Mightier than the blog?

We came across a press release this morning bearing the enticing headline of “Local MP in running for top website award”. Naturally intrigued, we read on and found that Carmarthen East & Dinefwr MP Jonathan Edwards has been shortlisted for an award in the MP Web Awards 2010 which is run by the British Computer Society.

Having checked it out, we’re not at all surprised. The site is excellently presented, very readable with crisp style of commentary and easy to navigate. It also serves as an effective vehicle for his favoured method of communication.  The newly elected Plaid MP clearly favours press releases over the usual what-I-said-today blog format employed by parliamentarians and his count is twenty-five issued in September alone. He can also claim a sufficiently high hit rate in the Welsh local & regional press to even give media-tart Peter Black a run for his profile.

As you would expect from someone with a professional background in Public Affairs, the Edwards website carries all the social networking bells & whistles of Twitter, Facebook and what-not. But then again he is a successor-cum-acolyte of former MP Adam Price – winner of the BCS Award in 2007 as it happens – and who also knew a thing or eighteen about the intrinsic value of a prodigious PR output using contemporary formats.

The Plaid man clearly has something to say on a wide range of subjects plus an ability to say it forcefully yet concisely – which is always a virtue in the eyes of sub-editors.  His style is an effective blend of key points & quotes with enough sustained topicality to please the weekly newspapers as well as the dailies. This conscious pitch towards print media rather than the internet whilst he develops a constituency presence is probably why he is described on his party’s website as “one of Plaid’s foremost strategic thinkers”.

Of course, it may also have something to do with the fact that he wrote that as well.

Coalition woes closer to home

Those eagerly looking for signs of cracks in the coalition should switch their gaze from Westminster to Wrexham where discontent of Labour’s stewardship of the NHS in Wales has most definitely surfaced.

A note from an occasional commentator prompted us to look at the latest post on the Plaid Wrecsam blogsite. It pulls no punches on the abilities of Labour health minister Edwina Hart and laments that Plaid has not been able to force her resignation. The full text states:

I can't believe that Edwina Hart has survived Kirsty Williams's exposure of her 'allegedly' misleading the Assembly. She must have a bloody charmed life, problems within the Wales NHS are being exposed daily but we seem incapable of exploiting them so as to force a ministerial resignation. Surely she cannot possibly survive anymore bad news stories about the NHS.

Based on the convention used on the blogsite for attribution, the views expressed appear to be those of Wrexham councillor Arfon Jones who was also Plaid’s parliamentary candidate in May.

We wait to see if the Party of Wales – or anyone else – has any comment to make on this intemperate contribution to the blogosphere.

What happened to legionella?

Just a few weeks ago, most of South Wales was bracing itself for more bad news as further cases of Legionnaires Disease were confirmed. Since then it has all gone strangely quiet – at least as far as the media are concerned.

The last mention in the Western Mail was on 20th September;  BBC Wales stopped referring to the outbreak a day later. The most recent update on the Public Health Wales website is dated 24th September.

So is someone in authority going to tell us soon that has it all gone away? Has the source been found? Should we all go and change the screen-wash in our cars or what?

Aren’t these the sort of questions that we rely on our politicians and media to loudly be asking on our behalf? Or are they worried that making too much fuss at the moment might spoil a weekend of golf?

Do as we say, not as we do

The Telegraph, and others, give prominence to statements by Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, who says that people found making fraudulent benefits claims will face new penalties, including bans on new claims and having their assets seized.

Lord Freud emphasised that the measures were aimed at those involved in organised fraud and whose criminal activities impact on legitimate claimants.


“We will put a stop to the fraudsters who infiltrate and steal money from our benefit system,” he said in a speech in London, “Criminal gangs and identity fraudsters who persistently steal money meant for the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society will be severely punished.”


We’ve previously mentioned Lord Freud’s involvement with investment bank UBS who recorded the largest losses of any European bank due to the extent of their dealings in the subprime mortgage market. Despite of the effect of the resultant worldwide recession upon the “poorest and most vulnerable people in our society”, you never hear ministers mention “organised fraud” in that particular context - despite evidence to the contrary when the bank agreed in February last year to pay US authorities $780 million and hand over customer details to settle charges.


The announcement of a benefits crackdown is portrayed by the ConDem government as a complementary measure to the anti-tax avoidance package unveiled by Chief Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander who told the recent Lib Dem conference that "There are some people who seem to believe that not paying their fair share of tax is a lifestyle choice that is socially acceptable. It is not. Like the benefit cheat, their actions take resources from those who need them most."


This is of course the same Danny Alexander who exploited existing rules to avoid paying capital gains tax when he sold his taxpayer-funded second home at a profit. Since his speech however, fiscal analysts have pointed out that his initiative seems to be really no more than a continuation of existing HMRC actions against the paradis fiscaux.


More to the point, most think that any positive effect on the exchequer will be more than countered by planned headcount reductions resulting in even greater amounts of uncollected domestic tax and subsequent write-offs on the scale recently reported.


Update: Talking of fraud ....

Heading west

Although it patently has not dawned on the Beans on Toast, the name announced for Lib Dem Assembly candidate for Swansea West is not the one that was widely expected.

The surprise contender is Swansea East councillor Rob Speht. He is reported to have beaten Education cabinet member Mike Day in the final vote. No surprises there as Day is widely perceived as an election liability with a reputation of being to Swansea’s schools what Genghis Khan was to community regeneration.

But the ‘shock’ revelation is that fellow Lib Dem councillor Peter May, who lost out on becoming MP for the same constituency by just 504 votes earlier this year was not even shortlisted. Admittedly, we also hear differing accounts as to whether his name went forward but his eagerness to be seen, heard and generally associated with a local health protest suggests otherwise.

An uncharitable suggestion among his critics (or more specifically, a senior local Conservative) is that May was probably unable to take advantage of his party’s innovative approach to the minimum voting age this time around. But no-one really seems to know or generally give a toss.

What is far more intriguing, to everyone except the dozy local paper, is why Speht who represents the Landore ward (on those occasions that he is in the country) and has stood as an parliamentary candidate for Swansea East in the last three successive general elections has now decided to turn his back very publicly on the constituency.

Too late with the questions

When Plaid’s Leanne Wood was quoted as questioning why a Wales Audit Office high-flyer aged 50 had left on an early retirement package worth over £600K, a few eyebrows were raised but not much else.

Since then, Assembly members have been queuing up to question the handsome payoff awarded to Anthony Snow, who was chief operating officer at the public spending watchdog.  Some even want the deal overturned on hearing that Mr Snow joined the Financial Reporting Council, an independent standards regulator, in November last year.

The Wales Audit Office (formerly the Audit Commission in Wales) employs around 260 people in the Cardiff headquarters and throughout Wales. Snow was quite a high-profile individual and was often seen accompanying his former boss, Jeremy Colman at various events. Many of the AMs demanding answers would have questioned Mr Snow at Audit committee meetings and several have regularly chatted with him at various receptions & events. A few would even have been councillors when their local authorities were reviewed by the bean-counter and one of his governance teams.

Yet none of them have highlighted the bullying at the WAO which was widely reported a year ago, or the identity of the main culprits and who was in overall charge of the affected staff.  Similarly, there is no mention of the widely held view expressed at the time, and since, that Snow had been “bought-off” and shipped out. We assume the reticence is because opinion remains divided over the actual reasons.

Yet, as one insider mentioned just a few months ago, the Auditor General who has since fallen from grace was known to play favourites to an embarrassing degree “if you were ‘in’ then you were definitely ‘in’ but otherwise you ended up in Carmarthen” is the phrase he used. But more to the point, this exact situation was also widely known among ministers and backbench AMs at the time. So why is it only now, when it appears too late to actually do anything, do the politicians start talking about an adequate redress?

Not so Simply R-Ed

There is no doubt that the union vote put Ed Miliband into the winner’s spot – even if he didn’t start from pole position. Yet does that make the younger clone as much a creature of the left as both his detractors and supporters would have us believe?

As soon as it became clear that the pair were the two front runners, their campaign managers strove to come up with something to make each distinctive from the other. Strangely, both teams made the same inference, albeit out of different motives, that Ed was more left-wing than David. Yet to anyone who has read the Labour manifesto, which Ed authored, would recognise that such a comparison is akin to saying George Bush was more liberal in his thinking than Dick Cheney.

Yet it has an effect in surprising places. Lib Dems who last week were discounting the “old thinking” of political polarity have suddenly rediscovered the concept – and to the extent that Peter Black’s constituents were apparently voicing their fears to him at the weekend of how damaging a Labour lurch to the left would be for his party the country (?).

Even so, “socialist (lower case)” is a handy label badge for a Labour leader in opposition - and one which has proved far less of an electoral impediment than the pro-Dave camp had hoped. In practical terms, being regarded as Old Labour will allow the new incumbent enough freedom to steer the party into clear red water whilst giving the tiller an imperceptible but necessary nudge to the right from time to time. But that’s where the flexibility ends. In many respects, the key areas of focus for the opposition are as much preset as the government’s priorities, i.e. economy, economy, economy – and all the travail that it entails.

The dilemma for Labour under these circumstances is that putting a new face on things through a change of personality is not the same as re-establishing the party as a movement committed to reform, especially when there is already so much of it going on elsewhere. Whoever had won on Sunday, the unspoken consensus is that a first step in any comeback campaign is to put the New Labour brand back in the box for a while and look for something else.

It looks like they will have plenty of time. The ConDem coalition is showing a remarkable resilience and it presently appears that it would take a division of Red Sea proportions to bring things to a premature end. The IMF’s endorsement of government’s plans for tackling the public spending deficit is added boost. When it comes to alternatives, the unions who backed Ed might find their man is not entirely sold on the idea of going in an opposite direction. All in all, the only thing remotely socialist about Labour’s revival strategy could be that it will need to be a five-year plan – at least.

Ashcroft shows who makes the rules on tax

Disillusioned tory non-dom donor Lord Ashcroft may regret his judgement in backing an ungrateful David Cameron but he has lost none of his shrewdness when using measures to avoid paying tax. 

BBC’s Panorama is tonight revealing how the Conservative peer, who is about to resign as the party’s deputy chairman, transferred his £17 million stake in a company to his children on 5 April this year. A day later, legislation came into effect which forces members of the House of Lords to pay tax on their worldwide income and assets. His cynical actions denied the exchequer an estimated £3.4 million.

more tory tax avoidance?

The Beeb highlight that Ashcroft is said to have backed the new tax rules for the House of Lords and told interviewers on election night that he was to become a full UK taxpayer.

This was ten years after he had been permitted to take his seat in the Lords on condition that he agreed to take up permanent residence in the UK and pay tax on his worldwide income. At the time, the [then] opposition leader William Hague claimed the newly created peer would be paying the treasury tens of millions of pounds a year. Instead he paid virtually nothing and this year confirmed his non-domiciled tax status.

There is no mention if Ashcroft will be targeted in the crackdown on tax avoidance & evasion action announced at the Lib Dem conference last week and which will cost £900 million according to party sources. We’ll just have to watch the programme to find out.

Update: The scheduled Panorama programme was withdrawn for "legal reasons". More to follow?

Seeking the healthy option

An anonymous contributor to this site notes that the Freedom Central blog is stuck in a health rut. Of course, others – including ourselves – might argue that they’re presently on a roll in that policy area and must be enjoying the novel experience.

With the party’s standing in the UK opinion polls showing no sign of a post-conference bounce (still stuck at 13% at 23 September according to YouGov) the Welsh Lib Dem contingent patently see the need to step things up a gear and have started by highlighting inadequacies & evasions within the Assembly government over health expenditure and performance.

Whilst it’s a little confusing as to whether Veronica German or Kirsty Williams is leading on health matters, the pair have nonetheless produced more palpable hits in a few months than the previous incumbent managed throughout his overall stint. Or so it seems.

Where Lib Dems fall down at the moment however is in matching their rampant negativity with something more substantial on the constructive front than a stated willingness to “work with others”. Never mind, we’re sure that something will come to them.

Another Friday, another serious case review

How disappointing to see the extent to which BBC Wales news has swallowed the official “press pack” on the findings of a Serious Case Review into how four young children suffered horrific abuse but whose cries for help went ignored. It seems that another Friday afternoon press release, issued by local government sources just as the media are going to sleep for the weekend, has done the job of deflecting serious press scrutiny yet again.

Among the waffle which implies that collective culpability and a suitable show of contrition somehow absolves those responsible for allowing the unacceptable to happen, there is a brief mention of how it took South Wales Police a full year to arrest the abuser after allegations of multiple rapes of four children were first made.

The 49 page Serious Case Review report makes for harrowing reading. More to the point, and for all the references in official press summaries to “inter-agency failings”, there is no mistaking that David Spicer, the report’s author, views the abysmal level of police involvement as a major concern. He even goes as far as to suggest that South Wales Police Authority look to see whether the force is able to fulfil its legal duty "in relation to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children".

 The reason for this comment are linked to his earlier findings that: 

·         Officers were not investigating child abuse in the same manner as they would any other serious allegation of crime.

·         There was inconsistency in the accuracy of records and varying practices for dating entries.

·         Officers did not always identify criminal offences and suspects when these came to light during child protection procedures.

·         There were unacceptable delays in interviewing victims.

·         Victim interviews were not conducted in accordance with statutory guidance.

·         There were delays in arresting and interviewing suspects.

·         Arrests were arranged by telephone.

·         Cases were resolved in informal ways.

·         Decisions were made to treat suspects as victims without consultation with Crown Prosecution Service.

·         There was failure to take proactive steps in response to information.

·         Poor co-ordination with the Crown Prosecution Service gave rise to inadequate inquiries, lost evidence and unnecessary discontinued prosecutions

Whilst it is also true that a combination of factors, including demographics, contributed to the circumstances that allowed vulnerable children to go unprotected for so long, the degree of criticism levelled at the police in the case review is considered by health & social care practitioners to be unprecedented. What we find puzzling is why the Safeguarding Board did not highlight this particular fact.

Partnership working in one thing; but consciously blurring accountabilities in order to protect your partners, and doing so at the expense of the vulnerable in our communities, is quite another.

Update: ‘Social services let down four children abused by paedophile’, says the Western Mail headline. Are they reading the same report?

Is the government serious about quangos - or just hopeful?

The joke in Whitehall is that a leak is immediately verified the moment it is dismissed as “pure speculation” by an official spokesman. But judging from the reaction of Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, and an accompanying Cabinet Office statement, the absence of any denial over an intent to scrap up to 180 quangos implies that any chagrin within government circles is about the timing of the leak rather than the content.

It’s a fair old list which the BBC Politics Show has released – almost seems as if they’re signalling what the ConDems can expect for the next two years of frozen license fees, don’t it?  But if the figures quoted by the Beeb are accurate then the proposed cull represents less than 25% of the total number of non-departental public bodies (based in England) and there are question marks as to whether there is an actual saving to be realised if staff are simply transferred back into the civil service – as happened in Wales.

Another factor which comes over as a little fuzzy is how the government can determine what is a safe timescale under which the complex activities of bodies, such as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, could be safely put under the wing of a Whitehall department whilst avoiding any serious cock-ups, so to speak.

The critics – and they are not all quango chairpersons & chief executives, it seems - voice ever so reasonable-sounding concerns that newly minted coalition ministers who need time to get used to government might be led into making a series of brave, contradictory and very expensive decisions because ministerial advisors would lack sufficient knowledge in a particular field of expertise. Of course, the need for specialist advice is presumably why the quango was created; and we can safely assume that this is the argument that will be employed as to why it should remain unscathed.

These apparent gaps in government thinking are probably why ministers would rather not have seen the proposals get out at just this moment. But the claim by Big Eric that he was “not sure” about the list’s accuracy and the statement of intent by official sources will serve as a useful softening-up period nonetheless. A view expressed by some media commentators is that it will also enable expectations of monetary savings to be managed downwards.

Yet there is a scepticism as to how much of a blaze this bonfire will actually produce when it is so widely accepted, public appointments rules notwithstanding, that the chairmanship of a quango is a modern-day form of patronage bestowed by ministers to suit various political or parochial ends. Whatever measures are finally announced by the government, the assurance given by one minsterial source that the transition process will happen "over the lifetime of this parliament and possibly beyond" suggests to us that the established tradition of quid pro quango will continue at Westminster for some time yet.

Scrutiny, schmutiny

In days gone by, a few hours sifting through the local council’s annual accounts could reward a reporter with a good dozen or so stories of dodgy expenditure and highlight the quirky sense of priorities at large within local authorities. So we were interested to see if anyone from the local paper turned up at Calamity Hall yesterday to report on the ‘debate’ over Swansea’s statement of accounts; or if something would be printed in advance (or even today) given that the report was published a week ago. They didn’t and it wasn’t.

This is all the more surprising when you consider that three chief officers at Swansea Council were named in the recent BBC Panorama public sector pay report as earning over £100K a year. The council’s chief executive gets more than the Prime Minister and the director of finance isn’t far off.

Yet a reasonably quick scan of the 143 page report nodded through yesterday would reveal that despite his pleas of being “skint”, council leader Chris Holley has allowed the number of managers getting over £60K a year to go up from 38 to 52 - up by more than a third. In fact, the average is closer to £80K, according to the report.

Another little gem to be found is the arbitrary action of writing off around £79,000 owed to the council via one of its arms-length companies. The astonishing reason given is that there are no records of who owes what and that the officers responsible have since left the authority to spend more time with their pensions!

Of course, the past five years under Lib Dem stewardship are littered with examples of how handsome exit packages and/or glowing references have followed a succession of abortive internal investigations into the leisure centre closure, the e-government fiasco (aka Shambles@Swansea) and a virtual meltdown in children’s social services. Even a reconstructed scrutineer like Andrew Davies would lose count of all the financial screw-ups after a while - and that’s probably what the ruling clique are banking on, in a manner of speaking.

It certainly seems to be working as far as the local press are concerned.

At best inconvenient and at worst unfair

Another health story in Swansea’s much loved local paper is a report on calls by tory health spokesman Andrew RT Davies for hospital car parking charges to be re-introduced. He maintains that “every pound spent on free parking is £1 less spent on cardiac services, stroke services and cancer treatment.”

His suggestion however seems to have struck quite a nerve with the editor who’s uncompromising comment is as follows:

Shameful idea of tax on sick

Today’s story from Assembly Conservative Shadow health spokesman Andrew RT Davies arguing hospitals should be allowed to bring back charges for car parking surely comes into the “You couldn’t make it up, could you?” category.

Two years after they were scrapped in Wales to universal applause, Mr Davies now says that maybe the issue needs to be looked at again.

Why?

We all know they were a tax on the sick. And we all know that they were at best inconvenient and at worst unfair.

Astonishingly, Mr Davies seems to think otherwise, despite assurances that funding has not been diverted away from key health services since the switch was made.

People who are attending hospital for treatment are already at a very low ebb. The last thing they should have to worry about is whether they have enough change to feed the meter and whether they will get back to their car before it is towed away.

So no Mr Davies, please do not pursue this shameful idea. You should have many other more pressing issues to occupy your time!

No grey area there. However, we would offer one slight correction; the decision to scrap charges in 2008 was not greeted with “universal applause”. Welsh Lib Dems, desperate for something to say, voiced similar grave concerns that money would be "taken out of front-line care, as the government has not announced that it will be giving any extra" etc.

Whether they would have the bottle to express an opinion one way or another these days is doubtful – far better to let the tories to advance the idea and take a stuffing. For ourselves, we are just a little intrigued by the reference in the editorial about inconvenience & unfairness and a similar turn of phrase used by Edwina Hart when she announced free parking.  Quite obviously a co-incidence, we’re sure.

How not to run a campaign

We see that the Beans on Toast and Swansea’s Lib Dems managed to screw up their ‘campaign’ to hold onto out-of-hours minor injuries service in the west of the city. By all accounts, heckling from parliamentary wannabe Peter May during a presentation sufficiently un-nerved health watchdogs to send them scuttling off into private session to make a decision. They later emerged to state they backed the hospital board and not the protestors.

May told the Post that he was going to “seek advice” from the Board of Community Health Councils on how to overturn the decision but an official pointed out that the body “does not have a specific power to overturn any decision." Perhaps we’re being picky, but we can’t help feeling that this is the sort of information that someone purporting to lead a campaign should know beforehand. It's no wonder that the Uplands councillor has a reputation for being noticeably ill-prepared when answering questions – or not – on his cabinet Housing brief in chamber debates.

There will also probably be a few smirks among another group of campaigners over May’s complaint that the CHC went into private session. The irony is he was meeting with other cabinet members behind closed doors this afternoon to look at proposals by users to manage Swansea’s Tennis Centre after the Lib Dem-run council ditched all responsibility for running the publicly provided facility.

We hear that they could have won their fight – which proves that an effective campaign to hold on to something takes a bit more than a petition, a few inept headlines and an uncontrollable tendency to mouth off.

(or dressing up as Batman)

Selection contest gets nasty

Selection is a rough business but Plaid’s internal wrangling over the South Wales West regional list is proving exceptional – as seen in yesterday’s Western Mail which reported on some of the party’s movers & shakers behind an engineered deselection of sitting AM Bethan Jenkins.

Martin Shipton claims Elfyn Llwyd, Helen Mary Jones, Nerys Evans and Jenkins’ predecessor Janet Davies are all backing Dr Myfanwy Davies to defeat the AM in next month hustings & selection. Few doubt that the quoted comments of Janet Davies about “young politicians” who use their “persuasive ability to undermine colleagues or just to grab a few headlines” are aimed as much at Bethan’s partner, Neil McEvoy, deputy leader at Cardiff council and all-round thorn in the side of the Plaid establishment.

However, the OTT assertion that “Myfanwy has a deep and mature loyalty to our party” seems on a par with Dr Davies’s impressive wikipedia entry which carries the disclaimer that “sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations”. In other words, she wrote it herself.

There is no suggestion so far as to who fellow regional AM Dai Lloyd is backing.

J’accuse

Ever notice how politicians talk with straight-faced sincerity about how they want to “bring trust back into politics” and then go and do the opposite. As much as our representatives regularly lament that we punters regard probity in politics as being as commonplace as unicorn shit, it is not as though they set a encouraging example themselves.

In the past few days we’ve seen Plaid MPs accuse a tory minister over fibbing over funding cuts for S4C; Welsh Conservatives have denied claims of a stitch-up for a regional list candidate; Labour’s Huw Lewis says Lib Dems have misrepresented child poverty levels in Wales; Kirsty Williams fingers health minister Edwina Hart for misleading the Assembly on a health spending report and Nick Clegg is charged by everyone with lying because he moved his lips.

It’s a standard political ploy when the message fails to get through – or when there isn’t one and the only aim is to promote your own impeccable qualities by portraying your opponent(s) as stupid/corrupt/forgetful/all of the foregoing.

Then again, as Disraeli more or less said, “Something unpleasant is coming when politicians are anxious to tell the truth”.

Denying Thatcher's grandchildren their birthright

No surprise that speakers at the Lib Dem conference have been adamant that they want to see the right to buy suspended in their communities. They too must have seen the Guardian article of a few days ago which revealed that the government has “begun a review” of one of Margaret Thatcher's most vaunted flagship policy.

The creation of a ‘property owning democracy’ – and the transformation of housing from a public service into a tradable commodity – is a legacy which has lasted a generation. It is also one that neither Blair nor Brown never quite seemed able to disown. Indeed, it was a concept with which New Labour appeared to be quite at home, so to speak.

Are we really about to witness one of the political ironies which crop on occasion whereby the wrong party does the right thing? After all, it took a tory government to introduce the concept of “statutory unfitness” for private housing and a properly funded grants system – and a Labour government to make the system unworkable by slapping VAT onto the building trade.

Meanwhile, back in Wales, the earlier fuss has died down from the announcement in July that the Assembly government has the legislative power to introduce “measures on housing”. The expectation is that ministers will make good in coming weeks on their proposal to “suspend the Right to Buy in areas of housing pressure” and assume “a broad range of intervention powers to strengthen the regulation of Registered Social Landlords”.

We can't wait to see how the tories vote.

Quote of the week (so far)

“You say you will do a lot of things in opposition but when you get into power you find that it is more difficult than you expected.”

These words of overdue wisdom come from Swansea Council leader Chris Holley speaking on BBC Radio Wales this morning. Bit late for openness and transparency from Swansea's Lib Dems on that one, innit?

Transformers

According to BBC reports, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Wales says she sees her mission as work with other parties to "transform" the country. Kirsty Williams said she would be "fighting on all fronts" at the assembly election but said she would not rule anything in or out in dealing with other parties.

Asked about a possible electoral pact with the Tories after next May's election, she said: "I'm not ruling anything in, I'm not ruling anything out". Clearly, Ms Williams does not want to commit to anything until she sees if her party which holds just 10% of Assembly seats can actually improve on it's current standing.

Meanwhile, her mission is to "transform Wales and to really take us forward in a way that the last four years of the Labour-Plaid coalition hasn't."

The unequivocal aim is borne out by this recently intercepted audio message from the Lib Dem mother-ship:

Have the people lost their voice?

No more bandwagon?

Today’s confirmation that independent AM Trish Law is to stand down next year ends several weeks of speculation and possibly marks the demise of a protest movement that kicked New Labour out of the Valleys.

The announcement follows a post-mortem meeting of the Blaenau Gwent People's Voice in August held to discuss the resounding defeat of parliamentary counterpart Dai Davies at the hands of Labour and to gauge future prospects. According to one local reporter, the breakaway body had “done the maths and run out of fingers”.

The departure of Trish Law is likely to signal an end of the dynastic creation formed after ex-Labour Assembly minister Peter quit the party when his planned accession to Llew Smith’s mantle ahead of the 2005 General Election was stymied by the imposition of an all-woman shortlist. Continuing as a protest action has limited appeal for a group which looks, feels and acts like a Labour party of the old school.

We will be watching to see how Alun Davies, Labour’s candidate-in-waiting for next year’s Assembly election copes in a constituency with a reputation for knee-jerk reactions when people think they’re being taken for granted.