In his regular blog for Caerphilly Observer South Wales East AM Lindsay Whittle gives his take on recent news.
2015 will be a momentous year.
The Westminster General Election in May looks according to all political pundits to lead to a hung Parliament with no one party winning overall control.
If this happens, Plaid Cymru will aim to strike a deal which is good for Wales, along with our SNP colleagues in Scotland and the Green Party in England.
The three parties will act as a progressive alliance, striving for an end to the austerity agenda of the current Tory-led Coalition Government. Frankly, people have had enough of doom and gloom. We need to put a smile on people’s faces and give them hope going forward.
Plaid Cymru we will work together to ensure that the Tories are not allowed back into power. We will also put pressure on Labour to end austerity and reverse the decision to renew Trident nuclear missiles.
Rebalancing power and wealth including sorting out our funding and ending austerity will be our priorities.
Those at the bottom of the income bracket have been hit hard by benefit cuts such as the despicable bedroom tax. That needs to go and we need to ensure that multinational companies and very rich individuals pay their proper share in tax and are not allowed to use devious means to get away with it.
On the Assembly front, I will be continuing my campaign to have a Commissioner for the Disabled established in the same way as there is a Children’s and Older Person’s Commissioner in Wales.
I’m baffled by the reluctance of the First Minister to move forward with this – I believe it is vital people with disabilities have a strong voice that can speak up for them.
Readers will be well aware of my views on the smacking of children and I will not stop pressing the Welsh Government to take action after 12 years of dithering.
I wish all readers of the Caerphilly Observer a happy and prosperous new year.
Hung Parliament, yes perhaps, though Plaid Cymru being able to make
any impact on govenment, no. The big player will be UKIP this time
around.
Smacking children – a ban is not enforcible, will lead to children denouncing their parents as if we were a dictatorship and is none of government’s business anyway.
Apart from that Lindsay has spoken a lot of sense this year, most recently
about the foolishness of selling public land to house developers in
Hendredenny. I wish him a happy new year and look forward to reading his
blog in 2015.
The fastest growing economy in Western Europe, unemployment at its lowest rate since 2008, inflation at a 12 year low, new car sales highest they have been for 10 years, fuel prices falling weekly, prices in the supermarkets falling and a low interest rate……those evil Tories in Westminster are doing a pretty good job considering the mess that the last Labour government left the U.K in. It’s Welsh Labour that are destroying Wales not the Tories in Westminster – never mind the under occupancy charge, something needs to be done about the utterly despicable and totally unjustified year on year increase in council tax here in Wales.
As for a ban on smacking children, well it’s exactly this wet liberal attitude to child discipline that now sees kids doing exactly as they please, no respect for their elders, using fowl language, no manors, don’t know how to behave in public – spare the road and spoil the child, although modern Britain today has an excuse for all those naughty out of control kids…ADHD.
You are spot on regarding children, Paul. Badly behaved children are now believed to have some clinical condition rather than their behaviour being the outcome of being poorly brought up.
Do you really live in Wales Paul?
With the Help of Plaid Cymru the next Government ( When the Tories are expelled) and working with the Labour Party, will abolish zero hours contracts, increase the
basic wage and force employers to pay a `living wage`. sort out the
discriminatory unbalanced tory education system in schools, reintroduce sport
for all in schools, increase, in real terms the NHS Budget,
increasingly tax the bankers bonuses, trousered from the trillions of
taxpayers money they gamble with, and reinvest that money in health
services, increased disability benifits, and maintain a reasonable level
of child benefit. And if they have any sense at all they will reduce
VAT and increase the top rate of income tax, use all legal means to
collect tax from none domiciles from money captured in this country and
salted away off shore.Criminalise such activity and force changes in
behaviour of these crooks, or at least they would be crooks with a
simple change in the law.Reduce the £8,million pounds the Tories
pay for Eton Educated Spin Doctors, employed by No 10. reduce the
Country`s £1,8 Trillion deficit created by George Osbourne and his
credit happy friends, Oh, and of course abolish the Bedroom Tax, and
make Dennis Skinner Minister for ` one liners“O and of Course ensure that the Barnett Formular is straightened out ensuring that we in Wales get our proper and fair share. New cars, who cares, and to claim the Tories have anything at all to do with the falling wholesale price of oil is what one comes to be expected from tories who` are used to jumping on any passing waggon if they think there is a vote in it. People will not be taken in in May, the tories are a spent force as will become clear.
So you’re happy that your Labour led local council are yet again increasing your council tax by more than three times the rate of inflation.
If you want good schooling in Wales you’d best go private, if you want a private-sector job best leave Wales, and as for Labour’s appalling record on health – after 15 years of Welsh Labour government the Welsh NHS has fallen further behind the rest of the UK. Cancer targets have not been met in 5 years, A&E targets have never been met and ambulance response times are the worst in the UK.
Wales has been betrayed by 15 years of poor governance by a Labour government firmly stuck in the 1970s. The country with a strong industrial past is now the basket case of Western Europe. Wales has the highest proportion of low income households in Britain, and the highest level of child poverty in the UK. Yet those who reside in the multi million pound Welsh Assembly building would rather spend tax payers money buying a failing airport and then continue to prop it up using tax payers money.The shocking public services and the benefit dependency in the Welsh valleys are always blamed on the late great Margaret Thatcher, but why have billions of pounds of regeneration funding not made any difference whatsoever to these poor areas. Labour is failing the people of Wales – and this is Red Ed’s vision for the future of Britian, well it doesn’t work, but the blinkered voters will no doubt be putting their cross in the Labour box, they’d vote for a cardboard cut out if it had a red rosette pinned to it.
And once again just for the record, it was Gordon Brown in 2008 who introduced the evil bedroom tax, and Labour are lying when they say that they will abolish it.
Don’t forget today is the first of January, the day the toll on the bridge goes up yet again…..just to do even more to discourage the private sector to set up business in Wales – happy new year!
So, no great supporter of the Labour Party then?
Someone has to be on the loosing side in May and that would be you and your party, you do appear to concede that you in your rant,. and for the record, I would vote for the ` Grinch` if it meant keeping out a party who`s members and supporters feel they have the right to hunt with dogs and rip apart other living creatures, in the name of sport, inane cretins! and they intend to put this in their manifesto, god forbid!
And lets not dig up ` The late great Margret Thatcher`. she was more batty in the eighties than when she actually left this world.
If we all had the same politcal and personal views the world would indeed be a very boring place – I see nothing wrong with fox hunting just the same way as I see nothing wrong with bankers making a few quid, I’m just sorry I wasn’t clever enough to work in the business myself.
Just for the record, there is a very thin line, and in fact, an established link, between those who deliberatly impose extreme, perverse, pain and suffering on animals, whilst being oblivious to the same human expressions and actions being imposed on children.
Not to mention the cretinous individuals who encourage dogs to rip apart any animal which gets in the way of their packs of dogs having been trained to `hunt`, like family pets, cats in particular, but there again, if a person supports the ripping apart of any animal why worry about the odd cat here and there?.
Paul , now back to reality ,only Greece have seen wages fall faster than the UK , the so called new jobs , 4 million are now under employed on zero hr contracts. Due to low wages the Tories are spending an extra £13 billion a year on housing benefits, and the tax take is falling through the floor. They have rewarded the rich with a whopping £150k a year tax break , while the rest of us have seen our wages fall ,leaving most £1600 a year worse off , it will take 12 years to get back to where we were in 2008. Even Mervin King has said the crash had NOTHING to do with labour , Paul it was a global financial crash , the clue is the name. Fastest growing economy, l.o. l most countries came out of recession back in 2010, the Tories took us straight back into recession, with a 5% hike in Vat and the ending of the car scrap age scheme, which saved the car industry. the economy was growing at 2% before Osborne killed the recovery . the Tories have Borrowed twice that of the last Labour government and due to their failure to eliminate the deficit as promised they are looking to cut an extra an 57% , this will take public spending back to levels last seen in 1930;s . our GDP is worse than most European countries, the economy has grown due too 2 million extra people, which pushed up growth , whereas all other countries have seen their economies grow through a rise in GDP. Oh and the Tories now include profits from illegal drugs and prostitution in GDP, no other EU country includes this , says all we need to know about the Tories , immoral and incompetent , just as they were when they put interest rates up to 15% following Black Wednesday. the Governments so called growth is built on increasing personal debt to wait for it!! £350 BILLION , personal debt has already gone up by 25% in the last 3 years and Tories need you spend money you don’t have to create growth, the Tories are building an economy built on debt, which is the Tory way Lets bring in a law to smack Tories !!
Sort out the NHS and ambulance service and keep out of family life.
The general public should have the power to remove AM’s who don’t answer emails and whose performance is poor or non existent.
They already have the power to remove AMs Jan. Trouble is
the people don’t vote. I am not being facetious in my reply, I totally agree with you that AMs should concentrate on sorting the things that they fail to deliver. Like not answering E-mails and the terrible health provision in Wales, but people need to vote.
In fairness Lindsay does answer E-mails but he is a rarity in local government.
I agree with Jan; There should be some sort of Petitioning to remove AM`s between elections and not just at the ballot box.
But Richard is correct. In the Case of Linsay Whittle he NEVER failes to respond to emails and other communications, and I have raised some very difficult political and community issues with him and he NEVER dodges the point, and always responds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assembly_for_Wales_constituencies_and_electoral_regions
“At each general election of the Assembly, each elector has two votes, one constituency vote and one regional party-list vote. Each constituency elects one AM by the first past the post (single-member district plurality, SMDP) system, and the additional Assembly seats are filled from regional closed party lists, under the d’Hondt method, with constituency results being taken into account, to produce a degree of proportional representation for each region. Altogether, 60 AMs are elected from the 40 constituencies and five electoral regions, creating an Assembly of 40 constituency AMs and 20 additional AMs. Every constituent is represented by one constituency AM and four regional AMs”.
I am glad lindsay answers emails because I have had plenty of emails ignored by kirsty williams, leanne wood, andrew rt davies, jocelyn davies regarding the NHS.