye feels about things?

Don't piss up my mac and tell me its raining

2011-02-03T22:15:00.000Z

Like many other people, I like to think that I can develop an opinion on a political question without all the heavy-duty saturation media campaigns that are an unpleasant aspect of today’s democratic process. So it was not too devastating to learn that the respective camps in the March Assembly referendum would not be getting their hands on thousands of pounds so that they could stuff propaganda through my letter box, text and who knows what.

Don’t get me wrong. I happen to think that the whole election funding system sucks and the sooner that regulated public money and capping come into force the better. But that does not mean that I am happy to see casual abuses either.

So I would like to know how the Assembly-based Plaid staffer behind the attack blog True Lies is allowed to write and publish his diatribes against the True Wales crowd during work hours and at public expense.

I really do hope that this is happening contrary to rules that apply to political staff. Because if this is allowable practice then the author will have achieved entirely the opposite outcome as far as my vote in concerned.

Man on the edge

2011-01-31T10:19:00.004Z

I am very probably the last person to express any opinion on matters musical – having once been described a “tonally challenged” and asked to keep quiet during a pub sing-along (actually the expression was “shut the f--k up”) – but I nonetheless feel a deep affinity with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Queen’s composer, who is campaigning against the "moronic muzak" piped through lifts, shops, call centres and on mobile phones.

I really hope the clampdown includes the larger supermarkets; although not more any reasons of musical purity. I am simply sick to death of walking around aisles trying to read my own hand-writing and attempting to tune-out conflicting noises from music speakers exuding a seasonal ambience, screened demonstrations of some gadget, announcements of “special offers”, i.e. stuff they can’t give away and the interminable bloody beeping of checkout scanners.

My own half-formed noise reduction campaign involved arriving at the store entrance toting a Kalashnikov and allowing some spittle to dribble out the corner of my mouth - but I’ll give Sir Peter his chance first.

Some politicians just don't know when to shut up

2011-01-24T13:09:00.000Z

Nice investigative piece on Jaxxlanders on how Swansea’s mouthy council leader slagged off local police for failing to tackle drugs-related crime only for it to be revealed that one of his senior administration colleagues has a close family involvement in a cocaine supply conspiracy. Priceless!

Stark inaction over trafficking

2011-01-17T18:26:00.000Z

I see that Peter Black has expressed a hope on his blog that the government listens to Barnardos over the need for a minister to have specific responsibility in tackling the growing concerns over child trafficking and exploitation.

It’s a pity that he didn’t have anything of this nature to say in August last year when the ConDem government was accused by charities of “sending out the wrong signal across the world” after they refused to endorse an EU directive designed to co-ordinate European efforts to combat the trade in sex slaves.

Figures published at the time showed that fewer traffickers had been jailed than at any time in the last five years. Campaigners are still calling on ministers to adopt the directive which includes a common definition of the crime of trafficking, thus making it easier to convict offenders in the EU's 27 member states. A Home Office spokeswoman stated that the government's decision could be reversed if it is "in Britain's interests".

Back in 2008, Nick Clegg [then Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman] published an action plan on immigration and the need for balanced & effective controls. Among the 12 points listed in his comprehensive agenda was “full ratification of the Council of Europe convention on people trafficking”. Black wrote an uncompromising post on his blog backing Clegg’s calls.

By way of contrast, the Welsh Assembly Government has last year announced the appointment of an anti-human trafficking coordinator. The new post will involve raising awareness, uncovering the extent of the problem and bringing more traffickers to justice.

Questions, questions

2011-01-16T15:37:00.000Z

Sunday's tend to be devoted to reading other blogs rather than writing anything on mine. But three questions do come to mind as a result:

Is Cheryl Gillan the worst Secretary of State for Wales in the history of the post?
Can the YES camp manage to persuade people to vote in favour of additional powers without £70K from the Electoral Commission?
Does Plaid have any option other than Labour after May?

Beyond the pale

2011-01-10T09:04:00.000Z

I don't think I have read such total twaddle as the claim by Peter Black that the "venom" displayed by Labour against Liberal Democrats and the ConDem government is somehow on a par with events in Arizona. The man is a disgrace.

Don't buy Cadbury eggs this Easter!

2011-01-06T00:30:00.001Z

Time to strike back at the lying, cheating bastards who are ruining our futures. No I don't mean Lib Dems but American food giant Kraft who took over Cadbury in February. They had pledged to keep the Keynsham site open but controversially announced just days after the takeover was completed that production was to be moved to Poland.

I was fortunate to work at Keynsham many years ago as part of an industrial training scheme and was made very welcome by staff and the people I stayed with. The mutual loyalty between the company and employees was remarkable and it is a disgrace that workers have been so let down by the new owners.

My individual protest is to boycott Cadbury products that are made at Keynsham and to get everyone in my (small) circle to do the same. Kraft clearly think that UK consumers will swallow their treachery. They need to be made to see they are wrong.

I am sure that someone with more talent than me will also take this up action as a Facebook campaign.

Too much to swallow

2010-12-31T17:58:00.000Z

Don't know what anyone else thinks but I find the granting of a knighthood to Roger Carr, the man who sold off Cadbury, leaves a very bitter taste indeed

Easy question for a Sunday

2010-12-19T19:49:00.000Z

So the question is which hat was Peter Black wearing when he called Leighton Andrews a cretin? If he was speaking as a councillor, he can be reported to the Ombudsman for misconduct and suspended by his local Standards Committee.

If he was acting as an Assembly Member however then the sanction he faces is ..err.. nothing.

Hospital pass

2010-11-20T10:31:00.002Z

I do love it when tories try to identify with the proles. There’s a letter in the local paper from an Assembly candidate, Suzy Davies, about consultation to move services for the elderly from one Swansea hospital to another – or something like that. Leaving aside the various issues for and against, I had to chuckle at how she apparently feels a big issue is the location of the bus stops (fer crissakes).

I could be wrong but I think it's a safe bet that Ms Davies ain’t been on a bus for some time. Similarly, I don’t think she has ever tried to use that particular form of transport to get to Fairwood Hospital which is located on the fringes of the Gower Common.

As the top Conservative name on the Wales South West list, Ms Davies is virtually guaranteed a seat in the Senedd courtesy of the AV system that her party opposes. I suspect the only geography that really interests her is the quickest route to Cardiff Bay.

Swansea council to privatise social services

2010-11-12T18:39:00.000Z

I've just read that Swansea Council has taken steps to privatise adult social services. I don't want to sound overly picky but I feel sure that they failed to make any mention of this kind of move in their 2008 election manifesto. I think it's also safe to say that they would not have got a popular mandate if they had.

Effectively privatising a service just a month before the next council elections is also highly suspicious.

Swaaaan-zeeee, how I luvs ya, how I luvs ya

2010-11-07T15:30:00.001Z

Nothing like watching your local erupt in unmitigated delight at this afternoon's result. I have popped out to crow before the alcohol numbs my blogging abilities. I shall return.

An excellent result. Swansea were definitely the hungrier side. Cardiff looked like they'll be in Europe next year - but only if there's a war.

Back to the pub!

2812

2010-10-17T11:00:00.002+01:00

(with apologies to Mock the Week)

This number is my personal estimate of how many times the BBC Wales has plugged its Snowdonia 1890 historical-reality-reconstruction thing on air.

I totally lost interest in how “two families will be stepping back in time” after the eighth successive mention one night. As far as I am concerned, they can go now and I hope they never fucking well come back.

If I want to see squalid conditions & deprivation in Wales set a building from the Victorian period then I’ll visit the local school.

Derek Gregory: Another class act passes on

2010-10-16T10:47:00.003+01:00

I'm surprised at the low-key references to the sad passing of Derek Gregory, former Unison regional organiser in Wales.

Derek was a hugely capable and cogent defender of public services over many years. His untiring efforts ensured decent wages and job conditions for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers in Wales. To the trade union movement, he was a major player in advancing the cause of the lower-paid. To the press of the day, he was an erudite reference point on a range of issues during the death throes of the Major government and Blair's early days in Downing street. To the Labour Party establishment, he was a persistent pain in the backside who was still fighting the class struggle.

In short, he was a player. And yet his death merits just a few lines in the Swansea Evening Post paper and nothing at all in the Welsh press.

I am sure the circumstances behind his leaving the post of regional secretary in 2002 have influenced media silence but it makes me sick how someone's contribution to the class-struggle can be wiped out and disputable rat-bags like Andy Coulson somehow merit "a second chance".

As the impending axe falls on services throughout the UK, and very pointedly in Wales, I sincerely hope that we will see the tributes from Derek's contemporaries in coming days and how Wales and it's public sector workforce has lost a class-act.

Randerson, you twist and turn like a ... twisty-turny thing

2010-10-12T08:44:00.001+01:00

I have seldom heard such mealy-mouthed evasions as those coming out of the trap of Jenny Randerson this morning. Somewhat naively, it seems, I had thought that Welsh Lib Dems would actually take a stand on tuition fees but listening to her non-committal crapola on BBC Wales this morning, nothing of the kind was apparent.

Randerson obviously thought she could come on and pile the shit onto Labour and Plaid's doorstep in order to detract attention from the fact that her leader has made very specific pledges both before and after the election. Thankfully, the interviewer was up to it and kept on pushing her into the corner until the Lib Dem AM began to sound like a cross between Vicky Pollard and Pinocchio.

I have long regarded the member for Cardiff Central as a very poor politician and today's performance has done nothing to change my opinion.

Quick rejoinder: First, I honestly had no idea that Grangetown Jack had already published a post with a very similar heading to mine about Randerson's squirming.. We're obviously on the same wavelength - which will be a scary though for him.

Secondly, what a contrast between the shifty sounding Randers' and the early forthright message delivered by Greg Mulholland, Lib Dem MP for Leeds North West on air to the deputy PM that raising tuition fees is not on his agenda and "was something I made clear to my constituents before the election". Top man.

Hit the road, Black

2010-10-10T15:45:00.000+01:00

It really narked me to read how jumped up Peter Black thinks it acceptable to have a go at a Mumbles hotel for claiming to be within 50 minutes of the Celtic Manor resort. Quite a cheek for someone working in a profession where the truth is a variable quality at best and where any manifesto should be filed under "fiction".

Perhaps the hapless AM has something against entrepreneurship or maybe just thought he'd be a smartarse. Either way, it's a pity that the spatially-challenged twat doesn't show as much support for hard pressed Swansea's businesses as he does for the Cardiff rented-property market.

Never a truer word

2010-10-05T00:46:00.000+01:00

Adio Paulo

2010-10-02T12:13:00.000+01:00

Nothing to do with me (honest); but a thoroughly deserved outcome in my opinion.

Leicester City sack manager Paulo Sousa - BBC Sport

Thursday 30 September 2010

Sousa foxes it up at Leicester

(A non-political comment but one that is far more important on the satisfaction-with-life-scale)

Far be it from me to gloat (not much) but I am abso-effin-lutely delighted to see that Senor Sousa is in big doo-doo over his non-performance at Leicester. Good enough for the disloyal so and so. We might even see Roberto visiting the Liberty next year if Wigan's abysmal season continues.

Prediction

2010-09-23T09:30:00.000+01:00

In the next 24 hours, Peter Black or Freedom Central (amounts to the same thing) will reproduce this news item about rising homelessness in Wales. A comment blaming the Assembly government will be added at the end. Job done.

Absolutely hilarious

2010-09-20T15:09:00.000+01:00

As much as it goes against the grain to praise these sickos - this piss-take by Jaxxlanders (esp. the video) has got to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Made up for an otherwise crap Monday.

Supercity

2010-09-09T10:17:00.000+01:00

I remember years ago reading a short story in which a character invents the trait of “supercity”: a word based loosely on the Latin super-above and cito-easily – or something like that. In essence, it is the ability to become considered irreplaceable whilst being thoroughly worthless. In other words, a lot like Peter Black.

The Liberal Democrats are already notoriously over-represented in the Welsh media. Having read Black's name mentioned in several press reports this week - and based upon the most oblique of involvements - I fear it will only get worse in the next eight months.

Where have they all gone?

2010-09-04T11:06:00.001+01:00

Being far more of blog reader than a [sporadic] writer, I have noticed several that have gone off the air. From my socially-challenged male perspective, its bit like the sense of grieving you experience when you notice that a nearby pub has closed down. You may never have set foot in the place in the past but now the opportunity is lost.

So, in a similar vein, I would like to record my personal regret that I am no longer able to read the words of :

Che Gravera: Guerrilla Welshfare – upbeat and anti-establishment

Cynical Dragon – not my favourite blog but balanced

The Lone Voice – blissfully irreverent

Miss Wagstaff presents – the inside scam on Assembly matter

Of course, to continue the pub analogy, some may yet still make a comeback either with the same names or new management. I live in hope. Meanwhile I’m off for a pint.

Stig-matised

2010-09-02T11:28:00.000+01:00

Like quite a few other people, my reaction to the "news" that the Stig was a some Formula 3 nobody was WTF or thereabouts. For the life of me, I cannot fathom how this court battle, contrived by Harper Collins to boost sales of what is likely to be an eminently put-downable autobiogrpahy, is in any way relevant to the fabric of the space-time continium.

This is not news; anymore that the spectacle of two glib numpties and a gnome smart-arsing as they pander to middle-class preoccupations with lumps of metal on wheels is entertainment. Grrrr.

Why I'm voting for Ed Milliband

2010-09-01T16:54:00.000+01:00

Because my union told me to!

Role models

2010-08-31T17:19:00.000+01:00

I'd never be caught reading it - anymore than Billy Hague would be caught sharing a hotel bedroom with his driver (ahem) - but I am reliably informed that the Daily Express today likens the intervention of Peter Mandelson in Labour's leadership fight to the appearance of "a pantomime villain".

I have to disagree. From my perspective, he always seemed eminently more suited to the role of dame.

What's going on with the press?

2010-08-30T18:21:00.000+01:00

Am I imagining things, or is there something unpredictable creeping into the media? Time was that you could guess a headline with reasonable ease based on the standard partisan factors. Yet one of the outward casualties of coalition-ridden politics these days is a confusion (for me at least) over right-wing versus left-wing bias among the erstwhile broadsheets.

Take the story of how the British Chambers of Commerce has upgraded its short term forecast for the UK's economic prospects – whilst urging that interest rates are kept low to avoid a second recession. A quick sample I read from the Guardian, BBC Business News and the Daily Telegraph all carry similar reports on the chamber’s views and highlight the same key points. However, it is the usually more-than-right-of-centre Telegraph which warns darkly of how “Coalition cuts increase risk of double-dip recession”.

My mate Arthur is an ex-journalist and tells me that the people who write the headline are not always the people who produce the articles. He reckons it is the Telegraph’s way of passing on the views of vested interests – rather than a lurch to the left. But he accepts my point that the paper did as much damage, if not more, to the tories when it exposed the widespread scam of parliamentary expenses. The scandal about duck-houses and suchlike possibly cost the Conservatives an overall majority.

I’m just left wondering if there is an agenda here or if there is a chance of getting more balance in the national press. Probably not.

What's the cost of a golfing weekend in Wales?

2010-08-24T09:08:00.000+01:00

OK let’s get something straight at the outset. I don’t like golf. I don’t play it, I don’t watch it and until recently I thought a niblick was a type of skin disorder.

This disinterest was compounded in 2004 when Rhodri Morgan decided it was less important to mark the sacrifice made by thousands on the beaches in Normandy than to attend a launch event held to announce that the Ryder Cup was coming to Wales.

This was described then, and since, as a major coup for Wales. But for who? I’m sure I read somewhere that there are more people who go fishing in Wales on any given weekend than play golf. And I have become heartily sick of the giggly twats on BBC Radio Wales who speak with second-hand authority about “economic benefits” and then start recounting some obscure past Welsh connection with the tournament.

I’m more than willing to acknowledge that the Celtic Manor and securing the event is down to the accomplishments of millionaire Terry Matthews but I am definitely not impressed by the distasteful spectacle of him behaving like a petulant 18th century milord who throws a wobbly after being told he can’t flatten a building so as to enjoy a less cluttered view from the drawing room or whatever.

On a personal level, and I suspect like many others, all I see is the inconvenience of interminable bloody roadworks on the M4 around Newport and a vague idea that other government investment is involved – a celeb-type bash in the Millennium Centre.

And that’s the point. We are going to get the Ryder Cup rammed down our throats from 1-3 October but WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS how much public money has been spent to finance what is essentially going to be an upmarket golfing weekend in Wales?

In these days where every penny of public expenditure is under the microscope to assess value for money, it is bizarre that no-one seems to be asking the question.

Jimmy Reid

2010-08-19T10:03:00.000+01:00

Anyone who has Alex Salmon, Alex Ferguson and Billy Connelly speaking in tribute at their funeral must have been a person who made an deep impression on a huge number of people. Yet what do people in politics today, let alone everyday life, know about Jimmy Reid?

According to the obituaries, he was Scottish trade unionist who led a successful work-in at the Upper Clyde shipyard in the early 1970s. The event is consigned to the dusty shelves of political history today but as Brian Wilson, writing in the Guardian states, it was “an event that galvanised working-class consciousness, challenged political moralities and haunted the premiership of Edward Heath”.

Undoubtedly confrontational and incredibly charismatic, Reid was as much a problem for the trade union establishment as he was for government ministers. He was uncompromisingly socialist in his beliefs and his principled stand at a time when political disillusionment was first emerging within UK society, gained him a range of admirers from unlikely quarters. But it also often put him at odds with a left-wing who treated his popularity with suspicion.

As Wilson states, Reid was far too intellectually and politically astute to become a kneejerk supporter of faddy leftwing causes. He was a proponent of making Labour electable and saw little benefit to be gained from seeking unwinnable battles with Thatcherite forces. His refusal to endorse Arthur Scargill’s handling of the miner’s strike earned him bitter criticism and the rift became too wide for reconciliation.

To his death, Reid remained an influence for politicians seeking a distinctive Scots agenda which meant something more than touting a thistle on the lapel. His skills at rhetoric never deserted him and whilst he always dismissed any similarity with Lech Walesa and the Polish Solidarity union, he is said to have enjoyed the irony of how a worker occupation in Gdansk’s shipyards put a communist regime on the back foot.

In 2005 he announced that he had joined the Scottish National party and the recriminations were surprisingly few. For many, the man had simply come home.

Jimmy Reid, trade unionist and journalist, born 9 July 1932; died 10 August 2010

Black has no perspective: official

2010-08-03T19:20:00.000+01:00

Got it in one

2010-08-02T16:30:00.000+01:00

From my admittedly biased perspective, there is an eminently suitable one word riposte which Pontypridd MP Owen Smith could deliver to Peter Black after being lambasted by the Lib Dem pipsqueak as a “self-regarding” politician – and that is ‘Kettle’.

Having said that, and gone through his treatise, I fear that Smith might find a monosyllabic response to be a bit challenging.

Smoke and mirrors

2010-08-01T09:31:00.000+01:00

Far be it for me to suggest anything untoward but following his claims that a plot was involved to oust Iona Jones, S4C's ex-chief executive, I am wondering if former heritage minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas may have switched from cigars to something more exotic.

RGT reckons that an investigation is needed to make sure that the decision was made for 'honourable' reasons and not personal animosity by certain members of the authority who have been waiting for their chance to pull the rug from under her desk. But what does it matter anyway?

Is she was pushed then no doubt an employment tribunal will reveal all. I rather think that Rhodri sees reflections of his own engineered demise.

The Freedom Central approach to blogging

2010-07-28T15:52:00.000+01:00

Swansea takes another step backwards into the future

2010-07-27T00:50:00.000+01:00

Boulevards? Give me fucking strength!

All strangely quiet on the Plaid front

2010-07-25T12:08:00.000+01:00

I have to confess to being mildly surprised that the press and public have not made more of the decision by Plaid chairman John Dixon to stand down whilst citing “significant political reasons” for his exit.

We're talking here about a political party that is propping up the One Wales government and which is probably seeking to do the same after next year's Assembly elections. Yet the comment from press and politicians who have been harping on about splits and various examples of disarray within the Party of Wales is virtually nil. I was sort of expecting something in Wales on Sunday but it doesn't rate a mention. Nor are there tributes either from the Plaid hierarchy or rank and file. Why is that?

Dixon has been a hugely influential figure and steered Plaid through some difficult waters. He has gained a reputation of dealing equably with various factions whilst also possessing a steely edge which came to the fore when seeing off rogue candidate Sian Ciaich. The word that is trickling out is that his last election contest was a step too far but whatever the reason, it is unlikely that we have heard the last of JD.

Out of touch

2010-07-22T00:10:00.000+01:00

I see that Peter Black has returned from his hols beleiving that the top news item is how some Lib Dem on Cardiff Council has been censured for tweeting something inappropriate about scientologists.

Funny, I thought the main headlines were the mostly about how Clegg and Cameron managed to make twats of themselves over proposed withdrawal dates from Afghanistan.

I'll have what he's drinking

2010-07-16T12:44:00.000+01:00

"It is striking that our reforming zeal is matched by our Conservative coalition partners," says Nick Clegg.

Don't know what he's drinking but it must be good stuff.

Pitiful

2010-07-14T00:30:00.000+01:00

I've just seen n outraged Peter Black spluttering on TV how minister Elin Jones should resign following the appeal court's decision against a badger cull. Yeah, right.

In England, we have the spectacle of a cabinet minsister issuing five conflicting accounts of what schools will not get improvement cash (between apologies to Parliament) with the consequences of a shitload of legal challenges and more costs. Yet not a word of comment.

Is the clear red water all washed up?

2010-07-10T12:32:00.000+01:00

John Osmond, writing in the IWA website, hankers after a distinctive brand of political philosophy for Wales whilst politely despairing of the incremental approach towards policy development by a devolved government.

We should be a bit bolder, says Osmond, citing Rhodri Morgan’s “clear red water” speech of 2002 as a signpost that a Welsh governmental apparatus duly noted but still managed to lose direction in the murk of day-to-day administration and dodging the cross-fire from Senedd skirmishes.

What is not remembered with such sunny nostalgia is the live interview that Rodders later gave in which he described his personal ideological stance as “Classic Labour” – prompting Paxman and other critics of the day to gleefully pick over the symbolism of a fizzy drink analogy that was big on packaging but low on actual nutritional value.

The IWA article was intended to advertise yesterday’s event aimed at discussing “cohabitation between the Taff and the Thames” (which has a nice ring to it) and, one assumes, whether a continued preference for policy separatism is achievable or affordable in the face of public spending austerity.

Perhaps I am doing the IWA and its director an injustice - as if as I care - but I see little value in a preoccupation which focuses on who decides either in chamber or siamber whether free bus passes survive; regardless of any so-called “progressive consensus”.

Such decisions, in my book, are the real stuff of national referenda. Asking the people and giving them an enfranchised voice in such key matters would make Wales a distinctive democracy. Are we ready for a hands-on alternative to the kind of comfortable arm's-length democracy that Welsh politics and its non-accountable entourage of intellectuals and SpAds much prefer? My view is that we are - but don’t hold your breath just yet.

Do we really give a toss what Rhodri thinks anymore?

2010-07-07T22:40:00.000+01:00

Sorry and all that, but what does it fucking matter if Rhodri Morgan thinks that tax-raising powers for Wales is a mistake? As it happens, I happen to hold the same view but that is just as irrelevant in the great scheme of things as whatever the ex-First Minister may have to say.

What is this media obsession with Rodders as some sort of mystical mahatma figure handing down pearls of wisdom from semi-retirement. To paraphrase Trotsky's views about Stalin, a glaring symptom of the mediocrity within the Welsh Assembly is that Morgan attained high office within it and held onto his post for as long a he did without any serious opposition.

He gone now. The sooner the Beeb gets over the fact, the better.

Adeus, Paulo

2010-07-05T09:46:00.000+01:00

Well that didn't last long. Seems like only a year ago that we were saying Olá to Roberto's successor. In fact it was - and now he has hoofed it to Leicester.

Loyal fans are already coming to the support of Swansea's directors despite their inability to hold onto a manager. But surely we are entitled to ask que está acontecendo, meus amigos?

There you go

2010-06-22T14:38:00.000+01:00

Scaremongers! Mischief makers! That's what was said about anyone who claimed that the Conservatives woudl be hiking up VAT to 20% if they got into power.

Well who are the lying bastards now?

If Laws keeps his job then it really is CON-DEM

2010-05-29T18:43:00.000+01:00

I am really sick to my stomach listening to all the apologists making excuses for David Laws who was outed by the Telegraph on a number of fronts.

"This is not a financial issue", says one Lib Dem MP, "It is a personal story". No it fucking isn't. Let's get it straight - the guy had a secret relationship which was the basis for a dodgy arrangement to claim parliamentary expenses for rent. It was a scam and what it most relevant is that he knew it was a scam. Saying sorry and reporting yourself is not an act of contrition but simply a tactical evasion that carries no weight or meaning for us ordinary stiffs.

David Law's sexual orientation is none of my business but the fact that he is a senior treasury minister and is patently less than upfront on his own financial dealings - is definitely my business and that of the nation.

Cameron & Clegg have gone big on their aim to clean up politics. They are going to sweep away the system of patronage that has kept lots of snouts in publicly-funded troughs for a succession of parliaments. If they allow Laws to stay in post then they will be rightly judged as spineless hypocrites who think it is acceptable treat the public with contempt.

Screw the result

2010-05-07T17:19:00.000+01:00

Screw the result and all the speculation, the best bit of this election is reading how the pollsters and political researchers are unable to explain why their predictions turned out to be such crap.

The BBC election website shows that none of the six eve-of-election polls came anywhere close to the actual outcome. I understand that some of the research outfits even challenged the accuracy of the exit poll that showed that the Liberal Democrats were to end up with a lower share of the national vote and fewer seats than five years ago.

But what I find really amazing is the half-soaked rationale given by a BBC researcher who asks, “Were the polls wrong throughout the campaign? I doubt it, but then how do I explain the stark contrast between them and the hard reality of 6 May? At the moment I cannot. For me and for many others I imagine, there is considerable work in progress as we try to reconcile the past four weeks of campaigning with the actual outcome”.

I can’t help but feel that anyone in politics or public life would be crucified by the very same media if they had made such a patently stupid and patronising statement. The twat should get himself a job in the Met Office.

Facebook versus the South Wales Evening Post

2010-04-27T00:11:00.000+01:00

Continuing the last article, I see that someone has started up a no-nonsense Facebook site in protest. Entitled WRONG ROB - 100% support for Rob Stevens, the South Wales Evening Post got it wrong, the author recounts how the South Wales Evening Post wrongly portrayed a local Swansea guy on its front page as a child molester and God knows what else. The allegation is that someone at the Post wrongly took his picture off Facebook - which is a pretty scary indictment of how research is conducted at what is supposed to be Wales' best selling newspaper.

If I was running the local rag, I would be very concerned indeed at the majority of comments. Far from the self-praise and plaudits that the paper often awards itself, the emerging theme from over 3000 hits so far is that the paper barely worth the status of arse-wipe. Most complain about a drop in reporting standards over the last five years and the consensus is that the Post should be screwed for damages and compensation.

I must say that I have to agree with the sentiments. As a long-standing reader I don't think I can remember a time when the paper has been more deserving of its nickname of "two minutes silence", i.e. the length of time is takes to scan the often dire and all too trivial contents. The reporting is obviously the product of cut and paste from press releases with just too many "un-named" sources to be remotely credible. The days of incisive copy from Brian Walters, Susan Buchanan and Jonathan Issacs have been replaced by insipid, light-weight garbage churned out by journalistic shelf-stackers who could not research their own backsides.

It is ironic that the paper is doing its usual outraged thing in lambasting the local hospital for mixing up the body of a dead baby and a placenta. Somehow, such indignation does not carry much weight coming from a newspaper that shows a similar lack of care and sensitivity in its own dealings.

Follow-up (27 April) - Just been told that friends have published their own page using a photograph taken off the Facebook site of the EP reporter who mistakenly identified poor Rob. Justice of sorts, I suppose. Fellow Swans supporters are also jumping to Rob's defence and suggesting a course of action in theirr own ultra-explicit fashion.

Petards and all that

2010-04-25T12:47:00.000+01:00

I'm not normally one to take the piss out of fellow bloggers (guess I'll be going straight to Hell for that one) but I cannot stop smirking at the post shown below which was recently published by Tawe Talk - an excellent Swansea blogger who apparently shares my sincere distrust of the ever-unreliable Evening Post newspaper.

No argument at all with the sentiments expressed by TT but the unfortunate thing about this diatribe on accuracy is that the editor's name is Spencer Feeney - not Warren.

Sloppy BBC reporting

2010-04-23T10:49:00.000+01:00

Picking up on a point of correction made yesterday by the Jaxxlanders, I find it informative about reporting standards within the BBC that this unattributed piece describes last night’s event as a “prime ministerial debate”.

Sorry to be pedantic, but how many prime ministers do you see in this picture?

What is the point?

2010-04-20T13:11:00.000+01:00

What is it about the TV production mindset that actually thinks it is necessary to have a live OB from a reporter with an inactive airport serving as a backdrop to underline the fucking obvious fact that planes are grounded? Don’t they think we would believe them if they just said it in the studio?

As if this was not bad enough, we suddenly have journalists becoming overnight fucking experts in aerospace technology speaking with presumed authority about the effects of ‘corrosive’ volcanic dust clouds on all aircraft. First of all it’s ‘abrasive’, you assholes, and secondly it only affects anything with the qualities of a jet turbine, e.g. loud, single purpose and full of hot air. You know, like anyone on Sky News.

Frankie says it with numbers

2010-04-17T19:38:00.001+01:00

Swansea’s local paper is getting all steamed up because their hack could not get a free seat to Frankie Boyle’s show when he appeared in the city the other night. The booking agreement between the comedian and venue on his tour is that critics are banned. This seems based on the premise that the show does OK with having just the one self-opinionated tosspot without allowing any others in to write about it later.

This unconscionable sleight inflamed the knobs at the Beans on Toast who place immense value on their ridiculously over-developed sense of status (after all, they can close restaurants, you know) and delivered a stern ticking off to the Glaswegian comic in an editorial.

As it happens, the show was an absolute sell-out - just like every other gig on his tour; which is about as satisfactory a “fuck off” to the pretentious twats at the Post as Frankie could deliver himself.

I'm feeling awfully empowered

2010-04-15T15:53:00.000+01:00

I’ve recently come across a cracking little gadget on the BBC election website which allows me to automatically see how opinion poll figures translate into the number of seats that each party would gain.

It may not seem much to you but for me it’s a real breakthrough as it means I no longer have to bite my lip whilst I am forced to get the information from that patronising twat Peter (it’s just a bit of fun) Snow or his equally irritating counterparts on ITV and Sky.

If only political parties were as willing to empower me as the Beeb.

Are you happy now?

2010-04-14T20:56:00.000+01:00

I might have been a bit previous (or prophetic) a few weeks ago in announcing the closure of the Penthouse restaurant on top of Swansea's Meridian Tower, but today's sad news is that the experiment that introduced something other than the bland & unoriginal eating out experience that Swansea has to offer has finally shut its doors.

Why the Evening Post (the city's local paper) took against the project so forcefully and spitefully is still a mystery as far as I am concerned. Someone I know, who always seems to have information gained from the "highest authority" or so he would have me believe, insists that it is down to an arrangement for the owners of Morgan's Hotel which is sited alongside the Evening Post building and within walking distance to the Tower. His theory is that the hotel has bought the newspaper building and that the deal hinged on the paper giving the Penthouse a fatal kicking. It's all a bit too Byzantine for me but I can understand why people would subcribe to this and similar scenarios.

For me the explanation for the sustained negative coverage by the paper that claims to be 'at the heart of all things local' is much simpler. And in this respect, I draw little distinction between the editorial staff and the stupid vandals who kick shit out of the bus shelter at the end of the road. Their actions are nothing to do with premeditated malice or to serve any particular purpose. They simply do it because they can and because there is no-one to stop them. It is this motiveless similarity that I find the most disturbing.

I’m actually thinking of voting Lib Dem

2010-04-10T10:44:00.000+01:00

My ex-miner, NUM lodge official grandad is probably doing 3000 rpm in his grave at the moment but I have to confess an admiration for a party, or at least a party spokesman, who stands out from the rest and tells it like it is without compunction.

Vince Cable described the spectacle of business chiefs collectively chanting “job cuts” over proposed rises in national insurance as utterly nauseating and I tend to agree, albeit a bit more graphically. But what really impressed me this morning was how Nick Clegg was not just fully backing his shadow-chancellor instead of the mealy-mouthed rationalisations you would expect but adding how he thought the profit-obsessed so-called captains of industry had been part of the causes of recession and should show a bit more humility instead of demanding public spending cuts.

That’s the kind of straight talking I want to hear and more of the same will probably make its mark on me. I don't think the Lib Dem has much of a chance in my constituency but so what?

Sorry Gramps

What's good for Wales?

2010-04-03T13:27:00.000+01:00

It is in the same context that a stopped clock is right at least twice in 24 hours that I find myself agreeing with Peter Black's take on claims in yesterday's Western Mail that development in Cardiff Bay has been good for Wales.

Admittedly informed by a couple of property consultants who have a fuzzy grasp on how the concept of a Development Corporation was first mooted, the feature in question nevertheless manages an astonishingly one-dimensional slant which ignores some basic historical factors when offering up the throw-away line that “politics and economics made the work of the development corporation an uphill struggle for most of its life” .

Another more grounded perspective is that, just like its Merseyside counterpart, the Cardiff Bay DC was a narrow-visioned 1980’s vehicle for delivering the Thatcherist economic ideology that you can achieve growth by steering market investment into a location through a combination of inducements and large scale public-sector spending. As it turned out, the shopping list included a humungous great barrage, miles of new road & rail infrastructure and the Bute tunnel.

A succession of tory ~~viceroys~~ Welsh secretaries with surnames such as Edwards, Walker, Redwood, Hunt (twice) and Hague all trotted out the same mantra about how match-funding and partnerships would win through for Wales. Although it appeared to some market observers that it was the Edwards-Crickhowell-Grosvenor connection which seemed to be the persistent winner in the earlier phases.

To the rest of the Welsh public sector, who found themselves subsiding the long-term rebirth of Cardiff project through reduced capital allowances and delayed programmes, the underlying philosophy appeared to be based on little more than ‘if we build it, they will come’. But whenever doubts of this nature were voiced, such heresy was quickly dismissed – a situation that persisted even when Ron Davies wiped his feet on the Gwydyr House welcome mat.

The rest, as they say is history, although it is worth noting that it might have been history with a slightly different ending if it has been Rhodri Morgan and not Alun Michael who had won the Battle of the Barrage.

What cannot be denied is that Cardiff Bay was ambitious on a scale not seen since Brunel and Telford made their mark on Welsh demography. With timescales running close to a generation, it demanded a quantum of consistency in vision & stamina that is not normally associated with government and the public sector. And in the same way that successive Caesars re-built and improved Rome, so the Assembly has picked up the baton and presided over an extension of the original remit with the creation of Bute Square, Callaghan Square, the Millennium Centre and various other Torchwood set backdrops.

But in answering the question as to whether it has all worked as an economic regenerator for the nation, an aspect that needs first to be recognised is that this was never originally the objective and how the project has morphed in terms of scale & scope during its lifetime.

The corporation was originally set up to address the range of problems that beset Cardiff’s economic future 30 years ago. These days it is easy to forget that this was a time which saw the decimation of older manufacturing industries such as Rover and Rolls Royce along with the closure of the huge East Moors steel works. To add to the capital’s problems, the flow of A48 through-traffic which had been both the bane & the life blood of business dried to a trickle as the newly completed M4 effectively became the Cardiff bypass.

A major component in a long-term rescue package, conceived under the auspices of the newly re-formed Welsh Development Agency, the Cardiff Bay strategy was intended solely to redevelop rundown parts of the city’s docklands in order to attract service industries to the capital. In many respects it was an evolution of the advance factories model although the product was unoccupied office blocks enjoying a level of subsidy up to eight times greater than any industrial park in the valleys. Although hideously expensive, it was considered by agency heads to be more sustainable than the recently introduced Enterprise Park at Swansea which had limited benefits, suffered from in-built bureaucracy and eventually proved too prone to unplanned retail incursions.

The transition from best-fit economic recovery solution for Cardiff into national flagship project turned out to be as subtle and inexorable as Japanese Knotweed. Although economists and academics highlighted the comparative paucity of actual private sector investment, those in government – and those who benefitted from their largesse – stoutly denied the possibility that continued millions sunk in the Bay might be good money after bad. It was only during the changing political tide of the late 90’s that people started quantifying the effect of such a patent imbalance in investment on the rest of Wales. Even then, the outcomes were variable inasmuch as trying to determine what didn’t happen because of Cardiff Bay invokes a series of imponderables along the lines of whether the internal light actually go off when you close the fridge door.

Whatever the negatives, there have also been studies which objectively conclude that the capital’s waterside renaissance coupled with improved infrastructure has significantly improved the measurable economic indicators for what is known as “Greater Cardiff” but the wealth has not spread much further. If anything, the gap in earnings, health and social deprivation in the thirty miles that separate Cardiff and Ebbw Vale has probably widened.

As it happens, the first recorded contextual quote of “What is good for Cardiff [Bay] is good for Wales” is attributed to the charismatic Labour council leader Russell Goodway who understandably heaped praise on successive conservative Welsh Secretaries for enshrining the principle of disproportionate level of public per-capita expenditure between the capital and the rest of Wales as government policy.

At the time, only someone like Goodway could get away with it – so at least something has changed.

Don't piss on my mac and tell me its raining

2010-04-01T12:46:00.001+01:00

Forgive the expletives but I am well pissed off at the pronouncement by 23 company bosses (including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury and Next) that a 1% NI increase would be a "tax on jobs" and would "endanger" economic recovery. What absolute fucking bollocks!!

Screw the politics of this. I don’t think that any party has got anything other than sound-bites to offer as a way to get out of this recession, but I have a good idea who got us into it. I make little distinction between the fucking shysters at Lehman Brothers and the smarmy bastards running the cash-rich retail sector that is obsessed with getting a stranglehold on market share and screwing suppliers & customers to squeeze out the last bit of profit.

Call me reactionary (as if I care) but I don’t equate economic recovery with the opening of another Sainsburys on some out-of-town retail park. From my perspective, the best thing that can happen is that retail sector gets a regulatory rod up its ass tout fucking suite.

Contradictions

2010-03-25T09:21:00.000Z

Being a simple soul in many ways, I am not sure that I have a grasp on the apparent acceptable contradiction between laws that make it illegal for two males to be refused B&B accommodation because the owner is offended by homosexual relationships but which permit pharmacists to refuse dispensing morning after pills on religious grounds.

Both refusals are wrong in my book, and not through any politically correct or moral standpoint, but simply because I recognise that the inability to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation and the availability of contraception are underpinned by statute and are intended to apply to everyone, repeat, everyone.

As it happens, I also strongly agree with both principles. If I didn’t then I would probably find it very hard to be a B&B proprietor or a pharmacist and would get out the business. But that’s just me.

Busted

2010-03-20T12:40:00.001Z

Just been advised by Blogger that Insidious displays spam charaterictics - assume they mean its bland & tasteless.

Restaurant falls foul to lobster syndrome

2010-03-18T19:36:00.000Z

Well I see that the Evening Post have had their way over the Tower restaurant in Swansea that I mentioned the other day. The poor chap who tried to make a go of it is now bankrupt and I feel pretty sure that all the negative publicity printed by the paper was a big factor. Whatever did he do to incur such vindictiveness?
Then again, it could all be down to the old story of another restaurant where a diner noticed one of the live lobsters steadily clawing up the side of the big tank. Summoning a waiter, he pointed out the crustacean’s imminent escape. But the waiter smiled and explained that the lobster had been caught in Swansea Bay.

“Don’t worry sir, the others are sure to drag him back down”, came the assurance.

I just hope that the Beans on Toast (as it is known on another blog) is as steadfastly determined to uncover the dirt about shortcomings in the local social services department as it has been in exposing problems in what was an exciting but sadly short-lived enterprise.

Nick Clegg walks the line

2010-03-15T16:02:00.000Z

As a pollster observed on Newsnight the other evening, the only thing that makes the Lib Dems relevant at the moment is the prospect of a hung parliament.

So it’s not exactly an earth-shattering insight to discover that Nick Clegg sees himself & his party as holding the role of ‘guarantor’ within such a scenario. The phrasing employed in his weekend speech signals that things are getting real and we will, hopefully, hear no more of those silly references to ‘moral mandates’.

Even so, taking on the debts of others, which is the accepted dictionary definition of a guarantor, is a big commitment for a political party that pollsters reckon will suffer an overall loss of seats on 6th May (or thereabouts). So it is crucial that punters do come to see the Lib Dems as arbiter rather than alternative too soon or else even the predicted 17% mark and the fifty-something seats that would it deliver becomes too big an ask.

Clegg doesn’t need the Telegraph to tell him that there is a fine line between being coy and appearing disingenuous to press and public, but if he is to enter into any deal with sufficient collateral then he will need to walk it for a while longer.

Press attacks on restaurant leave a bad taste

2010-03-12T12:33:00.000Z

Maybe it’s my imagination but I can’t help feeling that the good folks at South Wales Evening Post really have it in for the guy who runs a restaurant at the top of Swansea's Meridian Tower.

He certainly seems to have had a string of misfortunes in launching his venue but, as anyone who has tried will tell you, opening a new business in such a high profile location is always going to be a tough proposition. Things rarely run smoothly from the outset.

Even so, does that warrant 14 successive negative stories in 10 weeks by the local paper - including the latest that the owner has recently been done for speeding? It does seem to an uncomplicated reader like me that this particular business is getting a disproportionate amount of bad press. I would be really interested to know the reason why.

Unimpressed

2010-02-22T10:03:00.000Z

The distinct impression within the Insidious domicile is that the shit-spin brigade is turning the slurry hose on Gordon Brown as the election gets closer. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have too much time for the man and I think his claimed reputation in economics and statecraft is definitely overcooked. I also regard him as a self-made PR disaster unable to shuck off the perception that he is the Prince of Darkness’ finger puppet.

But the stories about how the PM is supposed to be first losing his sight; then allegedly dependent on pain-killers and now presiding over a bullying culture at No10 just confirms for me that old Andy Coulson is doing the job he is paid for.

Digesting a demise

2010-02-17T16:55:00.001Z

I’m afraid that my reaction to news that Reader’s Digest in the UK is about to go into administration was to reflect on how much that august publication reminded me of a distant great-aunt, i.e. both possess a genteel quality, are slightly irrelevant and – in my mind – had popped off years ago.

Scapegoat

2010-01-29T09:53:00.000Z

I have just been reading more about the appearance at a GMC hearing by Dr Andrew Wakefield, the chap who first claimed a link between MMR treatments and autism. A disciplinary panel ruled that he had "showed a callous disregard" for the suffering of children and "abused his position of trust".

But as others have already observed, the GMC did not investigate whether his findings were right or wrong, but instead focused on the methods of research. And it seems to me, being the cynical sod that I am, that Dr Wakefield's treatment is reminicient of the show-trials conducted to discredit Dubcek and other Czech leaders after the Prague Summer of 1968.

Why has no-one censured the editors of the Lancet for publishing his theories in 1998? Surely they are more guilty than anyone for fostering the idea in the media that there may be a link. And even now, no-one has definitively disproved the suspicion of a quiet decision by the clinical establishment that a 'negligible' number of reactions to MMR is preferable to a measles epidemic.

Further evidence that Iraq conflict was media managed

2010-01-22T01:26:00.001Z

This disturbing video clip taken just after the invasion has only recently been recovered from BBC archives and restored for viewing.

Still chasing the dragon

2010-01-21T00:36:00.001Z

It’s a funny old world. One moment IWJ is telling business that the era of grant-induced inward investment is at an end – a move seemingly endorsed by the Bevan Foundation. Then, and no sooner than you can say ‘Single Investment Fund’, the same minister is announcing 600 new manufacturing jobs in south-west Wales.

The emerging view that had commentators nodding sagely was one which saw the policy of attracting foreign employers with advance factories, enterprise zones and loadsa, loadsa money was a discredited Thatcherist hangover and should be finally abandoned. Pundits pointed to the Bosch decision to close its Miskin plant and relocate work to Hungary as irrefutable confirmation.

Yet we learn via that WAG was instrumental in getting Japanese car components firm Toyoda Gosei to take over the former Valeo (France) plant at Gorseinon at Swansea with the possibility of up to 600 jobs. Admittedly, such figures have to be treated with some caution; the former US-owned International Rectifier outfit located a mile down the road at Penllegaer once made similar noises but never got past the 150 mark - and the plant has been sold on twice since.

For what it is worth and for all the official denials, sweeteners have been an integral part of economic policy ever since Harold Wilson arranged a loan to the Polish government so that it could place orders for new ships with Tyneside shipyards. The WDA business model was probably slightly more subtle but basically the same in approach. It was eventually adopted by English regional development agencies who wrested themselves free of centralised Whitehall control. Funnily enough, this transformation was happening just as ministers in Wales were chorusing the need for ‘accountable’ quangos, i.e. bodies more obedient to the whims and fancies of their political masters.

It is probably overly academic to debate here whether a background as Industrial Development Officer for South Glamorgan County Council followed by a stint as the head of the European Community office in Wales is sufficient experience to tamper with a workable formula that had performed worked better than most for a couple of decades. The former First Minister never actually explained how he could square the circle in getting a forcibly brought-to-heel organisation to effectively promote greater entrepreneurial opportunities and no-one else has attempted it since either. But the uncomfortable feeling remains that Terry Matthews would never had made it he had been lumbered with the strictures and sign-offs that pass for business support these days.

What the Assembly was supposed to achieve in its first decade was a reversal of the mantra imposed by successive tory ~~government viceroys~~ Secretary’s of State that underpinned a skewed pattern of public investment favouring Cardiff above pretty much everywhere else in Wales. They almost pulled it off when the Development Board for Rural Wales was merged with the WDA but they also managed to saddle Wales with an in-built weakness by replacing the notoriously inefficient Training & Enterprise Councils with an equally inept and even more expensive acronym notionally responsible for skills training. It took years for ministers to admit that Elwa was a disaster and the same political myopia allowed Objective One funding to be squandered on a succession of fashionable initiatives whilst dipsticks were allowed to commission speculative courses in circuit board training just as Sony and Panasonic were putting such work into Malaysia.

The disproportionate attention paid by ministers and media to so-called experts who have never seen a shop-floor is symptomatic of a dysfunctional, often non-existent relationship between academia and industry. For many working in both public and private sectors, the loss of the WDA and, more importantly, the loss of real business people on its board, has further widened what was already a significant mismatch of expectations.

In any forum at any given time, employers – both indigenous and imported – will explain that what they need to make Wales plc a success is good infrastructure for movement of goods and services, flexible finance arrangements and a steady supply of literate school-leavers with a grounding in maths as opposed to media studies. Politicians and their bag-carriers strategies, on the other hand, spend as much time patiently explaining why their carefully developed strategies, prepared in consultation with a range of public bodies who have first claim on any spare cash, mean that it ain’t going to happen.

Matters have only been made worse in the last year by the rambling and occasionally contradictory WAG economic recovery road-shows held around Wales which painted a picture of ministerial awareness that would give your average shambles a bad name.

Of course, the business sector is just as flawed in its own way. Too many at the top mistook the burgeoning economies of China and India as merely improved opportunities to secure a source of cheap imported raw material and/or subsequent export markets for finished high-end goods. Now something suspiciously like the reverse is happening as Corus and Jaguar operate within the Tata conglomerate.

Even so, they are still best placed to advise and even decide the scope of skills needed for the employment market - if only because they are the market. And whilst big might not be beautiful, it certainly carries the economies of scale needed to provide more brains for your buck than the previous ‘managed’ packages on offer.

This week the Royal Academy of Engineering flagged up a serious skills shortage in areas of expertise critical to restoring the nation’s ailing industrial infrastructure. That is bad enough but it gets worse when you consider that the people who were once capable of directing and managing a renewal in Wales are now mostly gainfully employed - loan defaults notwithstanding - in Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Bahrain or else involved in building Olympic facilities. So where are the new generation of engineers going to come from?

As Billy Connolly once observed, the way things used to work, back in the bad old days, was that the schools would open their doors and the steel, coal and manufacturing industries would open theirs and a flood of school leavers would transfer across. His joke is that he trained to become a welder because he joined the wrong queue at the shipyard.

They were costly, inefficient and often unproductive industries; although the annual operational subsidy they drew from the exchequer was less than half that of the unemployment benefits paid out after they were closed down. Even more was eventually spent per capita in attracting alternative employers – like Bosch, for instance. Some economists are already making the point that if billions in public money can be put into banks to underwrite their viability then the ground rules can be changed for industry so that trainees and re-trained employees are paid the going rate out of a government funded scheme. Sound familiar?

But to repeat an earlier point, Wales is not just facing a skills shortage; it also has serious shortcomings affecting its industrial infrastructure. Not least of these is in the non-availability of cheap energy, as seen by the departure of Anglesey Aluminium. Despite a history of metal-working in the area, there are no foundries in South Wales capable of producing the spheroidal graphite iron used by automotive machining industries. Wide fluctuations in imported raw materials have make planned business growth virtually impossible. Energy Parks such as that in Baglan near Port Talbot were supposed to be a solution but unit generation costs can still be more expensive than power ‘bought’ from overseas.

Some in Cardiff Bay still retain a sincere belief that the future will be determined by our ability to tap into the so-called knowledge economy. Yet whilst the Technium crowd talk a good fight, the sum of their endeavours to date could not fill an average SME’s order book for a year. And what happens to them and their in-built advantages once impending cuts in university and further education funding take hold?

For many, and that includes this author, the idea of a Welsh Economic Strategy without a stand-alone and fully funded Welsh Development Agency, backed by an All-Wales programme of infrastructure improvements complete with targets, is both pointless and meaningless – and the sooner that is realised by politicians and press then the sooner that ambitions for recovery can begin to be realised.

In the meantime, let's take what we can.