They will miss him, if he's not around

Amid all the speculation about which Conservatives will be elected in which constituencies and on the regional lists next May over the Summer, the fete of David Melding who has done as much, if not more than Nick Bourne to alter perceptions of the Conservatives in Wales is still unclear and many are wondering if he will even be elected next year.

But speaking to the Western Mail yesterday David Melding proved his political nous and talents by making some of the most incisive, eloquent and articulate arguments by any Welsh politician I have heard, not only for more powers for the National Assembly, but also for Tax varying powers as well as blowing holes in the No campaigns arguments, the audio interview is HERE.

David of course missed out in the Vale of Glamorgan to the excellent Angela Jones Evans and looks likely to miss out on the top spot on the South Wales Regional list to the more boorish Andrew RT Davies when Tory members vote in the coming weeks.

He also pointed out the ERP's failure by stating that ‘the new economic programme brought in by Plaid Cymru Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones contained “secondary devices”, while measures that could really transform the Welsh economy would stem from tax powers.’ Maybe Dylan Jones Evans powerful critique of the ERP over the summer is finally getting through to him and his colleague in Cardiff Bay.

But why does it matter if David Melding and others like him who are more comfortable with Devolution are elected, well every party needs a balance of opinion, but mainly if the Tories want to continue making progress at Elections they can’t slide back to a pre 1997 position of hostility to Wales, which remains the attitude of many party members, some AM’s and most Welsh MP’s.

Can you help?

As someone who values Welsh Icons for the news service it provides, i thought i would share this with from the Editor, the full list of links mentioned are HERE.

'Some of you may have heard me moan occasionally on social networking sites such as Facebook about how hard it is to keep the Welsh Icons sites available as a free service and thought that it was just a ploy to get funding.

This is not the case. For the past 5 years I’ve been trying to pretend to potential advertisers how successful Welsh Icons is.

One thing I have not lied about though is our readership. Here are some facts:

The main Welsh Icons site has over 5,500 pages and averages over 6 million hits a month

The Welsh Icons News Site (this site) which was started just over a year ago now contains some 12,000 pages and is viewed by most of the ‘players’ and ‘decision makers’ in Wales.

Yes we have the readership but we have no funding.

We are all too busy adding content to spend hours a day chasing advertising. Most of our team are ‘creatives’ or ‘techies’ who do not have the skills or the ability to sell.

Our hand-to mouth existence is becoming increasingly untenable and there are a number of days every month when I (as editor) have to operate out of a public library as the broadband connection has been cut off.

I thank everyone who has written in saying that they only pay £x for their hosting etc but there are many hidden caveats running a site of this size.

We list many tens of thousands of Welsh businesses on the sites for free and have never refused to carry a charity press release – even if it is just for a coffee morning in the local village hall.

What you can do to help:

Click on the Donate button on the right hand side of each page on this site – $5/£5 is a great help

Advertise with us – Prices start from just £2 a month. See
http://www.welshicons.org.uk/news/support-us/advertise/ for details

Tell your friends about us and join our Facebook group

Keep sending us your news and for as long as we can keep going, we will publish it. Send to news@welshicons.org.uk

In all honesty I get just over £51 a week to live on and over half of that goes on keeping Welsh Icons on-line. I’d like to thank all our contributors and the Welsh Icons team but in all honesty I do not know if we can keep going without you help.

Sorry to even mention it,

Dom Stocqueler, Editor – Welsh Icons

You don’t say Governor !

Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England admitted in a speech to the TUC congress today that it was financial firms and policy-makers who caused the economic crisis, admitting: "We let it slip." a huge understatement and one that’s states the blindingly obvious.

It also proves that saying sorry for the mess is the easy bit. Clearing up the mess will be more difficult and of course it’s easy to be wise in hindsight.

Mervyn King’s also said “the costs of this crisis will be with us for a generation”. And questioned the large bonuses that the UK’s bailout banks are still paying by saying he could understand why they are doing it while the banks are still struggling.

It’s all good populist rhetoric that will find some favour among the TUC members in Manchester and generate some strong headlines for him, but seen as he was the Governor of the Bank of England before and during the financial crisis and he is secure in his job, his words to those facing redundancy and those already unemployed and looking for work will ring rather hollow.

Plaid might have good arguments, but Labour will still win the Election

I didn’t see the coverage of Plaid Cymru conference over the weekend, but from the TV bulletins, newspapers and various commentators and bloggers it seems that Plaid Cymru are in good spirits for the battles that lie ahead - probably a wise move, if they simply continued to complain about everything people would stop listening to them.

So they are trying to move on after their poor General Election campaign, the ongoing rows between Cardiff and London over the more powers referendum and Labour stealing their best ideas and arguments on a range of issues since May and getting credit for it and they needed a new narrative, but I’m not sure they have found one that will connect with people.

After all Wales has world champion Conservative bashers with a long track record in the form of Labour and most people I talk too seem to have already forgotten Labour's role in the financial mess and recession, so bashing Labour won’t work as well as they are hoping either.

But Plaid’s biggest problem is that the Welsh Assembly campaign will almost certainly be like the General Election campaign dominated by UK issues, mainly the public service cuts to come and who will be best as defending Wales communities from the harshest impact of Con/Lib Dem cuts which suits Labour, who have a ready-made script of evil Tories and their Lib Dems helpers, savage cuts that will hit the poorest hardest and apocalyptic visions of Wales ready to reel off to an ever receptive Welsh electorate.

Add to that the UK media in the run up to May Election’s will be pumping out pro or anti Alternative Vote messages as well as the latest cuts news and not on issues to do with the Welsh Assembly and Plaid Cymru’s optimism in Aberystwyth seem to be misplaced at best. (The less said about the lack of impact the Welsh media will have on events next year is probably for the best.)

All of which reinforces my initial response to the General Election when I said then that Labour would be the main beneficiary in Wales of the Con/Lib Dem Government and their cuts agenda because of our reliance on the public sector, but maybe Plaid will prove me wrong.