Back to the Future
Today, I am reliably informed, is a red-letter day.
Yes, the Assembly Government has published its radical blueprint for the future of the Welsh economy, the Economic Renewal Programme. But as 80s film buffs will know - no, not me but I know a man who is - when Marty McFly and co fire up the DeLorean time machine at the end of 1985's Back To The Future, the date that's typed in is 25 years into the future.
Yes, it's today.
Now I don't know what you were doing in 1985 but it's fair to say that 2010 probably seemed a very, very long way into the future. Personally I'd just been told I'd be spending the rest of 1985 and most of 1986 in Austria, teaching English in a school near Vienna. They picked up my Welsh accent; I came home with their Viennese twang. The Welsh economy wasn't on my radar. But one thing we do know now is that back in 1985, those who were looking saw the beginnings of an economic strategy for Wales based on dangling huge grants in front of companies to locate themselves here.
Today's the day that this approach was finally buried - and a lot more besides.
There was little rewriting of history from the Minister for the Economy and Deputy First Minister, Ieuan Wyn Jones. He accepted that the performance of the Welsh economy "has not met expectations" over the past decades - hard to do anything else, given the largely stagnant GVA per head figures compared with the rest of the UK.
There was an interesting and carefully co-ordinated intervention from one of his predecessors though. Andrew Davies took to the airwaves this morning to denounce senior civil servants, who, he said, had frustrated his attempts to push through similar plans while he was in office. Perhaps he wishes he had his own DeLorean to go back and have his time again but as Mr Jones was left in no doubt from the questions at this morning's launch of the ERP - you only get one shot at this.
So what happens now?
Huge restructuring within the Department for the Economy for starters (and they know better than most that 'restructuring' means jobs in the firing line), an end to that grants culture, a focus on six key sectors in terms of attracting investment, get rid of the myriad of business support schemes, concentrate spending on infrastructure projects like next generation broadband, transport and so on.
As the film ends and the time machine prepares to fly into the future (to today), the final line is given to Doc Brown - "Where we're going, we don't need...roads".
Turns out we most certainly do. But with capital budgets about to take a serious hit over the next few years, the question is whether there'll be any money left to build them. If we could only invest in time travel...
As a footnote, I'm told there was a nice moment at the launch this morning at the Panasonic factory in Cardiff, which was the first of the big Japanese investments to come to Wales. Environment Minister Jane Davidson said she was particularly delighted to address the event, since her summer holiday job in 1976 was working on the first televisions to roll off the production line at the site.
Back to the Future indeed.
I'm Betsan Powys, BBC Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~21~RS~)
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Never mind back to the future will we stay abreast of current developments that have no past precedent?
Suddenly convention has been thrown aside to secure the future of the Westminster coalition.
Nick Clegg wants a two thirds majority in order to dissolve Parliament instead of the proposed 55%
Will the referendum for more powers also require the same two thirds majority to change the status quo in order to secure a stable economic future for Wales and do away with .."the largely stagnant GVA per head figures compared with the rest of the UK."
Looks like giving up the summer holiday job was our loss and their gain!
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Oh dear - so now we are loosing Business grants so we can invest in infrastructure.
We've been given many millions of EU money to spend on infrastructure in the last 13 years - not much to show for it.
If the Assembly is keen to improve the largely stagnant GVA per head figures - I wonder whether they will look carefully and revise the constraints, costs, rules and regulations they have imposed (and are planning to impose) on Welsh Business, probably not.
Betsan you say "little rewriting of history" I predict the future will be the same as the past.
There will be no encouragement for wealth generating private ventures, all effort and available funds will be directed to protecting and where possible expanding our bloated inefficient Public services.
After all the Socialist mood music since the General Election is that to save the Country there must be more spending on the Public Services - Who must at all cost be protected to prevent a collapse into a catastrophic second recession.
So
Quangos will spring up all over the place with highly paid Officers unanswerable to anyone.
Demands will be made on Local Government to reorganise, get expensive Consultants advice, report back (bilingually of course) to a new raft of Civil Servants taken on in Cardiff and all round Wales to deal with making the massive cuts needed.
Can you envisage the Job Adverts, the job titles, and salaries offered.
Who knows the demand may be so great that the need to be fluent in Welsh may be temporarily ignored, providing the candidates agree to learn Welsh during working hours of course.
But infrastructure projects will not, as a first priority, be designed to serve the people of Wales, and our struggling business's, for a Socialist that approach is unthinkable.
There are far more important things to put effort and money into, Organisation and central controll is the thing, so Offices will be needed for the new Inspectors and Data Collectors needed to police and control the predicted burgeoning growth in Welsh Business - but no doubt some visionary projects like Ieuan Air will no doubt be smiled on and encouraged.
If you ask Businessman or in fact any Welshman with common sense - What do we need;
They will probably suggest things like - A north South Rail Link, dueling and debottlenecking the A483, a new Access road to Cardiff Airport, the Newport Bypass, dualling of the A40 & A477. I'm sure mid and North Wales have their own list.
Its pretty obvious we need investment on infrastructure - we need to remove unnecessary regulations from business, we need to help Wales earn its keep.
We've certainly not been starved of funds, there has been enough money to do most of this work over the last 10 years, but it has been spent on other things.
I'm not holding my breath - this is not really the priority agenda for our Culture Vultures down at the Bay of Plenty is it.
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Extreme pedantry, but Doc Brown goes to 2015.
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Quangoes bloomed most during the last period of Tory rule, where, failing to win seats and indeed losing them in Wales, tory faithful packed the boards of quangos.
The Assembly and the Welsh government have lacked the tools to do the job, the lack of full match funding for European money didn't help either. But have to agree a lot of European money was wasted. Building a broadband backbone would have helped as would some strategic transport infrastructure investment. But most of all I think not investing in the non university HE sector was a major error.
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Back to the Future was Ocotber 2015, nice to see the BBC is keeping to it usual reliable sources of twitter and the bloke down the pub. If you cant be bothered to check that the opening paragraphs of your story are accurate then why bother writing at all?
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