Nick Bourne AM

It was a big ask, as Wimbledon and Test Match commentators in a different context, have been telling us over what we used to call summer for five new assembly members to become immersed so soon after their election in talks about coalition and accords and so on But they did… They responded brilliantly. The new team is a strong team with excellent new members. 

Angela Burns has that rare ability to get straight to the heart of an issue to cut out all the surrounding minutiae and see the essential big picture. She will prosper as a politician. 

Darren Millar has all the presence and fluency in the chamber of somebody who has been there a long time. 

Paul Davies is able and likeable and using Welsh in the chamber to excellent effect. 

Nick Ramsay has, of course, considerable Assembly experience as a researcher but now has effected the transition to AM very comfortably and is standing up for the interests of Monmouth with cogency and reasonableness. 

Andrew Davies is an effective operator and is already making his mark in the chamber. 

The existing team from the last Assembly certainly needs no write up from me but they continue to score points for our party in debate, in committee and elsewhere. 

We can look forward to success and fun - I know Labour and Plaid will be delighted to see us trying to create more fun given their commitment on page 37 of the One Wales document to do so. 

Labour’s Refusenik Five’s absence from the Deputy First Minister’s inaugural speech and those very lame excuses is a promising start on the Fun front. Irene’s mobile with its cuckoo clock ringing tone going off during questions to Lorraine Barrett also sets a very high standard… In fact we must congratulate Irene on an early strong showing on the fun front with two commendations in the first week. 

The gauntlet has been thrown down. We will respond. 

Ieuan’s first speech as Deputy First Minister was a perfectly rounded piece of work. There will surely be a honeymoon period for the Lab Plaid government. However, the seeds of future trouble were even then evident five members from the Labour benches were missing from the Chamber for Ieuan’s speech and no doubt alibis have been arranged for all of them but they were the same five who spoke out against a coalition with Plaid — Hub Lewis, Lynne Neagle, Ann Jones, Karen Sinclair and Irene James step forward please. 

The Presiding Officer gently chided me that there was a committee in session but it had in fact already ceased its work. All other members of the committee were in the chamber. No doubt Carl Sergeant as Labour Chief Whip will seek to convince us all that the fact that the absent five were also the Refusenik five is a total coincidence like those chimps who if you leave them long enough - 63 million light years will type up the complete works of Shakespeare with out error. 

The seeds of destruction are already there. 

This has been sent via a blackberry, so please excuse any typo errors! 

I have just started reading the diaries of Downing Street’s answer to Richard Hazlewood — the Campbell Diaries. They are a good read but although I was prepared to see how news management and spin and personality dominated the Blair years even I was surprised at the extent to which that was the case.

 
The questions were how do we deal with the unexploded bomb that is Clare Short, how do we handle the breakdown of the Robin Cook marriage, are Gordon’s team creating trouble and so on, rather than great questions of political principle on the mixed economy or improving public services.

 
 I have also been reading Greg Dyke’s Inside Story (Greg no fan of Tony though he does get on well with William Hague) and I am dipping into Simon Hoggart’s excellent satirical sketches of the Blair years. Already some of this seems a long tome ago and how quickly. The waves engulf although, of course, Rhodri and some of the Labour party invoke Suez and the Abdication Crisis in debates on my party as if they were yesterday!

 
On the fiction front. I am reading Scott Turow not nearly so far fetched!

 
This has been sent via a blackberry, so please excuse any typo errors!

Yesterday as Rick famously said in Casablanca I had some sympathy with the fox. I have never been the defendant in a court case and coming up before four beak on a Standards Rap was in its way intimidating.

 
I am delighted to say that justice was done and the 180 odd complaints were thrown out. I am now apparently in a strong lead in terms of complaints over the second marker, Alun Cairns.  Cairnsie, in fairness, has a greater range covering many different occasions .On his day he is unstoppable!

 
It was very gratifying both before and after the hearing. (Later when news of this was released) to receive loads of goodwill messages many of them from people I had never met agreeing with my attack on the BNP and their messages of hate.
 

This has been sent via a blackberry, so please excuse any typo errors!

I have been very pleased to sponsor a Statement of Opinion on local pubs this week.  In the area I represent – Mid & West Wales, pubs form a vital part of communities and are the hub of much that goes on in villages and small towns.

 
I often stop at pubs in my area for a quick bite of lunch and a chat with locals and the Landlord or Landlady when I am doing constituency business. It is a chance to discuss local issues as well as support for this key part of our Welsh community life.

 
So to the Landlords and Landladies of Wales, I say Cheers.

I have just been reading Iain Dale’s excellent Blog – no better source of contemporary news on the Party than here.  I wholeheartedly endorse what Iain says about taskforce reports.  These are policy suggestions for discussion and are not Conservative Party policy.  Clearly there is much to commend some of the ideas in the Social Justice Taskforce report headed by Iain Duncan Smith, but that doesn’t mean that these are Conservative policy.  They will be discussed at length within the Party before any decision is made on their content.  This would certainly apply to any proposals concerning taxation, for example.

 
There are existing taskforce reports which we in Wales will be looking at, as there is a Welsh taskforce chaired by Cheryl Gillan which will look at how these policy ideas will impact on Wales.  One such is the taskforce report headed by Michael Heseltine which, for example, recommends elected Mayors for cities and communities in  Britain.  The Welsh taskforce will be looking at that and I know that Nick Ramsay, our Local Government Spokesman, is also considering its impact, as are Council Leaders, Councillors and Party activists up and down the country. 

 
It is important in opposition that parties renew themselves and this process of studying detailed suggestions on policy is, I think, a very necessary part of that process and much to be welcomed.

So the Red and Green Synthesis document (RAGS) is approved.  Some thoughts on that. 

 
All appears surface calm with Labour passing the One Wales document at their meeting on Friday night, but beneath the surface I suspect everything is far less serene.  The union vote, predictably, was massively in favour but then we all remember the Alun Michael episode on that one! The constituency vote was clearly far closer and many people seemed to be approving the deal through clenched teeth.  The Labour Party did what they had to do. 

 
Certainly Plaid Cymru seemed happier at their meeting in Pontrhydfendigaid on Saturday.  They only had one document to consider, however, and the position may have been very different had the ‘rags’ and the ‘rainbow’ documents both been up for discussion.
I know Plaid Cymru was concerned about the stability of the Liberal Democrats in any coalition, and certainly the Liberal Democrats have appeared faltering and uncertain at key moments, but at the same time it has to be remembered that there was a document, the All Wales Accord, that was agreed by three party groups and their Leaders which could have put Plaid at the head of the government, and when it came to it Plaid didn’t walk up to the plate.

 
I have read the One Wales document and there is much in it that I disagree with, although clearly there are policies there that I like, not least our own policy of council tax discounts for pensioners which has found its way in there somehow. 
I am intrigued by a policy on page 37 of the document where the two parties commit themselves to  creating ‘more fun’.  I have visions of Jane Davidson, Helen Mary Jones and Carl Sergeant in Plenary session with pig’s bladders on the end of sticks, compulsory fun becoming part of the national curriculum and Fun Checks by the Fun Police at the Severn Bridge.  What can they mean by this commitment to create more fun.  Why haven’t they promised better weather as well – this is a subject sadly neglected in the ‘rags’ document.

 
Key to the document appears to be the section on the referendum which is woolly and vague.  It remains unclear what would happen if there were a resolution in the  Assembly for a referendum, and this then passed up to Westminster.  The Westminster parties are not privy to this deal and there would be no obligation to grant the referendum, indeed, there appears to be a let out clause in the document itself that states – the need to assess the levels of support for full law making powers necessary to trigger the referendum.

 
Interesting times clearly lie ahead!

I have just heard the alarming news that Rhodri has been kept in hospital over night. May I wish him a full and speedy recovery. 

The Group was in Brussels this weekend for a very useful series of meetings with MEPs and members of Commission staff on issues as wide ranging as agriculture, higher education, convergence funding and local government concerns. We reduced our carbon footprint by taking the train and Brynle reduced his footprint by refusing to climb the mount at Waterloo.  He and Jonathan Morgan were also disciplined by the Chief Whip for drinking in Bonaparte’s Bar.  William, in fact, frog marched them off for an ice cream in the Wellington Café which was straight opposite.   It has all gone down in William’s little black book I have no doubt.

 
I always come back from Europe realising how vital the link with Brussels is, determined that we should make more of it.  In fact it is a lesson the whole Assembly needs to learn.  We ignore the European dimension at our peril.  

As well as weekend surgeries, I have a visit to the Wyeside in Builth Wells.
The Wyeside is a superb institution offering arts, including a cinema, to the people of Builth and Mid Wales.  It is having a funding problem at the moment having cleared a massive overdraft and refurbished the centre.  It also, of course, has a problem with insurance being right next to the River Wye (hence the name!).  I promised to do what I can by raising the issue again with Powys County Council and the Arts Council for Wales. 

 
In the evening I attend a social function in Boughrood.  It is a beautiful evening and the function is held by the side of the river.  It is a good attendance.  Glyn is also there and it is a good opportunity for a chance to talk about the situation in the Bay and to get the perspective of somebody who’s very much been an insider but now perhaps has the perspective of looking at it from outside. Glyn, of course, is soon to come up in the primary in Montgomeryshire – a Glyn Davies/Lembit Opik tussle for Montgomeryshire will be fascinating given the present political situation. 

 
It is interesting how much the situation in the Assembly has galvanised activists in the Party throughout Wales.  It is a long time since there has been a massive anti Assembly feeling in the Party in Wales, and the prospect of actually sharing in government and being a part of trying to put things right in Wales and doing important things for our nation certainly makes a difference.  People are even talking about the government in Cardiff.  We wouldn’t have heard it referred to in that way in the Party until recently!