Guto Hari, one of the front runners for Andy Coulson’s old job

The two resignations in the last 48 hours certainly changes things for the Tories and Labour at Westminster and will add even more spice to politics no doubt, while in contrast Nick Clegg must be breathing a small sigh of relief that the Lib Dems rapid fall from grace has been pushed from the headlines for the time being.

Alan Johnson’s resignation to be replaced with Ed Balls leaves Labour vulnerable to the Son of Brown jibes that the Sun and other newspapers will happily seize upon and Andy Coulson’s departure leaves David Cameron wide open to the accusations that he just doesn’t understand the vast majority of people struggles or lives.

No doubt there will be more details and comment on what both resignations mean in tomorrow’s papers, but from a practical perspective the only remaining issue is who replaces Andy Coulson at No 10 Communications Director, a few names have been mentioned and Guto Hari, currently London Mayor Boris Johnson’s Communication Chief and former BBC Wales and BBC Chief Political Correspondent is being mentioned among the lead contenders. It certainly would be a bold move for David Cameron as Guto is done a very good job at the moment.

And if he does get the job as well as the day to day media management, might his appointment have a direct affect on who is appointed as Welsh Secretary in the future after the enormous damage done by Cheryl Gillian to the Tory brand in Wales?

Youth Unemployment is about more than NEETS and a lack of jobs, it affects us all

Today’s unemployment figures were predictably bad, nearly 1 million (20.3%) of young people are without work and there is now an ever growing number of underemployed in the UK, people so desperate they are taking part time just to keep themselves active in the Labour market. Both are a policy headache for any Government.

Politicians, City Analysts, Economists, Academics and Commentators will debate the strategic impact of today figures and make predictions with most of them having no idea what being unemployed really means.

For any age unemployment is hard, its physically and mentally debilitating even for the most enthusiastic and active of jobseekers. For young people research has shown that a period of unemployment when you first enter the labour market impacts negatively on the rest of their working lives, all of which has a financial and social cost to wider society that is ignored in most commentary today and every other day unemployment figures are published.

And youth unemployment is not just about those not in Education, Employment or Training (NEETS) who need intensive support in rebuilding their lives and are not currently receiving it. Many of those who in today’s unemployment figures are graduates, the sort of youngsters the country needs to help create wealth in the future to pay for pensions, the NHS, Education, Roads and every other public service we rely on.

Having a job is about more than earning money it’s about feeling part of the wider society and wanting to contributing to it, but as a society we seem happy to throw youngsters on the scrap heap rather than trying to doing something to change the inevitable decline that will see more than one generation lost to work and society if we carry on

I spoke to a wise women today who told me that concerns over number of young unemployed in Wales were being raised over a decade ago and little has been done since, so you have to ask what will shake politicians of any party in to action here in Wales and the rest of the UK on such a vital issue that really does affect us all.

After the publication and Assembly debate, where does the GVA and economic debate go now?

To the usual chorus of well rehearsed arguments, Wales’s GVA figures for 2009 were published on the 8th December 2010 by the Office for National Statistics and showed Welsh GVA now standing at 74.3%, 0.2% lower than last year and continuing the downward trend over the past decade or so leaving Wales the poorest of any nation or region in the UK.

To be fair the Welsh press reported the new figures and some thin analysis to go with it, but they were more interested in the fact that we had qualified for another tranche of European Funding because our GVA is so awful. A few bloggers picked it up and added their thoughts but that was it, the awful GVA figures got lost in the pre Christmas noise as they are always supposed to do.

The issue was revived briefly last week by the Tories and Lib Dems in the Senedd Chamber in a debate on the GVA figures, but it wasn’t reported anywhere as if often the case with Assembly debates, but it also reinforces the view that economic debate isn’t important in Wales.

Or maybe it’s because the economic arguments are so well worn and the Welsh Assembly Government refuses to accept that there are problems with its own new shiny economic plans published back in July last year who knows.

Maybe the debate needs fresh impetus, I wrote back in August to ask why WAG doesn’t produce up to date quarterly or 6 monthly GVA figures while the Scottish and Catalan Government’s somehow manage to do just that, it makes me wonder how long can WAG keep claiming that they want a better economy when they are continually planning economic policy with data that is always more than 12 months old?

Sadly and not for the first time, this leaves me asking is there any real appetite for rational economic debate among the Welsh political class or is Welsh economic debate destined to go round in circles repeating the same old arguments every 12 months after another set of predictably awful GVA figures are published?