Conservatives in Manchester (I)

The Conservatives are as secretive about their conference agenda as Labour. If someone can point me to a publicly-available programme, I would be grateful.

It was clever of them to get one of their weakest pitches out of the way on the first morning. Sir George Young outlined some very desirable democratic changes to House of Commons procedures at length, but dismissed the allowances and expenses scandal, which arguably implicated as much mis-spending on the part of Conservative MPs as Labour ones, in a couple of sentences at the beginning.

Sir George rightly drew attention to the Select Committee system which has proved so valuable over the last twenty years. What he omitted was the name of Norman St John Stevas, the prime mover of the changes. He was not Margaret Thatcher's favourite person, which may have had something to do with his air-brushing out of Conservative history this morning.

(Given the keynote of austerity sounded by Eric Pickles, it was rather tactless to fill in the gap between presentations with a backing track which, if I heard correctly, repeated the mantra "Shop till you drop".)

Glamorgan chairman refuses to guarantee Maynard's position

I would be more worried if he had given the traditional vote of confidence which means that the incumbent is on his way out!

Steve James, on Radio Wales this morning, reckoned that if Maynard goes, Dalrymple will also. While I have had my doubts about some of the cricket manager's pronouncements, I have none about Dalrymple's captaincy. In my view, he is the best since Tony Lewis, his bowling changes being particularly astute. It should be remembered that, though Glamorgan finished in the middle of the second division table, the gap between success and mediocrity was narrow. If memory serves, there were three matches in which Glamorgan were on the brink of victory having the opposition nine wickets down. If two of the three had gone the county's way, we could have been celebrating promotion now.

The letter that will never be printed

Not the least regrettable feature of the sudden demise of the Neath Guardian was that the letters page was dumped in favour of a retrospective article.

At least I have Web access and can post my last letter below. I am sorry for any reader who put a letter in and is not online. Anyway, I am not about to let Alun Llewelyn have the last word:

Letter to Neath Guardian "points of view"

Does Alun Llewelyn (“points of view”, September 24) really claim that the economic policies of the current coalition government in Cardiff are “Plaid-led”? If so, he must be accepting responsibility for the overwhelming financial pressure on local authorities to persuade their tenants to say “Yes” to housing stock transfer.

Of course this is not so. We both know that the Plaid Cymru housing minister is following the Labour policy made in Westminster, just as the Nationalists have done about-turns on fair votes and local income tax in return for their ministerial seats.

Frank Little
Prospective parliamentary candidate,
Neath constituency

Labour and rail transport

Further to my complaint yesterday about the lack of information about the Labour conference, I discovered that the transport topic was merged with a discussion of other economic items. I missed any coverage of contributions from the floor. The views of transport union officers would have been interesting.

However, I did catch an evangelistic speech by Lord Adonis. He made the case for the investment in rail over road in the near term, and promised interventions which would make life easier for both passengers and industrial users of the railway. Sadly, the Labour Party website has not yet seen fit to put up a video of the speech.

But why, oh why, couldn't Labour have embarked on this programme at the start of its ministry rather than at the fag-end of it? Even a few years later, a change of heart would have reaped benefits. Work on the electrification of the South Wales main line could have been under way in 2007, helping to ease the recession and providing a modern railway ready for the upturn predicted for next year.

There is consolation in that not only Liberal Democrats are committed to the future of rail, but also now the Conservative Party has signed up to green transport policies. Assuming we can believe the latter, all the parties are now on the right track.

Government immigration snatch squad invades vicarage

Suzanne Fletcher has a chilling illustration of how hollow Labour's railing against extreme nationalist groups really is. The methods of the Border Agency would do credit to any mid-twentieth century European dictatorship. Suzanne's final sentence ( "If the officials behave like that in front of clergy in a vicarage, what is it like where there is nobody to witness ?") is sobering.

Labour conference secrecy

One would have thought that a party which claims to embrace 21st century communication would publish a timetable of its debates at Brighton. After all, the 2009 conference is being shown on BBC-Parliament and selected speeches are available as video clips on www.labour.org.uk, so it's not exactly confidential. We Liberal Democrats are so proud of our glasnost that we habitually publish the full conference documentation on www.libdems.org.uk, usually leaving it up for months after people have lost interest. ;-)

The cause of this gripe is a need to find out when Labour is to discuss transport policy. If any Labour member reading this can let me know the day and times, I would be very grateful.

Labour body language

In the spirit of fairness and objectivity which marks the typical Liberal Democrat, I tuned in today to BBC-Parliament's screening of Labour Party proceedings, as I had watched events in Bournemouth last week.

It was noticeable how much more at ease Gordon Brown is among friends, and especially with the young Labour candidates, than he is in the House of Commons these days. (Of course, he was hardly pressed with difficult questions in Brighton.)

Also noticeable was that the eyes of party leader and deputy leader hardly ever met. Brown had a handshake and a pat on the back for every parliamentary colleague's speech, Harman joined in the applause but otherwise ignored the speaker. In the question-and-answer session, Harman was never content to let Brown have the last word, but had to add her own spin.

Harriet Harman clearly has her own agenda, which John Prescott, for one, does not like.

Town Hall meetings

Both Nick Clegg and Kirsty Williams have had success with meet-the-people events up and down England and Wales respectively.

If a political party can have a meaningful conversation with the electorate in this way, then how much more important is it for the Welsh Assembly government to reach out to local communities. It was a sad day when the Labour Assembly Government decided to abandon the regional meetings which enabled ministers to explain WAG's approach to given topics and then to hear from local activists and concerned citizens on them.