Our Creators

The Daily Mail has recently printed a list of the 50 people who "wrecked Britain". Apparently these are the people that made Britain "the ugly, ignorant, beer-ridden and brawling place it is today".

Wales' very own "Prif Copyn" Richard Brunstrom makes the list (honestly) along with such awful people as Princess Diana, the man who invented the mini-roundabout and Jimmy Saville. Imagine how much happier we'd all have bee without these people...!

A few more deserving souls anmed in the list are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Maggie Thatcher and Janet Street Porter. There is also a special mention for Wales' first First Minister:

"A dismal little doormat called Alun Michael. To look at, he is not a striking proposition, a careworn creature with the hunched shoulders and lank hair of a natural loser."

And the annoyance of all bloggers (Just kidding, love you all really!) also get a mention - Internet Anons!

But surely, pride of place in the list must be reserved for the truly evil, the god-awful, the child-corrupting Topsy and Tim. Apparently these cpreaches:

"A Britain peopled by disciples of Topsy and Tim would not last long in the world of international terrorism. If we succumb to the worldview of Topsy and Tim, we might as well give up now."

I still can't believe people actually read this paper!

Sunday Sillies

Sunday is a day of rest - no work, no night out to plan, nothing to do. That's why we get the big fat papers on Sunday and that's why Sunday's are usually the day bloggers, commentators and forum users bicker about stupid things to waste time.

Today seems to fit that bill perfectly. The News of the World prints a story saying that the One Wales Government is going to scrap free prescriptions. Straight away alarm bells should be ringing in a reader's head. Firstly, it's the News of the World. Now while that should be enough to make the reader suspicious of the truth of the story there's plenty more.

The paper's source is from Whitehall, that makes him an English Health Department source. Recent months have seen plenty of tension between Edwina in the Bay and Ben Bradshaw, the English Health Minister. If the WAG were about to scrap their free prescription policy then you can be sure that Bradshaw's department would not be the first to know. Another reason to cast doubt on it all is the reason given, namely that Doctor are prescribing over the counter medicine and that the cost of the policy has ballooned due to all those millionaires abusing it. As I've noted before, the rise in the amount of prescriptions issued since the scrapping is virtually the same as the rises that occurred every year for the past half decade.

So surely anyone with any knowledge of Welsh politics would have written this story off as Whitehall mischief making. Apparently not. Tory Health Spokesman Jonathan Morgan is quoted as saying:

"This news destroys the Welsh Assembly Government’s remaining fragments of credibility over health policy. Ministers in Cardiff must now give clear answers as to the future of this initiative."

Glyn Davies also seems desperate to believe the story while Miss Wagstaff, not a fan of free prescriptions, barely pauses to question it, and the same is true of David Jones MP.

Personally I'm no big fan of free prescriptions. As long as the means test limit is set high enough to cover the people who need it then people like me who earn enough not to be on the breadline should fork out for our pills. Having said that I don't see it as a disastrous policy, neither do I see it as just a gimmick. After all our Health Service is supposed to be free, something it simply would not be if we paid for our prescriptions. But even though I'm not a fan of the policy, I'm not going to jump on an obviously false story to try and make a political point of it.

Glyn Davies believes that this is a huge story unless the One Wales Government issue a categorical denial with no weasel words.

"The story in today's News of the World is absolute nonsense. We told the newspaper on Friday that we have no intention of 'pulling the plug' on our free prescription scheme, which is highly popular, and we're delighted that Scotland and Northern Ireland are following our lead. We're at a loss to understand where this story has come from"

Categorical enough for you?

Media Mess

So ITV Wales is, for all extent and purposes, no longer. The industry regulator, Ofcom, has announced that Welsh news coverage on the third channel will be reduced from 320 minutes a week to 240. Even worse is that non-news will fall from 240 minutes to just 90.

What this means in practical terms is that the evening Wales Today will be the only Welsh news on the channel, with the mid morning and weekend lunchtime programmes dropped. As for non-news ITV Wales' current flagship programmes like Wales This Week, Sharp End, Soccer Sunday, Fishlock's Wild Tracks and The Ferret will find themselves fighting for scraps.

ITV Wales' head of Drama was scathing in judging the proposals:

“This is the kind of vested interests and cultural arrogance we have seen over the years where they have deliberately undermined our attempts to represent Wales on the UK network."

It's already clear that coverage of devolved politics in Wales is abysmal. With the UK written media practically ignoring the Assembly all together and the Western Mail's circulation flatlining under 40,000 and seemingly concerned only in copying and pasting Adam Price's blog posts the only place the Welsh public learn about devolved politics is through their TV set. With the BBC being attacked for ignoring devolved politics and ITV now cutting their coverage to the bones things look quite bleak.

The barrenness of the media coverage was reflected by the recent poll which showed that over 30% of Welsh people interested in politics got their fix from the internet. Credit where it's due, the BBC Wales news website churn out plenty of stories, but, being the BBC, they are lifeless and simply contain quotes from government and opposition politics. The same pattern is employed by the Western Mail and her sister paper. What this means is that there is no-one left to actually investigate Welsh politics, to dig deep into her secrets and complexities. If Peter Hain had just been the Welsh Secretary and not the Secretary for Works and Pensions, would he have escaped disgrace? Because I can guarantee you that neither BBC Wales, ITV Wales nor the Western Mail would have any ability or interest to expose him.

With the possible end of Wales this Week and the Sharp End, and a further cut in Welsh news, what we are left with in this country are a few reporters. What we need is investigative reporters, but don't hold your breath.

Hmm I Wonder

A Daily Mirror reader writes in to his favorite paper saying...

I don't understand why Sarah Ferguson has such a low self image

I would advise the worried writer to turn to page 29 of the same edition where regular Mirror columnist Paul Routledge says...

Britain is eating itself to death says the Duchess of Pork, oh sorry York. She's certainly doing her best to help, having ballooned to 15st 10lbs at one point.

Yes, i wonder just why she has such a low self-image...!

The Telegraph's Version of Britain

O'Neill pointed me towards a part of the Telegraph's site today that would be scary if it wasn't so funny.

Call Yourself British is the Daily Telegraph's attempt to make us all stop calling ourself Welsh (or Scottish or English or Irish) and bask in our Britshness. This follows on from Gordie's attempts last year to wrap himself in Britishness and call for a "British Day".

The site is covered with the Union Jack (and by the way, it is called the Union Jack not the Union Flag - incorrect pedantic fools!), Big Ben, British Bulldogs, the Queen and a British passport. It looks like a proper propoganda machine. But once you look at it closely, it falls apart pretty quickly.

First is their all important poll, headlined "Most of us feel British - for now ", "Only 37pc of us see ourselves as British" and "We are better off British - and proud of it". You'd assume that, in a website devoted to "rally the people of Great Britain around the 1707 Acts of Union", "us" would mean British people. Read the text of the articles and you quickly realise that they only carried out their poll in England - hardly a good example of uniting the UK!

Even better is, at the bottom of the front page, the pictures of the Assembly, Scottish and NI Parliament and the Commons. I'll reproduce it here and will give plenty of kudos to the first person to point out how not in touch with the world outside England the Telegraph is! (Remember that building on the left?)

Then there is their "Journey to the Heart of The Union" - passing through Glasgow, Edinburgh, Hadrian's Wall, The Midlands and into London (I guess Wales and Northern Ireland are just not important enough to be the heart!)

To cap off the whole doomed project (no new articles since December 2007) is the advert on the left for the Telegraph Family Activity Planner. Here it is......

I guess that's a good map of the United Kingdom as the Daily Telegraph sees it!

Media Dictionary

Obsession: (pron: əb-sěsh'ən, ŏb) an unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation with something or someone.

With thanks to the Daily Express / Sunday Express!

(After ages of researching, copying and pasting, bloody Blogger makes the final image nearly unreadable! I hope it's clear enough!)

Update: Click on the picture to see it better

What's Feeding the Media?

I thought it may be time to have a look at the media's contribution to Mr Permatan's continued vulnerability for the chop.

I have no doubt that Peter Hain should have resigned days ago. If the Labour government has done one thing to make my blood boil it is their recent (i.e. last 5 years) complete removal of the idea of ministerial and the acceptance that a minister (or Prime Minister) is justified in doing everything he can to hold on to office. Who remembers the days of Ron Davies, where the resignation letter was handed in before the media even knew there was a story!

Peter Hain is the latest minister to participate in this straw-clutching desperation, but what is quite surprising is the way the media have decided not to let him get away with it. While Harriet Harman and Wendy Alexander managed to clutch the straw just long enough for the media to lose interest, this time they just won't let go of Mr Permatan. Hain is now on his 11th day of bad headlines, and there is no doubt that they will continue for some time to come. The question has to be asked, why?

Some have said that Gordie's washing of hands is to blame. Gordon Brown, while declaring full support for Hain, has said that his fate is the hands of the different enquiries. A pretty bizarre stance for the Prime Minister to say, but there we go, it gave the media a big sniff of a scalp. The argument is that it is due to the Prime Minister failing to give his 100% backing that Hain continues to be in trouble. This argument doesn't quite hold water when you remember the headlines when Harman was in trouble. Brown didn't give her his unequivocal backing either, saying that the donations to her could not be justified in any way.

So what other explanation can there be, because remember, Harriet Harman and Wendy Alexander had both broken the law as well, Hain is not unique in the criminality of his (in)actions. I see two plausible explanations.

The first reason is that the media is being fed by admissions from Labourites that Hain's time is up. Some MP's are public about it, many are not. The reason for this is that there was a wide assumption before this scandal erupted that Hain was for the chop soon anyway. The consent seemed to have been that in the next Cabinet reshuffle, expected in the first quarter of the year, Hain would find himself either out of a job or seriously demoted (I assume that in the London media view, seriously demoted would mean "just" being the Welsh Secretary).

This puts Peter Hain in a very different position to Harman and Alexander. Unlike those two, Hain is expendable to Labour. Harman is the recently elected party deputy, Alexander is the recently elected leader in Scotland. Both replaced unpopular predecessors. If they resigned in shame, it would have thrown the party into turmoil. You will remember the feeling at the time that Labour was falling apart at the cracks. Hain's resignation would not leave the same hole, and Labour MP's know this. After all the turmoil and scandal both sides of the New Year, there must be a feeling within Labour that giving the media a scalp would put a line under the whole business and allow Brown to re-start his Premiership.

So yes, the media are being fed a bit more than with Harman, but that can't be the sole reason for their persistence. The other reason seems to be the simple fact that Hain is just not that likable. While many in Wales would have stronger words about him, both good and bad, on an UK level Hain, while not totally dis-liked, is certainly not liked. The numerous jokes about his Permatan shows that there has always been a feeling that Hain is, for some reason, not that popular. The reason most often given is his arrogance and aloofness.

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An often-used example of this is his speech to the Welsh politician awards late last year when colleagues and media alike were disgusted by his attitude. But some of the jokes he said at that ceremony were both funny and often used in political circles anyway. I for one have used "Ieuan-Air" many times to describe the North-South Air link. Hain's problem was not his choice of jokes, but his choice of venue. The awards was a cross party event with political differences put aside for the night. Hain did not conform to this, and preferred to be very party political. And for me, that's the worst thing about Hain. He puts himself and Labour first, Wales second. He, like Brynle did the other day, prefers political point scoring to actually helping people. That's a political "quality" that goes down very poorly with both the media and the public.

And that seems to be Hain's downfall. his inevitable resignation/sacking/demotion, it is as much the fault of his £100,000 "memory lapse" as it is Labour's apparent acceptance to offer him as a sacrifice and the general feeling that Hain just isn't that nice a politician.

Update: Want an example of the arrogance that Hain is often accused of, here's a Hain quote from yesterday:

"I have a record in government second to none"

Move over Lloyd George, Churchill and Aneurin Bevan, King Peter is here!