Backing Wales

Is the Cambria Politico blog serious? Their campaign to back Wales is laughable - and not even original! I am just about old enough to remember the risible 'I'm backing Britian campaign' of 1968. If they think some badges and a few cruddy t shirts is enough to turn around the economy they need their heads seen to.

Forecasters wrong again!

So much for our economic pundits who have got it wrong once again. Just as the morning news stories were discussing the technical end of the recession when .. oops, the figures show it hasn't.  Just like the predictions that prices were falling a year ago ... and they turned out not to be.  Ask any woman or man in Ebbw Vale or Llandudno or Llantrisant if they think the recession is ending and you would have got a more accurate answer than the pundits.

John Lewis hype

What is it with the hype about St. David's Shopping Centre and John Lewis? News shops open - fanfare! Shoppers go shopping - shock!  The Western Mail online edition carries no less than SEVEN different items in the first three pages of its 'news' coverage.  Is that really the only news in Wales?

We should have learned from the recession? Endless, credit-fuelled consumption is not the answer. It doesn't help the economy. It doesn't help the environment. It doesn't even make us really happy.

Grow up people, and start asking some serious questions about why more than 10% of males are unemployed in Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent and why manufacturing has contracted by more than 10% in a year.

As soon as Rhodri made that announcement

As soon as Rhodri Morgan has announced he is going I hear that the Office of the First Minister is to get a big boost.  Staff are going to be brought together from various outposts into a strategic centre.  The outgoing FM was always said to be not very keen on this sort of big government.  Looks like the next FM won't have much choice!

All Wales Convention heading for long grass?

Will the All Wales Convention's report end up in the long grass?  Published on the same day as the Queen's Speech, in the middle of the selection of a new  Labour leader and First Minister, to be shortly followed by a General Election, and then the Assembly election in Spring 2011.  Summer - autumn 2010 looks like the only possible time for a referendum.

And would a Tory Westminster government after May 2010 actually go along with a referendum happening at all?

Interesting times.

Hooray for pay cuts

Workers at Flintshire Council are up in arms about 'pay cuts'.  They are blaming equal pay.  Media reports carefully forget to say whether the people are complaining are men but I bet they are.

This is really about getting rid of all the hidden perks and benefits that men workers have used to boost their pay.  Refuse collectors and outdoor workers have set themselves up with lucrative bonuses e.g. for turning up, for finishing on time, etc. Jobs which women do like dinner ladies and home care workers don't have the same bonuses.

There is another way of looking at this - women get equal pay at last - but that is not a news story.