Merry Christmas

To all my readers have a restful Christmas, Nadolig llawen

‘But Wales is a land where nothing succeeds like failure’

The quote sums up Wales perfectly, failure has been the defining narrative of Wales and welsh politics for so long we’ve forgotten what success is or that there is even an alternative to the endless misery. But saddest of all is the knowledge that it won’t change because those who fail Wales time and again are continually rewarded by the electorate.

The quote was from Adam Price’s Western Mail article on Saturday about the state of the Welsh economy and picked up on these themes

He writes ‘The conventional narrative is to see this as part of a century-long process of economic decline as oil replaced coal as the dominant energy source worldwide.

While this is undoubtedly a big part of our history, the Welsh economy managed to recover from the deep trauma of the inter-war years and by the 1970s and ’80s had stabilised around 85% of UK output per capita.

As can be seen from the chart (inset) the slide into the low 70s is a recent phenomenon which has little directly to do with coal as most of the industry had already disappeared to all intents and purposes by the time it had begun.

Looking back, the ’70s and ’80s were in actual fact a period when the Welsh economy held its own with the rest of the UK.

It’s only in the last two decades that the familiar story of Welsh decline has emerged with a vengeance.

In the 20 years to 1990, Welsh output per head grew by 46.3%, just 1% shy of the UK figure.

In the two decades since then Welsh prosperity has grown by 20 percentage points less, while the UK has continued to lodge a perfectly respectable figure of 42%.

Something really big and really awful has happened to our economy, but we seem to have adopted an air of quiet acceptance. The Welsh Government once had a target of reaching 90% of UK GVA by 2010. We missed by 16%.

One might have expected a resignation or two.

But Wales is a land where nothing succeeds like failure.

While all around have been losing theirs, a Labour First Minister’s job seems even more secure than ever.

And when Carwyn warns of the dangers of a race to the bottom if Wales is given the power to vary corporation tax, he can be pretty sure that no-one around him will have the temerity to point out it’s a race we’ve already won.'

TIME Person of the Year 2011 – the Protestor

It’s perhaps fitting that at a time when leadership around the globe in politics, business and elsewhere is proving so ineffectual in the face of the multiple challenges the world faces that TIME Magazine chose the generic protestor as its 2011 person of the year rather than a political leader or business person.

 

From the Guardian 'As Time's editor, Rick Stengel, argues, to celebrate the protester is to defend the idea "that individual action can bring collective, colossal change". This collectivity has spread like wildfire in the last year or so – each protest, revolution and occupation triggering new uprisings against state oppression, class inequality and police brutality. "From the Arab spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow" declares the Time cover, with Stengel pointing out "the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history".

But how to represent this collective subject, to give a face to this global anger? It is hard for the media and the state to forsake their need to celebrate (and punish) charismatic figureheads, especially when it comes to protest movements. But the anonymity, the leaderlessness (which is not to say structurelessness) of many of the global protests are indications of their strength and of their mass character.'
 

A video report from Alan Fisher of Al Jazeera is here     

So did TIME get it right and if not who would you chose as Person of the Year 2011?