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Just in case you missed last night here's round - what shall we call it - five or six in the war of words between former First Secretary Alun Michael and the Presiding Officer Dafydd Elis-Thomas. Somewhere, in the not too distant future, in a Further Education Institution somewhere in Wales, there'll be a student handing in a dissertation on it ... with copious footnotes.

Let me help them with one chapter at least.

Earlier this week a leaked letter from Dafydd Elis-Thomas to Secretary of State Paul Murphy - written "in the spirit of our often-stated agreement to make the constitution of Wales within the UK work" - warned that the time it takes to process LCOs put forward by individual Assembly Members "may soon render the ballot process ineffectual, thus curtailing one of the functions of a legislature that of allowing Members as well as Government Minister or Committees to take through legislation".

In other words, one part of the machinery - he warns - is moving so slowly that soon, another part of it will grind to a halt. And if it's not working properly it will, of course, need an overhaul.

At this point you either accept that the Presiding Officer has seen a problem coming and wants to ensure the system doesn't get clogged up to the point it's deemed to be "ineffectual" - or you spot an agenda.

Alun Michael MP spots an agenda. In fact he spotted one a long, long time ago, before the chapter headed or the footnote on the meaning of

This is how he put it on last night's programme on Radio 4:

"This is an accusation that is only really made by one person, which is the Presiding Officer, Dafydd Elis-Thomas who seems to have totally abandoned the normal neutrality that one expects from the speaker or Presiding Officer. I don't understand his motivation. It's a success and it's a success for the Assembly and he should be sharing in that success and I don't really understand why Dafydd Elis-Thomas wants to pretend that there's some antagonism there which there really isn't, unless he has a personal agenda on the issue".

And then this:

"This is the difference between naked nationalism on the part of Dafydd Elis-Thomas and the partnership working that is the absolute essence of devolution".

Naked nationalism on the part of the PO? Since when, ask his office, is wanting to make sure the Government of Wales Act 2006 is interpreted properly on a par with nationalism, naked or otherwise? Well, they didn't quite put it like that but you get the spirit of retaliation.

And just one more footnote for that dissertation. Peter Hain was also interviewed by The Westminster Hour. Listen back and you'll hear him making it clear that he never envisaged that the veto granted to the Secretary of State would be used.

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