Senghenydd Student
I wanted to congratulate Senghenydd student Harley-Blue Clarke-Stead on winning the Farmers’ Union of Wales Glamorgan county branch, Walter Rowlands Memorial Award.
Harley-Blue, an animal management student at Pencoed College, near Bridgend, lives at Graig-yr-Hufen Farm, Senghenydd, and received the accolade for her excellent work as an agricultural student.
The £200 award has to be used towards educational studies and was devised in memory of Walter Rowlands in recognition of his work as FUW county secretary.
Graig-yr-Hufen Farm is a family farm which produces its own meat and sausages, selling it to butchers in Gelligaer. They also supply lamb and pigs to businesses within a 10-mile radius of the farm.
This locally-based food enterprise is just the sort I have been saying needs to be encouraged by the Welsh Government because using local suppliers means less food miles and a reduced carbon footprint. I was recently in Merthyr Tydfil visiting a soup factory that has been trying to get on the government catering contractor’s list of suppliers. We need to support our local food producers.
Jobless
Many people are really struggling to make ends meet. They are trying to juggle meagre incomes so that they and their family can eat and also they can heat the home.
I know in my own region that some people from workless households don’t even have money left at the end of week to pay for an electricity token.
I raised the issue in First Minister’s Questions last week because the Welsh Labour Government says one of its key priorities is to reduce the number of families living in workless households.
It is frankly appalling that in 2012 that people cannot afford to heat their home. The UK Coalition Government is cutting back on welfare benefits and this will lead to more and more people having to choose between heating and eating. This is not scaremongering, this is what is happening.
The First Minister told me that levels of economic inactivity in Wales are the lowest than they have ever been in history and the unemployment is coming down. But that is no consolation to hard-pressed families because the incidents I have heard are far from isolated cases. There is still a long, long way to go to drag people out of poverty.
Lindsay Whittle
Plaid Cymru AM for South Wales East