Thatcher more decent than Blair

Craig Murray is to give a lecture in Cardiff tomorrow night on the subject of whistle-blowers, with particular reference to Bradley Manning. In a measured interview on Sunday Supplement this morning, he said something which was new to me, but presumably covered in "Murder in Samarkand". He was a witness to Margaret Thatcher, when she was prime minister, laying down the rule to our "spooks" that they were not to make use of intelligence which was likely to have been obtained under torture. This policy, he said, was reversed under Blair-Bush.

Very worrying for Labour

Since the general election, and the tough remedies which the chancellor of the exchequer has imposed, the Conservatives have not been popular and this unpopularity has rubbed off on Liberal Democrats as coalition partners. In many places the message that we have restrained the Conservatives from even more regressive measures has filtered through, so that we have marked net gains in council by-elections in the UK since January. It has to be admitted that Labour has until recently also been making gains, but a result from Darlington this week must give them pause.

Darlington UA, Harrowgate Hill

Date: 12/04/2012

Con 694 (43.8; +3.2) Lab 607 (38.3; -21.1) LD Hilary Allen 142 (9.0; +9.0) UKIP 95 (6.0; +6.0) England First 47 (3.0; +3.0) Majority 87 Turnout 33.8% Con gain from Lab. Percentage change is since May 2011.

The Conservative win was achieved in spite of interventions from UKIP and England First. The good news about new investment creating more jobs in the north-east of England would have come too late to influence the result. The major factor has to be the dramatic fall in the Labour vote. Clearly, Ed Miliband inspired neither traditional Labour voters nor his party workers in Darlington. There are stories in the blogosphere of a reorganisation of the party in London causing splits. This, and a relocation of party HQ, coming at the same time as local government campaigns in London and the English cities, cannot have helped. If Ken Livingstone falls to third place on first preferences in the London mayoral election, it is hard to see where Labour can go.

Nursing on the wrong path

Things have come a long way from the time when Margaret Thatcher felt able to imply the low professional status of nurses by declaring that it was a good way to get a husband. (As I recall, she was excusing their low pay at the time. Some things do not change.) But they may have gone too far in the opposite direction.

I make no apologies for linking to Independent articles which are based on the English NHS, because the basic pattern of nursing careers is the same in Wales, having been set before devolution. In a series which started last  Tuesday (and continued on Wednesday, yesterday and today), Christina Patterson examined the perception that today's nurses suffer from callousness, or at best a deficit of compassion. As the first article showed, the starting point for the series was her own experience as a surgical patient.

The introduction to the Wednesday article is significant: "When I asked people who worked, or had worked, in the NHS what they thought had caused the biggest changes in nursing care, nearly all of them mentioned something called Project 2000. This was a new system introduced in the early 1990s, which moved the training of nurses out of hospitals and into universities. Instead of the old apprenticeship system where nurses were attached to hospital schools, and trained on the job, they now had to study off-site for a diploma, or degree. And now, even the diplomas are being phased out. By next year, all nurses who qualify in this country will have to get a degree. [...]

"It wouldn't be fair to say that Project 2000 has produced nurses who are 'too posh to wash', or that their training is all about theory, and not practice. Trainee nurses do spend about half their training time on the wards, but they are supervised by 'mentors' who are often too busy doing paperwork to help them turn theory into practice."

This shift towards an academic approach to nursing mirrors what has been happening in local government social services. In the opinion of many people it needs to be reversed, in both professions.

I invite comments and/or corrections from anyone with informed views.

A small nation finds a profitable use for its spare electricity

Iceland can produce loads of cheap electricity by geothermal means, but one can't export electricity any great distance. However, there is a trend for multi-national specialists like Google to build huge computer "farms" to handle all the data, and data requests, they make their living from - and data can be imported and exported easily. These data farms need a lot of cheap reliable electricity, which is what Iceland is offering. It could also be that is easier to cool all that computing machinery in Iceland than in southern California.

Cllr John Tallamy is wont to say, when yet another application for a power station in Neath Port Talbot comes before the planning committee, that we already produce more electricity in Wales than we consume in Wales. The trouble is that it is not cheap.

Political apathy continues

The lists of candidates for county borough and community council elections for Neath Port Talbot are on the council's web-site. There is a surprising number of uncontested wards, more than in 2008 if memory serves. I am not at all deprecating the contributions that Colin Morgan, Hugh James, Scott Jones or Arwyn Woolcock have made to the council, nor the regard with which they are clearly held in their communities, but it is a sad sign for democracy that nobody in Briton Ferry, Cymmer or Brynamman felt able to give electors there a choice.

It is also noticeable that are fewer young Labour candidates than one was led to expect. Rumours were circulating in the members' room last year that Labour was forcing many of its veteran councillors to stand aside to make room for a new generation, but it appears that the new generation has backed down.

Giorgio Chinaglia

I just missed Chinaglia's playing for Swansea Town. He had already been released by the Swans by the time the advance guard of DVL set up in the borough. (City status came later, in 1969.) He could well have made his mark in South Wales, but it seems that the management were unsure of his correct position and played him too often as a centre-back because of his imposing physique. As Bob Latchford was later to show, he could have thrived at the Vetch Field as a bustling centre-forward. As it was, he had to return to the land of his fathers to prove himself. What Lazio may also have done for him was to impose some discipline, as he later confessed (as this obituary by Phil Shaw records) that he spent much of his time drinking ale and winding up his fellow team members.

"A friendly welcome awaits you - just turn up"

I have the 2012 summer programme of Neath & Port Talbot Ramblers. There will be walks every Sunday from now until September 30th (apologies for missing the first two of the series on April 1st). In addition, there will be special walks on May 5th celebrating the opening of Wales's coastal path, the first circumscribing a British nation.

At a recent meeting of the Friends of Craig Gwladys, I also heard the suggestion of a Solstice Walk. Watch this space.

There is more on the ramblers' website.

May elections will put Welsh councillors in for life

Liberal Democrat Voice has published what is probably a spoof story this April 1st about English local authorities. The thesis is that Eric Pickles is concerned about budget-setting being carried out too close to the end of a council's life, that he wants to see it as one of the early functions of a new council and that he will therefore legislate to bring forward local authority elections from May to February. The story is here, but don't be surprised if it disappears by 11:59.

However, it did raise a serious point (or a bit of trivia, if you prefer). Earlier this month, the local communities minister in the Welsh Government confirmed that councillors elected next month will be in for a five-year term instead of the normal four years. This is ostensibly in order to avoid a clash with the next Welsh Assembly elections, themselves put back a year because of the new fixed date for the UK general election in 2015.

The extended life of the existing councils will also give more time to the Welsh Government to prepare its stated objective of creating new super-councils, merging two or three unitaries. It is therefore possible that the next term for Welsh councillors will be their last for the life of their present councils. It will also enable some of those who are elected to the 2017 super-councils to claim a bizarre record of serving their communities under four different local government structures*. I can think of several Neath Port Talbot CBC members who would qualify and be up for this.

*Before the 1994 Act setting up the Welsh unitary councils, there was the 1985 Local Government Reorganisation Act which applied to both England and Wales.