Rhodri Morgan taking the mikey

Unlike many people in Wales I have never rated Rhodri Morgan or seen his appeal to the electorate and the fact that he became First Minister at all says a lot about Welsh politics and politicians.

His legacy as First Minister if you can call it that, is one of a Wales more reliant on the public sector for employment and investment, a devolution settlement that is causing more problems than its solving because he was more interested in Labour Party unity than what best for Wales and his own party broken in more ways than one is an inditement of the man.

The same man who was in charge of Wales for more than a decade and not only failed to get the full amount of European Objective One funding for Wales because the Treasury top sliced it but who squandered it with precious little to show for the money Wales received.

And now according to the Western Mail he thinks Wales could lose out to Europe in cutting edge industries and that West Wales and the Valleys could qualify for another round of Convergence despite the EU enlargement of poorer countries because some Welsh communities remain so deprived would be laughable if it weren’t so serious - somebody needs to remind Rhodri much of this gap is down to his economic policies and refusal to listen and take other ideas on board because he insisted he knew best.

And for the record hands up all those who think that Carwyn Jones will do any better because i certainly don’t .

Are David Cameron’s PR skills deserting him?

There is a lot to criticize David Cameron about, but his PR skills are normally top notch, it seems even those are starting to desert him as this Channel 4 report shows with him faltering under pressure in an interview with the GAY Times over equality issues.

UTV/NWM wins Welsh News Franchise

With all the problems facing the Welsh media, any news on trying to secure its future is big news and today’s announcement is no exception.

The Independently Funded News Consortia (IFNC) pilot for the Welsh franchise has gone to WalesLive which it’s made up of UTV and Mold based North West Media Ltd.

The reasoning for the panels decision was ‘UTV proposed a model which would deliver a harder-edged TV news programme reflecting the needs of a devolved nation in conjunction with local and community media across both north and south Wales.

A strong track record in Northern Ireland gave credibility to a clear vision for an innovative community-based approach in conjunction with citizen journalists and its newspaper partner, NWN Media.'

Interesting that the words harder edge TV news programme were used to desribe the winning bid successs, let’s hope it includes stronger political and economic coverage and tougher questioning of the politicians across the board.

Commiserations to Tinopolis, the only all Welsh company bidding, but they were chosen as the reserve bidder ahead of ITN’s joint bid with ITV Wales,(make of that what you will).

The WalesLive website is HERE

Inequality played a big part in the Crash

As the political parties continue arguing over how the UK and Wales get out of the big hole were in at today’s Budget in Westminster and the validity of crossing picket lines or not in Cardiff Bay and the damage it’s doing to the National Assembly’s reputation among voters, here’s an article on one of the major causes of the crash, namely the huge rise in inequality in the UK over the past three decades.

Although excessive bank leveraging and reckless financial risk-taking triggered the meltdown of 2008/09, these are symptoms of a crisis that has its roots in the rising wealth gap, and in the way a new domestic and global super-rich elite created economic fragility. The rise in inequality of the last 30 years has been driven by a steady fall in the share of wages in UK national output – from a high of 65 per cent in 1975 to 53 per cent in 2007 – while the share going to profits has soared.

The wage squeeze and profits boom have been key drivers of financial instability. This is because instead of boosting productive investment, the rising profits pool fuelled the personal wealth boom of the last two decades. Faced with mounting wealth portfolios, he new super-rich elite turned to financial speculation as the source for quick gains. In doing so, they aped financial institutions, leveraging their wealth by borrowing – sometimes by huge amounts.

Record returns together with cheap credit encouraged the wealthy to borrow not to finance consumption but to take large speculative bets. Money poured into hedge funds, private equity, takeovers, commodities, rare art, commercial and private property in a speculative frenzy that created the multiple bubbles that triggered the credit crunch and the subsequent recession.

A similar mechanism was at work in the build-up to the great depression of the 1930s, with a great surge in the concentration of wealth in the United States and in the volume of speculative loans during the 1920s. During that decade, the poor and the middle stagnated while the rich prospered, as they have in the UK and the US in recent times, and soaring profits poured into real estate and stock markets, leading to the 1929 crash.

The role of inequality in fuelling financial instability has long been recognised. Keynes made it clear that because of the lower marginal propensity to consume of the rich, and their propensity for speculation, wealth inequality increases the risk of financial instability and economic collapse. In his book “The Great Crash”, John Kenneth Galbraith identified “the bad distribution of income” as the first of five factors causing the crash and the great depression.

The global distribution of wealth today is almost as uneven as it was in the 1920s. And its speculative element and impact has been accentuated by both greater leveraging and the rise of an avalanche of footloose capital owned by the world’s nomadic super-rich. The combined wealth of the world’s richest 1,000 people is almost twice as much as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion.

The central lesson of the crisis is that there is an economic limit to the degree of wealth inequality consistent with economic stability. Beyond that limit – one heavily breached in the post-millennium years – economies implode. It is a lesson that has yet to be learnt. The global super-rich have largely bounced back from the slump in their fortunes.

'Stephen Byers and the ghost of new Labour'

There's a great piece by David Aaronovitch (a long time supporter of Tony Blair) in the Times on the latest lobby scandal involving Stephen Byers among others and how it mirrors New Labour's terminal decline.

Here's a taste 'In 1995 or 1996 Stephen Byers was introduced to me by a knowledgeable Labour person as a towering figure of the future. So I suppose he was just looming then, his potency down to his acuity and grasp of the new politics. Hard to believe now. The journalistic sting that snared him was absolutely predictable to almost everyone but him. Even Julie Kirkbride saw it coming. But Mr Byers was taken in. When confronted with the evidence he couldn’t deny the “cab rent” metaphor, since it was his own — nor the amount he claimed he would charge lobbyists by the day to advise them. Nor that he had claimed to have influenced decisions in favour of Tesco and National Express.

And ends 'And in so doing, he never noticed the irony in the name of the fictional company he was meeting — Anderson Perry Associates. Perry Anderson has been one of the great intellectuals of the far Left for more than 40 years, and was editor of the New Left Review for a quarter of a century. Mr Byers must once have known this. But, like Labour itself, he has forgotten just a bit too much.

The full article is HERE and it's well worth a read

Tory Government would delay cuts in Scotland for a year

The Scotland on Sunday newspaper is reporting that Shadow Chancellor George Osborne would delay the Scottish Budget cuts for a year if the Conservatives win the General Election.

So is this going to win them extra votes or is it for political advantage against the SNP and Labour? and from a Welsh perspective are there similar plans for the Welsh Budget since George Osborne has already said our needs are greater on his recent visit to Cardiff, no I didn’t think so either.

The articles starts ‘The Scottish Government's £30 billion budget for 2010/11 will be excluded from the round of cuts that the Conservatives will impose on the rest of the UK if they win the election.

In the first concession of its type to be given by the Treasury to Scotland, the shadow chancellor said he was prepared to postpone the cuts in Scotland for a year out of "respect" for the Holyrood budget.

Osborne warned, however, that in the long run Scotland would still have to bear its share of the pain, raising the prospect of savage cuts to the public sector after the 2011 Scottish election.

Although the Scottish Government will be given the option of sticking to its original budget for 2010/11, the savings would eventually have to be found the following financial year in 2011/12.

Usually, cuts in spending at Westminster automatically have a knock-on effect at Holyrood as a result of the Barnett Formula, the mechanism that determines the size of the grant Scotland receives from the Treasury. Osborne's offer, however, would allow the Scottish Government to postpone those cuts.

"Because the Scottish Government and Holyrood has passed a budget for 2010/11, any savings that are going to be required in the Scottish budget… can be delayed until 2011/12," Osborne said.

"They (Scottish ministers] will still have to make those savings, and Scotland, like the rest of the country, has to do its bit to live within our means. But because of Scottish devolution, because we have a settled budget for 2010/11, we are going to respect that and if they want to (they can] delay the savings they would have made in 2010/11 to 2011/12."

Osborne and First Minister Alex Salmond will meet on 30 March in London to discuss the proposal, which has been suggested by the Conservatives after Salmond sought assurances from them that they would not cut the 2010/11 Scottish budget passed by MSPs earlier this year.

I have a feeling this isn't the last we will have heard of this story.

Vince Cable in talks with Treasury about Coalition Government and becoming Chancellor

As the Opinion polls continue to show a 6- 8 Conservative lead that means there would be no overall majority at the General Election there are signs that the mandarins in Whitehall are making preparations for a possible Coalition Government.

According to the Observer ‘Vince Cable has held unprecedented and detailed talks with the top official at the Treasury about the Liberal Democrats' economic policies – and declared himself willing to serve as chancellor after the next election.

As Whitehall gears up for a possible hung parliament, Cable told the Observer that he had been questioned by Nicholas Macpherson, the Treasury's permanent secretary, about what the Lib Dems' demands would be in a coalition with Labour or the Tories.

Mr Cable was unaware of such meetings having taken place with Lib Dem shadow chancellors before previous general elections. The talks were a sign that the Treasury was "taking seriously" the prospect of his party playing a leading role in economic policy in what could be the first hung parliament since 1974.

"He wanted to know what we attached priority to. He wanted to know what we felt strongly about," Cable said, adding that his ideas on tax and spending were well received. He didn't say to me: 'Yes, minister, but you can't do that'."

Cable, whose credibility has grown throughout the economic crisis, made clear that, if he was to be offered the chancellorship in a hung parliament, he would jump at the chance. He did not want to be "the most unpopular person in Britain" as public spending is slashed, he said, but added: "I wouldn't be in this business if I wasn't willing to take the responsibility if it was to come my way."

I have no idea whether the Lib Dems would actually end up in a Coalition Government, the General Election could still produce an outright winner, but I wonder what it would mean for Wales and the Assembly Government.