Chocfinger or Cocoa-gate?

The Sunday quality press are asking questions – which means that they already have the answers from elsewhere – about the involvement of international development secretary Andrew Mitchell on behalf of a tory party donor who also happens to be one of the world's richest cocoa dealers.

The Sunday Times, Observer and a few others relate how Mitchell, was reportedly asked for help by Anthony Ward of Armajaro Holdings, whose firm had been banned from trading cocoa out of Ghana over allegations that a contractor was involved in smuggling.

It is alleged the minister telephoned the British high commissioner in Ghana on the issue in breach of departmental guidelines which prevent ID ministers exerting influence to promote British business interests overseas. There is a further claim that officials in Mitchell's office contacted the Foreign Office to say that the matter required "urgent attention". A partial trading ban imposed on the company has now been lifted.

Armajaro donated £40,000 to Mitchell's parliamentary office between August 2006 and December 2009 whilst he was shadow minister. The firm donated £50,000 separately to the Conservative party in 2004.

Council walks the talk

Independent-run Pembrokeshire Council took a lead this week by announcing a cut in cabinet members. The local authority is to reduce its executive body from ten to eight members with a consequent saving of just under £30,000 a year.

The council leader explained the admirable move by stating,

"In the future, as the financial cuts bite, we will no doubt be expecting equal amounts of work - or more - to be done by less people. It is only right that the cabinet should practice what it preaches... by leading by example and reducing its numbers and costs.”

We have no expectation that Swansea, which has among the highest “political management” costs in Wales, will be following suit soon. The ruling Lib Dem crowd did the predictable pay-cut gesture on taking up office a few years back but are still in the top 10% by virtue of the size criterion that determines extra pay for responsibilities.

A source in Calamity Hall pointed out to us somewhat defensively that Pembrokeshire’s chief executive still earns more than the PM. Of course, the same can be said of Swansea’s top man – although he lacks the talents of the West Wales guy who seems able to persuade turkeys to vote for Christmas.

There is no indication whether Powys will have ten members in its new cabinet but the official spin as to how the move is prompted by changes introduced by the Assembly, rather than a deal struck with Lib Dems, does not bode well for anyone expecting savings.

Chaotic scenes at planning committee

Today’s Beans on Toast carries quite a few references to the good burghers of Swansea and shares their views on a number of respective subjects vital to their political profile the public good. Yet one instance - and one individual - not mentioned was the absolute shambles seen at yesterday's session of the imaginatively named Planning and Petitions committee.

Without going into too much detail, we hear that the meeting fell apart in chaotic scenes and ended up inquorate because so many councillors walked out over a series of disagreements. The committee is theoretically made up of all 72 councillors although the original attendance was said to be less than half that figure.

Our sources tell us that a major contributor to the fiasco, which left a number of citizens left in the lurch over their applications, was the inept handling of events by the committee chairman. This is none other than hapless Wendy Fitzgerald who screwed up social services as cabinet member and was shifted to the post of presiding officer only to be dumped again. No change there then.

Cheques and balances

Sometime next week, a Treasury civil servant will drop a note on the desk of Business Secretary Vince Cable to advise that retail activity trends are expected to exceed normal levels in the present quarter. Unfortunately, this bit of seasonal good news has a downside in that the main reason is an anticipated flood of consumers attempting to avoid 20% VAT on their purchases in the New Year.

Analysts predict a significant dip in sales, despite assurances from High Street retailers that they will “absorb” the VAT increase. But regardless of the bravado, the market knows that raw material & fuel suppliers have no remaining leeway and will pass on the additional charge to manufacturers and so on down the supply chain.

It is fast becoming another unravelling thread in the government’s patchy fiscal programme in which their assault on the public spending deficit is increasing depicted in the media as kicking for the less well-off in society. As Danny Alexander rants away from the dispatch box, the feeling in the cheap seats is that the ConDems need a real politician with enough nous to avoid the “wrong move, wrong time” mentality that so often beset New Labour. In other words, Boris could do it all a lot better.

The child benefit reforms have a hasty, unfinished feel about them which is bound to lead to yet another “rethink”. Today’s announcement of sanctions against high-taxpaying households sounds less convincing when  tax experts flag up the more or less non-existent data exchange capability between the depleted ranks at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the DWP Gestapo. Coincidently, a project to create a joint data management system was scrapped in a pre-CSR pogrom.

It all adds to the perception that Tory and Lib Dem ministers much prefer picking on the poor than the better-off. And if that sounds a little unfair, take a look at how many many of the FTSE who received an average 55% pay rise are the same names who backed the Chancellor’s public spending cuts.

Another time, another place

A few months ago, Michael White of the Guardian cheerfully observed that the “AV referendum may test the coalition to destruction – and Clegg has more to lose than Cameron”. Although a residual number of parliamentary observers still hold onto variations of this stark viewpoint, the more widely held opinion is that Nick Clegg and compatriots have all but un-coupled electoral reform from outrageous fortune.

The best place for reform

It has been some time since anyone within earshot tried to fall back upon electoral reform as a creditable (or credible) rationale for the Lib Dem leadership doing handstands over tuition fees, housing benefits and the like. Anyway, being stuck at just above double figures in the polls and with only vague proposition to do a wholesale remapping of boundaries, the premise of no gain without pain is a busted one, in electoral terms at least. Most believe that it will need an enormous amount of reverse-gerrymandering and a small battalion of tory MPs to play dead before any meaningful change in the Commons is likely.

Down the corridor however, their Noble Lordships see it all a little differently. The stakes are now different, according to the genteel wing of the party where there is undisguised admiration apropos a deputy PM who shows all the signs of staying the full course even should Cameron decide to disinter Lloyd George’s remains and then piss on them in Parliament Square. Such grip merits it own reward and what better than a system of constitutional governance which is far more susceptible to peer pressure? After all,who could argue that what this country needs is a second Upper House with real powers of scrutiny to keep those naughty self-indulgent MPs in check.

Last month, Observer columnist Nick Cohen railed against the “Liberal fudge” which he claimed had been substituted for electoral reform. His argument was that the cobbled up AV model could not deliver “greater democratic fairness”. No-one disagreed with him; nor however did anyone point how this was never the government’s objective anyway. When it comes to reform, ministers prefer to talk about efficiency rather than accountability. Measures introduced to effect systemic change and counter endemic abuse habitually end up doing vice-versa, so to speak. Parliamentary expenses have made the proper transition from scandalous excess to institutionalised swindling and all is well at Westminster.

Consequently, a pragmatic and universally more popular action on the horizon is the plan to morph the hybrid House of Lords from its current shifting membership of 744 or thereabouts to an (almost entirely) directly elected upper chamber, e.g. Senate of the United Kingdom, downsized to 300 members and who come up for re-election by thirds at each general election – giving each a 15 year term. At least that is what Jack Straw had in mind and probably what the ConDems are about to repackage.

We peasants can expect more news of this constitutional breakthrough in coming weeks. Then again, if the “rebellion” over housing benefit makes any progress tonight then we will read about it in the Sundays.

Guessing games

Well, if you hadn’t already guessed, the reason for David Cameron’s emphasis on growth at yesterday’s CBI speech was a sort of “if we can do it, then you can do it” clarion call to the private sector in advance of today’s news of a 0.8% rise in economic activity between July and September.

The increase follows a 1.2% jump in growth in the second quarter of the year which many analysts had labelled a blip. As the Beeb rather grudgingly mentions however, the latest GDP outcomes, which are double the 0.4% expected by analysts, may yet be revised downwards.

Government ministers will be today seizing on this data to dispel market fears of a double-dip recessionary trend. But they need not worry. A sanguine commodities sector and quite a few glass-half-full commentators will already know that these outcomes are the bow-wave effect of “unaffordable” public spending programmes chucked into the pot by an outgoing Labour government. The real pain is to come.

As one commentator observed, "The government will no doubt take this as a sign that the private sector can fill the gap created by public sector cuts, but with consumer confidence, hiring intentions surveys and housing activity data all softening we remain cautious."

Nevertheless, it was enough to boost the traditional indicators of economy buoyancy with the pound rising by a full cent against the dollar. This is just as well given that confidence in manufacturing & services sectors continues to drop as concerns grow over the impact of the spending cuts. Analysts also see poor sales figures for September, down 0.2%, as less reason for celebration.

The bets among the financial press are that Cameron will greet the news with something Churchillian. We assume they mean he will try to sell them insurance.

See no fairness, hear no fairness, speak no fairness

As much as the ConDems may want to push economic growth up the agenda, accusations of unfairness over their recent spending review continue to follow them around like a bad smell.

Cameron, Clegg and Osborne have since modified their earlier attempts to kick shit out of the Institute of Fiscal Studies who have been consistently critical of the regressive effects of benefits changes upon the economy. The trio now simply say that they "fundamentally disagree” with the public policy think-tank.

Unsurprisingly, the IFS holds a very similar stance but is winning hands-down in the credibility stakes; mostly because "highly respected" and "objective” are not attributes one readily ascribes to political parties – especially political parties in government.

The Conservative manifesto was peppered with references to “fairness”; the Lib Dem document even had the word in the title, and yet the polls show that people think both parties have decided to abandon the notion for the duration and possibly beyond. Their scepticism is probably fuelled by a disjointed feel to the grand plan as bad news announcements made in almost off-hand fashion from various platforms seem to be greeted by dismissive noises from IDS as much as IFS.

The same research findings indicate how very few voters think benefit changes are sensibly targeted, long-term in nature and in the overall public interest, and evidence appears to be mounting daily to back up this perception. The charity Gingerbread says unemployed single parents are being "set up to fail" by moves compelling them to seek work when their youngest child turns seven. Academics are adding their contention that the treasury deficit does not justify the scale of the proposed spending cuts and that benefits regime changes are ideologically and not economically driven.

No-one seems able to say if the talk by Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes about  a parliamentary party rebellion against housing benefit cuts is prompted by sincere disillusionment or a sense of self-preservation by an MP representing a London borough. A similar sense of confusion presides over cabinet backtracking out of the Browne stuff as Clegg touts the idea that tuitions fees might be capped after all.

What we must deduce for the moment at least is that “fairness” is a variable notion for ConDems in Westminster rather than a disposable one. Hence the news that universal benefits (i.e. pensions) have suddenly become affordable again.

Expectations are for a made up campaign

The adoption of Jayne Sullivan as an independent candidate for Blaenau Gwent in next year’s Assembly election is good news for the media and even better news for Labour’s Alun Davies, if you listen to his camp followers.

Ms Sullivan’s headline-grabbing tactics are found quite entertaining within press circles and they expect as much emphasis upon mascara as any talk about medical priorities. All the expectations are for a contest that is big on personalities but not much else.

Trish Law has given Sullivan her backing. We hear however the AM's political advisors are not so enthusiastic about going for a sympathy vote a second time around.

Tories make bye-election progress in Swansea

Regardless of whatever future electoral pain may (or may not) be visited upon the tories as a result of their scorched earth approach to public spending, an LG bye-election result in Swansea Council saw them pinch a seat off the Lib Dems.

Following a 40% turnout, they took the Newton ward (Gower constituency) with 545 votes. Lib Dems recorded 299, Labour 187, Ind 108 and Plaid got 31 - according to numerous Twitters seen tonight.

.. and the truth shall set you free

It’s not every day that a politician puts their hand up to being a liar, and the ready admission by tory MP Nadine Dorries is something worth a mention.

The moral crusader found herself hauled up in front of Parliamentary expenses watchdogs over some confusion as to whether her house in the smoke or a constituency home in leafy Mid Beds was actually her main residence. She was claiming for a London address but was forever telling constituents via her blog how her primary domicile was the constituency.

Nadine cleared it up with the joyously contemptuous explanation:

My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact. It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire. I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another.

Her admission has been enthusiastically seized upon by Tim Ireland (Bloggerheads) who condemns her as mendacious whilst Guido Fawkes thought the appropriate headline was Parliamentary Standards Commissioner clears Nadine. 'Guess they're both right.

Are we really in this together?

We could claim to have been mulling over the nuances of the chancellor’s spending review before attempting to come up with anything intelligent (quite a challenge in itself). Then again, it’s possible that we were waiting for A Change of Personnel to produce an insightful post for us to plagiarise.

In truth, we have no idea if a massive £81 billion cut in public spending is the right mix of fairness and fiscal policy that the country needs. What is most worrying is that everyone else, including the ConDem coalition government have the same looming gaps in their knowledge. The glib admission that there is no Plan B is hardly reassuring as Osborne lets go of the rope and we float down Shit Creek.

The treatment spelled out in the House yesterday, and which is intended to ensure healthier balances by the next election in the future, carries overtones of the purging that physicians of old prescribed for their ailing charges. The theory was to dispel the dangerous humours and was deemed a success if the patient survived the horrendous effects.

New thinking along the old lines

It may have been one of the least unexpected announcements of the week, but the news that plans for a £14bn Defence Training College at St Athan have been scrapped is a significant blow nonetheless.

We can now expect a counter-play of suitable expressions of horror from unions matched by accusations from MoD mouthpieces about how the previous government raised costly expectations .Of course, there is also the Cairns Doctrine which seeks to blame it all on Labour delays and avoids some tricky questioning by Friends of the Earth.

Word has been flying about for some time about the effort which the Metrix outfit has been allegedly exerting in its “engagement” activities of politicians. Observers put the frenetic lobbying down to a massive projected price tag over two or more decades. The same pundits see phrases like “commercially robust” in the official statement as coded confirmation that it was too much even for an arm of government which earnestly believed that MoD stood for Massively Overspent Department.

"Politicians come and go, but advisors simply change departments" goes the saying in Whitehall and, consequently, the well-touted stories of open warfare between Treasury and Defence have to be treated with some scepticism. Spending cuts may have severely limited the abilities of a office within the Admirality which purportedly still controls the specification of cannon balls - but you can bet that it will not have been abolished.

For a generation or more, ideological & economic arguments over defence have broken down into camps either side of the nuclear deterrent as manifested by Polaris, Cruise, Trident or some other innocuous sounding brand of megaton death. Of course, the collapse of soviet hegemony changed the rules sufficiently so that it was actually some chap from the Russian-owned Evening Standard who claimed this morning that Cameron is about make the same disastrous error as Thatcher. He pointed out that a massive cut back on the Royal Navy’s surface capability in 1981 had led to the Argentinean invasion of the Falklands.

Political historians however would suggest that if it was a mistake; then it turned out to be a damned clever one.

It's fraud, basically

The government is going after benefits cheats big-time. Measures announced by Chancellor George Osborne include detection of fraud patterns by sharing data with credit reference agencies and the recruitment of 200 new inspectors. A mobile task force is also to be created which will go into areas with high rates of fraud.

Of course, the problem with politicians talking about how “benefits cheats are mugging the public” is that memories of parliamentary expense claims made to maintain moats & duck houses are still fresh in the public’s minds.

As a result, we will be looking to see if the benefits team in Swansea will be equally resolute in confronting a local politician who claims to be sufficiently disabled to qualify for a Motability car and yet has recently been spotted delivering leaflets in the Newton by-election.

Update: Interesting note received from DWP (allegedly) requesting evidence. Are they really that stupid?

Nothing new on offer at Lib Dem non-event

One of the more overlooked media events of the weekend was the gathering of Welsh Liberal Democrats at their autumn conference. Wales on Sunday managed a reference from Freedom Mental about Kirsty Williams castigating New-ish Labour for wreaking havoc in Wales, although neither mentioned that the Lib Dems actively helped the bastards do it – from 2001 to 2003 at least.

Whatever rationalisations were touted at the Brecon Castle Hotel, the impending devastation of public services & job in Wales is frighteningly apparent. Promises by Clegg and Williams to mitigate the scale of the damage have proved worthless in light of reported moves to scrap the Severn Barrage and the Defence Training College in St Athan. Moreover, the cynical fashion in which these cuts has been drip-fed into the public domain in advance of the CSR announcements puts Cheryl’s Gillan’s condemnation of union whistle-blowing in perspective.

After a succession of national leadership u-turns over VAT, child benefit and now tuition fees, Liberal Democrats have shown themselves all too willing to abandon their principles and their supporters. People are looking for a distinctiveness that sets Welsh Lib Dems apart from the Westminster crowd. If all Kirsty can offer them is a bit of Labour bashing then things look ominous indeed for next May.  

A roundabout way to cause traffic chaos?

We see that BBC Wales has taken the somewhat radical step of reading a Swansea Council cabinet agenda and have discovered how the fiendish devils at Calamity Hall aim to bring the city centre to a standstill.

A while back we reported on the lot of old boulevards that was envisaged as the next stage in screwing up Swansea’s traffic system and the wacky plan to block off access at the bottom of Wind Street. Now comes confirmation of the intent to rearrange traffic flows on the two bridges that span the River Tawe so as to create a giant roundabout – or gyratory system.

However, our sources tell us that the idea does not have full political backing and that the council’s deputy leader, John Hague, has threatened to resign if it goes ahead. This claim appears seems to be borne out by the absence of Hague’s title, as cabinet member for Highways, from the report due to get rubber stamped on Thursday. Similarly, only staff from Regeneration & Planning departments are named as contact officers.

An insider told us that the usual convention is that an item with such major implications, and especially which is primarily about transport, would be a joint report from both cabinet members. The same source pointed out that the paper which recommends reconfiguring eastern gateway only runs to six and a bit pages whilst a recent planning application for a new house in Gower required an 18 page highways & traffic assessment.

Of course, it must be said that the cabinet is only being asked to approve the capital spending effect of the proposals; the principle of the scheme was apparently approved some time ago – although it’s a safe bet that none of the cabinet members could tell you precisely when the decision was made – or who made it.

Sadly, political circumstances have allowed this governance by stealth to become the hallmark of Lib Dem-run Swansea Council in the last six years. Their promised openness & transparency barely lasted a month when the Pool Sanctuary deal went down the pan. These days, the political leadership no longer even bother pretending that there is a semblance of answerability involved in its management of the capital programme.  

But if the rumours of a serious split at policy level are true, then opposition parties at the very least should be calling for these massive proposed changes to be validated by independent traffic management consultants. Just as importantly, if anyone in the political executive is concerned at what this “reconfiguration” will do to Swansea’s business fortunes then they should have the guts to stand up and say so rather than absent themselves from key meetings as they did during the CapGemini fiasco.

Gotcha!

We've no idea how long this will last but the hacked video which the National Union of Students have embedded on the Lib Dem website is worth watching if only for Nick Clegg’s breath-taking hypocrisy.

LINK

Bethan tops the party list

We note that Plaid’s party hierarchy received a smack in the chops last night when sitting AM Bethan Jenkins took top position on Plaid Cymru’s South Wales West regional list.

According to the well-informed Western Mail, Bethan received 95 first preference votes, whilst Dai Lloyd took 70 and contender Myfanwy Davies won 32 despite some heavyweight backing from senior members. The Pontardawe-based AM recorded a significant hike in popularity among members from her debut a few years back and at which party rules in favour of women nominess put her in pole position with just 17 votes.

We hear that the result was greeted with enthusiasm by activists in the region. However there are reports of sneers and a few groans among those earnest young things at party HQ who think that effective campaigning is something you do from behind a desk.

Not bad for a gog blog

Congratulations to Druid of Anglesey for picking up the Welsh Blog Awards. It’s a regular read for us and it’s good to see a well-written and generally non-partisan viewpoint receive due recognition.

Wrong again!

Things can happen quickly in politics – especially when you don’t have a soddin' clue what you’re talking about.

On Monday, Peter Black told the local paper that he doubted the Swansea passport office was under threat. His rationale was that he had "seen nothing to suggest that the Swansea interview office is to be closed”. Of course, non-entity Black wasn't just out of the loop in such matters but way out of his pay grade.

Today a Home Office spokesman confirmed that offices in Aberystwyth, Swansea, Newport and Wrexham will close by September 2011 and be replaced by a mobile interview service. The closures amount to the loss of 27 jobs.

Let’s just hope that he doesn’t make any more insightful predictions.

Coming off life support

Well, it was bound to happen. True to form, Jeremy Hunt has told S4C that he considers funding linked to the retail price index as "unsustainable in the current financial climate". His solution is that he will decide in future how much the Welsh language channel will receive.

To many industry observers, the decision is another is a succession of moves that will eventually see the service shunted off into the hands of the Welsh Assembly.

Conservative MP Glyn Davies, who is PPS to Cheryl Gillan, said he expected the guaranteed funding for S4C to be changed in next week's spending review but that the broadcaster would remain as an independent body.

But he warned that it was “not untouchable." Ooer.

Backwards is not an acceptable option

It’s understandable that the BBC would latch on to sickness levels at Swansea Council as the cost of public services is increasingly put under the microscope. Yet it would only have taken a slightly more detailed look at the local authority’s Annual Corporate Improvement Plan, which will be presented to councillors tomorrow, to uncover that there is most definitely room for improvement across the board.

This might come as a surprise to some people, given the marked reluctance by the local paper to even scrutinise council reports these days; let alone voice any sort of criticism. So it is in the spirit of community service that we share some of the down-lights in the 90 page report with Swansea’s council tax-payers - who might be interested to learn that their local authority has:-

·         Missed its target for additional cash from rental income.

·         Brought in £800,000 less in capital receipts than needed.

·         Recorded 12.9 working days/shifts per employee lost due to sickness absence.

·         Achieved an average of 65 days against the target of 31 for which permanently excluded pupils did not receive education.

·         Came in three points below the 25% target for recycling municipal waste.

·         Only determined 47% of planning applications within 8 weeks instead of the 60% target. There was a similarly dismal performance recorded for environmental assessments and enforcement actions.

·         Reported a fall in the number of people using the Council park and ride services.

·         Admitted that its community regeneration service was failing by nearly 50% to meet its own target for helping youngsters.

·         Somehow managed to get a drop in the number of visits to local authority funded museums and galleries (despite free admission).

·         Failed to reduce the percentage of carbon dioxide emissions in the housing stock (it actually increased).

·         Once again set a pathetic standard in delivering Disabled Facilities Grants, which still take well over a year to sign-off.

The report uses a traffic light colour-coding system to highlight problem areas and the section for Social services predictably resembles an outbreak of measles outbreak with far too many failings to mention here. Yet you might come to an entirely different conclusion from the report into Child and Family services, which happens to appear in the same agenda. Not that we expect anything too different at next week’s presentation either.

In the same vein, the council seems to have provided a thoroughly reasonable set of explanations for each of the poor performance results listed above. And as you would expect, this basically involves describing a failure to reach a target or to explain away a downward trend as nuffink to do with us guv, honest.

As we’ve reported here in the past, a succession of performance reports given by independent assessors has rated the local authority as somewhere between piss-poor and basket case. Yet neither the local press nor the political opposition seems to be remotely interested. No wonder it took an Assembly minister to intervene before somebody finally admitted that social services in the city was no longer fit for purpose!

The people who head up the political & management hierarchy at Calamity Hall are hardly newcomers to the job of running a local authority. The fact that so many key services are going backwards is unacceptable. At the very least it should prompt serious questions on how the council should go about finding some new faces along with a new sense of direction.

Be afraid, be very afraid

So whilst Cheryl Gillan snatches humiliation out of the jaws of defeat over the fate of the passport service, a new tory champion emerges from the fray, vowing to defend the Welsh nation from English oppressors if he feels that they’re being “unfair” (cue ‘Terminator’ theme in background).

But it’s hardly the rhetoric one associates with Owain Glyndwr and, let’s face it, Nick Bourne ain’t preaching rebellion – or even resistance. “Doctrine” may sound a bit more purposeful than “guideline” but it amounts to the same thing in most dictionaries.

Nick tells the Western Mail that “Devolution means we do things differently. We don’t necessarily photocopy policy from Westminster and we sometimes take a different line.”

Kick-ass stuff, eh?

Lib Dems back tuition fee hike - or do they?

Vince Cable is reported as giving the government's approval to a report calling for an unlimited level of tuition fees for students. According to the BBC, the Business Secretary told the House of Commons he endorsed the "persuasive proposals" of Lord Browne's radical funding reforms.

Liberal Democrat MPs, including Mr Cable, signed a pledge at the election to vote against any increase in fees. Nick Clegg made a video for students in which he delivered a personal message saying that tuition fees were "wrong" and that he would oppose them. The Lib Dem press office insisted well into this evening that it remained official party policy to scrap tuition fees.

The disarray among party MPs and party activists is highlighted by the challenge issued by deputy leader Simon Hughes to Cable for him to explain how disadvantaged youngsters would not be deterred by such charges. Cable sought however to highlight divisions on fees within the Labour party - quoting the opposition of Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson to graduate taxes.

Lord Browne’s blueprint for universities in England calls for the current £3,290 cap on fees to be scrapped and replaced by a free market, in which universities set their own charges for different courses. Assembly Education minister Leighton Andrews has criticised the proposals and warned that they will impact on Welsh students.

Self-made man

We have been taken to task by e-mail for suggesting in an earlier post that Gower Conservatives were tipped to take a council seat in a forthcoming by-election. We actually did nothing of the sort but merely repeated what had been said by senior local tories within the hearing of a reliable source.

But while we’re on the subject of overheard comment, it seems that the blue-tinged brigade are also quite taken with Anthony Ridge-Newman, their chosen man for Gower in next year’s Assembly elections, and who has been making a number of guest appearances in the constituency.

The former councillor has a decidedly impressive website. This is complemented by a professional looking blog in which he declares himself “Ready for Action”. Having looked a little into his background, we find that he is a self-made man in more ways than one.

Unsurprisingly, the tory hopeful has decided that health is the favoured ticket. Well it would have to be; when you consider that he needs to beat health minister Edwina Hart if he is going to get himself elected. As such, the leading paragraph in most of his several deeply moving CVs describes him as “ardently leading the campaign to save Fairwood hospital” – and yet there have been no reported sightings of him at public meetings or CHC events. As far as the local paper is concerned, the only recorded mention of him is his selection as candidate. Perhaps he should have a word with the CCHQ staff who write his stuff.

Ridge-Newman’s website also declares “Anthony is committed to representing Gower” although not so committed, it seems, as to actually live there. From what we understand, his given address at Brynymor Road in Gowerton is a pied-à-terre. Anthony pays his council tax considerably further away and across Offa’s Dyke.

We also discovered that his reference to being a councillor is slightly overstated. Ridge-Newman was returned in a by-election for Runnymede District Council in June last year. The achievement needs to be put into its proper context inasmuch as the political composition of Runnymede DC is 36 tories and 6 independents. He stood down less than a year later so that he could contest the capricious Ynys Mon seat in the general election.

The accomplished self-publicist is credited by some (but mostly himself) with substantially boosting the tory vote on the island. His detractors point out that he did no more than ride the inevitable bounce back in the party’s support to the levels it had enjoyed prior to an embittered Peter Rogers causing them serious grief five years earlier. They also mention that Ridge-Newman also used an accommodation address as a candidate on that occasion.

It will be interesting to note if the former businessman, researcher and communications kiddie actually manages to make any sort of breakthrough in Gower. It was supposedly a target seat for the tories in May but Labour defied the bookies and held on despite a 5% swing against them. In seven months time, Conservatives will be taking stick for hiked VAT, spending cuts and redundancies. On the face of it, the future prospects of success appear to be as defunct as the Gower Conservatives website - which could possibly explain the low-profile approach to date. We shall see.

AV - doing it by the numbers

Whilst speculation continues on what aspect of the Comprehensive Spending Review will be the deal-breaker for the ConDem coalition, the Guardian ponders if the Alternative Vote flagship can continue to navigate treacherous waters whilst flying its colours of convenience.

Graphic filched from www.BryantPedia.com

If AV is as misunderstood & misrepresented as the paper suggests then such negative perceptions can be attributed to vilification by press, public and politicians in roughly equal measure. The purists regard the system as a third-rate compromise whilst reactionary wings of left and right regard the bastard offspring of proportional representation as an unwise leap into the pit of dispair. The remainder see AV as the least of all evils in a changing political landscape where peace-time coalitions are in danger of becoming the norm.

Some critics eager to damn the process through guilt by association say it is uncomfortably close to the method used by Ed to slay his brother - although it was actually the byzantine composition of Labour’s electoral college, rather than the counting system, which delivered the outcome. It is also the same voting mechanism that Liberal Democrats use to elect their leader.

What cannot be denied is that narrow, nail biting results will become the norm in many constituencies. Pollsters will increasingly seek refuge in the plus or minus three percent margins of error to explain away unfulfilled predictions whilst the experience from the US & Australia is that parties can look forward to spending as much time in the courtroom as on the stump.

None of the main parties disagree that demography and successive boundary tweaks have contrived to create a surplus of rotten boroughs safe seats to the extent that result of a general election is actually decided in about 120 out of the 650 constituencies. Similarly, there is a tacit understanding that the current imbalance of representative ratios in constituencies throughout the UK needs to be addressed.

What is alarming however is the degree of dissatisfaction among MPs, of all three main parliamentary groups, with respective parts of the reform bill. Whilst an appetite for change remains, the means by which it is to be achieved may be too much for some to swallow. Public suspicion, fed by media babble, that it will all be either too expensive or just unworkable is the sort of thing that parliamentarians are likely to seize upon.

If the right number of votes are not delivered in the House then talk of a referendum is academic. Parliamentary reform would be no more than a cut in the overall number of MPs who will continue to be elected on a first-past-the-post basis. There are still deals left to be done and votes to deliver but, as is in all things in politics, its a lot closer than you think.

Update: Sky News reports that tories failed in their attempts to scupper AV plans

Time for a change?

A belated hat tip goes to fellow blogger Tawe Talk for flagging up an intriguing new piece of information on Swansea Council’s website.

Readers are advised that “Anyone can organise a petition to call for a referendum for a directly elected mayor. Upon receiving a valid petition, a Council must hold a binding referendum on proposals for executive arrangements involving a directly elected mayor.”

A petition needs to bear signatures from 10% of local government electors in the area – which works out as something over 18,867 for Swansea. A valid petition would then trigger a referendum on whether the majority of citizens would want to dump the present cabinet system in favour of a single, accountable directly elected mayor.

The notice helpfully adds that petitions can only be submitted during a specific six month period starting twelve months before the next local government elections, i.e. from May to November 2011.

Nearly 19,000 names sounds like a big ask but not so arduous when you think of the numbers who joined a Facebook campaign last year to preserve the Big Apple at Mumbles. The only question is whether a real opportunity in deciding how the city is run would actually generate as much interest.