Going on a spree
You've heard of a spending spree.
You've heard more than enough about a spending squeeze.
Well here's a 'spree exercise' - one we'd heard nothing about and one that's going to hurt.
This morning the First Minister revealed that for the past two years the Assembly Government has been conducting what he called a "Spree Exercise", a two year internal evaluation scheme of public sector projects. How do you spell that, mouthed one reporter? Forget how you spell it. What is it?
Mr Morgan mentioned this particular SpREE - Spending Review and Evaluation Exercise -in response to a question about how the government intends to cope with its most difficult budget round ever.
Along the way a number of "low priority" projects have been indentified which could be cut in response to the "very difficult" budgetary situation.
He talked about traffic lights, about using red, amber and green as a way of identifying which projects had been delivering, which hadn't; which were safe and which are operating under the glare of a red light that says their money is about to stop.
Would chopping the budgets of these public sector projects lead to job losses? There would, said Mr Morgan, inevitably be a "drop-off" in the number of public sector jobs in Wales, although this would in part be offset by the increase in people working for the Department for Work and Pensions dealing with the impact of the recession. Welcome to downturn swings and roundabouts.
Which projects are under threat? He wouldn't be drawn. That will be up to the Finance Minister's job when the draft budget is published this autumn.
The First MInister's not talked about this process before in his briefings but the government refer us to this statement made some years ago.
It's fair to say it was news to Nick Bourne too. The official opposition - or the "government in waiting" as he's taken to describing the Conservative group - say it's the first time he's heard it discussed like this. Mr Bourne has, as he admits himself, been asking Mr Morgan with "what some might call monotonous regularity" about the spending programme and possible cuts to come.
Still. Now we know. So just who is working for public sector programmes that are, as the First Minister puts it, "nice to have but not things you need to have?"
I'm Betsan Powys, BBC Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on 
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Do you need it/them, resources and staff ?
Could the electorate manage without it, projects and services ?
Two questions begging answers from Westminster and Cardiff Bay.
If I were King Morgan, I would be demanding a 20% cut in every budget, unlike John Redwood I would not send the money saved back to Westminster, I would offer it to every department but demand a cost-benefit report that could be published for the electorate to approve, or otherwise.
Times are hard, but not so hard that people are starving, we want value for money, value for every penny spent; is there a politician in Cardiff Bay with the necessary to demand it.
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Betsan....
I can only ask one straight question with a mannerism....OH! yeah, and we are supposed to believe that load of tripe are we?
Two years with not a word into the public ear hole, of revising the less than important quangos, who does he think he is kidding?
The Welsh may be treated like sub normals most of the time, but we ain't, and those who still try to slip one over on us had better come to terms with the notion we are not as stupid as is often made out.
The plain and simple truth is.. the Assembly have been told to cut out the prestige and sectarian projects, or suffer the consequences of much reduced funding.
Not before time.
Hopefully the rest of it will soon be a thing of the past, and the saved funding utilised for far more necessary usage.
BTW....
I haven't seen any new comments about the massive amount is has cost to 'study' the costs involved in Welsh embassies etc. Some £185.000 so the BBC reports. The consultancy firms really are coining it at our expense.
All in, it comes to something like a million quid, most of which has been spent on first class travel, which our magnificent leader knew nothing about, that is until it was dragged into the open in front of him.
Answer,.... no Assembly, no cost involvements.
We did not all come up with the daisies Betsy, many have their ear to business, especially when its 'funny business', the usual sort of stuff emanating from the Bay of Pigs.
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If you dont need to have it why have the "mickey mouse" politicians in Bay been spending public money on it??. As Boris Johnson stated in Daily Telegraph the cuts should fall on all the "non-jobs" that appear in their hundreds every week in Guardian,rather than infrastructure and proper investment to produce return. Things must be really,really bad if king Rhodri is going to axe his "voters" on the public payroll.
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This "SpREE" Exercise will of course include the scrapping of the appalling, wasteful, unnecessary Quango known as the "Welsh Language Board"...
Or is causing language division in Wales deemed an 'essential' project ?
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Didn't take long for the anti Welsh language fanatics to resort to their monomania, can you for once desist and talk about something else?
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message 5....
Didn't take long for Lyn to come up with his load of codswallop.
There are four messages before his, none of which mentioned the language as such.
#4 mentioned the LWB, but that is NOT the language.
Persecution complex LYN?
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#5 Lyn_Thomas when you write .....
Didn't take long for the anti Welsh language fanatics to resort to their monomania, can you for once desist and talk about something else?
..... you demonstrate an uncanny tendency towards literary nonsense, I think we might award you the Edward Lear award for September.
Canada successfully applied a 20% cut across public spending, we should do the same immediately, as I wrote earlier "we want value for money, value for every penny spent", it's not happening and the Plaid Labour coalition are in the driving seat.
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