The only explanation I can think of for the disgraceful editorial in this morning's Western Mail is that its circulation must be falling like a stone, and the order must have come from on high to resort to cheap sensationalism to stave off seeing it reduced to a weekly.
I took a quick look at Wiki to see what its circulation figures were. Wiki still has the figure for August 2009, namely 32,926. But that figure has now dropped by more than 7,000 to 25,898, as we can see here.
It obviously can't go on like this, and desperate directors do desperate things. In fact the Monday to Friday circulation is an even more disturbing 23,777 so the paper relies very heavily on its Saturday sales of 36,015 ... and this explains why becoming a weekly is on the cards.
It's a shame, because if it were run in Wales, for Wales (perhaps amalgamated with the Daily Post to become a true national newspaper for the whole nation) it might rebuild itself into something we could respect.
I normally wouldn't comment on an organization's response to a formal consultation without reading the whole thing. But because the British Medical Association have gone to the media with the aim of publicizing the key points of their position on the Welsh Government's proposal to improve Welsh-language services in health, social services and social care, I feel justified in commenting on what they've said.
The BMA’s response to the consultation said: “While Welsh-language service provision for some patients is essential, and does need to be recognised and effectively supported, it should not be a one-size-fits-all policy. If the aim is to improve patients’ experience of care, government efforts and investment would be better placed in tackling waiting times and filling staffing vacancies with the best professionals to deliver the best care.
“Today, the NHS is at breaking point; everyday we hear the same warnings. Imposing duties to offer NHS services in Welsh in a sector which in some areas is struggling to offer any service at all to its population is quite another.
“The time, and financial situation, is not right for imposing language duties on NHS organisations aiming to deliver world-class healthcare, but which in reality are many light-years away from that.”
The first paragraph contains a typical straw man argument. Nobody is suggesting that there should be a "one-size-fits-all policy" in respect of the Welsh language. But if the BMA is in fact acknowledging that a Welsh-language service is, to use their own word, "essential" for some patients, then we should welcome their acceptance of that. It's a start.
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Next, the BMA uses the argument that because the NHS is struggling, efforts to improve the service would be better directed elsewhere. The implication is that the standard of medical care is more important that the language in which it is delivered. My response is to point to the English NHS to see whether they accept that argument. Only a few months ago the UK government introduced new language rules on doctors working in the English NHS:
In essence, the GMC has been given explicit new powers to be able to take action against doctors when there are concerns about their ability to speak English, and at a local level "responsible officers" are to be appointed to ensure that doctors have adequate language skills. In practical terms, this means that even the very best doctors in the world will not be allowed to treat patients in England unless they have adequate language skills. It blows out of the water the BMA's silly suggestion that the "best professionals" should be appointed irrespective of their language skills.
Why should we accept lower standards in Wales? The same mechanism set up for assessing an employee or prospective employee's skills in English is just as appropriate for assessing an employee's skills in Welsh as well, so no additional administrative or cost burden would be imposed. Neither does it cost any more to employ someone who speaks both Welsh and English rather than just English. Nobody is advocating that every medical or care professional in Wales should speak both English and Welsh, but registering their language proficiency is an important step towards ensuring that sufficient Welsh-speaking health and care workers are employed and, more importantly, readily available to provide a service appropriate to the level of demand. This might well mean that Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor will need 70% of its front line staff to be able to speak Welsh, but that Nevill Hall Hospital in Monmouthshire would only need 10% of its front line staff to be able to.
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Lastly, the BMA claims that "the time and financial situation is not right" to impose any language requirements on the NHS. My response to that is much more dismissive. The Welsh Language Act of 1993 imposed a duty on all public bodies to treat Welsh and English on the basis of equality. Almost two decades have now passed, including times of economic boom and an unprecedented amount of money being poured into all public services, but especially the NHS.
But how did the NHS in respond to its obligations under that Act? There are some honourable exceptions, but in the main the NHS in Wales did not take them seriously. Getting a service in Welsh, either in health or social care, is generally more a matter of luck than of planning or forethought by the organizations that should have been providing it.
As it happens, today marks the start of a non-statutory public consultation by the Welsh Language Commissioner about the new language standards which will be applied under the new Welsh Language Measure. The consultation documents are here but, as we can see in this news item, the media focus seems to be on the private bodies that have now come under the scope of the Measure.
For me, a more important aspect of the new Commissioner's role will be to get public bodies which largely ignored their obligations under the old Act to now start doing what they should have been working on for the last twenty years. The old Welsh Language Board did not have any way of enforcing the old Act, it could do little more than name and shame those bodies which failed to do what they agreed they would; but the new Commissioner now has powers to set standards and some powers to enforce them.
The standards haven't yet been finalized and there is no way of knowing to what extent the Commissioner will have the appetite to enforce those standards when they are—and of course the BMA were responding to a similar consultation exercise by the Welsh Government, which has a different and more direct responsibility for the standards of health and care services in Wales—but my advice to Meri Huws would be not to go gunning for the bodies newly brought under the scope of the Measure.
To start with, it will be better to use enforcement powers on those public bodies which should have been doing much more than they have over the last twenty years ... and the providers of health and social care services should be right at the top of that list.
It was good to see that the disused railway station at Wdig has been rebuilt. There are many people who can rightly take credit for this, but undoubtedly the main factor was the decision to increase the train service from just two trains a day timed to link with the ferry service to seven trains a day in each direction, which enabled the service to be used for by local people for commuting or shopping too.
Ben Davies of Arriva Trains Wales was excited and asked where else in the world a new station was being opened today. But in fact there are several more in various stages of planning that I can think of:
• Energlyn in Caerffili is advanced enough for Network Rail to have produced a video of it.
• Holywell/Greenfield, Queensferry and Broughton on Deeside are mentioned in this document from Network Rail.
• Bow Street and Carno on the Cambria line to Aberystwyth when an hourly service is introduced, see this document.
• In the SEWTA (south east Wales) area, this document mentions new stations at Brackla, Crymlyn, Pye Corner, Hirwaun, Trecynon, Albany Road/Crwys Road in Cardiff, Upper Boat, St Mellons, Coedkernow, Caerleon, Llanwern and Sain Ffagan.
Not all of these will come to fruition, but many of them have positive benefit-to-cost ratios, with some of them rated as good (i.e. a BCR of more than 2:1) particularly if the service frequency can be enhanced.
So yes, let's celebrate the opening of one new station ... but it's a celebration that we could repeat many times over in the next few years if we have the foresight and political will to press ahead with these plans. It's exactly the sort of capital investment we need.
I think most people reading this will know that the Welsh Government (unlike the Scottish Government) is not able to borrow any money, but that our local authorities can. So on the face of things it looks like the Welsh Government's decision to co-ordinate existing council borrowing powers, and specifically to pay the cost of that borrowing through its annual revenue grants to local authorities, is a clever idea.
And in principle it is ... but everything depends on what that money is spent on.
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Borrowing to pay for capital investment projects is generally a good idea. We need things like new schools, new hospitals and new transport links, and it is simply a question of doing the sums to see if the benefit to cost ratio of any particular scheme is favourable. It very often is: especially if, for example, the new school or hospital replaces an old building that will cost more to maintain and provide energy for than a new building would, or if a new road or railway investment will save people and businesses time and money and thus boost the economy. In both cases the investment will pay for itself in the medium to long term.
But borrowing money simply to pay for the maintenance of existing infrastructure is something very different. It doesn't pay for itself, and never can. Even if this £170m over 3 years pays for some badly-needed repairs to our roads, no-one in their right mind could imagine that it will be 22 years (the time it will take to pay this loan off) before many of the very same roads will need repairing again. What will happen after five or ten years? Will the Welsh Government co-ordinate another round of borrowing on top of this one ... and yet another round of borrowing five or ten years after that? It is mad-house economics. It is a short-term fix at the expense of long-term planning.
Co-ordinating local authority borrowing powers is a good idea, but only if used for capital investment rather than maintenance.
I've been looking through the local election results, and have again been struck by how difficult it is to get an accurate overall picture of how people voted, either within a particular local authority or across Wales as a whole.
The main reason for this is that some wards return more than one councillor, and each voter in these wards has as many votes as there are seats to be won. This makes it almost impossible to meaningfully analyse how people voted, because different voters have different numbers of votes.
I have wondered if the best way to get a clearer picture would be to say that instead of having more than one vote, voters in a four-seat ward have four "quarter-votes", that voters in a three-seat ward have three "third-votes", and that voters in a two-seat ward have two "half-votes". This wouldn't affect the individual election results in any way, but would mean that each voter had only one vote in total.
This is just a question, but has anyone ever seen an analysis of local election results done on this basis?
In response to the LibDems losing 48% of their council seats in Wales, 53% of their seats in Scotland and 40% of their seats in England—not to mention losing their deposit in the London mayoral election—Lembit Öpik has now told us that Nick Clegg can't be in government and leader of the party at the same time. He said,
"You can't do those two full-time jobs at once and get away with it."
That will be news to David Cameron, who would have to choose between being Prime Minister of the UK and remaining leader of the Tories; and to Alex Salmond, who would have to choose between being First Minister of Scotland and remaining leader of the SNP.
Just when we were left wondering if it's possible for the LibDems to sink any further, we get proof that they can.
There have been several comments in the last few days about the Silk Commission and specifically on whether a referendum would be needed before implementing any recommendation it might make on whether the National Assembly should have tax setting and borrowing powers. The situation is perhaps best summed up here:
Obviously the result of the Wales Governance Centre/YouGov poll is interesting. But I think there is a danger of focusing too much on details at the expense of the bigger picture. When presented with a "shopping list" of options it's easy to say you want items 1, 3, 6 and 7 but not items 2, 4 and 8 ... and that you don't care one way or the other about item 5. But sometimes it's impossible to have one thing without also having to accept another thing.
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I've always seen the Silk Commission as a way to resolve a fundamental stand-off between Labour and the Tories.
Labour primarily want the borrowing powers (and a fairer funding formula, although this is not part of Silk's remit) but don't want to be held accountable for how money is raised. In general UK terms, their traditional electoral advantage/selling point is that they're good at spending money. To a large extent, this explains why Labour do well in Wales and in other peripheral parts of the UK that depend on a net fiscal transfer from the more wealthy parts. It's always easier to spend money that, to a degree, has come from somewhere else.
So Labour will obviously say Yes to borrowing and fair funding without a referendum, but are currently holding out for a referendum on tax setting powers (except for a few very minor taxes) because they think they'll be able to get a No in such a referendum. They could eat their cake and have it.
The Tories primarily want the Welsh Government to be responsible for raising some of the money it spends because, again in UK terms, their traditional electoral advantage/selling point is that they will lower taxes. If levels of taxation become a factor in Welsh elections, the Tories believe it will enhance their electoral prospects.
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So the name of the game is to put together a package that includes both, which is what Plaid Cymru and the LibDems have consistently wanted. From my point of view, I want Wales to have some control (even if limited for now) over a wide range of economic levers, because it is by carefully balancing these levers that we can put Wales on course to become more prosperous. Having control of just one or two levers isn't much use. It's like flying a plane: you can't get where you want to go with control over only the ailerons; you need to control the flaps, rudder and throttle too.
If a balanced package can be hammered out and agreed by the Silk Commission—which includes a nominee from each of the four main parties in its seven member team—then there won't need to be a referendum. It would be no more than an expensive and time consuming rubber stamp.
Referendums are only useful if there is a reasonable degree of uncertainty about what the result would be.
This blog has been set up to complement the Syniadau Forums.
Much of what will appear on this blog will also appear in the Syniadau Forums, but the emphasis on this blog is slightly different. The forums are focused more on the structures and institutions that Wales will need to develop in order to become a successful independent nation, arranged on a subject by subject basis, but the blog will have more of an emphasis on day to day political news and developments.
People are welcome to reply or leave comments either here or on the Syniadau Forums. If anyone wants to initiate a new subject they are very welcome to do so there.
