'Pre-approved and ready to go!'
Tuesday, May 01, 2007

A moment of excitement at the end of ITV's Wales Decides. Never mind the fact that half the audience are from a wind farm pressure group. Rhodri Morgan has let the cat out of the bag: Labour are already working with Peter Hain's Welsh Office on implementing their manifesto pledges for the 2007-11 assembly term. Peter Hain, of course, has to approve all the new assembly measures before they can become law. But right at the end of the show, Rhodri let slip that Labour's proposals are 'pre-approved and ready to go'.

That's funny, I was under the impression that political parties needed a mandate from the electorate before they could start the business of government. Can Labour really be so sure of a majority that they can begin their legislative programme before a single vote has even been cast?

Labels: , , , ,

posted by Blamerbell @ 12:03 am,

18 Comments:

At 12:19 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The approval is based not on policy, but on the legislative powers. You can't ask for the power to legislate in an area if it is ultra vires to the Government of Wales Act. How outrageous is it that Labour a) costs its policies and b) checks to see whether they have the power to implement the legislation they put in their manifesto.

If Plaid Cymru's manifesto is based on the same auditing as Isoft, who have they gone to for legal advice - Jeffrey Archer?

 
At 12:19 am, Blogger Unknown said...

Pure Asterix.
On his own.
And his armies are asking for Welsh votes to put him in again.

He showed complete arrogance towards the electorate and any self respecting Welshperson should think again before playing dumb and voting Labour this time.

Or not voting, which is almost the same.

 
At 12:21 am, Blogger Damon Lord said...

One of the things that Peter Hain and Rhodri Moron would like to do after the election is visit planet Earth. They haven't been down for a long time.

 
At 12:38 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Damon said...
One of the things that Peter Hain and Rhodri Moron would like to do after the election is visit planet Earth. They haven't been down for a long time

You're talking of huge egos there. They will do and say anything to keep themselves in positions of power. These days we are more enlightened to personality disorders that include this trait. The political world is like a magnet to them and they care little about the electorate.

 
At 12:50 am, Blogger Tom said...

It seems fair enough that they'd check the status of their policies in advance. It saves time if/when they take office, and ensures they're not making unfulfillable promises to the electorate.

 
At 1:03 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who needs Tony Blair to turn off the voters when we've got Peter Hain and Rhodri Morgan doing an equaly good job

is this what passes for welsh democracy - a total stitch up, what a joke !!

 
At 6:23 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There's 'on-message Anon, as loyal as ever with his little pre-packaged defence speech. How can you tell he's a Laboru stooge? Because he uses terms like 'ultra vries' after midnight.
Not sure 'pre-approved' means the same thing - in this context it means: 'we've asked Peter Hian if we're allowed, and he says we are. As for the Welsh people, that's a formality. Thanks. Wafffle waffle'.
Ultra vires...
DR

 
At 6:42 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why waste the time of the UK Parliament with Labour's timid list for legislation? Although a minority government will find it difficult to stop the opposition coming together on PR for local government. Then we wil seen the true colours of Vain and co.

 
At 9:03 am, Blogger Glyn Davies said...

Blamerbell, Rhodri's slip was very significant - and a good post by you. I have a somewhat different take on it though and hope to post on it tonight - if I have time. I thought Rhodri looked bored out of his mind and didn't give a toss what anyone thought.

 
At 9:24 am, Blogger Ian James Johnson said...

So Labour have already decided what's going to be implemented after the election.

That Rhodri can still have the gall to call someone else 'arrogant' is breathtaking....

 
At 11:43 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

you've closed comments on the david taylor post - why?

 
At 11:47 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Glyn Davies is right. Basically Rhodri knows that Labour will not have a majority after May 3rd. He gave the impression that he had lost all interest in the election. The leaked memorandum in today's Western Mail shows how tough the next 4 years will be for whoever runs the assembly. Tough decisions will be required. Unfortunately all the politicians in Wales want to be loved and habve a quite life. As soon a some swivelled eyed over 65 starts shouting about hospital closures and wind farms they run for cover. The result is a world of decision paralysis and free gifts for the lumpen proletariat. Just had a Plaid leaflet with the promise to cap council tax for the elderly irrespective of income. It really is pathetic. Roll on 2011.

 
At 11:54 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

re david taylor. (comments are closed on above post).

// There's evidence of a lot of graft here, and I can't imagine it's been done for no reason //

Could say the same about your post on him. It's a bit pointless and hardly relevent two days before an election.

soounds like you're the one with the agenda.

btw, if you think he is behind arsembly, you're wrong. he was in north wales when sanddef did his interview in cardiff.

 
At 2:48 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

One telling comment in your post was that so much of the audience was made up of anti-windfarm protestors.

I was in the audience poised to ask a question about whether the parties supported action on climate change as proposed by Stop Climate Chaos (which includes Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, WWF, RSPB, Christian Aid, CAFOD, Action Aid, Greenpeace, UNISON, the WI etc).
Rather than talk about this there was yet another question about windfarms, asked in front of an audience which has been specially stuffed by ITV with anti-wind types. There were 12 people there from the SWAT (South Wales Against Turbines) Team alone. How many people were there from all the organisations listed above? Just me.

They did something similar for the north Wales event.

No wonder politicians think windfarms are unpopular, despite opinion polls showing a big majority in favour of them.

Were ITV just trying to get a bit of cheap controversy going, or does someone there have an agenda to oppose windfarms in Wales?

Whatever the answer, it's a bit pathetic that they "didn't have time" to ask some questions about climate change because they were too busy having the same discussion they'd done in north Wales just last week.

 
At 3:22 pm, Blogger Henlaw said...

Julian - this is important. There are real concerns that ITV has lost the plot on news and current affairs, especially in 'the nations'. But there is a forum that COULD do something about it, if there was sufficient pressure. Why not email Ofcom, Cardiff and try to get the ball rolling? There are some pretty fierce rules about the way PSB's conduct their business at election times...

 
At 3:54 pm, Blogger Marcusian said...

I didnt catch the ITV programme, but i thought the BBC programme also suffered from having to specific and 'personalised' questions. In the limited media time (a different debate im sure) that is available in Wales, the chance to get all four leaders together isnt huge, and it was wasted with far too narrow and personalised questions.

 
At 4:10 pm, Blogger Blamerbell said...

Conspiracy theorists are rife today!

I'm pretty sure there was no hidden agenda relating to either the BBC or ITV debate programmes.

Actually, as far as Welsh versions of these things go, I though they were pretty lively.

It is always the aim of the broadcasters, as far as I'm aware, to make the questions as broad and non-specific as possible. But you can't control certain people when they've got their platform and they will inveitably speak their mind.

 
At 5:21 pm, Blogger Unknown said...

Blamerbell said:
It is always the aim of the broadcasters, as far as I'm aware, to make the questions as broad and non-specific as possible. But you can't control certain people when they've got their platform and they will inveitably speak their mind. //


I did not see any bias. Surely the point of it all was that people spoke their minds? Is that not what the Hustings are for?

Since when has anyone had control of Joe public and other parties during elections campaigns?

There are many dead blogs because some Lab candidates refuse to post the complaints of their electorate. This control is worrying, like Big brother has arrived and decides to gag anything and anyone that makes them look less than squeaky clean.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home