Going live…
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
Yes, Peter Black’s web log is not always wrong. Peter is quite right that I am launching a blog and here it is. I hope, in this blog, to provide some views on contemporary Welsh issues and also to range more widely and freely over other issues.
This morning, coincidentally, I am going on TV with Peter to review the newspapers this morning. The issues we have been asked to look at include the possibility of a rainbow alliance. This has been featured recently on both Peter’s web and also Glyn Davies’. I first raised the issue in a lecture to the Welsh Politics Centre as long ago as the St David’s Day Lecture in 2005. My view hasn’t wavered that for Welsh politics to thrive and proper there has got to be some alternative in the short term to a Welsh Assembly dominated by Labour – a rainbow alliance of the three present opposition parties, perhaps with independent input, is the best prospect of doing this. On the TV we are also looking at the issue of Salman Rushdie’s views on the wearing of the veil. Predictably I suppose he is very much against the veil. My own view on such a sensitive issue where religion is concerned that any discussions are best had between politicians and religious leaders or between different religious leaders. It is very hard for people of one religion to pontificate about the features of other religions, and I don’t intend to do so. We will also, of course, be looking at ‘Scrabblegate’ poor hapless Alun’s Christmas card. It is not, of course, an issue about the Christmas cards themselves but the seeking of expensive legal advice as to whether Scrabble’s permission was necessary to use Scrabble on the front of the Christmas card. I could have told Alun that for free that of course it is necessary but the irony of course was that Scrabble was willing to let him use the board game for nothing. Why wouldn’t they? Another irony is that we now find out that the board game’s Welsh version had sold out before Alun’s Christmas cards were falling on the doormats of the great and good around Wales. We are also looking at the issue of obesity throughout Europe. In fact the obesity statistics show that Britain has the most serious obesity problems in Europe, and Switzerland is the least obese nation in Europe. It doesn’t seem to be an issue that is governed by geography and the diet that might be associated with a region of Europe. The Czech Republic is on the right side of the average line, whereas Slovakia, the other half of the old Czechoslovakia, next only to the UK in having obese adults. I feel sure, however, that diet must be a part of this and that is why the work of people like Jamie Oliver is heroic and to be welcomed. I think the last issue we are looking at on the programme is the Conservative conference and the impact of David Cameron. You won’t be surprised at my view that this has been wholly benign and that the conference that we had at Bournemouth was the best for a long, long time. Many political opponents would, of course, privately agree, and one or two of the more courageous ones will agree with it publicly too.
