Is it time Welsh Coalfields Regeneration programmes were audited?

2010 is here and I fear a grim year ahead, so it’s worth reminding people that while many of us will be cutting back and trying to save some money in the coming year, there are many parts of Wales that will continue to struggle because they didn’t share in the prosperity of the last decade and some communities never came out of the last recession before entering the current one, a pretty damming verdict on current and past Labour and Conservative Governments.

It will come as no surprise that many of those areas suffering are Wales’s former Industrial heartlands, North and South but with so many of those communities still at the bottom of the same lists after a decade, has there been a recent assessment of the impact Regeneration programmes in Wales Coalfields areas for good or ill?

I ask because there was a report by the UK Audit Office published by the UK Government in Christmas week called Regenerating England’s Coalfields which in its summary said ‘Whitehall initiatives to revive former coalfield communities have helped to make them more attractive places to live and work but many remain among the most deprived areas in England and opportunities to help train local people and promote local businesses have been missed.

In short positive signs and some progress, but not enough to close the gap with other parts of England and all the programmes were sluggish in their delivery which were further compounded by a failure to properly co-ordinate resources - will the Welsh Audit Office look at the Welsh Assembly Government and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust programmes to see what has been achieved and what can be done better or is Welsh Coalfields Regeneration still a sensitive issue?

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda – Happy New Year

The roller coaster that was 2009 is over and 2010 is almost here, I hope the next 12 months bring you good health and much happiness.

To you all Blwyddyn Newydd Dda Happy New Year

NO HE DIDN’T

It’s the end of the year and time to look back at the last 12 months, the Western Mail are obliging with a series of banal interviews with Rhodri Morgan for an insight in to his political motivations, but Rhodri’ s revelation that he’d wished he had thought of Barack Obama’s campaign slogan YES WE CAN to sum up what he wanted to achieve as First Minister is not just ridicules but rather insulting given his awful record as head of the Welsh Government for the past decade in every area from Health and Education to Transport and the Economy.

If you want you can read it HERE

Adam Smith Institute in favour of fiscal devolution

Amid the depressing economic and finance news on the Adam Smith Institute blog a few days ago was a post on Devolution worth highlighting, under its heading of policies it thinks should be adopted in UK in 2010.

It talks of the need to create an English Parliament to end the anomalies that devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has shown up and give fiscal powers to all the Nations in the UK and just pool resources over defense and taxes.

It says ‘I think that giving England its own Parliament, and ending the constitutional anomalies that have existed ever since power was devolved to Holyrood, is the least one could ask for. This is a policy I would encourage the next government to start looking into as soon as possible.

This shift ought to be coupled with a decisive move towards fiscal autonomy for each of the Home Nations – every national parliament should be made responsible for raising the money that it spends. In the short term, the easiest way to accomplish this would be keep VAT and National Insurance as UK taxes, while devolving everything else.

This would certainly be a major shift in British constitutional policy, but it should also only be a first step. Further powers – over welfare and benefits, for example – should be devolved as soon as practical, eventually leaving only defence, foreign, and security policy at the UK level. Moreover, even within the Home Nations power should be pushed downwards to local government, or better still to individuals.'

With such an influential right wing think tank talking of the need for more devolution and devolving fiscal powers to all parts of the UK it’s no longer a subject the Tories can kick into the long grass, however much many of them would like to. And it will be interesting to see how David Cameron and the Conservative Party react especially with the growing resentment in England over the devolution settlement and more powers on the agenda in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Setting Election Records

Interesting article from Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer about the General Election setting new records, but not for the reasons we might think.

Firstly he writes ‘My friends in the polling industry tell me that no prime minister has been as unpopular as Gordon Brown and gone on to win the subsequent election. Nor has there ever been a four-term Labour government. In fact, only the Tories have won a fourth consecutive election in more than 140 years. So two very big records have to be smashed for Labour to win.

Secondly ‘The electoral climb facing the Conservatives is nevertheless very steep. One of the wiser heads in the shadow cabinet recently offered me the private prediction that their margin of victory would be "in the low tens". By this, he meant that the Tories will win a parliamentary majority of between 10 and 30. I wouldn't bet my house on any forecast of the precise result, but that sounds like a highly plausible guess. Yet even to achieve that sort of modest majority, the Conservatives will have to break a record. To win a Commons majority of just one, the Tories must take 117 seats from other parties and not lose a single seat themselves. This is a feat they have not pulled off since before the Second World War. It will also require a swing to them in the election-deciding seats the like of which they have not managed since 1945, a swing greater even than Margaret Thatcher achieved in 1979 with the help of the winter of discontent.

And he finishes by saying ‘On top of the specific dilemmas facing each of them, all the mainstream parties have one challenge in common: that is to find an answer to the public alienation from the conventional political classes as a whole. The next government, whoever forms it, will need trust, credibility and a mandate to implement the tough decisions that face Britain. That will be lacking if the election sets another record, a record low for turn-out.