This week saw the second of the Welsh Party Spring Conferences take place ahead of the General Election expected in May, it was Plaid Cymru's turn to sell their message and there was a marked difference in their message from previous General Elections as BBC Wales’s Adrian Masters noticed, out went talk of constitutional issues and the welsh language to be replaced by talk of the economy and jobs, help for pensioners and veterans and the role played by Plaid Cymru MP’s in opposing the UK Government, in short focusing on the day to day issues that most people are concerned about.
The Party are targeting 5 seats (the most they would have ever have sent to Westminster) including the three they already have plus Ceredigion and Ynys Mon but they will have a fight on their hands and to achieve their target.
As always with Plaid Cymru in General Election the question remains can they make themselves relevant to the debate and the possibility of a hung parliament this time provides a chance to get heard more widely but whether this translates in to votes in another thing. They and all parties have got their work cut out trying to persuade a very disillusioned electorate to back any of them with any enthusiasm.
But better organisation and campaigning will help as the Party’s outgoing President Dafydd Iwan stated “We’ve stopped being a pressure group and we’ve had to grow up as a party. The most encouraging thing is we’ve become a more professional unit working together – not that we agree on everything, but we spend less time quarrelling.
“We used to do a lot of that. It’s been great seeing work being done.”
He admitted that turning Plaid into an election-winning force had involved a “very steep learning curve” and “very hard lessons”.
Mr Iwan said: “I’d become used to the idea of Plaid Cymru shouting from the sidelines. It’s been a very, very quick period of development. We’ve had to learn some very hard lessons. Politics is all about compromise – compromising on the basis of some principles we hold very, very tight.”
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Lack of policy making ability hampers Welsh Economic Competitiveness
There is an article over at the Institute of Welsh Affairs blog on Welsh Economic Competitiveness well worth reading that calls in to question the strategic policy making ability of the Welsh Assembly Government on economic matters and raises questions the wisdom of mothballing the Welsh Development Agency for all its faults had that policy making ability and knowledge which obviously wasn’t transferred to Department of Economic Development and Transport.
To prove this point It shows that WAG spends more on Economic Development that another part of the UK and yet Wales remains at or near bottom of many economic indicators from GVA, unemployment and business failures.
It also question the scrutiny and accountability of the new economic set up stating “ Worryingly, the high levels of economic development spending in Wales are not matched by clear lines of public accountability, making any assessment of real progress virtually impossible. At the time of the 2005 quango reforms, the Welsh Government claimed that the mergers would enhance accountability. In reality, society’s capacity for effective scrutiny has actually been much reduced. Unlike regional development agencies in England and Scotland, the business plans and evaluations of the Welsh Government’s Department for Economy and Transport are not made publicly available.
The article ends with ‘Given the lack of strategic thinking it’s not difficult to understand why Wales has such a difficult job attracting private sector investment and capital.' So what are the chances of a Welsh Assembly Government listening and acting on this advice because much of it has been said before and fallen on deaf ears.
To prove this point It shows that WAG spends more on Economic Development that another part of the UK and yet Wales remains at or near bottom of many economic indicators from GVA, unemployment and business failures.
It also question the scrutiny and accountability of the new economic set up stating “ Worryingly, the high levels of economic development spending in Wales are not matched by clear lines of public accountability, making any assessment of real progress virtually impossible. At the time of the 2005 quango reforms, the Welsh Government claimed that the mergers would enhance accountability. In reality, society’s capacity for effective scrutiny has actually been much reduced. Unlike regional development agencies in England and Scotland, the business plans and evaluations of the Welsh Government’s Department for Economy and Transport are not made publicly available.
The article ends with ‘Given the lack of strategic thinking it’s not difficult to understand why Wales has such a difficult job attracting private sector investment and capital.' So what are the chances of a Welsh Assembly Government listening and acting on this advice because much of it has been said before and fallen on deaf ears.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
An argument for fiscal powers?
It kind of sums up the debate over the Barnett Formula and fiscal powers in Wales that’s its a former Civil Servant, not a serving politician who has made a good case for financial powers to be transferred to the National Assembly for Wales to deal with Wales poor economic performance while writing about the referendum and Barnett Formula.
The former Permanent Secretary Sir Jon Shortridge was talking about why Wales compares so badly to the rest of the UK in unemployment, poverty and economic terms and said “It can be argued that one of the reasons Wales is so relatively poor is that it had been governed from England for too long.”
There’s no arguing that a lack of regional economic development plans from the UK Government and investment in the South East of England at the expense of other areas for decades has played a significant role in the state of the Welsh economy and high unemployment, but this isn’t a new problem and shows the limited ambition of the Welsh Assembly Government in failing to argue the case for a revised Barnett Formula based on need and fiscal powers until very recently.
Sir Jon also echoed much of what has been said by others when he said that Wales should not suffer as a result of the way funding is allocated across the UK and warned that any debate about changing the Barnett formula should take into account the need to protect Wales' budget.
He also wrote: "For all its recent successes Wales remains on most measures one of the poorest parts of the UK” and that “there is certainly no case for further reducing the assembly's present budget in relation to those comparable budgets in England at the present time, and it would be a travesty if that were to happen solely as a result of a change in the way Scotland is funded."
Jon Shortridge’s words should also herald a long overdue realisation that WAG needs to take some responsibility and lobby Westminster more often for Wales’s needs instead of playing the blame game because it would put the Assembly in a better light with many voters. And despite not having fiscal powers they do have control over economic policy, business support and substantial European funds and have failed to tackle the complex issues of long term unemployment and the balance of the public and private sector, it shows a lack of leadership especially when Scotland and parts of England outside the South East have seen growth in jobs, GDP and Research and Development investment in the same period.
The former Permanent Secretary Sir Jon Shortridge was talking about why Wales compares so badly to the rest of the UK in unemployment, poverty and economic terms and said “It can be argued that one of the reasons Wales is so relatively poor is that it had been governed from England for too long.”
There’s no arguing that a lack of regional economic development plans from the UK Government and investment in the South East of England at the expense of other areas for decades has played a significant role in the state of the Welsh economy and high unemployment, but this isn’t a new problem and shows the limited ambition of the Welsh Assembly Government in failing to argue the case for a revised Barnett Formula based on need and fiscal powers until very recently.
Sir Jon also echoed much of what has been said by others when he said that Wales should not suffer as a result of the way funding is allocated across the UK and warned that any debate about changing the Barnett formula should take into account the need to protect Wales' budget.
He also wrote: "For all its recent successes Wales remains on most measures one of the poorest parts of the UK” and that “there is certainly no case for further reducing the assembly's present budget in relation to those comparable budgets in England at the present time, and it would be a travesty if that were to happen solely as a result of a change in the way Scotland is funded."
Jon Shortridge’s words should also herald a long overdue realisation that WAG needs to take some responsibility and lobby Westminster more often for Wales’s needs instead of playing the blame game because it would put the Assembly in a better light with many voters. And despite not having fiscal powers they do have control over economic policy, business support and substantial European funds and have failed to tackle the complex issues of long term unemployment and the balance of the public and private sector, it shows a lack of leadership especially when Scotland and parts of England outside the South East have seen growth in jobs, GDP and Research and Development investment in the same period.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Innovative Thinking or another idea for Deficit Reduction?
The Conservatives have unveiled their latest ‘big idea’ yesterday, it will be as big they claim as the right to buy scheme under Margaret Thatcher, but will we still be talking about Co-operative run Public Services in years to come, I can’t see it myself.
For starters this is another policy that won’t apply to much of Wales, so is there a Welsh Conservative idea at a time when there is a legitimate debate to be had about the way public services are delivered especially when Local Authority and other organisations budgets are going to shrink in the next decade, probably not but this is something that Welsh Labour in particular and all the parties in Cardiff Bay should already be thinking about.
But it’s the Conservatives who are struggling on public sector and economic reform having made the UK’s budget deficit their most important issue, because any new idea they unveil is now being seen in this context. The idea is a good one if it’s done properly, and one which the current Government has already introduced in parts of the NHS in England with some success, so it’s hardly new or groundbreaking as was claimed yesterday, but for all the fanfare the suspicion remains that Co-operative Public Services are the just latest deficit reduction measure from the Tories by another name.
More from Valleys Mam
For starters this is another policy that won’t apply to much of Wales, so is there a Welsh Conservative idea at a time when there is a legitimate debate to be had about the way public services are delivered especially when Local Authority and other organisations budgets are going to shrink in the next decade, probably not but this is something that Welsh Labour in particular and all the parties in Cardiff Bay should already be thinking about.
But it’s the Conservatives who are struggling on public sector and economic reform having made the UK’s budget deficit their most important issue, because any new idea they unveil is now being seen in this context. The idea is a good one if it’s done properly, and one which the current Government has already introduced in parts of the NHS in England with some success, so it’s hardly new or groundbreaking as was claimed yesterday, but for all the fanfare the suspicion remains that Co-operative Public Services are the just latest deficit reduction measure from the Tories by another name.
More from Valleys Mam
Sunday, February 14, 2010
It’s still your background, not Education attainment that determines life chances
The well worn adage that Education is a way out of poverty and to get ahead in the UK has been seriously challenged by a new study from the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) published this week.
It looked at social mobility in 30 rich countries and found that ‘It is easier to climb the social ladder and earn more than one’s parents in the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada than in France, Italy, Britain and the United States and says weak social mobility can signal a lack of equal opportunities, constrain productivity and curb economic growth.’
The researchers found that in Britain people whose fathers have a university degree earn on average 62% more than the children of men whose education ended at upper-secondary level. In Europe, only in Portugal is that gap wider.
While there was little difference between the qualifications of the children of graduates and non-graduates, this did not translate into higher wages.
"Britain does not fit the normal analysis here. It is about average in terms of educational social mobility. People can attain a tertiary education but it is doing a lot worse in terms of wage mobility," Duval said. "What you see is a gap between education mobility and wage mobility."
This report from the OECD follows on from the Sutton Trust and former Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn among others who have reached similar conclusions in their own studies on the closed door mentality that leads to such unequal opportunities across the UK.
All in all a predictable and damming verdict on current and previous Governments efforts to solve the problem, a situation that is unlikely to change any time soon.
It looked at social mobility in 30 rich countries and found that ‘It is easier to climb the social ladder and earn more than one’s parents in the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada than in France, Italy, Britain and the United States and says weak social mobility can signal a lack of equal opportunities, constrain productivity and curb economic growth.’
The researchers found that in Britain people whose fathers have a university degree earn on average 62% more than the children of men whose education ended at upper-secondary level. In Europe, only in Portugal is that gap wider.
While there was little difference between the qualifications of the children of graduates and non-graduates, this did not translate into higher wages.
"Britain does not fit the normal analysis here. It is about average in terms of educational social mobility. People can attain a tertiary education but it is doing a lot worse in terms of wage mobility," Duval said. "What you see is a gap between education mobility and wage mobility."
This report from the OECD follows on from the Sutton Trust and former Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn among others who have reached similar conclusions in their own studies on the closed door mentality that leads to such unequal opportunities across the UK.
All in all a predictable and damming verdict on current and previous Governments efforts to solve the problem, a situation that is unlikely to change any time soon.
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