Capital Ruled

Cardiff already has the "One-Wales" coalition, now it has the "Capital Vision" coalition

The Lib-Dems and Plaid have signed a coalition deal to run Cardiff. The Libs, being by far the largest party, have Rodney Berman back in the Council leader role and have most of the cabinet seats. Neil McEvoy, Plaid's group leader and a man who until two weeks ago had a very un-friendly relationship with Rodney, becomes Deputy Leader.

Plaid will have one other cabinet spot along with the Chair of the scrutiny committee and the regulatory committee. The rst will go to the Lib Dems.

And, as predicted by none other than yours truly (wehei!), the deal-maker was an amendment to the Libs failed school reorganisation plan. In a weird situation Plaid had previously refused to vote for a plan opening more Welsh-language schools because it meant English-language schools closing. I understand that the new deal will open a new welsh-language primary and a new welsh-language secondary school - without closing the English Lansdown and Radnor. The new primary will be in Canton, the new Secondary somewhere in the city centre.

Other parts of the deal include:

Halal food made available in some schools
No congestion charge
The free bicycle scheme you see when abroad
No PFI
Upgrade sport pitches
Try and get powers to suspend the right to buy council houses

All of those are very plaid-centric policies (no sup rise seeing as how I'm learning about them through a Plaid statement!) I'm sure there's many more Lib Dem centric policies, we'll see.

Interesting two last parts to the agreement. Firstly the Council will give a day off to all of it's staff on St David's Day. Secondly the Council will actively support the Yes campaign whenever the referendum for powers comes.