大象传媒

Don't tell anyone but someone seems to have spilled the beans during this afternoon's meeting of the Finance Committee.

It looks as though the Welsh Assembly Government has a 拢140m of money left over, sitting with the Treasury in London, unspent from previous years - money that they could, if they chose, spend on capital projects - like building and repairing schools, though probably not on setting up Welsh language newspapers.

There's a further 拢65m available for revenue funding, which could be spent on setting up Welsh language newspapers.

Now we knew there WAS a pot but not how much was in it.

What does the Assembly Government plan to do with it? "Spend it ... on priority areas over the next three years".

Good scrutiny: you can't beat it.

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It's a red letter day!

Psephologists across the land rub your hands with glee. In fact if you're remotely interested in how a sample of 1200 people told pollsters they'd vote in a referendum on a Scottish style parliament for Wales, you can rub your hands with glee too.

We've conducted an opinion poll - 大象传媒 Wales' annual 'sometime around March 1st' opinion poll - and at four o'clock I'll be able to .

In the meantime take a look at in The Scotsman.

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• - What's this?

Last time I checked there was no-one chanting and unfurling banners on the roof of the Senedd.

The Lib Dems hadn't go so very cross they'd been thrown out - or was that walked out - of the Assembly chamber.

AMs haven't been proposing an LCO that would devolve to the Assembly the right to find out what my expenses are.

Still, you musn't think it's a day without its highlights.

We're a step closer to discovering who the world's very first "Welsh Idol" will be. A shortlist of ten names has been drawn up since "the quest" was launched and visitors to the Senedd and to the North Wales Visitor Centre in Colwyn Bay have been voting.

Take your pick from the following:

Ray Gravell
Katherine Jenkins
St David
Gethin Jones
James Hook
Joe Calzaghe
Tom Jones
Bryn Terfel
Hywel Dda
Ryan Giggs

Wot - no Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas?

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• - What's this?

Have you ever 'done a Gibbons'?

Yes, and which will guarantee the then-Health Minister's place in pub quizzes for years to come.

He seems on course to become the Malcolm Nash of Assembly politics, as in 'Which Glamorgan bowler was hit for six sixes by Sir Gary Soberts in August 1968?'

But he's not alone in pressing the wrong button.

We've all done it, I've certainly done it more than once and now someone deep in Neath Port Talbot's Plaid Cymru branch has done it. He's pressed a button and sent Plaid's confidential local election campaign themes to the relevant strategy group, to Plaid AMs and to "our resident PR expert".

And to a 大象传媒 journalist who - absolutely remarkable I know - wasn't THAT excited by the rogue message. She must have a life.

But thankfully she pressed the right button: forward, not delete.

So how does Plaid Cymru intend to fight local elections against Labour when, on a national level, they're big pals?

Well theyre planning to "refer to the positive successes of the One Wales government programme" while also ensuring they "enable local focus". But bear in mind that this One Wales is made up of two halves.

They'll argue that "New Labour in power are failing our communities" while welcoming "Plaid's 'One Wales' commitment for increased spending on local roads". They must have a special copy of the One Wales agreement that shows which party owns which bit.

They'll attack "New Labour's Poor Record in Neath Port Talbot" and "the bad deal for local government and public services from London Labour - under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown".

They'll hit the streets with a promise that "Plaid Cymru's policy is to scrap Labour's Tory tax [the council tax] and replace it with a local income tax based on the ability to pay".

In other words they seem set to attack London Labour, Neath Port Talbot Labour and praise the One Wales Agreement - the bits identified as Plaid's anyway. Oh and they're looking for an English translation of "Gwneud y pethau Bychain". In case you didn't know - "it's from Dewi Sant!"

The Tories revealed yesterday that they'll launch their local election campaign on April 3rd. Which gives them just enough time to secure the services of a resident PR expert.

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• - What's this?

Education standards are, according to this comment from a Welsh Assembly Government Spokesperson on the up:

"It is great to see that standards within most areas of education and training in Wales have improved during the last year. However ... we are obviously concerned about the gap between the best and worse schools in Wales."

Let alone the gap between the best and worse spelling displayed by press officers (and this blogger) today.

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• - What's this?

Spring is in the air and Rhodri Morgan was in full flow at this morning's lobby briefing.

The drawing pins had been out and the Welsh flag stuck up as a backdrop. There were daffodils on the desk and the Welsh/English interpreters - an innovation under the Labour Plaid coalition - were in their seats.

It was an 'ask me another one' kind of lobby briefing and the questions and commentary came thick and fast.

Warren Gatland and his boys had done good. What marks out a great coach - a great leader - from a merely good one? The ability to give clear, thought-through instructions. We all scribbled a quick note, not that anyone is looking for a leader at the moment of course.

Should St David's Day be a bank holiday? Ah well yes, in principle but don't think it's simply a case of devolving to Wales the right to determine the number of bank holidays. Ah no! Fiddling with the "WorkingTime Directive 1998" is a complex business. What about giving us the Monday closest to March 1st off instead of a bank holiday later in the year? The First Minister's not convinced most of us want that, only those who are "sufficiently patriotic".

Wouldn't Gordon Brown baulk at the thought anyway? Isn't he thinking more in terms of celebrating and promoting Britishness, ? Ah well it may be that creating a bank holiday that each nation can celebrate when it chooses would in itself be a way of celebrating how devolution has 'created something different' ... but let's see how things go.

Questions about Rhodri Morgan's trip to China to sign phase two of the memorandum of understanding between Wales and Chongqing, his responsiblity to raise human rights abuses, advice to Welsh athletes hoping to head off to the Olympics, all were asked and answered.

One more before we go? "Can we have a progress report on the Welsh Language LCO?"

There had, after all, been plans behind the scenes to have it done and dusted and ready for the off by March 1st.

His response was curt. It's hard to give a running commentary on something that is still "ar y gweill" - literally, still on the knitting needles - meaning still a work in progress. And that was it.

Which rather gave credibility to the rumours that the First Minister and his Deputy are having trouble hammering this one out.

Plaid have just rocked the boat once - and rocked it good and proper. How? Well take your pick:

- by failing to honour the promise in the One Wales Agreement to support the establishment of a Welsh language newspaper (decide for yourself whether "we will expand the funding and support for Welsh medium magazines and newspapers, including the establishment of a Welsh-language daily newspaper" is a pledge to come up with enough money for the establishment of a Welsh language newspaper)
- by coming up with too little cash and therefore killing off the Welsh language newspaper "Y Byd" that had been "on y gweill" for years
-by not taking a risk, when they should have done, on a venture that may well have failed
-by doing the right thing but becoming embroiled in an argument with prominent supporters who are convinced they got it wrong

Take your pick, come up with your version but rest assured that Plaid minds are concentrated on delivering a Welsh Language LCO that will please some of those who are so displeased and disappointed with them.

And rest assured that persuading Labour to move towards compulsion on the private sector to deliver services in Welsh will have been 'on y gweill' for a while and will take more than a few nifty knit one, purl ones to sort out.

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• - What's this?

The most important, influential person in Wales - arguably - is a woman, one who sounds nothing like a civil servant, one who looks nothing like a civil servant and one whose relish at the thought of delivering better public services was so passionately put, Sir Humphrey would have blushed.

Sir Jon Shortridge, the retiring Permanent Secretary (in more ways than one), only just managed not to.

Dame Gillian Morgan - 'no relation' said the First Minister hastily - left the Rhondda at the age of 7 to live in Hampshire. She became a GP, working in hospitals and taking on various roles in the health service before heading towards management. She's been Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation since February 2002 but took a step back towards Wales when she was "excited" by becoming one of the three members of the Beecham review team, the team who advised the Assembly Government on reforming public services.

A passionate, excited Permanent Secretary then, who is planning to be just a little bit more visible than Sir Jon. She will, at least, have 'a profile but not an in your face profile".

Why?

Because the role will change. Gone is the need, argued Sir Jon this morning, to concentrate on laying the foundations. The man who pretty much wrote the Government of Wales Act has done that bit (even if some argue that there are plenty of wobbly bits beneath the concrete).

It's the same message as the one we heard from Rhodri Morgan in Llandudno. Wales has proved it is capable of governing itself. It's pretty clear that Dame Gillian's appointment confirms that the new mood, the new drive is towards creating more efficient and more distinctive Welsh public services.

If "the next phase of devolution" means anything, then that is probably it.

If Dame Gillian is indeed planning to concentrate on improving public services, then it seems inevitable that her own profile will be that little bit more public. But most of all I think it's fair to guess that someone who didn't use the word 'governance' once but talked bluntly about the challenges set by the One Wales document, about her 'passion' for making Wales one of the best, if not the best, small country in the world will play things differently to Sir Jon.

"If Wales were a patient" asked the Western Mail's smiling David Williamson, "what state would you say it's in?"

Maybe Dame Gillian, the ex GP, was already proving her new civil service credentials and had foreseen the question. Maybe she hadn't seen it coming. Either way the response was immediate and ... well, passionate. "Health good in parts", "in need of some preventive work", "not at death's door", "no expensive drugs necessary".

Just as well perhaps, given the tightest settlement in devolution's history.

And as for Sir Jon, was he looking forward to retirement?

He would spend the next few weeks like a lemming heading towards a cliff came the reply. Then it would stop and the former Permanent Secretary "will leave it all behind".

[Thank you First Minister for the title of this entry].

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Taking?

We're about to find out who takes over from Sir Jon Shortridge, Wales' top civil servant, when he steps down in April. I'll update as soon as I'm able.

Giving?

From the Electoral Commission this morning a list of donations accepted by political parties between October and December 2007. I've only had a quick read but:

Labour accepted over 拢5million, excluding public funding. The Conservatives well over 拢9million, the Lib Dems just under a million.

women4theworld got 拢8,973 in donations and Mum's Army 拢7,496.

Plaid Cymru? Nothing to declare. No donations other than the 拢39,383 they got in public funds.

Off 'upstairs'.

UPDATE: The new permanent secretary is Dame Gillian Morgan. She has been chief executive of the NHS Confederation since Feb 2002.

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Why did Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, Jane Davidson, not want to be First Minister?

Because - she explained to the lobby this morning - while there are people in politics who enjoy the "rough and tumble" of it all, she got into politics and still gets up every day to go to work because of the opportunities she's been given to take on substantial areas of policy and to "change things".

She never wanted to be First Minister apparently so will no doubt wonder whether (or why) she is still on and .

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"These are the facts that matter in Wales, and these are the facts that matter for Wales".

There was one big theme to Rhodri Morgan's speech to close the Welsh Labour Conference yesterday and one big over-riding fact he wanted to drive home before delegates did the same: Labour are still in power in Wales and the coalition that kept them in power is getting on with it.

It was a neat, contained speech that gave it to the opposition, gave it to Plaid ("where we are head to head with Plaid Cymru in May, we go head to head with Plaid Cymru in May!") and gave his own party the clear message that the deal they struck at last year's Special Conference wasn't palatable but that it was, in fact, the right one.

Welsh Labour were upbeat - more upbeat than recent drubbings here and over Offa's Dyke might have left them. It was almost as if they felt they'd been there, done that, got the T-shirt and had started learning lessons (strategy, policy, organisation, communications, campigning skills in need of an overhaul ...) and were ready to get on with it.

They just may find that the Welsh electorate aren't as ready to move on come May of course.

The First Minister quoted Dan Pat Moynihan, Hillary Clinton's predecessor as Democratic senator for New York State who said "that while anyone is entitled to their own set of opinions, no-one is entitled to their own set of facts". But as Rhodri Morgan knows too well, we don't always cast our votes with the 'right' set of facts in mind.

Missing data, undeclared donations, hard economic times ahead - they weren't on his list yesterday because they're not problems of Welsh Labour's making. But there is Northern Rock, back in the headlines today - and that must be another unpalatable fact for some Labour councillors.

Perhaps a gulp of Llandudno air helped Gordon Brown come to two decisions: to nationalise Northern Rock and to tell Andrew Marr that he's

No mention of Wales.

He'd gone as far as to tell the on Friday that "we have always got to look at what more we can do to make sure devolution works well.鈥�

He was talking about Wales then but not, it appears, yesterday.

There'll be a Commission on Funding and Finance established here soon of course. In the meantime it looks as though those who like to put forward arguments claiming that Scotland is seen by London as a problem and Wales as a complication will have a chance to rehearse them all over again.

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That's it. I'm buying a Blackberry. How can you be surrounded by cables and laptops galore but fail to get an internet connection? Answers on a postcard to Llandudno. No luck yesterday then but today, via a man pressing a button two hundred miles away, I'm back online by proxy.

A quick catch-up then: Gordon Brown unveiled his much-trailed "contract out of poverty" in his speech last night without putting much flesh on the bones. None at all in fact. A promise from Welsh Office Minister Huw Irranca-Davies on Wales Today last night that more detail will be revealed over the coming days. The Prime Minister also reiterated, almost word for word, a message we've heard from him on devolution at previous conferences:

"Proud of Wales, proud of devolution, proud of innovative changes the Welsh Assembly has made" but "there is no Wales-only, no England-only, no Scotland-only solution to the biggest challenges we face".

He did refer to the word "parliament" with regard to the Welsh Assembly mind - not sure we ever heard Tony Blair do that.

The Prime Minister was welcomed effusively by Betty Williams MP who'd organised a gift for his young sons: a pack of books written in Welsh. She hasn't revealed what they were but I'm betting on the recently published "Sali Mali a'r Hwdi Chwim" (Sali Mali and the fleet-footed hoodie). A safe environment is very much on message after all.

Rhodri Morgan's speech promised to veer way off message with a joke about the Archbishop of Wales and Sharia law. The camera was trained on Gordon Brown's face throughout .... The convoluted punchline turned out to be about rugby and perfectly innocuous. Mr Brown looked thoroughly, thoroughly relieved.

On to today: Harriet Harman galvanised the troops, attacked David Cameron and heaped praised on Peter Hain. Paul Murphy went on the attack against the Lib Dems (they'll say anything to get elected, are responsible for chaos, confusion, weak leadership and have no vision), David Cameron's Tories (no mention at all of the Tories in Wales) and Plaid ('we may be sharing power with them in the assembly but there is no wider pact ... We will fight them every step of the way"). The last got not one but two rounds of applause.

Why have I skipped last night? Because the most interesting story is proving a bit hard to stand up. Rhodri Morgan may still be arguing that the only people talking about his possible successor are journalists but on that, he's wrong. There are plenty of people talking about it.

The story involves Unison and an emergency motion criticising the use of private sector suppliers in public sector procurement - a motion that at one point, we gather, named Public Sector Delivery Minister Andrew Davies. Now it's been withdrawn and Unison members have disappeared upstairs to have a bit of a chat.

What was going on? "Just a bit of a misunderstanding" according to Andrew Davies who's talking to Adrian Masters on Conference Live as I type.

People at this conference aren't just talking about the leadership race. It seems to me they're thinking hard about it - and planning ahead.

Read the rest of this entry

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• - What's this?

Off to sunny Brighton until Thursday. Not a conference in sight ... well not until Llandudno and Labour on Friday.

Next blog from the Gog then.

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So before blowing out the candles the First Minister had some news for us. He'll stand aside in September of next year, on his 70th birthday.

The man who gave us that memorable image of a three-legged duck that swims in circles knows what happens to lame duck leaders. Did he ever regret saying publicly he was going to stand down before the next Assembly Election?

May be.

Will he regret putting a date on it?

May be. But he's put in an interesting caveat. He'll stand aside in September 2009 unless there's a General Election in that year - that might change his mind.

Just imagine that there is an early General Election and just imagine that Labour in Westminster lose their hold on power - just how quickly would Labour in Wales decide to push for a referendum? Now a brand new First Minister wouldn't fancy staking his future on the result perhaps but an old hand, a man who'll have given Welsh politics everything he's got?

Wouldn't they wonder whether we'd find it harder to say no to him?

Just a thought.

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• - What's this?

Happy Birthday to you ...

I don't know if he's planning to throw a party or cut a (low-fat) cake but the man who thought he was toast just a few months ago celebrates eight years in the job on Saturday. Will the First Minister celebrate a ninth? The wise money says that's his plan at the moment, before bowing out in 'around' 18 months' time.

Now granted the King isn't dead, so it may be a bit early to wish the next one a long life but the race for the Labour leadership is bubbling so loudly under the surface these days, it's getting hard to ignore.

So who's in and who's out?

The only obvious candidate to have ruled herself out is Jane Davidson. The politician who's regarded by some as Too Posh Spice revealed before Christmas that she doesn't really, really want the job. Privately Edwina Hart (Formidable if not Scary Spice) has said the same. Not everyone believes her, or perhaps want to believe she's not prepared to go for it.

So, leaving the Spice Girls metaphor right there, who might be up for it? Whose names - whether they're prepared to put them there are not - are in the frame?

There's Counsel General and Leader of the House Carwyn Jones. Looks good, sounds good both in Welsh and in English, is more likely than any of the other runners to connect with those voters beyond the Clwyd and the Loughor that Rhodri Morgan has set his sights on.

I know a man who's had 拢50.00 riding on the Minister for Finance and Public Service, Andrew Davies for over a year now and he remains convinced the bookies will have to pay out. Who was busy working the room when the new think-tank, Ideas Wales, met in Cardiff at the weekend? Andrew Davies. Who knows the party machinery inside out? Andrew Davies. When that rather - what's the word - matey photograph of Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones appeared in the Western Mail last year, some might have thought the fat lady had sung and Andrew Davies, for one, was out of the running. They don't think so any more.

If Andrew Davies doesn't go for it, then might the Deputy Minister for Regeneration, Leighton Andrews - a man whose profile is getting higher by the week - take his place?

Former Deputy Minister, Huw Lewis, will almost certainly be there. Those who wish he wouldn't rock the boat certainly seem to be assuming that he will but are hoping he won't get the 6 nominations needed to go forward. His supporters seem equally hopeful he will.

And there's one more name worth mentioning, another Labour politician whose profile has shot up recently. Who was it who sat next to Rhodri Morgan at a fringe event in Labour's conference in Bournemouth and suggested it was time for the 'clear, red water' to ebb away, time to embrace new ideas? It was Eluned Morgan MEP, long-time favourite to follow in the First Minister's footsteps as AM for Cardiff West. My colleague Vaughan Roderick has heard her name mentioned again today. What if Rhodri Morgan were to stand down not just as Labour leader but as AM too, in time for her to bed in, then stand for the leadershp? Far stranger things have happened in the past twelve months.

So what about the rules? Those have changed - significantly - since (because of?) Alun Michael's days.

A third of the vote is in the hands of AMs, MPs and MEPs; individual members get a third and the same goes for the unions and affiliated organisations. And it's not winner takes all. The candidates will get a percentage of each third - a system that will be used for the first time for the Welsh Labour leadership. No union block votes then. Each union will ballot their members and cast their votes proportionally.

Will unions name preferred candidates? Or would that count as breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of the new rules?

Will there be a cap on donations? You may not be surprised to hear that party bosses are considering just that.

Tonight's Dragon's Eye has more - and an idea from some in the party of what the job description should be. Don Touhig MP doesn't "think it matters in terms of (which) strand (of Labour the next Labour leader comes from) but it's going to take someone who's pragmatic, who understands what the party feels too and understands what Wales needs and understands the difficulties of the balancing act that now exists in Cardiff Bay - may it soon come to an end".

Still sure you want the job?

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More on the Wilson doctrine and Wales.

Not only can AMs be bugged without offending the doctrine (though it now seems that so can MPs as long as the bugging or tapping isn't subject to approval by ministers) but according to the Counsel General it appears our First Minister can't approve such surveillance either, unlike the First Minister of Scotland who can.

Which now makes it rather appropriate that the man who called the former Prime Minister "Big Brother Blair" when he considered scrapping the doctrine without a vote ... was Alex Salmond.

By the way the 502 error message is back with us as many of you have noticed. That means getting any comments through is almost as difficult as finding work if you're a Lembit Opik look-alike ... but not quite.

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On Friday Rhodri Morgan will have been First Minister for 8 years.

So when the Counsel General started talking about an "exciting milestone" this morning the lobby wondered, just for a moment, whether Carwyn Jones was getting his best wishes in first and his best foot forward in the race to succeed him. He wasn't - not that overtly anyway but more on that particular race later in the week.

The "exciting milestone" will be reached this afternoon when the final draft of the Additional Learning Needs Legislative Competence Order is laid before the Assembly.

Don't scoff.

It won't make hearts beat faster anywhere else, least of all in Westminster but as long as the whole Assembly approves of the draft (and they will) and as long as the new Welsh Secretary agrees to lay the Order before both Houses of Parliament ('he will of course' says Carwyn Jones), as long as the House of Commons and House of Lords can find an hour and a half to debate it and as long as they approve it (they will ... this one anyway) then by 'not long after Easter' it'll be in her Majesty's hands.

She will then make the Order and it'll be full steam ahead on the road to creating "a substantial number of new Welsh laws" as Carwyn Jones put it and again, "a new body of Welsh law". (Now that might make hearts beat faster in Westminster).

No talk of bumpy roads this morning, only a steady voice and an insistence that this is a process where some difficulties along the way are "completely natural".

If you want to be led through that process it by the hand, then take a look at the explanation came up with and note the subtlety of point 7, that the "process by which LCOs are passed is somewhat complex".

But don't scoff.

It may be complex, it may be considerably bumpier than those steering the process up and down the M4 want to admit but it is all we have. And at last, this Welsh Assembly Government will soon have to prove it has the ideas and the drive to make those new Welsh laws ones you care about.

Carwyn Jones did allow himself one bit of overt creeping and one bit of 大象传媒 bashing.

He not only congratulated the Welsh rugby team but introduced their glorious victory (sorry, just slipped out) as one which "the First Minister had of course predicted".

The 大象传媒 bashing? That the camerawork during Saturday's match was, in his view, dreadful. "If I'd wanted to watch the match from the sky, I'd have been a bird".

Listen: as the Mam who kept the kids happy while Dad got to sit on the sofa, I'd have been happy to watch it from anywhere.

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What was that about 'academic' exercises?

Lembit Opik MP's

Is that the Lemibt Opik who was on Al Murray's programme on Friday night, who made a cameo appearance as himself in the satire Blair on Broadway last week ..?

Hands up who told Neil May there was a gap in the market.

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Does the Wilson doctrine which bars the covert recording of conversations between MPs and their constituents apply to Assembly Members? Now that may be what some of you regard as an academic question but it was asked this morning so here's the answer.

No, it doesn't. The convention dates from over 40 years ago and since there's been no statement extending it to the National Assembly or the Scottish Parliament, then AMs are not protected.

To that list starting with lawyers and doctors who might want to know why MPs are (meant to be) safe from bugging and they - who conduct plenty of confidential conversations - feel free to add AMs.

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