Nick Bourne AM

For the first time for a long time we gather for our annual UK conference truly prepared for government. Whilst the clear, appropriate and necessary message will be to beware of complacency- hear hear to that! - A massive amount of work has gone on to meet the challenges that will face us in our country after the next election..

 We have changed massively as a Party and in pledging to address the problems of a broken society we will be seeking to address the systemic poverty which exists in so many of our communities and not least in our own nation. It remains a scandal that the only escape from poverty in some of our towns is seen as the A470 to Cardiff or the A55 out of Wales.

We in the Welsh Conservatives are putting policies together to strengthen our communities, to protect local schools, to save the Post Office and to enhance local health care. We are consulting widely with communities on achieving these aims…

 The current economic crisis means George Osborne and David Cameron are totally right to rule out up front tax cuts, the country cannot afford them.

 In Wales we will support a smarter approach of ensuring money goes to the needy and providing for the availability of new drugs as they become available, not the current heartless and capricious lottery.

 In short I believe that the Party at UK level is presenting a united one nation programme that will serve our people well.

 This is the time for change. 

Well I can now speak with some authority as to how excellent the Croatian Health Service is having been rushed to Zadar Hospital this morning. 

The Dalmatian coast is noticeably warmer than the Plitvice National Park, though that was considerably higher. En route by coach to Zadar it is striking that many cafe halts specialise in stuffed animals - bears et al - to greet hungry visitors. It tended to cure my hunger.

 The Croatian infrastructure is rather good and Zadar has certainly bounced back with a vengeance from the independence war years and the time in the 90s when it was cut off from Zagreb for 14 months.

 It is a prosperous town which is clearly heavily reliant on the tourist trade (much of it local) and the manufacture of the cherry liqueur Maraschino - the local producers Maraska are all over the area.

 Today we climbed the campanile of the Cathedral for a superb view of the area including the surrounding islands.

 On the islands linked by frequent ferry from the mainland even developed tourism seems a long way away sitting in the sun with a glass of Karlovacko beer and a good book( Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday ) as the sea laps soothingly on the shore. 

Zagreb is practically devoid of tourists, but I cannot understand why. A massive restoration programme seems to be underway in the upper town where the buildings are reminiscent of Prague or Bratislava.
  
St. Mark’s church in the same square as the Parliament building, the magnificent twin spired cathedral and the Mimara museum are all well worth a visit.

 
The Mimara museum is an extremely impressive and vast collection of art and icons  and porcelain, glass, statuary and carpets from around the world donated by Ante Topic Mimara to his home city doing for Zagreb what Burrell did for Glasgow. Born in the nineteenth century he died as recently as 1987.  Amazingly nobody  else was in the entire museum which made the visit like a private view but it  was really a shame that such a collection which included a brace of  Canalettos, and works of Degas, Pissarro, Turner. Constable, Renoir and Rubens were not being more widely appreciated.
 On the restaurant front we found that there was a good range of eateries offering local food. The local red wines from Istria are very good as is the local beer.
 In the upper town at dusk a lamplighter still walks the streets lighting the gas lamps. There is a bustling food market in the centre of the town too. This is very much a lived in capital city, from here we travelled the two hours by local bus to the Plitvice National Park a truly superb network of lakes and waterfalls. Within the park we proceeded by bus, boat and mostly on foot and the paths include a great deal of boardwalk blending in with the surroundings and often stretching out across the water. The Park is a UNESCO world heritage site and it also has iconic Croatian significance in the struggle for independence as Croatian children were killed here and the hotel we were staying in had been looted by rebel Serb forces. There are bears in the Park but the closest we got was the stuffed one in the hotel lobby. Our rooms had excellent views of the Park and lakes.
  Both Zagreb and the park come with a strong recommendation for a visit though we certainly noticed that this holiday was more costly than when we all visited Dubrovnik and Southern Croatia two years ago.
 Now we are now on board a bus taking us from Plitvice to Zadar, the Dalmatian capital on the Adriatic coast.
 

Here I am in Zagreb at the end of summer’s leave with a group of friends. This time I admit that I flew overseas although the last time that I was in Zagreb I had travelled here by train with a group of friends that group are still my friends and some are in this group with me today. Then we were on our way back to Blighty after inter-railing as students to Greece, Austria and Hungary. These were countries which were then regarded as rather exotic.

 The train back from Athens took us through the then Yugoslavia and it was a two day journey and yours truly had his turn on Zagreb station to fill half a dozen empty water bottles for the parched aforementioned group. There I stood in T shirt, trainers and shorts with no passport and no money on me just six water bottles as alarmingly  the train pulled out of the station. I might have ended up languishing in some Yugoslav prison or become a Croat national had not the train stopped 200 metres up the track and, with a speed which I had not matched before, nor since, hared up the track and on to the train.

 So I returned to Zagreb today to a very different nation though the station looks the same, grand and imposing, and the station buffet which we have just visited has a very middle European feel straight out of Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train or Third Man.

 The city, which I had not seen before on my earlier brief Olympic training sojourn, is pleasant and dotted with outdoor cafes and the whole city has a slowish leisurely pace. This was the second city of Yugoslavia after Belgrade and has grand buildings (many covered in art nouveau architecture), a commanding Cathedral and onion-domed churches.

 Everywhere there is scaffolding and renovation. You would be excused for assuming that Croatia is already an EU member rather than a candidate country as the EU flag is flying everywhere but it is not yet a member. There is only one show in town and that is membership. 

I have just finished reading ‘A Political Suicide ‘ by Norman Fowler, a man of pretty much unrivalled experience in the Conservative party over the last four decades. 

From a ringside seat, indeed for much of the time he is in the ring itself, he charts the period from the dominance of Margaret Thatcher and meteoric rise of John Major through the wilderness years to the merciful arrival of David Cameron. 

It is a compelling narrative by a perceptive and fair politician who, in different circumstances and possibly in a gentler age, might have made it to the very  top of the greasy pole. 

It is a withering critique of what can happen to political parties when they become out of touch and bang on about issues that the electorate do not want them to bang on about. A particularly chilling event is Bill Cash arguing that the party had not made Europe enough of an election issue in 2001! 

The work concludes with nine political lessons. Just to pick on two- disunited parties lose elections and the Conservative party should stay on the centre ground and avoid propounding policies that only appeal to paid up members. 

Thank goodness lessons seem to have been learnt but this book should be made compulsory reading for Conservative candidates, MPs and AM - and they should also heed its lessons.

I have long thought that if we are to reduce dependency on the car, and this is more easily achievable for longer journeys and for commuter runs as a nation, we have to invest massively in rail.

 Not only do we need to look at investing in new stations and re-opening old ones but we need also to consider new and re-opened lines. Special pleading for Carmarthen to Aberystwyth has long been on my personal agenda.

 A wider range of rail possibilities for travel and also for freight as well as enhanced commuter services (and I don’t just mean for Cardiff) should be on our agenda and indeed are on it.

 Not only is this green but also it will ease congestion and enhance the quality of life. It is also safer, of course. It also frees up time. In fact this blog is being written on a train. 

There are certain defining moments in politics which can be seen as tipping points, admittedly sometimes in retrospect but sometimes even at the moment that the  politico in question puts foot in mouth or in some other way makes a glorious bish of the situation. A point of no return for a politician or a party or both.

 Jim Callaghan did it on returning from some great international do in Guadeloupe with a tan in the winter of discontent when the dead were going unburied and there were mountains of uncollected litter in the streets and the rest of us were white as sheets. While I know he didn’t actually say ‘crisis what crisis’ he didn’t need to.

 Then there was Norman Lamont singing in the bath a La Piaf ‘Je ne regrette rien’ as he told us breezily  when the rest of us were witnessing quite a lot to regret.

 Mr. Darling’s performance at the TUC conference yesterday fell into that same category of Cor Blimey moments. His speech could be roughly paraphrased as ‘we are the government we are the government we are the government’ (for Apprentice fans paralleled by Rory asserting in vain to Tre ‘I am your boss I am your boss I am your boss’ with the same audience reaction- what a plonker! ).

 Surely that obvious black hole of policy to deal with the current economic crisis, greeted with jeers and cries of rubbish, spells the end for Mr. Darling and probably the Labour party in the near future too. 

It has been an enjoyable three days.  Somebody jokingly commented to me that I must be so cheerful because David Davies has indicated he is going to be running a ‘No’ campaign against extra powers.  That is certainly not the case.  I have great respect for David’s powers of persuasion and believe that at the moment they would be much better deployed in arguing for Conservative victory at the next general election and putting the case for us in Europe so that we get two MEPs elected to the European Parliament – Kay Swinburn and Evan Price, overtaking Labour in Wales, rather than on other activities.   

 Despite the weather I had a good weekend in Aberystwyth.  Got to see the film ‘Edge of Love’ (Dylan and Caitlin) at the Arts Centre in Aberystwyth, and although the storyline is not an uplifting one, the acting by Matthew Rhys, Keira Knightley and Sienna Millar was superb.

 Additionally met some new friends for a meal in the Harbour Master in Aberaeron, not in its extended form and as excellent as ever.  It was a really good evening with good Welsh food and good company. 

 The weather was certainly not superb on Saturday though I did manage a walk on Ynyslas sands and just about managed to stay upright in strong winds.  

 The weather on Sunday was far better and we had a meal in the Angel in Salem on the way back to Cardiff.  Again, the food there is excellent, as is the service.

 Today has been spent interviewing in the office for researcher vacancies and David Melding, Rebecca Flynn, our Chief Researcher, and I were faced with a very, very strong field of candidates with detailed knowledge of the issues facing Wales and the general political scene.  There is a real buzz about the Party at the moment with the prospect of government at Westminster and the interesting political scene we face both at Westminster and in Wales. 

 In the afternoon I met with Gerry Holtham who is heading up the Commission on Finance for Wales.  We had an interesting discussion about the background to this and about the general financial position, as well as the options available on finance within the United Kingdom.  This is a fascinating area where the technical issues of the Barnett Formula and financing touch the Party political of what is feasible within the United Kingdom.

 Meanwhile, British and Welsh success at the Paralympics is the icing on the cake!

My views and those of the Assembly Group on extra powers are pretty well known I think. David Davies’ views on the issue are also well known.

 
I was surprised to see that David seems to be involved in the launch of an anti-Assembly Powers campaign.  No referendum is immediately in prospect and at the moment Gordon Brown and the government are very much on the ropes and we don’t know when there will be a general election – it could be early.

 
Certainly all my energies are devoted to ensuring that we win as many seats as possible in that general election and focussing fire on Gordon Brown, Rhodri Morgan and the Labour Party.  Yesterday I spent much of it with the media criticising Rhodri Morgan’s economic stewardship and that of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, and the fact that no Welsh measures had been announced with regard to housing or fuel or food for Wales at the same time as initiatives were being made in England – weak though they were.  David Melding also was conversing with the media on the government’s economic mess.

 
We got very good coverage on this in the Daily Post and on the BBC, but it was disappointing some media seemed more interested in David’s comments which divert attention away from bigger issues and let Labour off the hook.

 
I think it important at the moment that we don’t indulge in cross-Party activities with the Labour Party (or for that matter other parties) on whatever issue as we should be focussing our attention on the general election and focussing our fire on the mess Labour has made of our country.  We should also be ensuring that as many Welsh candidates are successful in that election as possible. That is certainly what I will be doing and I urge others to do the same.

 
Cheryl and I have known for some time that there was a meeting planned near Newport of this anti-Assembly Powers Group, but hadn’t realised about David’s involvement as he hadn’t discussed it with either of us. 

 
Time for campaigning when the starting gun for a referendum has been fired.  I don’t believe there is any early prospect of that.