Martin, You Forgot Your Pen!

Wales' 40th best blogger (apparently) Martin Eaglestone has resigned as Labour prospective Parliamentary candidate for Arfon.

Martin states personal reasons for his resignation and having lost four elections in a row I guess that kind of thing does get personal. Arfon is, technically, a Labour seat. Although it has a Plaid Cymru sitting MP it's boundaries have been withdrawn to the extent that the seat is considered a very marginal Labour one.

Having been trounced in the first post-boundary change election (Assembly 2007) there was no way Martin Eaglestone was going to "retain" the seat for Labour. So what is Labour's plan? Have they found a heavyweight candidate and therefore forced Martin to step down? (Betty Williams will certainly have some free time come the next election, and she does have roots in the area) or will they now effectively concede the seat and pick an unknown young candidate to "train him up" for the next set of elections?

With Llais Gwynedd winning seats on the Council, do Labour think that their best option is to pick a sacrificial lamb and hope the anti-Plaid coalition called under the Llais Gwynedd banner will unseat Hywel Williams? I Doubt it, if Llais Gwynedd have a chance anywhere (and I don't think that they do mind) it would be Elfyn Llwyd they'd be targeting, not Hywel Williams.

Update: It is now apparent that Martin's decision to step down was, unusually for politics, purely personal. I hope you'll enjoy your life outside of politics Martin.

Tender Truth About My Sheep

Today is what I can only describe as a crap news day. When the BBC have to resort to drink-drive figures going down as their top story, while icWales manage to link the one hour detention of the son of Hypocrite Kinnock by Russian police to the Diagnosis Murder-style killing of Alexander Litvinenko! EVen The Onion's top story today, detailing Jessica Simpson's plan to bring down the Dallas Cowboys, stinks of a page filler.

Even Fox News, always ready with a new scandal with a lack of accuracy and shovel of bias that would put the Daily Mail to shame, lead with the astonishing fact that OJ Simpson is still not in jail! And since I wanted to give Hain the rest for today I'm reduced to trawling Google News for an interesting read. One article which I've given a wide berth is the New Statesman intriguingly titled Tender truth about my sheep!

So, trying to avoid mentioning Mr Permatan for a day at least, I took the opportunity to look at the headlines a few days back reporting on Rhodri Morgan's tour of Welsh speaking Wales. The First Minister was at least honest in admitting that this was a desperate attempt at vote gathering, but what appalled me was the fact that this was even news. "First Minister of Wales leaves Cardiff" shouldn't be on page 11, let alone front page news, but sadly it is. There's many people in the South West and the North who, rightly or wrongly, don't feel the Assembly works for them, having the First Minister make such a big deal of a three day trip to the wild west is hardly going to reassure them.

A lesson for bloggers today comes from the blog of ex parliamentary candidate and ex-Assembly candidate (i.e. habitual loser) for Arfon Mr Martin Eaglestone. His entry for Rhodri's visit to the Royal Town is headed Rhodri Listening, and yet his very next entry is a video where Rhodri Morgan, after his visit was interrupted by a Cymdeithas protest, confirms that he is not, and will not, consider a new Welsh Language Act. Should that first entry be re-titled "Rhodri Listening Only To those who Like Him"?

No discussion of Rhodri Morgan and the Welsh language can end without quoting these wise words from a young(er) Mr Morgan when he was an MP in 1993

"The Government calls this a Welsh Language Bill, but it would be better described as a Welsh Language Quango Bill. What one could call a Quango for the lingo ...... We shall be abstaining tonight because we hope to have the opportunity before long to do the job properly. That will be done when we revisit the question of a Welsh language measure when we are in Government"

Oh how things (and principles) have changed!