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Welsh Assembly election

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Here we go ... again.

  • Betsan Powys
  • 4 Jun 07, 03:02 PM

You disappear for a few days and what happens?

You get into work to find the Royal Navy's anchored what looks like a warship a few hundred yards away in Cardiff Bay, the in-box has been inundated with offers of free phentemine, codeine, car radios and viagra and - yes, rather more significantly - Rhodri Morgan has anounced his new cabinet.

The texts that came my way on Thursday lunchtime were in two minds over his choice: small but perfectly formed or a make-no-false-moves flop? I just wonder whether we'll even get the chance to find out.

It's certainly a cabinet designed to do what the man says is on the tin: to 'reach out to other parties' and 'move forwards on the basis of consensus'. Three key posts, three key appointments: the 'sweet' Jane Hutt (Glyn Davies' description, not mine) who got on so well in her negotiations with Plaid; Edwina Hart who we will now, I hope, get the chance to interview rather more often than in the past and Carwyn Jones who gets his golden opportunity to lose the 'lazy' tag.

By the way tomorrow night he's on the panel of four politicians facing an audience in a Week In Week Out special down in the Senedd. Who's on the panel? Spot the odd one out: Ieuan Wyn Jones, Mike German, Nick Bourne and ... Carwyn Jones. Do you think Rhodri Morgan is trying to tell us something?

If you've any questions to put to them or want to let off steam about the events of the past few weeks then let me know before tomorrow night and I'll do my best to include them.

And you never know, before the end of the week, the blog may even have managed to migrate to its proper home alongside the Political Editors of Scotland and Northern Ireland. I get the feeling geese have less trouble making it over the Himalayas than I've had it to shift from one site to another.

Here's hoping.

Comments   Post your comment

  • 1.
  • At 12:24 AM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • JohnCymro wrote:

Big day tomorrow (I'm posting at 23:57).

I feel I've let Jane Hutt down badly.
She used to come up here to the Gogs so often. Immaculately dressed and so pleasant and smiling.

What's happening now? She doesn't smile naturally and she wears a masculine garment!.(joke)

Seriously,the Gogs complain that the Cabinet has no voice from the "Gogledd". I don't understand them. It's impossible if there are no quality Labour members from the North. Indeed how many elected Labour
voices do we have up here?

The locals here moan and moan...They insist that Dafydd Wigley should be in the Cabinet.......!!! (not the kitchen cabinet I hope).

A great day today (it's now 00:12).Our Royal Highness will be there. We might not like the system.....but our Queen has done her "job" so perfectly, I'm short of superlatives...really I am. She has performed her role so.....Absolutely.

If only the politicians had done so.

Betsan, for me if you can, give my "hip hip hwre" to the Frenhines Elisabeth tomorrow.Please do.

She took over the throne in 1953, at the same time as I passed my 11+ .

She would have done a damn better job than the politians...and the electorate.

I don't know what all the fuss is about... cannons at the front of the Pierhead Building; a Royal Navy Destroyer moored around the corner; and a mace inside the Siambr just in case things get out of hand... perhaps AMs, Bethan 'Baby of the House' Jenkins and Leanne Wood have had a change of heart and deciding to turn up after all :-D

P.S. I'm curious as to who will carry the mace

  • 3.
  • At 08:49 AM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • Herbert Davies wrote:

Dafydd Ellis Thomas said on radio Wales today that in considering whether to support a so called 'rainbow coalition' government in proposing a referendum for a Parliament, Labour should take heed of the opinion polls at the time. Does he and his Plaid colleagues believe their right wing coalition should do the same before undertaking the 'coup etat'?

Perhaps you could frame a question to this effect Betsan? Any chance the 大象传媒 could do the poll?

  • 4.
  • At 11:13 AM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • Richard wrote:

I have to say the appearance of the warship was a bit of a shock at the weekend - I thought we were being invaded... But at least the Admiralty has shown a little more tact this time in sending the Exeter. When HM arrived to open the Senedd last year, the ship in Cardiff Bay was HMS Westminster - very subtle in these devolved times!

Good luck with the migration - this blog has been a great part of the past few weeks, and I think we'll need your insights once the day-to-day business gets underway!

  • 5.
  • At 11:20 AM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • Bedd Gelert wrote:

Croeso yn ol ! Hope you had a good few days away. Like many people I had some time in Wales since the Bank Holiday.

Was very impressed by Eisteddfod yr Urdd [Don't often go] and the fact that so many children at 'grass roots' level are participating. Surely this is the sort of thing the WAG should be supporting ?

It also dismays me in England that such things as poetry and classical music are dismissed as being 'elitist' or 'middle class' whereas in Wales these rather facile and superficial distinctions are not made. A lesson for the UK methinks..

  • 6.
  • At 11:55 AM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • Jono wrote:

What annoys me at the moment is the other partys making the so called "rainbow party" to push Morgan out of power. If that happens what was the whole point of us the people voting. My labour vote and thousands of others have gone to waste cause the other three partys decided they want to decide whos in power and not the people of Wales

  • 7.
  • At 11:56 AM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • Richard Harris wrote:

Welcome back Betsan!

The Archbishop has been asking after you!
(He wants his own 鈥淭hought for the Plaid Day鈥/Welsh God slot on Dragon鈥檚 Eye )

Anyway, I am now boycotting your Blog for today as the ENGLISH Queen is down 鈥淥ur Bay鈥 !

Just hope the corgis don鈥檛 see Helen Mary鈥檚 new hat...


This is almost worse than 1969 crowning of Carlo in Caernarfon. Isn't the Labour party suppose to be the workers party and Plaid Cymru the party of Wales. Then why are all these politicans bending down in front of the german/english royal familly!!
When Carlo eventually takes over do you think this ceremony will continue!?!?

  • 9.
  • At 03:17 PM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • John R. Walker wrote:

Pity HMS Exeter was only there to make 21 pointless bangs!

It could have done us all a favour by turning the Arsembly building back into a car park...

  • 10.
  • At 08:03 PM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • Anotheran wrote:

We're still getting the comments from peole who don't understand what real democracy is. 29.6% voted Labour, 54.2% voted for one of the other 3 major parties with 16.2% for others. That means that under a PR system - yes, that's what we have, even if it's still not quite perfect - 54.2% voted for a Rainbow party to be in government. That's a majority.

That, Jono, is the "whole point of us the people voting". To get a government made up of parties supported by a majority of the voting electorate, not by a party supported by less than a third of those who voted. Sadly, at the moment the WAG is only representing that 29.6%.

  • 11.
  • At 11:04 PM on 05 Jun 2007,
  • Lyn David Thomas wrote:

What some correspondents don't seem to have grasped is that Labour lost this election. They don't have an automatic right to be in the government. Getting the highest number of seats arguably gave them the right to have "first crack" at forming a government. They blew that, by their lack of compromise, hence the next largest party had a go, that failed so the only alternative at the time was a minority government. However that clearly will be precarious. If the other parties can pull together (as they seem to have) a viable program of government then ultimately they will remove Labour. This is democracy - I don't think some people have quite grasped this yet.

  • 12.
  • At 01:11 AM on 06 Jun 2007,
  • Herbert Davies wrote:

No we get it just fine. Plaid and the Lib dems masquerade as left of centre parties then jump into bed with the Tories who are still hated in most of Wales. If you are so convinced in the 'rainbow' that you have this massed support of the people of Wales why are you so afraid of an opinion poll asking the people that question? Is it democratic to have a first minister with 15 out of 60 seats? How many Plaid voters expected their votes to deliver Tory Unionist Ministers? This is about personal ambition and vanity - Ieuan will abandon any principle for power. Thank heavens for the guts shown by four socialists in Plaid who seem to understand the concept of integrity and remaining true to the values they espoused before votes were cast.

  • 13.
  • At 09:39 AM on 06 Jun 2007,
  • Dave Edwards wrote:

What does Brian Gibbons know about industry?

Come to that, what did he know about health? He must be the perfect antidote to those who believe that doctors should run the NHS.

Finally on the Gogslot- Maybe if Carl Sargent can stay awake long enough he may be the missionary to the north that we have been waiting for, but I doubt it!

Maybe we could all vote for the laziest AM? Mrs Burnham perhaps?

  • 14.
  • At 08:31 PM on 06 Jun 2007,
  • Another Betsan Fan wrote:

#8 Oh god no! With any luck Wales will be a self-governing republic by then.

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