Tag Archives: rhodri morgan

Would you blow £10 million of public money on the basis of a wee chat?

£50 notes side viewI think sometimes we might make too much of our claims that we’ve been cleaning up Labour’s economic mess for the last four years. It’s true they didn’t fix the roof when the sun shone, but there was this global recession thingy that, frankly, I didn’t mind them spending a fortune to bail us out of.

But they don’t help their reputation for financial incompetence. We know that they left the City of Edinburgh Council brassic with not much in the reserves . Now, it transpires, Rhodri Morgan, when …

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Kirsty Williams writes: Slow progress in Wales

We are six weeks from the elections and the Scottish Government and Northern Ireland Government getting on with the job they were elected to do – governing and legislating. The Scottish Government is demanding more fiscal powers and they are rocking the constitutional boat. Whether you agree with the SNPs policies or not, they are doing something. The story in Wales is different.

The first major government announcement in Wales came on Tuesday when the First Minister rose to his feet to outline his Welsh equivalent of the Queen Speech. This should have been a momentous occasion since the people …

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Y Barcud Oren #12

To Wales, then, where it’s goodbye from him, and it’s au revoir from him …

And So, With Tears In Either Eye

In fairness to him, Rhodri Morgan pretty much kept to his end of the bargain in announcing that he would stand down as First Minister after the Assembly budget was agreed on December 8th (but since the promise was that he’d announce his intentions on or around September 29th, his end of the bargain wasn’t that hard to keep up). The inevitable political and journalistic encomium followed and you can’t begrudge it him; whatever his political failings, his personal popularity is unmatched in recent memory.

With the flag dropped, Larry, Moe and Curly were soon off and running to succeed him (not that they hadn’t been before, unofficially).

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Y Barcud Oren #11

Can it really be party conference season already? In Wales it can, as Plaid pop off to Llandudno this weekend where no-one will notice them (so what’s new…) In any case, what self-respecting journalist is going to waste their time on things that are actually happening when there’s good speculatin’ to be had?

Leaving On A Rhoose Plane

The target of said speculation is of course Rhodri Morgan, whose stated retirement date (his 70th birthday) is now just over two weeks away. With departure supposedly imminent, the pretenders to the throne have crept back into the shadows to avoid the appearance of giving an extra shove on the way off the precipice (Jon Cruddas’ trip to Wales to essentially endorse Huw Lewis as the “properly lefty” candidate notwithstanding.)

Mind you, Rhodri couldn’t have done a better job fuelling the speculation if he’d tried.

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Y Barcud Oren #5

And now on ITV 17, “Welsh Labour Politicians Say The Stupidest Things”…

Excuse Me While I Hate Myself

Our first clip comes courtesy of Rhys Williams, the Labour PPC for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. A strongly Welsh-speaking area, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr is fairly iconic for Plaid; it’s the successor to Gwynfor Evans’ old seat and is now represented by The Next Leader Of Plaid Cymru™ and The Minister For Smoking In The Eli Jenkins. Equally, having been held by Labour so recently, it’s also often identified as vital for Llafur in re-establishing its Welshness.

Nevertheless, Mr Williams went in all guns blazing in a magazine article, chastising the Welsh-speaking community for using the language as a weapon of exclusion. Not that he has any problem with individual Welsh speakers; that would after all be quite difficult as he is one himself…

In a competitive seat, it would indeed have been electoral suicide, but Plaid were already going to open a big can of electoral whupass on Mr Williams anyway, so for him the greatest consequence will likely be a reminder of his idiocy on BBC Wales’ election night coverage. In any case, no-hoper Llafur candidates saying stupid things quickly took a back seat as the professionals got into the game…

L’Etat, C’est Morgan

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Jenny Randerson lodges official complaint against Rhodri Morgan with, erm, Rhodri Morgan

Jenny Randerson AM, Welsh Lib Dem Assembly Member for Cardiff Central, has today lodged an official complaint against Wales’s First Minister Rhodri Morgan amid concerns he may have broken the Ministerial code when discussing school closures in Cardiff. Her letter of complaint was sent by Jenny to Wales’s First Minister Rhodri Morgan because, as she noted in her letter:

My enquiries have shown that I have no alternative to write to you yourself over this issue as the Ministerial Code does not make provision for how to complain about the First Minister, only Welsh Ministers as a whole. I trust that

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