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Jul 1st, 2009 gan Menter Iaith Abertawe
Ydych chi’n berson brwdfrydig ac yn gallu siarad Cymraeg?
Mae Canolfan Cymraeg i Oedolion De-orllewin Cymru yn gyfrifol am holl ddarpariaeth Cymraeg i Oedolion ar draws Sir Gaerfyrddin, Sir Benfro Abertawe a
Chastell-nedd Port Talbot. 31/7/2009
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Menter Caerdydd
22/6/2009
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Menter Caerdydd
21/6/2009
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Menter Caerdydd
5/7/2009
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Menter Caerdydd
23/7/2009
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Eurolang
Last Saturday night two young acts were chosen to represent the Celtic and Scots languages at the Liet International song contest for European lesser used languages. Ten acts from the various Celtic and Scots languages travelled from far and wide to Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, Scotland, to perform in front of an enthusiastic audience. The event was also broadcast live over the internet.
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Eurolang
On Sunday Greenland ushered in a new era of self-governance that may lead to eventual independence from Denmark, its ruler since 1721. Kalaallisut, also known as Greenlandic, a traditional Inuit language, is the country’s official language, and Greenlanders are now recognized under international law as a separate people from Danes.
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Eurolang
On Tuesday, 30 June, the Slovak Parliament passed the amendment of the Slovak Language Law. The new version will enter in force in September 2009. Members from the Party of the Hungarian Coalition expressed their conviction that the new law will hinder the enforcement of the linguistic rights of national minorities.
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Eurolang
A new survey launched in Galicia indicates that 50.3% of the inhabitants of Galicia have the Galician language as their mother tongue. Also, the survey shows that only 3% of those living in Galicia consider themselves as Spanish only.
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Cangen Bontnewydd Branch, Plaid Cymru
There are some things that are the responsibility of the individual. If conservatives can be accused of forgetting that society shapes the individual’s experiences, it is also true that we socialists can often forget that the individual also responsi…
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Betsan Powys (BBC News)
When Assembly Members came together in the chamber this afternoon to discuss the Enterprise and Learning Committee’s report on the way the government has so far handled the economic downturn, they expected to see the man in charge of the economy standing up and standing his corner.
He is Ieuan Wyn Jones, the Deputy First Minister, a man who “comes across like a good country solicitor” according to fellow Plaid member Adam Price , a man who came across like the Scarlet Pimpernel this afternoon, according to his fellow Assembly Members.
They seek him here, they seek him there … or more appropriate after this afternoon’s events perhaps, now you see him, now you don’t.
The Deputy First Minister was in the chamber earlier, answering questions and facing flak. There’s growing cross party pressure on him over the alleged delays in the scheme to dual the A465 Heads of the Valleys road. At economy questions today, he faced the wrath of Huw Lewis, whose increasingly vociferous campaign on the issue is reaching new levels of anger. He was joined by Mike German from the Lib Dems, and William Graham from the Tories - both reflecting deep unease that there are still no confirmed start dates for several key stretches of the road.
And as the rhetoric gets stronger, the positions become more entrenched. Mr Jones’ opponents claim that precious capital resources are being sucked into improving north-south routes - at the expense of east-west, particularly the A465, the dualling of which is seen as vital to the economic regeneration of the Heads of the Valleys area. It’s claimed what amounts to a Plaid Cymru nation building exercise is holding up much needed help for one of Wales’s most deprived areas.
Not so, says Mr Jones. I’ve told you and I’ll tell you again. I inherited the reprioritisation programme from my (Labour) predecessor in the job, who in turn made his decisions on the basis of expert advice on the complex issue of programming trunk road improvements. All I’m doing is sticking to a time table set by a Labour Minister.
The conflict derives from the four yearly cycle of announcing priorities for trunk roads - which means when it “crosses” ministers - 2004 report under Andrew Davies, then 2008 report under Ieuan Wyn Jones. There’s no obvious way of divining who made which decision and when.
But having faced down the barrage of criticism in the chamber, Mr Jones then decided to hit the road himself.
He was gone.
Who stood up on behalf of the government to respond to a heated debate on the way they’ve handled the recession? John Griffiths, a deputy Minister in the Education department.
Where was Mr Jones, AMs demanded to know? The Minister for the Economy had “urgent ministerial business” to attend to, ventured Mr Griffiths. In fact his own appearance showed that there was joined up working between their respective departments.
They didn’t buy it. The urbane and rarely ruffled Conservative Economy spokesman David Melding raised his voice. That in itself deserved raised eyebrows. This was “truly pathetic” he said. Was this “what passes for leadership in the Welsh Assembly Government?” The Lib Dems, with Jenny Randerson leading the charge, went for “a discourtesy” to his fellow AMs.
Even the - Plaid - chair of the committee, Gareth Jones couldn’t help adding that he’d been “a little surprised” by the Deputy First Minister’s absence.
So where was he?
He had “a long standing engagement dating back months to attend a conference this afternoon on the economic crisis organised by the Welsh Governance Centre.” And anyway given the Enterprise and Learning Committee’s report covered the work of the education department as well as the department for the economy, it was entirely appropriate that the Deputy Minister for Skills should respond to the debate.
We seek him … and find him in the Hilton Hotel, where his speech, according to some anyway, was shifted from a quarter past four to four o’clock. Maybe.
What’s significant here? That Mr Jones is gaining a reputation amongst an increasing number of AMs for not responding quickly enough to their queries, not taking them and their job of scrutinising what he does seriously enough; that it’s hard to avoid the feeling he’s being targetted by those who suggest that being DFM and holding such a crucial portfolio must be very hard work indeed. You know what they mean - perhaps a bit too hard these days.
Mr Jones may argue, as a good country solicitor might, that the facts suggest otherwise.
He’s answered questions on the government’s handling of the economy many times before .The ProAct and ReAct schemes - yes, those again - have generally gone down well. His department is working overtime to respond to what is a global crisis.
But perceptions and reputations are equally important and a good country solicitor ought to know that too.
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Stuart Wilks-Heeg
The Local Government Association (LGA) has published a remarkable pamphlet to coincide with its annual conference, taking place in Harrogate this week. The glossy, professionally-designed eleven page document is what we've come to expect from local government these days. It is the text which is surprising. The pamphlet is written with a passion, immediacy and radicalism unheard of in local government circles since the days of Red Ken's GLC, David Blunkett's Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire and Derek ‘Deggsy' Hatton's Militant resistance in Liverpool. Even the title of the pamphlet - ‘Who's in Charge? A Manifesto for a New Politics' - is reminiscent of the language associated with the radical localism of the New Urban Left in the early 1980s. Much of the text could have been borrowed, with minor modifications, from David Blunkett and Keith Jackson's (1987) book: ‘Democracy in Crisis: The Town Halls Respond'.
As such, established local government commentators will recognise that there is nothing particularly new in the demands made in the LGA's manifesto. It advocates rolling back the unelected Quango state; radical decentralisation to bring decision-making down to the lowest possible level; making local NHS bodies accountable to the electorate; a genuine power of general competence for local government, and real fiscal autonomy, including returning to councils the power to set local business rates.
The surprise is that these demands are being made by the usually ultra-cautious LGA, and that the case for them is underpinned by a sense of (justifiable) anger in a text whose authorship is jointly credited to the Leaders of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Independent groups within the Association. Consider this as a joint statement from the three main parties in local government: ‘Expenses scandals have catalysed a more fundamental and longstanding sense that the system doesn't care about the interests of real people and is run by cosy insiders for their own benefit'. Or this: ‘Until people have a real sanction over the things that matter most to them, they will, quite rightly, feel that voting doesn't matter, except as a way of venting their frustration with a political system that they feel works for the politicians, not for them.
In these times, such critique is possibly too easy. The far more intriguing part of the document, which provides its greatest claim to radicalism, is that all the main parties have signed up for an agenda of ‘more politics, less state'. On page three, the authors suggest the following:
Voters unsurprisingly feel excluded, disempowered, and angry. And while they vent their anger on politicians, the basic truth is that they want to see more politics, not less - just not the stale politics of national parties. On the contrary, it is the remote and unresponsive executive state that must shrink. In terms of the power and influence they wield, government must become smaller and citizens bigger.
This notion that the state must shrink and government must become smaller might seem at first sight to imply that the Conservative majority within the LGA was dominant in shaping this manifesto. This sort of language could equally be interpreted as being seriously at odds with Labour's preference for the interventionist state. But to see things this way would be to miss the point. There has always been a suppressed strand of radical Labour thought which favoured community and cooperative, rather than state, control. This is the neglected Guild Socialism of GDH Cole, rather than the dominant ‘commanding heights' state socialism of Sidney Webb, a vision of associational democracy in which fraternity and liberty matter just as much as equality. Notably, many Labour politicians seem to suppress their own preferences for such approaches, particularly once they become Cabinet Ministers, as the following extract from Blunkett and Jackson's (1987) book would seem to suggest:
We do not feel that the state should be the only means whereby people in need can find help and support (…) Collective community support, of the kind formerly seen in so many towns and villages, is vital, alongside the formal state provision. What we need is to do things together, rather than having them done for us.
Of course, like Blunkett and Jackson's writing, the LGA's pamphlet is a product of its times. Radical proposals for democratic reform have become de rigueur in the heady political atmosphere which has prevailed in elite circles since May 09. But, as I've argued elsewhere, it is far from certain that the reforming spirit is percolating through the Populus as a whole. Like others desperate not to miss this opportunity to push for reform, the LGA seeks to ‘front load' its case for change with questionable references to the apparent public desire for a new political settlement. The first paragraph of the text makes the following claim: ‘in the first week of June, the public spoke loudly and clearly through the ballot box. Voters want to see the political system change in response to their frustration with it'. Elsewhere the document asserts the superior democratic legitimacy of the LGA's vision for a new politics: ‘the LGA is made up of politicians who, unlike those at Westminster, have seen their mandates refreshed at the ballot box since 2005'.
This sort of analysis is seriously problematic. The local and European elections of June 2009 did produce dramatic results, but to argue that the public spoke loudly and clearly at the ballot box is plainly wrong. The vast majority of the electorate stayed at home, just as they normally do for local and European elections. We have no basis at all for assuming that continued large-scale electoral abstention indicates a widespread desire for radical change centred on a far-reaching programme of decentralisation. In this sense, the LGA are as guilty as other reformers who risk putting the cart before the horse. The actual case for constitutional reform and political decentralisation is the other way around; it is only through radical change that we will restore public confidence in our politics and be able to bring about a reversal of the mass boycotting of the ballot box which has become the most obvious hallmark of contemporary British democracy.
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Martin Eaglestone
Roberto De Mateo - that will do at the Baggies. A young manager with a bit of success who played at the top level. Just concerned at these rolling contracts which, fair play to the guy, suggest an ambition beyond the Hawthorns. How can their be a great…
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Victoria Winckler
New report on our website on the Heads of the Valleys called ‘Good to be Here’. Read it, comment on it, and change your thinking about it.
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Victoria Winckler
The Bevan Foundation’s report on child poverty was launched last week, and has already attracted an encouraging response - see Valleys Mam, A Change of Personnel and Syniadau.As part of the report’s launch a panel of AMs (Eleanor Burnham, Mark Isherwoo…
Jul 1st, 2009 gan itsallhappeningwales
Not South-Wales specific, but the Council For British Archaeology has launched an online Heritage Toolkit for Community Groups. Featuring lots of ideas on how to get started exploring the history of your local area, for walks, school-talks etc. Well wo…
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Che Grav-ara
I wasn’t planning on having a go at the Tory AM’s that travelled to Brussels twice, and as has now been revealed, Madrid also on taxpayers money. It is estimated that the cost of the trips comes in just under £19,000.I have no idea what went on th…
Jul 1st, 2009 gan itsallhappeningwales
The Finance, Audit & Business Improvement Scrutiny Board of Swansea Council – a body probably unsuitable for asthmatics – today receives a report on how businessman Alun Thomas mistakenly received a cheque for £121,936.90 from the local author…
Jul 1st, 2009 gan David Cornock
We love anniversaries in journalism. It’s 40 years today since the Prince of Wales was invested, if that’s the right phrase.It’s two years this week since Labour and Plaid Cymru coalesced in Cardiff Bay.It’s approaching the first anniversary of the las…
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Peter Black
The Home Secretary has hit all the headlines today with his assertion that ID cards will not be compulsory and that plans to introduce compulsory identity cards for airline pilots and 30,000 other “critical workers” at Manchester and London City airpor…
Jul 1st, 2009 gan Peter Black
Plaid Cymru AM Bethan Jenkins is staging a short debate later today on ‘The Twitter Revolution - a time for democratic renewal?’As part of her 15 minute speech she is presenting a five minute video collage of people who use Twitter and social networkin…
Jun 30th, 2009 gan itsallhappeningwales
Why is the Honourable member for Torbay so animated about an Arts Council for Wales grant to Swansea artist Sue Williams who has been handed £20,000 to study women’s buttocks?Surely he shares the views of the artist that more needs to be done to emula…
Jun 30th, 2009 gan Miss Wagstaff
The BBC has reported that there are NINE more cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Wales, taking the total to 26.Among the latest cases is a 25-year-old local man who works at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.Health officials said this …
Jun 30th, 2009 gan Glyn Davies
Studland Bay is a beach near Swanage in Dorset, which is officially designated as a location where naturists can sunbathe without a stitch on. It seems there’s been some trouble down there. A police spokesman is reported as saying “There will be a poin…
Jun 30th, 2009 gan Paul Flynn
Still no sign that Rogerstone Community Council are repentant about their threatening letter to Mrs Edith Avery. To give a little extra pressure the following early Day Motion will appear on tomorrow’s Order Paper. Rogerstone Community Council and allotments That…
Jun 30th, 2009 gan Politics Cymru
Dewi Dau and myself (Dewi Tri is still missing but was with us in spirit!) have just returned from the launch of David Melding’s new book on the future of the British constitution.Tŷ Hywel was the venue, packed to the rafters with the who’s who of…
Jun 30th, 2009 gan Che Grav-ara
This caught my eye on Betsan’s blog.“Then in 2011 it was Labour’s turn to launch their election manifesto.”In 2011? Has Doc from back to the future been helping out at Transport house?
Jun 30th, 2009 gan Miss Wagstaff
Lembit is attempting to distract me from watching a programme!’A Prince for Wales?’ on BBC One Wales to be precise. Huw Edwards is asking the great and the good of Welsh life, as well as the ordinary people, about a prince for Wales.Lembit’s new glasse…
Jun 30th, 2009 gan Glyn Davies
David Cameron seems to be raising the temperature of his language when commenting on the Prime Minister and his policies. Today’s Telegraph front page has him accusing Mr Gordon Brown of “deceit, dishonesty and deception”. He’s also reported as warnin…
Jun 30th, 2009 gan The Drinker
That’s a big ol’ question up there in the title isn’t it. If you have an opinion, please drop it in a comment. I’m thinking thus, because there’s not much to report from today. Another pretty routine (and thus successful and also unsuccessful one of so…
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