In his regular blog for Caerphilly Observer South Wales East AM Lindsay Whittle gives his take on recent news.
AM’s Pay
I am totally opposed to the recommendation from the independent Remuneration Board which proposed a £10,000 increase in the salaries of Assembly Members from 2016.
It is already a well-paid job and can’t compare with, for instance, nurses who help save lives. NHS workers will receive just a 1% rise. Pay increases for politicians need to reflect times we live in with massive cuts in public services.
We do need a reduction in number of MPs with more legislation moving from Westminster to Cardiff. Why 40 go there to represent us is baffling. What are they doing? They are due a rise next year to £74,000, which is staggering.
The Remuneration Board needs to reflect on the overwhelming opposition to their proposals and come back with something more realistic.
Smacking of Children
I have become increasingly frustrated at the failure to take action to ban smacking of children. This has dragged on for 12 years and is an example of a do-nothing Labour government.
Last week, a committee was set up to discuss the removal of the reasonable punishment defence involving children. Frankly, the government is kicking it into the long grass until after the next election.
Forty two countries have acted, the United Nations has called on the UK to act and action that been supported by numerous children’s organisations across Wales but still we wait.
Look at the court case in Swansea where a father who got 17 years for seriously injuring his own child. Did that start with him being smacked and then he just carried on smacking his own child until it got out of hand?
Instead of marks being made on a child, the government should be making a mark in support of the child.
Miners’ strike
I went to the screening of a film in the Assembly on the Miners’ Strike which told the story of the strike and the communities today. The old Penallta colliery was featured in the film and some of the ex-miners were present for the screening.
Lindsay you have no right to interfere into family life. A clip around the ear never hurt me at all.
Your priority is sorting it the NHS and the ambulance service but you won’t bother with the important matters.
The assembly has been a disaster for Wales to date.
Lindsay is dead right, in my opinion, on the issue of AMs pay but nurses are relatively well paid. Spare a thought for the private sector care staff, cleaners, call centre workers, shop staff and so on who are paid minimum wage. It is these people who are becoming increasingly angry as their wages are not even at the level of the official ‘living wage’ and yet pay National Insurance, Income tax, VAT and fuel duty in order that AMs are provided for in the style to which they have become accustomed.
On the spanking isssue Lindsay could not be more wrong. Injuring a child has been illegal for hundreds of years. A corrective smack, or more usually the threat of it, has saved many lives and produced millions of responsible citizens over the years. Asking a small child politely to stop running into the road, hitting someone and other things that small children tend to do will not achieve anything. A smack from a loving parent or a highly trained teacher has always had a greater impact on modifying bad behaviour.
My mother was a person that Lindsay knew well and there was a mutual affection and respect between them. She never spared me from, a deserved, smack when I was young and if she was here now would tell him “you are not too old for a clip round the ear; telling me how to look after children is a bit of a cheek!”