What the ruling class think of us

 On a PM broadcast last Thursday, Dominic Lawson, son of the former Chancellor, a Sunday Times columnist and a friend of the outgoing BBC chairman Richard Sharp, declared that the latter was brought down by "political pygmies" and that it was a good thing for the chairman of the national broadcaster to have a close personal relationship with the Prime Minister. Those MPs who endorsed the independent report into Sharp's appointment were, of course, elected by hundreds of thousands of British people, which Lawson was not.

 Then we learned that the current Prime Minister believes that we in Wales were no more than guinea-pigs in a socialist experiment. Speaking to the Newport rally of Welsh Conservatives, Sunak cited among other things the pause in approval of major road schemes and the failures of the NHS/GIG in Wales. Some of us believe that the major cause of long waiting-lists is the exodus of trained staff and professionals caused by Tory decisions in Westminster. (And how does one explain the initial decision to bar Sudanese doctors on NHS working permits from evacuation flights?) Be that as it may, there is surely less argument against the Welsh Government actually acting on the UK's commitment to combat climate change. Green, Liberal Democrat and even many nationalist voters will surely go along with the decision to set more stringent criteria for new road construction. So far from being puppets of Sir Keir, who is purging English Labour of socialists, Drakeford and his ministers are following his predecessors in being more radical than the party in Westminster. Often that means policies that are unsupportable, but in critical cases, like the settlement of disputes with transport and health unions, as well as more than paying lip-service to preventing environmental damage, Drakeford finds sympathy across the board. 

Sunak, Truss, Johnson, Lawson and their ilk no doubt find elections inconvenient, especially under voting systems that more closely represent the will of the people. Fortunately, there is little they can do about it. One trusts that one petty attempt, voter identification which discriminates against young people and the poor, will be thwarted in the English local authority elections next Thursday.

A WAAF at war

 This must surely be the last of the first-hand accounts of the work of Bletchley Park, maybe even of World War Two service in general. ITV reports: 

A 100-year-old WWII veteran, who intercepted German secret messages in Bletchley Park, has released her memoirs.

Born in Mansfield, Margaret Wilson served in the Woman's Auxillary Airforce (WAAF) before transferring to the famous code-breaking complex.

'A WAAF at War', is the story of her role, and women like her, who volunteered to join the fight against the Nazis. 

That the memoirs appeared at all is a tribute to the work of Blind Veterans UK (formerly St Dunstans) and in particular to fellow blind veteran Simon Mahoney. 

The pair struck up a friendship together when Simon signed up as a telephone befriender for us during the Covid-19 pandemic and was assigned to Margaret.

Simon says: “Having listened to and been in awe of Margaret’s amazing stories for over four years I jokingly suggested that she should write a book. She said ‘I leave that sort of thing to you.’ And in that moment a mad idea was born.”

Over the course of the next eight months, Simon, who lost all of his sight in 2018 and has written three books of his own, interviewed Margaret and typed up the book using a specially adapted PC and word-processing software that we supplied him with.

Simon continues: “If it wasn’t for the adaptive kit that Blind Veterans UK gave me and trained me up on, there’s no way that Margaret’s amazing life story would have been able to have been told in this book.”

Blind Veterans UK, Barrow-in-Furness Women’s Co-operative, Royal British Legion Derbyshire and Association of Royal Naval Officers all gave substantial financial assistance that allowed the book to be produced and published.

Elizabeth Fothergill CBE, HM Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire, says: “A WAAF at War is a feast of glorious detail into the world of war through a woman’s eyes, brought to life through Margaret’s tremendous memories and Simon’s creative skills.

“One of the great pleasures of being His Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant for the county of Derbyshire is the opportunity to meet and celebrate some truly exceptional people. Simon and Margaret are certainly up there with the best.”

 

The work of Blind Veterans UK goes on, since conflicts involving the British services have not ceased, and seem unlikely to do so. So please give to the charity, even if it is only by buying their lottery tickets.

Dramatic vote surge in Swansea City by-election

 My doubts about next week's English local government elections may have been misplaced. In what has been described as a rock-solid Labour ward, in a Labour-controlled city, in a nation which reacted more strongly than England to the Clegg betrayal, Liberal Democrats registered a challenging second place from a standing start. The Conservative candidate finished last.

By-election Swansea City Penderry ward 2023-04-27

Baker, Mair (Lab) - 485 - 53.5% (-25.7%) Burton, Dan (LibDem) - 274 - 30.2% (+30.2%) Davies, Craig (Green) - 42 - 4.6% (+4.6%) Griffths-Warlow, Ioan Macsen (Plaid) - 34 - 3.8% (+3.8%) Harry, Jake (Con) - 71 - 7.8% (-14%)

Erdogan recovers after health scare

 Having had to cancel a number of election rallies because of a gastrointestinal infection, Turkey's president used a video link today to open a new nuclear power station. In spite of his errors in micromanaging the economy, and the charges of corruption surrounding the fatal collapse of so much recent construction in this year's earthquakes, his opponent in the election of 16th May is reckoned to have only a slight lead in opinion ratings. Egypt, having only just resumed diplomatic relations with Turkey, will be watching anxiously, as will China.

A politicised civil service

 In the wake of the Raab affair, the supporters of the disgraced Justice Minister are calling for the decapitation of the career civil service. They are aggrieved that poor ministerial management has been called out and want to take it out on the top civil servants, rather as successive Home Secretaries responding to the increased influence of people-traffickers have taken it out on the victims.

Their inspiration is the power of incoming administrations in the United States to change every public appointment. However, the US has been a major power not because of her system of national government but rather in spite of it. The nation's strength results from sheer size, the muscle of global corporations based there and the devolution of political power. Trump appointees damaged the national interest. President Carter's early choices did not inspire confidence, either. Who would the equivalent appointees be in Westminster? The Tories' choice of special advisers should provide a warning. Can you imagine Dominic Cummings in day-to-day charge of a major Department? And, unlike the fixed term of a US presidency, prime ministers and therefore cabinets are liable to change over the course of a parliament. A change of approach, such as that we saw under Truss and Kwarteng, would lead to a change in appointees, leading to more uncertainty than with mere ministerial changes.

Post-Cameron, Conservative administrations have shown impatience with international norms and even the law of the land. A trained permanent civil service, recruited on merit, is a bulwark against such dangerous misbehaviour. 

Margam Country Park to host Urdd Eisteddfod

 It was good to hear Cimla and Pelenna Councillor Jeremy Hurley on BBC Radio Wales today confirming that Neath Port Talbot has been chosen to host the 2025 annual arts festival and competition for the youth of Wales. 

Diane Abbott misspeaks

Diane Abbott is not a likeable person. A late party colleague (Jewish as it happens, which may or may not be significant) worked at the BBC when Ms Abbott was a regular on Andrew Neil's sofa. He had one word for her: rude. But back in the late 1990s, she was also a forensic questioner when on the Treasury Select Committee, so much so that both major parties felt more comfortable after her removal when Tony Blair came to power. She has also suffered more racist vitriol than any other MP. One result of this was to place her son in a private school rather than put him through the abuse that she knew he would suffer in the state sector, even though this would label her, an avowed socialist, as a hypocrite. Her outspokenness on race and social matters did not diminish her standing within the Labour party, whether through careful judgment on her party, or a more liberal party leadership.

But things started to go wrong about ten years ago. Possibly an episode related to the diabetes she suffers from took the edge off her mental sharpness, culminating in a confusion over police numbers when she was Jeremy Corbyn's shadow home secretary. The younger Abbott would surely not have got in such a mess. She would also have realised that she was in the line of fire when Sir Keir Starmer took over as leader and started a purge of those associated with Corbyn. She would have known better than to send her confused musings on race to be published in The Observer.

Racism is black and white 

Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable. It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism.

In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.

Diane Abbott House of Commons, London SW1

One should point out that in the UK, there have been no laws against people of colour as such participating in public life, as there have been against Jews.

Quoted on Labour List,

[Pat McFadden MP] said the views in Abbott’s letter were “deeply wrong”. He said: “The chief whip of the party would have had no choice but to take the action that he took yesterday. When it comes to the awful history of racism, one thing we shouldn’t do is try to establish a hierarchy, or suggest that one group of people’s experience somehow counts more than others. 

That is like saying that one disease is as bad as any other. The unique awfulness of anti-Semitism is that it combines racism with religious intolerance. Race is a slippery concept anyway. It is a perception, not a scientific classification as leading geneticist Steve Jones constantly points out. Moreover, Judaism does accept converts, though as I understand it this is a more demanding process than with other religions. It is even more slippery when one considers Travellers. How many these days are true Roma, able to trace their ancestry back to India? 

Coincidentally, there was a fascinating programme on Radio 3 last night ("The Black Cantor") about a town (Newark, New Jersey) where, in the early decades of the twentieth century, Jews having fled to America from pogroms in eastern Europe made common cause with coloured people who had settled there in the hopes of making new lives away from the poverty and discrimination of the Deep South. There was mutual respect, if not assimilation, as shown by the nominal subject of the story, Thomas LaRue Jones, an African American tenor who sang Jewish music. One also learned that Willie "the lion" Smith, that pioneer of ragtime piano, had a Jewish father, took Hebrew instruction, and also had a side-line as a cantor. Sadly, the programme went on to detail how the  one-time partners in adversity drifted apart, culminating in the Newark Riots of 1967 in which Jewish-owned stores were a prime target for arson attack. 

No more chunder from down under

 Before Dame Edna waved her gladioli on BBC TV, Barry Humphries burst upon my consciousness in the pages of Private Eye. Barry McKenzie was the hero of a cartoon strip written by Humphries and drawn by Nicholas Garland, London-born but brought up in New Zealand, who went on to become the Daily Telegraph's first political cartoonist. McKenzie was the archetypal innocent young colonial seeking to make his fortune in swinging London. The strip satirised current London trends as well as the provincialism of an older Australian generation. It also introduced British readers to colourful Aussie expressions (e.g. "don't come the raw prawn with me"), augmented by a few of Humphries' own. Along with such fellow Aussies as Bruce Beresford, who was to make a very successful film of the adventures of Barry McKenzie, Humphries spearheaded a movement showing the Poms that Australia had a unique cultural identity, independent of the mother country. She was more than an exporter of con artists, cricketers, dentists and newspaper magnates.  

Dame Edna was clearly close to Humphries' heart. She had been fully formed on Australian TV before he brought her to England. She was what he will always be remembered for, but I will treasure more his "cultural attaché", Sir Les Patterson, a more biting satire on conservative populism. Even without those sacred monsters, Humphries could have successfully plied his trade as a writer or as a character actor, as his supporting role in The Getting of Wisdom (another Bruce Beresford movie) showed. Bazza McKenzie would no doubt dismiss the term as "poncey", but "renaissance man" fits Barry Humphries, a unique talent who will be much missed.

Which? asks: is our food safe?

 The latest issue of the Consumer Association's magazine draws attention to the holes that are opening up in our vaunted food safety regime. 

A landscape of rising food prices, changes to border controls and cuts to enforcement agencies has left our food system ripe for abuse. In March, it was reported that supermarket chain Booths had to remove prepacked beef slices and deli items. A supplier had labelled them as British beef, but they were actually from Europe and South America

[...]

Not even food producers want to see legislation disappear. As Orla Delarge, head of public affairs at Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming says, "standards ensure a level playing field for all."

 

Two useful Bills pass the Lords

 This morning, two Bills with cross-party support passed Third Reading in the Upper House. 

First, Lord Faulkner's Heritage Railways and Tramways (Voluntary Work) Bill passed, in spite of government opposition. If enacted (and it has to pass the Commons next), it would override 1920 legislation regarding the employment of children in respect of voluntary activity on heritage railways. Viscount Younger of Leckie for the government objected that there was no need for a new act, because the Office of the Rail Regulator had undertaken not to prosecute under the 1920 act if heritage railways or tramways were concerned. However, supporters of the Bill pointed out that this did not rule out private prosecutions and that insurance companies could well be wary of underwriting activities which would be deemed unlawful.

Then Lord Redesdale, a scion of the Mitford family as I like to remind people, a Liberal Democrat peer, successfully steered through another Lords-originated measure, the Ecology Bill. The government could hardly object to a Bill which requires "the Secretary of State to achieve the nature target for the United Kingdom" - keeping the government to the promises they so freely give to international conferences on ecology and the like. It will be interesting to see how it fares in the Commons.

Management consultants and governance

 Adam Shaw's Radio 4 series on the influence of management consultancy came this week to the increasingly intimate relationship between government and the big consultancy firms. In "Affairs of State", (BBC Sounds relay here), he attempts to gauge the effect that the latter have on politicians and the civil service. Contributors spoke of consultants "hollowing out" or "infantilising" the civil service. If the tone seems broadly critical, it is because none of the firms cited in the broadcast provided people to defend their position.

It is most likely that, taking the long view, it has cost more to employ consultancies than it would have done to recruit and retain a skilled civil service. However, they have the great advantage to politicians ever fearful of headlines in the Daily Express and the Daily Mail of keeping the civil service head-count down. Even less forgivable is commissioning a consultancy project in order to push an unpalatable political decision over the horizon, as Welsh Labour did in 2013-16 . Millions were wasted on that and on a public inquiry which recommended a decision in favour of a Newport by-pass which was not taken.

Feed the birds

 Well, the results of the Big Garden Birdwatch are in and once again there is a drop in the number of insectivorous birds. I remember the days before refrigeration was common and agricultural pesticides had not reached the level of sophistication of today. On warm days, flies were a frequent annoyance. For  car drivers, it was worse as flying insects committed harakiri on their windscreens 

I can foresee the day when genetiaally-modified flies wll be relesedj to keep a vaible populaton of songbirds.

Türkiye-Egypt rapprochement

 Talks between Egypt and Turkey leading to a possible restoration of diplomatic relations at ambassador level continue. Turkey certainly needs the support of stable nations in the region given her recent natural disasters on top of a plunging economy. One positive outcome of the rapprochement could be the release of journalists gaoled by the Sisi regime without trial because they were seen to be sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey had supported the Brotherhood during its short-lived democratically-elected administration and during the revolt which brought Sisi to power.

A worrying possibility is that Turkey will be persuaded to abandon her support for the elected government of Libya which helped stave off the insurgency of Khalifa Haftar, who was backed by Egypt and the UAE.

Tempering expectations

 The media, prompted by the party's PR team, are talking up Lib Dems chances of making big gains in next month's English council elections. Sir Keir Starmer's Labour is confident that their attacks on the Conservative leadership are working. Opinion surveys show support for Conservatives at a very low point. 

However, people should remember that there was a big swing against the Conservatives the last time these council elections came round, and that the big winners were the Liberal Democrats. So there may not be many more votes left to squeeze. The pent-up increases in state pensions and other benefits are beginning to trickle out, which may help voters to feel better, though admittedly this will be offset by the nurses' strike over the weekend before the poll, unless the government can pull off a last-minute settlement. There will surely be more confidence in a government which is seen to be in control, as against the faltering Theresa May of 2019.

There is another factor: the coronation of Charles III. Publicity surrounding this event is already building up and will surely increase before the postal ballots are issued. This is sure to bring out the conservatism of the majority of English voters and may well work against Labour and Lib Dems. Moreover, there seems to be a concerted effort by election candidates to emphasise local issues, distracting the voters from the national background, even to the extent of rebranding themselves "Local Conservative".

Conservative Campaign Headquarters is no doubt already briefing that they expect large losses of seats and councils. So, when the carnage turns out on 5th May not to have taken place, CCH will claim this as almost a victory. One trusts that Vincent Square will either make no predictions as to gains, or at least pitch these on the low side.

I would like to be proved wrong, if only because a disastrous Tory campaign will split the party, with Johnson supporters calling for Sunak's head. There could be a Commons vote of no confidence leading to a general election. There would be a short-term deterioration in the economy resulting from international loss of confidence, but in the long run a country more at ease with itself.

Nuclear power developments

 Germany has finally shut down its nuclear generation capability. One appreciates the desire to move to an all-renewable strategy for electricity supply, but the premature closures of atomic power stations has increased the use of fossil fuels. An earlier stop to nuclear development led to the prolonged use of lignite a particularly dirty fuel. More recently, Germany turned to natural gas, cleaner, but still a fossil fuel and one which contributes to global warming. Moreover, Germany became dependent on Russia for the supply of gas; trying to reverse that situation as a result of international politics has brought lignite back into the picture.

At the same time, Finland's Chinese-designed nuclear power station (of the same type planned for Sizewell) at Oikiluoto has gone into full production after 7 months of trials. One would like to think that ministers Graham Stuart and Jeremy Hunt will keep an eye on performance at Oikiluoto with a view to learning lessons for Sizewell C (if it ever gets built).

Birdy top ten: it's as you were

 RSPB has published the results of the Big Garden Birdwatch 2023. Sparrows once again top the count. No surprise here, as they dominate the soundscape  - once they wake up, the lazy so-and-sos. What continues to puzzle me is why jackdaws, also numerous wherever I have been in south Wales, still do not figure in the top ten, which is much the same as last year.

Labour dipping a toe in electoral sewage

 It is not an exact parallel, but the tone of Sir Keir Starmer's current campaign ads. is strongly reminiscent of that of the Republicans' personalised attack on Michael Dukakis in the 1988 US presidential contest. There is the same resort to an emotive issue (murder and race in the American case, child sex abuse in the British), and the same strongly personal nature of the attack. One would like to think that there was a backlash against the anti-Dukakis ads., but glimpses over the years of TV promotions of candidates for Congress or for party selection as presidential candidacy suggest that ad hominem attacks are still a normal part of the political campaigner's armoury. This became clear to a wide audience from day one of Donald Trump's race to the White House - and Trump has not stopped to this day.

It is fair enough to attack Sunak and his supporters for their actions in government, even their political ideology. What is wrong is the negative, innuendo-ridden personal attack in such a sensitive area. 

Even if Sir Keir does not see the wisdom of returning to the moral high ground, he should consider this: anything Labour can do, the Tories can do nastier. In a race to the bottom, they can get there faster and with fewer scruples. Tighter election spending rules in the UK than in the US should prevent the voter being swamped by the tide, but he or she could still suffer the backwash of a very dirty campaign.

Are renters or owner-occupiers the prime electioneering target?

 Cameron and Osborne were in no doubt, according to Nick Clegg quoted in the i yesterday. They were against building social housing because it would "create more Labour voters".

So what should one make of the headline of that article: "71% of Tory voters want more social housing"? There has to be caution about any opinion survey, even one conducted by a leading polling company like YouGov. What sort of answer you get depends very much on the way a question is put. Even so, there seems to be a recognition even by Daily Mail readers that owner-occupation is not the be-all and end-all.

Some 71 per cent of people who voted Conservative in the 2019 general election said they agreed that there needed to be more social housing [...] An overwhelming majority of Britons - 82 per cent - also agreed that it was "difficult" for young people in the UK to access adequate housing.

So it was good strategy for Sir Ed and his English local authority election team to backtrack from last winter's naked appeal to mortgage-payers and to concentrate on issues which concern everybody, such as the failure of crime prevention and environmental degradation as a result of weak regulation.

Lawson: an economist's evaluation

 It is good to see a reasoned counter to the general media (including the BBC) summing-up of Nigel Lawson as "a great reforming chancellor". It struck me at the time that these views came from people in the tax bracket who most benefit in the short term from Lawson and Thatcher's philosophy of cutting direct taxation. Simon Wren-Lewis writes from a democratic socialist perspective, but he does season his criticisms with mention of the few things which Lawson got right.

This paragraph struck a chord:

Monetarism didn’t make sense either in theory or practice. In terms of theory it made little sense to set interest rates to hit an intermediate target (some measure of money) rather than the final objective (inflation and output). It was a bad policy in practice because it caused a recession that decimated UK manufacturing, resulting in a prolonged period of very high unemployment. This was never the intention of the policy, because those putting it forward thought it would cause little disruption.

I was on a contract in Coventry in the 1990s. Coventry had been hit particularly hard by the deliberate raising of the base rate by the government. Practically the whole of the machine-tool industry, in debt to the banks, had been wiped out. A co-contractor, a local, opined that those companies had been too complacent, not realising the need to modernise. He saw the period as one of clearing out of dead wood. The net result, however, was handing over the industry to the Americans, Germans and, predominantly, the Japanese. One wonders whether the outcome would have been better if government had worked constructively on modernisation with industry and the banks instead of hitting them with measures derived from an untried intellectual theory.

The Tennant Park gates

 I had just been reading about the relationship of Winifred Coombe Tennant with her sons Alexander and Henry (in "Wales' Unknown Hero" by Bernard Lewis) when the first two names came up in correspondence. 

"In 1935, Mrs Winifred Coombe-Tennant and Mr Alexander Coombe-Tennant gifted a plot of land to Coedffranc Parish Council for the purposes of sport and recreation.  The land to be known as Tennant Park and gifted in response to the Prince of Wales Appeal at the Silver Jubilee for land to be made available for young people to take part in physical activities. Mr Coombe-Tennant was presented with a fountain pen by the Parish Council and a silver cigarette box by Skewen Rugby Club (Western Mail 9th May 1935 and Neath Guardian 10th May 1935) " 

In 1951 ceremonial gates to a new access to the park were erected and in 1952 a plaque commemorating the Festival of Britain was placed on them.

The Coombe Tennants were extensive land-owners (and the Coombe Tennant Estate still has holdings) hereabouts as a result of George Tennant's entrepreneurship in the early 19th century. (There is no connection with the great Liberal family of the same name as far as I am aware.) 

The gates and the access path are now in a sorry state and there is agitation to attend to them. The matter is now in the hands of the community council and I hope there will be more news after next week's town council meeting.

 

Véronique Ryke

 She appeared in the episode of Maigret shown on Talking Pictures TV last week. She played the small but important part of a governess to the child of an American family visiting Paris. Her mid-Atlantic accent was authentic, but it appears she was born Veronike Rijke in the Netherlands round about 1963. She married, or was partner to, the director Eric Magnan and was probably the mother of Alec and Alexandre Magnan who assisted on a couple of the older Magnan's pictures. She also released an electro-pop album in 1988. Sadly for such a talented lady, it appears she died in Paris in the early 2000s. 

All that is second-hand information, which I cannot back up with official publications. I would dearly love to fill out the skeletal IMDb entry, so if anyone can give me a link to an authentic document, I would be glad.

The logic of privatisation meets the reality of greed

 One wonders whether the late Nigel Lawson was ever tackled on the performance of the public undertakings he and Margaret Thatcher so enthusiastically privatised in the 1980s. In one sense the utilities have prospered, giving their executives ever-rising safe incomes. An eminent example is that of water company bosses, who, i reports, "still managed to pick up generous incentives for ecological standards despite relying on discharges to keep their networks functioning". 

Lawson's reasoning was:

The decline that we are going into was one that we have been in for some time. This country has been in economic decline for a long time - I take no pleasure in saying that, but it is a fact and everybody knows it. It is essential that if we are going to get out of that decline, to hold back government expenditure and to allow the private sector to lead the way forward to higher levels of prosperity and that means cutting back on government spending, reducing income tax, liberating the energies of the private individual and going ahead on a basis that will bring a reduction in inflation and a soundly-based prosperity. [Quoted on Radio 4's "Last Word"]

It is difficult to find a speech in Lawson specifically applied this philosophy to utilities, but that other arch-privatiser Nicholas Ridley did so in the debate on the Water Bill 1988, which took away the duty on the statutory water companies to regulate their discharges and allowed them to become plcs:

privatisation must be right. If we are to enable our companies to innovate and diversify, they must have access to capital markets for the capital investment needed. Until this Government took office, nationalisation had constantly restricted and restrained that. Between 1974 and 1979, when the Labour Government gave up control of the economy to the International Monetary Fund, the water authorities suffered an overall reduction in capital Toggle showing location ofColumn 340spending of one third in real terms. Within that total, the Labour Government halved expenditure on sewerage and sewage treatment. Since then, we have conducted a considerable catching up exercise. Investment has increased by more than 50 per cent. in real terms since 1980. We have doubled the programme in cash terms to £1·2 billion this year, and will increase it to £1·43 billion next year.

The dirty man of Europe is indeed sitting on the Opposition Front Bench. To some extent, I exonerate Opposition Members. It was not deliberate—it was not because they meant to, as the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) admitted a few weeks ago—but because their financial incompetence prevented them from achieving even that basic water cleanliness that we all seek. The proof that public ownership cannot generate the necessary capital investment to protect the environment has been supplied in ample measure by the Labour party.

The promise of private finance being better for the environment than government funding was made more explicit by the then Welsh Secretary, Wyn Roberts, on the second day of the debate:

In general, the provisions of the Bill apply equally to both Wales and England. The Bill will create in Wales private-sector undertakers to provide clean, wholesome water and take away dirty water through the sewerage system. I am confident that the privatisation of the utility functions of the water authorities in Wales will allow the provision of a more efficient operation to the benefit of Welsh consumers.

In the event, the regulatory quangos have proved ineffectual. Investment, in one notorious example at least, that of Thames Water, went into reverse. At least Welsh Water/Dŵr Cymru is a not-for-profit company, but it still has enormous difficulties.

In his Desert Island Discs appearance, Lawson revealed that logic had appealed to him from a young age. If one believes in all people in public life acting with good will, then maybe the logic of improving public functions by applying the profit motive is supportable. Did Lawson ever truly believe in what he said publicly? If so, he must eventually have been disabused. He will have seen how chancers revelled in the opportunity to skim money from the funds which ordinary citizens on the grid are compelled to contribute to. As far as I know, he never apologised.

Machynlleth's Centre for Alternative Technology seeks to add trustees

The CAT Board of Trustees is seeking expressions of interest in becoming a trustee from people with experience of data protection/cyber security and digital strategy, education or education strategy, or fundraising.

Further details here.

Nicola Heywood-Thomas

 The untimely death of Nicola Heywood-Thomas, announced today, leaves a huge gap in arts broadcasting in Wales. She was not only the voice in Wales of arts in Wales, she was also the voice of Wales whenever Radio 3 broadcast a concert from the nation. A distinctive, warm voice it was, too, but also authoritative. My condolences to family and friends.

Glamorgan CCC: the season starts today

Is this the year in which the county at last achieves promotion to where it surely belongs, the County Championship proper?

More about today's opening fixture against an old enemy here.

Diversity and inclusion

 I like this, quoted by Anu Garg:

Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance. -Verna Myers, author and speaker (b. 5 Apr 1960)

Tax will have to be taxing

 For forty years, payers of income tax have profited from the Thatcher-Lawson revolution. The cost has been in the loss of control of basic utilities and the downgrading of social services and benefits. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, HM Treasury and its advisors have now realised that the ideology that persisted through the Blair-Brown years and sadly those of the coalition, is unsustainable if the UK is to remain a first-world country. Former Labour adviser Andrew Fisher writes today in the i:

A confluence of demographic, ecological and political factors are slaughtering low-tax ideology on the altar of reality. [...] The biggest problem facing a likely incoming Labour government is that people want change. New research by the Fairness Foundation shows that people have growing expectations of what the state should deliver. A large majority of voters want government provision of a range of services, including social care, early years education and childcare, public transport and housing. More generous social security also has widescale backing. 

[...]

Tinkering around the edges will not be sufficient. Labour is likely to inherit significant backlogs in the NHS, courts and asylum system, massive staff shortages in the NHS and schools, [...] Taxes are going up and staying up. The real debate is: who bears the burden?

Nigel Lawson has died knowing that the tide has turned in his own party against the concept of low-tax, small-state government, even though the free-market wing of the Conservatives, exemplified by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, is still very noisy. However, he will have been satisfied that there is unlikely to be any real action to curb the use of fossil fuels nor to replace the pseudo-market in energy which has proved so costly to ordinary consumers over the last year. Sir Keir seems to be following in the conservative tradition of Tony Blair. Nor is Sir Ed Davey likely to propose a radical change to the path he followed while in government.

It is ironic that the supposedly elephantine central control of electricity supply could be more flexible in its selection of sources and thus provide lower prices to consumers than the present system in which price is tied to the most expensive source, currently gas. It is clear that if we switched to an average price regime, the operators of gas-fired power stations would simply shut down leading to likely blackouts at time of peak demand. And the consumer has no more choice than under national control.

The energy emergency has led to the government pumping taxpayers' and borrowed money into the market in order to keep prices within reason. But this will eventually have to be paid for - out of tax.

 

Two illiberalities

 The success of two reactionary parties in yesterday's Finnish general election probably owes as much to a reaction against the sitting government in difficult times as it does to a reversion to ultra-conservatism. However, it is worrying that another authoritarian government will take its place alongside Poland and Hungary in the EU. The saving grace is that Finland will continue to stand alongside her new NATO partners against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Danger signs are disenchantment with the EU and with green policies within the potential coalition parties.

There is a clearer illiberal trend in Israeli politics as the Netanyahu government approves the establishment of an equivalent to Iran's revolutionary guard corps. This will not only lead to increased violence in the region but also suffering by Israel's poorest as other state budgets are raided to provide funds for the new body.

Views of the Celtic Freeport

The British Ports Association has welcomed the announcement that the Celtic Freeport and Anglesey Freeport bids have been successfully awarded freeport status today by the UK and Welsh Governments, but it suggested that policy makers should look to grant other locations a similar status. 

Will Bramble CBE, Chief Executive of Pembrokeshire County Council, said: “The Celtic Freeport will unleash the full green industrial potential of Wales, accelerating the decarbonisation of our most carbon intensive industries and bringing new opportunities to our communities, major international investment and thousands of high skilled jobs to the region. [It] will produce significant investment in the region, particularly the focused areas of upskilling our workforce and ultimately creating job opportunities here in south west Wales. Fundamentally this will now put us at the leading edge of the green industrial revolution.”

Cllr Steve Hunt, Leader of Neath Port Talbot Council, said:
“Today’s announcement is an absolute game changer for Neath Port Talbot and for Wales. It will transform the fortunes of people in all our communities. It puts us at the forefront of the world’s green energy revolution and our residents will soon be working in the industry of the future, learning the skills for securing green, well paid jobs.

Karen Jones, Chief Executive of Neath Port Talbot Council, said:
“This great news is the first step towards a much brighter future here in our county borough. I look forward to working with our partners to make sure local people and businesses have the best possible benefit from what’s now in front of us.”

Tom Sawyer, Chief Executive of the Port of Milford Haven, said:
“As the UK’s Energy Port, the Port of Milford Haven welcomes this fantastic news which allows us to build on the significant multi-million pound investment we’ve already made in the renewables sector at Pembroke Port. But what really excites us about this announcement today is the positive impact it’s going to have on our coastal communities. Securing the jobs of today and creating fantastic opportunities for future generations.”

Welsh Government Economy Minister, Vaughan Gething said: “It was great to be in Port Talbot today to congratulate the Celtic Freeport team on their successful bid.

“From off-shore energy to advanced manufacturing, the Celtic Freeport will help create tens of thousands of new, high quality jobs in the green industries of the future. it will support our highly ambitious plans to reach net zero by 2050, while also supporting our young people to plan their futures here in Wales. All this will help us transform the economy of south west Wales, helping us create a stronger, fairer and greener future for local people and communities.”

South Wales West MS, Dr Altaf Hussain (Conservative), said: “This is fantastic news for my region and the whole of South Wales. I have been a firm supporter of the Celtic Freeport from the outset as it has the potential to transform our economy. From Port Talbot to the Port of Haven, this news will mean new jobs and new investment and a great example of what we can achieve when governments and industry work together. The Celtic Freeport has the potential to access £5.5bn of private and public investment and will bring thousands of well-paid, highly skilled jobs to the region whilst kickstarting the green energy revolution."

First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford said: “The Welsh Government has a clear economic mission to transform the Welsh economy, creating a stronger, fairer and greener future. The designation of these sites as Wales’ first freeports will reinforce that mission, building on the significant investments and partnerships we have made in these regions over many years. The joint working between governments on the freeport programme should serve as a blueprint for future intergovernmental work on a whole range of issues.”

Private Eye says: [They generally displace] investment from where it might have been better used. A couple of years ago, the Commons international trade committee heard from a string of experts about this absence of benefit - particularly given the low or zero tariff agreements such as the UK's with the EU, since the traditional appeal of freeports is the exemption from customs duties and checks. [...] They do come with government giveaways, however [and] they offer juicy opportunities for the trade consultants whose business is one of the few growth areas post-Brexit. 

Maritime union RMT has warned that new Freeports must not lead to attacks on working conditions and super exploitation of seafarers [and] cheap labour, [nor] deregulation and a reduction in safety standards. The union highlights examples in Teesside where freeport status has led to public concerns which have not been allayed by a Government report.

What is a freeport?

A Welsh freeport will be a special zone with the benefits of simplified customs procedures, relief on customs duties, tax benefits, and development flexibility. Goods entering freeports do not have to pay tariffs, import VAT or excise duty until they leave the freeport and enter the domestic UK market, with simplified customs procedures and declarations. Then all that focus on union recognition, net zero.

For more analysis, see https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/what-freeport-wales-getting-one-26538227

We shall see in a year or so's time how many people outside the Conservative party believe that the freeport has been a Good Thing.