Duw It's Hard
"Duw it's hard" as Max Boyce put it some thirty five years ago when he sang Live in Treorchy. I'd always argue to be allowed to stay up to watch him on tv, even though I had no idea what on earth "empty gurneys red with rust" were. He was Welsh and he was on late: that was a good enough excuse for my brother and me.
Today it was Live in the Media Briefing Room for Nick Bourne and David Melding but their considerably smaller audience of lobby journalists left with the same feeling: Duw it's hard to be an effective opposition party these days.
They took a clear enough line: their approach to the economic crisis is different enough to the Labour/Plaid coalition that in the long term, people will get it and it will benefit the Welsh Conservatives. "I'm sure of that" Nick Bourne muttered more than once. In the short term the Tory group is here as a responsible opposition to support where needed, criticise where needed.
But hard to make that work? I think they'd agree it is.
How do you make effective use of your "ten point action plan to kickstart the economy" when some of your points reflect ideas already taken on board and others reflect a basically different approach to Labour/Plaid policies that if it's to gain you votes, it will do so in the long term?
How do you, in a once-a-week press conference balance David Melding's gentle summation of talks with officials about the current approach to easing the pressure on the Welsh economy as "well begun" and clearly useful, with the attack in the press release on Gordon Brown and Rhodri Morgan for causing many of the current economic problems?
Of course both approaches can be absolutely right. But Duw, this morning, they were hard to balance.
Even harder when the double act was joined by Cheryl Gillan, who was "just on a visit" to the Assembly. She's the kind of visitor who smiles, sits to one side but rarely leaves without making her point. Looking the visiting school inspector she threw in her pennyworth on the LCO row. Why not, she suggested, take away the job of scrutinising LCOs from the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and instead, create a series of committees to scrutinise each LCO as they come up to Westminster?
She was, she said, trying to be "constructive" but had got nowhere with the Secretary of State.
The Deputy First Minister had just upped the Affordable-Housing-LCO-ante by insisting that "there is a precedent being set" and "a wider principle involved" here.
Paul Murphy may at this point be tempted to join in with Max Boyce.
All together now ...
I'm Betsan Powys, BBC Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on 
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Duw, replace the WASC (who are at least mostly Welsh) with a series of ad-hoc committees (lots of English MPs without a clue of Wales, let alone any mandate) full of anonymous back benchers with careers to forge or axes to grind - that sounds like it will smooth the process out - Not.
Mog the mechanic - I remember him well....
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David Melding, now there's a blast from the past. Was at Uni with him in the early 80's when he was active in student politics. He always stuck out from the usual Tory crowd of that time - a valley's boy with an incredibly posh accent and, more importantly, a deeply-ingrained sense of decency that many of them lacked.
Isn't he from the same part of the world as Max? It's about all they have in common.
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On another note, October 21 passes without a mention of Aberfan. If you don't mind, I'll post a link to my blog.
http://homeandotherthoughtsfromabroad.blogspot.com/
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I've always thought of the Tory Party as an alien party, as far as Wales is concerned, as this country is not as class-riven as England. Its by and large the party of the wealthy and well-heeled middle classes.
I don't think many people in Wales are wealthy, on the contrary, we're a pretty poverty-stricken lot.
So, George Osborne hobnobs with multi-millionaires on massive yachts. Blair did too, and I understand that Mandelson is also a close friend of the self-same Rothschild. Wales doesn't have much in the way of top public schools. What an Eton-educated toff, has to offer us, "Duw a wyr". If his antecedents in government are anything to go by, its more unemployment, misery and poverty. We have seen the gap between rich and poor increase under both Tories and New Labour, and during the recession its going to widen, particularly in Wales.
One of Alex Salmond's first acts as First Minister was to abolish tolls on Scotland's major bridges. Is our Assembly is a position to remove the tolls on the Severn crossings, on the only motorway ever built in Wales? The toll is a huge disincentive for businesses to invest here. Its one of the reasons we need an effective Welsh government, which the unionist parties will do their darndest to deny us.
Cheryl Gillan is MP for Amersham, one of the most prosperous areas in the Home Counties, where there has been massive investment in industrial and business development. We don't need lessons from her on how to run our country, any more than we needed a John Redwood.
As for IWJ. What more can be said. He states the obvious, ... a precedent is being set'. But what are you going to do about it, Ieuan? You're propping up a neo-tory party which has done your country down to the best of its ability. They might take Plaid down with them when they sink. It has to be presened as a positive alternative to the failed unionist politics of the last hundred years.
We're not hearing that. What are you going to do to make Wales a better place for us to live in? You can't do that by getting into bed with them, and having to keep silent. They're going to renege on the only promise in the agreement that mattered to Plaid. Hoping that people are going to vote Plaid at the end of the four years, simply because Labour has failed them, badly, isn't going to work. You may be sleep-walking into an electoral disaster in 2012.
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You almost feel sorry for Paul Murphy...almost!
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