Tied up with string
The brown paper package containing the Welsh Language LCO, if you remember (and I have a funny feeling you will) was last seen sitting on the Secretary of State's desk. Paul Murphy told Assembly Members it had been scrutinised by Whitehall departments. Officials here echoed that with private relief that Whitehall departments had all given the LCO the OK.
We'd even heard a whispered date of publication: January 26.
But it looks as though the new year has brought with it new - and fundamental - problems with the LCO which, according to a document that arrived in another brown paper package this morning, "makes the January 26 deadline look increasingly difficult to achieve".
Why?
More tomorrow morning when we've had time to scrutinise the contents of the package properly but let's whet your appetite with this: conjure up an image of Ministers of the Crown facing "criminal sanctions" for non-compliance on issues surrounding the Welsh language. Add a few extra issues that "remain alive to the Secretary of State" and remain "to be resolved at the political level".
And you'll see why January 26 looks so difficult achieve and the LCO looks tied up with red string ... or should that be red boxes?
I'm off for a curry.
I'm Betsan Powys, BBC Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on 
© MMX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~13~RS~)
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This is going to be way down the batting order, now the Heathrow 3rd Runway decision is slipping... The Welsh Language LCO is, one feels, going to be occupying considerably less Cabinet time and effort than squaring the circle of Hilary Benn's environmental brief and Peter Mandelson's Business friendly approach to government.
By which time a few more companies will have gone belly up, and the priority of this will drop down the batting order quicker than KP's captaincy...
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It only goes to show what a pathetic institution Labour has created. What on earth are PC doing supporting such a bunch?
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Officials in the assembly government.. " point to the court service's introduction of the Libra system for issuing court summonses which was introduced with no provision to issue bilingual summonses."
Just about sums up what it is for Welsh-speaking people to live under the heel of an English Parliament and Government. These English politicians and civil servants have only contempt for our Language and People.
We have to put up with the likes of Paul Murphy, Peter Hain, John Redwood etc, who have not a word of Welsh in their heads. Let's hope that this miserable failure of a party is consigned to the trash heap of history at the next general election. Its not fit for purpose. The last decade has shown that its totally lost its purpose and forgotten its roots. It exists in a moral vacuum of total self-interest.
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Message 1....
The 3rd runway is decided upon, it's to go ahead.
Will that bring up the LCO in the running order...maybe. More than liley not, hopefully.
But as it has been pointed out by Murphy, and even more in Westminster see the dangers concerning the potential demand for 'fines' on government departments if they do not USE Cymareg under certain circumstances, then I see it finishing up propping up a wobbly leg on a desk in some obscure office in the dungeons of The Palace of Westminster.
There it will actually have some use, and save a far more valuable beer mat, to boot.
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