Nick Bourne AM

Today Labour and Tony Blair face the prospect of losing a vote in the House of Commons on the call for an inquiry into the Iraq war. I spoke to Cheryl and trooper that she is she is getting ready to go to Westminster to vote even though she has only just come out of hospital. She will be going through the lobby in a wheelchair.

I, along with other AMs I suspect, am receiving a constant supply of e mails from the Kazakhstan authorities keen to create a positive favourable impression of their country. They are seeking to counter the satirical digs from Baron Cohen’s Kazakhstan journalist character Borat Sagdiyev in his nylon suits and with his trademark toothy grin.
 

The hot news from Kazakhstan today is that the Silk Route is to be re-opened and that Khazakhstan’s Prime Minister, Daniyal Akhmetov has provisionally called the link

–wait for it—

The Europe-Saint Petersburg-Moscow–Kazan–Orenburg–Kyzylorda–Shymkent–Khorgos route.

He was no doubt being pressed by cabinet colleagues to go for something longer and less pithy but probably felt that the tourist possibilities dictated something crisp and evocative of the Silk Route. Good call!!  I do salute the Khazaks though in trying to turn the Borat satirical forays to their own advantage!

The Institute of Welsh Politics and the Jean Monnet Centre for European Studies hosted a reception and a lecture yesterday in the International Politics department at Aberystwyth. 

Professor Michael Keating of Aberden and Florence spoke on ‘Europe and the Nationalities Question’. He was cogent on shared sovereignty and entertained the audience with an erudite exposition of the development of the EU.

During the reception I met somebody from Veritas, one of Kilroy-Silk’s vehicles for advancing his ambitions. Not sure what the tanned one would make of his attendance. Is he still in Veritas? He seems to have resigned from a lot of parties — Labour - UKIP and now Veritas! I hope it is some other party’s turn to host him for a few weeks next…  

Today the Home Office has announced that it is to pay one hundred thousand pounds towards the cost of Dyfed-Powys’ expenditure on the abortive police merger that was to be imposed on it and the other police forces by the Home Office.

 
This will still short-change the police force by over one hundred thousand pounds which will, of course, be passed on to  Welsh taxpayers.

I consistently opposed this merger but feel that the wasted costs of preparing for the merger should be borne by the Home Office.

 
Why should the hard pressed taxpayers of Wales pay for this?

Today at the Clubs Conference I am part of a Q and A panel. Most of the questions are about the smoking ban in public places. I seem to be just about the only one there in favour of a ban!

Representatives of the clubs do quite reasonably say that publication of the regulations and guidelines on implementation should happen forthwith.

For example what are the planning rules for canopies outside and can customers take their drinks outside of the immediate licensed premises?

Over to Stradey Park — the hotel not the rugby ground — for the Clubs’ Conference.

The Conservative Clubs do fantastic work for the party and the interaction between the clubs and the party has improved massively. I certainly use the clubs in many towns for my constituency surgeries. As well as my own session here I am also doing Cheryl’s as  she is recuperating from her operation. She tells  me her surgeon is called Gibbons– scary!

At the dinner I am sitting next to the redoubtable, Beata Brookes, who is on fine form. She was Chairwoman of the party in the dark days ten years ago when the party was in freefall and she managed to keep the show on the road and always exuded incredible confidence and optimism.

While here I take another look at the Stradey Park ground which is the subject of a called in planning application. The Scarlets are, of course, an institution in Llanelli and their assured future is important but the planning application for houses on the Stradey ground has been called in by the minister. The uncertainty is undesirable but the process must be allowed to take its course.

I am in Llandudno for the Welsh Local Government Association conference. The excellent Max Boyce entertains us after dinner with a rumbustious speech.. I am told that there are far more there for the dinner than for the conference- our councillors know a good thing when they see it!.

At the conference iitself Peter Hain speaks and is provocative about his gatekeeper role under the Government of Wales Act 2006 when he makes it pretty clear that he will not accede to a request for.an Order in Council on PR in local elections. Now there are some valid concerns about such a proposal but if it is asked of Westminster by an administration in Cardiff Bay then it runs counter to assurances he had given earlier not to block proposals on narrow political grounds..

I had already expressed my cioncerns about the instability that could so easily arise from the cobbled compromise contained in the Government of Wales Act and  this re-inforces my worries. Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Lembit Opik and I speak for our respective parties on Deepening Devolution and there are some interesting exchanges and a degree of consensus on the threatened blocking of measures by Peter Hain(driven by party political ends) and of his  seeking to cut back the allowances of regional AMs in the Assembly(get your  tanks of the Assembly lawn and we do not want first and second class assembly members).  
 Dafydd also speculates on his role as PO  if there is electoral stalemate after the 2007 elections.. He says he will  ask  each party in terms of the number of seats. in  turn to seek to form an administration starting with the largest and . ending with John Marek Clearly relations must be improving and he must be anticipating a Marek viictory in Wrexham!

I come away from the conference realising that we  are very well served by the great mass of our councillors and it is sometimes easy to forget this.

It is clear Peter Hain is rattled about the forthcoming Assembly elections – with some justification!  I don’t find going round talking to people that there is a great wave of sympathy for the Labour Party in Wales.  They feel let down by Tony Blair and they feel let down by Rhodri Morgan in Cardiff Bay. 
However, the sort of wild hyperbole and over the top nonsense that the Secretary of State is dishing out is not worthy of him or his office.  His tactics seem to be to try to frighten people into voting Labour by suggesting erroneously that we believe in massive budget cuts for Wales.  Clearly we do not.  The Barnett block is determined by what happens at Westminster not what happens in the Assembly elections.  He is also suggesting that somehow the opposition parties are playing politics with the draft budget in the Assembly.  This is nonsense too.  The Labour Party is in a minority here and had promised to engage in discussions about the budget.  This hasn’t happened.  We have put forward a series of totally reasonable amendments which have been passed by the Assembly requesting more money for example, for the ambulance service, for schools and for public transport.

The administration here has indicated that they will negotiate on these matters with the opposition parties.  That, at least, is responsible government.  
Then, in a very provocative move, the Secretary of State indicates that he may block requests for legislation for any non-Labour administration in Cardiff Bay.  This is clearly fettering his discretion in advance of any requests and is grossly irresponsible and could provoke a constitutional crisis.  Perhaps he will have got John Prescott’s job by then so the problem may not arise! 

Additionally, the Secretary of State mounted another of his partisan and spiteful attacks on regional members in Cardiff Bay.  He never made such attacks when he was promoting Alun Michael’s fight to win a regional seat in Wales.  He is clearly totally out of touch with what is happening in Wales, for example if he believes that regional members do not hold advice surgeries.  They do, and I think he will find, if he actually studies the evidence, that uniformly they are hard working throughout their regions. 

I have yet to receive a shred of evidence from him, although I have requested it, indicating dissatisfaction with regional members or any evidence that they are not doing the job as effectively as they might.  Come on Peter, let’s see the evidence! 
 
 
 

Reading Peter Black’s Blog yesterday about those thousands of blogging Peter Blacks in the United States prompted me to recall that I was well into my twenties before I discovered any Bourne who was not a close relative.  Then by one of those strange coincidences that happen in life.  I met two in the same week.  One of whom worked for Ken Baker MP and the other was a contender candidate for three jobs that were being advertised by a company in central London.  In fact the two of us both succeeded in getting one of the three jobs that were being advertised.  That was Merfyn Bourne, who is now based in Lampeter.  

I am currently reading the best seller that has come out recently ‘The Righteous Men’ by Sam Bourne.  When I borrowed it from the library the staff at Aberystwyth Library were keen to know whether he was a relative or not.  I answered that I didn’t think so, and on checking the blurb in the book it appears that Sam Bourne is actually a nom de plume for a prize winning journalist.  I now find myself scanning the text to see if I can see any prose similarities with the writings of Martin Shipton or Clive Betts or Tom Bodden! 

The Plenary session today is a pretty electric one. 

We have all the opposition forces in today and so we have the opportunity of defeating the Business Statement and we are set to do so when the government is rescued from the brink of defeat by Alun Cairns who presses the wrong button in voting – doing a Brian Gibbons as we call it in the Assembly!  There are then a few jibes as to how he is going to vote on the budget debate and is he going to do the same thing again.  

The budget debate is a pretty charged one.  The Minister sets out her case fluently and quite reasonably although I think is unwise to cut off the possibility of doing anything for hard pressed farmers as there are many on very, very low incomes indeed.  

I have to say that some of the Labour Party contributions are partisan in the extreme and some pretty personal remarks are certainly addressed to Trish Law which I think is unforgivable.  However, this does have the effect of giving Trish a slight edge of anger when she speaks in her contribution and she makes a very effective contribution in the debate and is clearly very much finding her feet and is certainly standing up for the interests of Blaenau Gwent, and after all that is why she was elected by the people of Blaenau Gwent. 

Thanks are due to Alun for voting the right way in the final analysis on the budget and allowing us to defeat the government’s draft budget, and no doubt there will be tough and long negotiations as there were last time, before the final budget is presented to the Assembly before the Christmas recess.  The opposition has various major concerns including ambulance funding, schools’ budgets and money for transport.