Nick Bourne AM

Yesterday was Boss’s Day.  Sandra remembered and I get a card from her.  She has been my PA for ten years and is now much more a friend than employee.  I go into the gang and say that at least one person remembered Boss’s Day.  This seems to fall on stony ground, and comments like “we would only be subsidising the greeting card companies”, and what about ‘Employee’s Day’ and ‘Hard Worked Staff Day’ etc, are the only responses that probably can be reproduced here. 

There has been some talk of ‘Baker Days’ in my constituency dealings recently and it caused me to wonder how many other institutions or articles in the English language owe their provenance to Ministers.  Baker Days are named after Ken Baker, the then Education Minister, Short Money named after Edward Short in the then Labour Government, the Gladstone Bag, the Anderson Shelter (wartime shelters), and Belisha Beacons are others.  I suppose there must be more. 

I remember reading somewhere that Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as he then was before he became a member of the pro-letariat, hoped that the Post Office Tower would be called Big Benn with two n’s.  This was a rather rare display of vanity from a man who is actually extremely pleasant.  I came up against him when I fought the Chesterfield by-election in 1984.  A political baptism of fire if ever there were one!   

Click on the link below to listen to

Nick’s thoughts of the day:

Nick3

If I were Carwyn Jones, Andrew Davies or any other aspirant for the job of Labour Leader I wouldn’t be confident of the First Minister keeping his appointment with destiny and resigning as Leader of the Labour Group in 2009. 

 His track record is not very good. Failure to attend a service in London for injured and murdered Police Officers because he was running late, late for the Queen, and missing a flight to Hong Kong so that his programme had to be rescheduled, and I now learn that on Saturday evening he failed to attend a dinner in Cardiff for the Franco British Friendship Society where he was down as a speaker and proposer of a toast.
 Apparently the guests waited for half an hour before starting the dinner and then assumed the First Minister was running characteristically late, but in fact he didn’t show up at all.
 It is hard to see how his record can get any worse unless, like the Great Gatsby he starts to miss his own parties and functions!
  

Cheryl did her hip in last weekend and like a trooper was carrying on regardless but she has had to have emergency surgery this weekend. It went well.

I took on some of her programme yesterday speaking to the South East Wales Womens conference. There was a wide range of questions including some on the Government of Wales Act and the breakdown between Dafydd Elis-Thomas and John Marek as Presiding Officer and Deputy Presiding Officer.
I was also asked about the possibility of a rainbow alliance and I answered that now all my own AMs had come round to the idea, that it was worth pursuing — we now need to persuade all those in other parties.that it is worthy of effort.

Click on the link below to listen to

Nick’s thoughts of the day:

Nick2

Geoffrey Howe approaching 80 and losing none of his powers of analysis and perception is in Cardiff to deliver the Welsh Centre for International Affairs annual lecture on ‘Re-creating. Britains Foreign Polcy’, Geoffrey first attends a party function in the city centre at the excellent, Officers Mess Club.

 
Signing the visitors’ book I innocently ask why the  Andrew who has signed in doesn’t have a secon name–’:Oh I see that Andrew–Andrew Windsor’. A party member is despatched to get some lava bread from Cardiff market- a compulsory stop off on Lord Howe visits and then over to the Temple of Peace which has no equivalent in Pyongyang more is the pity.

The lecture is penetrating and thought provoking — ‘we should not slavishly follow America — worst foreign policy decision for 50 years’ and so on Memories of the Lady PM giving Reagan a lambasting over Grenada for example are cited as evidence of amore robust partnership.
Geoffrey also shares  recollections of being stopped in Banbury– Weren’t
you the geezer who hit Maggie with  a cricket bat?! It was left to our Chairman for the evening,. Archbishop Barrie Morgan to ask the best question of the evening ‘Should we have an updated Trident?’
 

Answer ‘Possibly not though I may be speaking as an ex Chancellor rather
than an ex Foreign Secretary’

A superb dinner afterwards and Geoffrey and I discuss the Assembly and the
current state of Welsh  politics. Interestingly he and Elspeth are very close friends with Denis and Edna Healey.– despite the dead sheep gag, so he is a forgiving man too.

For a couple of weeks now members have been raising the issue of overcrowding in prisons and the problems that this is causing in Wales, particularly if it is going to mean taking police station cells for housing prisoners.   I raised this two weeks ago and it was raised again this week by Mike German.
The First Minister responded that Edwina Hart would be taking a lead on this and she has now written to Tony McNulty, the Minister for Policing, asking what arrangements are in place in relation to Police Stations in Wales, and asking for confirmation that the cost of this is going to be borne by the Home Office.  The other concern again raised in the letter is the problem with Police Officers being diverted from their normal front-line duties if this is to happen. We will have to see what response is forthcoming to the letter which was sent on 10 October.
Prison overcrowding is a serious issue throughout the country.  Some prisoners shouldn’t be in prison at all and some dangerous ones seem to be in open prisons which is also crazy.
 

Some jokers are now saying after the thoughts of General Sir Richard Dannatt on Iraq  have been articulated that we have a PM who cannot control his Generals and a Deputy PM who cannot control his privates!

So Peter Hain has been speaking out on the Scarlet’s move from Stradey Park and clearly there are great dangers in this.  It seems that he spoke out against the advice of his special advisers and no doubt they were influenced in giving advice by the danger of any interference in the planning process.  This throw the whole thing open to judicial review which would slow things down and that is certainly not in the Scarlet’s interests at all.  As an Assembly Member for the area I supported the call in of the planning application, and Carwyn Jones has indeed called it in.  The position of Peter Hain must be seriously in question I think. First he doesn’t represent the area, secondly this is a devolved issue, but most importantly as one of the most senior politicians in Wales as Secretary of State speaking out as he has done, particularly against advice, must surely lead to the inference that this is exerting undue pressure in relation to the planning decision, and this is clearly a matter for serious concern.  

In the Chamber there are Finance questions and I have one to Sue Essex about her budget priorities.  This is a difficult question at the moment now that we are in discussions and so the exchange goes something like this.  “I know you can’t really answer this but I wonder if your budget priorities include spending on the ambulance service” and the answer, “Well no I can’t really answer that question but of course I recognise that that is an important priority”.  I think we had similar exchanges in last year’s budget round!  

David Melding, Jonathan and I are off to a Welsh Conservative Dinner at which Ken Clarke is guest of honour.  We bump into Huw Edwards on the way there.  Huw is the former MP for Monmouth and always affable and pleasant.  He is now doing some training for officials on the Government of Wales Act – I believe his background is in training.

Ken tells me his work on the Democracy Taskforce, which is advising David Cameron, is proceeding well.  It is clear that devolution is very much part of the landscape in his view. He will, of course, be looking at the West Lothian question, or the Clwyd West question as it is from a Welsh perspective.  He is very happy with the direction of travel under David Cameron’s leadership.  “Obviously lost to the right man” is his comment. He is pretty scathing about the Government’s handling of the Middle East situation and public services, and pressed on the Labour Leadership says he is hoping for a dream ticket of John Prescott and Claire Short.  Now that would be good!