Author Archives: Gareth Aubrey

Forever delayed but back at last in the wake of the most important Wednesday of the Welsh political year (and I’m not referring to Lembit’s council tax summons…)

Here’s Your Starter For Spring, All Conferring

The Assembly has of course been off on recess, which gave everyone time to get through the rest of spring conference season. Having survived Tory attempts to Welshify themselves at a cricket ground and Plaid’s efforts to cast off the cottage burning we were first to the plate in the second half.

The result was record turnout for a Welsh Lib Dem conference, a jam-packed policy agenda, a great Q&A session with both our leaders and a typically firebrand keynote speech from the leader herself. The press coverage was similarly upbeat and there’s plenty of reaction from the blogosphere to get your teeth into here, here, here, and here.

But one thing that sticks uppermost in my mind is that I spent a goodly chunk of Saturday night in the bar talking to the executive member for education – in Blaenau Gwent. So don’t tell me we haven’t grown and don’t matter outside Mid Wales and the cities…

And then it was Labour’s turn, closing things off in Swansea with not so much a conference as a leaving do in the staff canteen. With Rhodri heading towards voluntary retirement and Labour generally hurtling towards involuntary booting out on their arses, they had little option but to mutter, mutter against the dying of the light. Paul Murphy did his best “You’re Welsh, You’ll Vote Labour” routine, but the BBC’s sermon metaphor rather hit the nail on the head of that one.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Get Out Of The Cock-Up

It may be late (I blame the author’s man flu, but then I would…) but it’s a bumper Barcud this week as the end-of-term mood added an extra air of lunacy to proceedings.

I’m In Plaid, Get Me Out Of Here

Every writer submitting items for delayed publication risks being overtaken by events. Nevertheless, when I e-mailed off the last Barcud I had little fear that the sordid question of top-up fees would have developed further by the time it appeared on Lib Dem Voice barely 48 hours later. After all, there was no mention of it in the Assembly business for that week, and it would have taken a pretty pathetic and utterly disgraceful flouting of parliamentary decency for the government to schedule an announcement on such an important topic at the last minute…

Never ones to cock things up by halves, Plaid soon got to work on the really heavy-duty stupidity. Among the documents to appear in the public domain in the aftermath of the announcement was a letter from 17 year-old Plaid member Arianwen Caiach-Taylor, attacking the party for caring more about Ieuan Wyn’ Jones vehicular buttock comfort than the needs of students. John Dixon (yes, the self-same party chairman who’d gotten so much airtime representing the opposition to top-up fees among the grassroots), decided that the only measured response was to expel her from the party altogether, with the classic semantic caveat that he considered her letter to be tantamount to resignation (proving, as much as anything, that he hadn’t read it…). Still, at least she was spared the ignominy of then having to go to Plaid’s spring conference, held at a university (and not just any university, but the one in my ward…)

Meanwhile, Plaid’s fictitious wing were busily reinforcing their position as hypocrites-in-chief, railing against cuts in further education funding at a rally outside the Senedd. As this Welsh Lib Dem video so ably demonstrates, however, that railing would have been a little more meaningful if the members in question hadn’t voted for the budget that made them…

Let no man say, however, that Labour or Plaid are to be found wanting in their brazenness; no sooner had that video appeared than one of the members involved was asking for the unedited footage so they could put their speech on their website. I don’t suppose the actual response was of the nature of that given to the plaintiff in Arkell vs. Pressdram, but still…

I’m A Stupidly Named Website And So’s My Wife

One of the less publicised features of the One Wales Agreement is the incomptence suicide pact, whereby if one coalition partner is making an arse of itself, the other has to do something equally moronic to spread out the damage. In this case, Labour’s contribution was the launch of Aneurin Glyndwr, a website describing itself as the new digital voice of Labour supporters in Wales.

Appallingly, almost criminally badly written attack blogs are ten a penny, but Aneurin Glyndwr is a different kettle of fish. For starters, it opens with explicit endorsements from Peter Hain MP, Eluned Morgan MEP and Alun Davies AM; indeed, Hain described it as an “Obama moment”. Other commentators were less charitable, and rather more accurate;

• Labour’s John Redwood moment
• A Howard Dean moment
• The internet equivalent of watching your dad dance at a disco
• Like a monkey saw a blog and tried to draw it with a crayon

But rather more unfortunately, Aneurin Glyndwr thinks it’s funny.