I put up the first post on this blog one year ago today. It seems like a long time ago now, but I've enjoyed it immensely.
So, to all the friends I've made through it—and that includes those who disagree with me as much as those who agree—to those who have made guest posts, to those who have contributed with their comments, and to all who have just read and I hope been stimulated by what has been said ... thank you.
Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi i gyd.
It's clear enough from the headlines in today's Western Mail:
Lib-Dems £3.1bn plan for green jobs
The Liberal Democrats yesterday launched a £3.1bn plan to create green jobs and bring £125m to Wales.
Yet the first thing that struck me was that this was far from being a good deal for Wales. Nobody needs a calculator to work out that our rightful 5% share of £3.1bn is £155m ... so we in Wales would immediately be short-changed relative to the remainder of the UK by £30m. On second thoughts, perhaps the LibDems do need someone to buy them a calculator.
But let's leave that to one side, because any additional spending on the Green economy is something I would welcome. Let's look to see if this still a good idea ... even if the rest of the UK will benefit from the money more than Wales. Their version of the story is here.
Did I say additional spending? Well, it turns out that it isn't additional spending at all. This is what they say:
The plans target £3.1bn of public spending that can be stopped and the money used to create jobs and protect the environment.
But as we might expect, there is absolutely no mention of what particular areas of public spending are in line to be "stopped". The Health Service? Education? Police? The Fire and Rescue services? Who knows? ... for the LibDems certain aren't telling us! We are simply expected to trust Kirsty Williams when she says these are "credible and costed plans". My guess is that these must yet more of the fabled "efficiency savings" that spring up whenever an election is called ... but haven't the LibDems banked on these savings at least once already? Perhaps we should just marvel at how a new batch of these savings can be plucked off the tree whenever the LibDems want to publicize a "new" idea.
But let's still give them the benefit of the doubt and look at how they intend to spend this money. As it happens, the MPs that we are about to elect to Westminster are not going to spend it at all ... they're going to give this £125m to the Assembly with "suggestions" about how it should be spent, since most of the things they want to spend it on in England are devolved matters in Wales and Scotland.
But here we hit a snag. For even though the LibDems aren't specific about which public spending budgets they will "stop" in order to create this new "Green" package, the Welsh block grant will have to be reduced by 5% of the £3.1bn they intend to save in the UK as a whole, because the Barnett Formula works both ways. So in fact this loudly proclaimed £125m—which would have short-changed Wales by £30m if it were additional money—is in fact a £30m cut in the block grant Wales would otherwise get ... a block grant that we already know is going to be cut back, and in all likelihood will be cut back further no matter which, or which combination, of the three UK parties forms the next Westminster Government.
In short, you couldn't make it up! Unless you're a LibDem, of course. This is the sort of maths that only makes sense on planet Clegg as seen from its attendant moon, Kirstopia.
Now at this point I want to be clear. I do agree that we should invest more money in the sort of things that the LibDems "suggest" the Welsh Government should spend things on. But devolution doesn't work that way. Those decisions are not for our MPs to take in Westminster ... the LibDems should save their "suggestions" for the Assembly elections next year, because it will be up to the AMs we elect to the Assembly to decide how we spend our block grant. That will include, if the LibDems get into a position to implement this new plan of theirs, the headache of how to do things with £30m less than we would otherwise be getting.
And many of their suggestions turn out to be things the Welsh Government is already doing. For example, the LibDems suggestion to expand the Home Energy Efficiency Scheme would be fine but, on a pro-rata basis, we would not have £20m more to do it with, but about £5m less.
The LibDems might have their hearts in the right place, but as soon as you look at what they propose in any degree of detail it doesn't take long to realize that it's the disconnexion from their heads that is the problem. It's all very well to put a "Green label" on any idea you come up with. But to really create a more Green economy, our thinking needs to be much more radical ... and our maths much more accurate.
Right at the top of Labour's promises at the launch of their manifesto for Wales today was a commitment to fair funding. Peter Hain said:
"Today's fair funding guarantee means that, with Labour, Wales will not be disadvantaged in the future."
Well, I've just read through their manifesto, and it is quite clear that this is not only the most blatant of lies, but that Labour either do not understand the basis on which Wales is presently funded, or that they do, but want to spread confusion and disinformation about it. This is what they say:
Right now, for every £100 that is spent on schools, hospitals and other vital services in England, £114 is spent in Wales under the ‘Barnett Formula’ because of the relative sparsity, ill health, deprivation and age of our population compared with England. This formula has served Wales well these past Labour years: for example, funding for the Welsh Assembly Government’s health and hospital programmes has more than doubled, in real terms.
This is completely wrong. The Barnett Formula has nothing whatsoever to do with the "relative sparsity, ill health, deprivation and age of our population compared with England". It is based simply on population, nothing else.
Gerald Holtham and his colleagues have recommended that the Barnett Formula be replaced with a needs based formula that would take account of these and other factors, but Labour have refused to commit themselves to that sort of change, as I explaned here. And this manifesto is most certainly not a promise that Labour will change their minds and introduce a replacement for the Barnett Formula, they are just repeating the fudge that they made previously.
So in short this is deliberate mendacity—blatant lying—of the very worst kind. The manifesto is peppered with lies and innuendo, but this is simply too big a lie to be ignored.
It is disgusting and shameful that Labour are telling us
the exact opposite of what is true
On the same page, Labour make much about how much spending in Wales has increased. Now it is true that public spending in Wales has increased. But what Labour don't say is that they increased spending in England and Scotland much more than they increased it in Wales. This graph, which I make no apology for showing yet again, shows just how much spending in Wales has gone down relative to the UK average:
In short, Labour have deliberately and systematically used their 13 years in power at Westminster to see spending in Wales fall from about 125% to 114% relative to the UK as a whole. The biggest injustice is that relative spending levels in Scotland have been and still are much higher than in Wales. But, as the PESA figures in the table below show, over the past six years relative spending in Scotland has in fact gone up from 117 to 118, and in England from 96 to 97.
As we can see from this table, the PESA figures show that over the past six years relative spending (the UK as a whole is 100) in Wales has gone down from 114 in 2002-03 to 110 in 2007-08. But for the same period relative spending in Scotland has in fact gone up from 117 to 118, and in England from 96 to 97.
Put bluntly, we have been unfortunate to have Secretaries of State for Wales that have proved themselves completely incapable of standing up for Wales at the Cabinet table. The Scottish Secretary has managed to keep Scotland's advantageous position, but we have been lumbered with a second-rater who would rather praise himself than fight for the people he is meant to represent.
And, just in case anyone thinks that this was some sort of misprint in the Labour manifesto, Labour candidates have been putting out precisely the same lies in their leaflets. Nia Griffith in Llanelli is another perfect example of a Labour candidate lying through her teeth in the hope of trying to hold on to her seat, as I wrote about in this post.
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But finally, I do not want to be be critical of Labour without showing that there is a better alternative:
Plaid's manifesto launch yesterday doesn't appear to have made it onto iPlayer, so I thought I'd put it up here:
Just click the images below to read the full manifesto in either Welsh and English:
Plaid's manifesto launch yesterday doesn't appear to have made it onto iPlayer, so I thought I'd put it up here:
Just click the images below to read the full manifesto in either Welsh and English:
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On Monday, the Daily Post carried this story about Welsh-medium education in Wrexham:
Wrexham council accused of dragging feet over Welsh language education
Education consultant John Morris, who has worked in schools and colleges across the country, fears Wrexham is leaving many families out in the cold who want their children to be educated in Welsh.
He said he had been contacted by a number of parents who had tried to get their youngsters into Welsh schools only to be turned away. And he claimed the local authority was not doing enough to ensure there would be adequate provision to meet demands for Welsh language education in the future.
Mr Morris said: “I have had families come up to me and tell me they haven’t been able to get their children into schools with education provision in Welsh language. People have seen the success of schools in Wrexham which provide Welsh language provision such as Ysgol Plas Coch, Bodhyfryd and Morgan Llwyd. But schools are completely under resourced to cope and at Plas Coch they have put up two mobiles because of the extra demand."
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The authority’s Chief Learning and Achievement Officer John Davies, said: "The authority is still in the midst of carrying out a feasibility study on a range of possible sites and locations for a new primary welsh-medium language school in Wrexham. This should be completed within the next few weeks. Once this is completed a report will be submitted to the executive board in late April, where members will agree on a preferred option. The authority will then carry out a full consultation, which will seek the views of a wide range of stakeholders about that preferred option.
"There is sufficient accommodation in our Welsh medium schools to meet the current demand. All pupils who have applied for places at Welsh medium schools in Wrexham next September have been allocated places and two of our Welsh medium primary schools still have some places available."
This sounds suspiciously like a case of "he said, she said". Whenever anyone makes an allegation there'll always someone available to deny it, and the average reader is left with no means of being able to judge who is telling the truth. But, happily, it only takes a little research to get the facts.
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The current situation is that Wrexham has five Welsh-medium primary schools, although there are also two very small rural schools which teach in Welsh. Wrexham publishes the admission number for each school in this document, together with the number of applications for places in September 2009:
Plas Coch ... Admission number 27 ... Requests 57
Bodhyfryd ... Admission number 46 ... Requests 49
Bryn Tabor ... Admission number 42 ... Requests 31
I D Hooson ... Admission number 29 ... Requests 39
Cynddelw ... Admission number 18 ... Requests 6Total admission number 162
Total requests 182
This shows that the number of requests for places exceeds the number of places normally available. However it should be noted that the Ysgol Bodhyfryd website says that the school now has an admission number of 60, to refect the fact that temporary space has been found from somewhere. As mentioned in the story, Ysgol Plas Coch also has two temporary classrooms.
So Wrexham have just—but only just—managed to find places for those who have made formal admission requests. However they are very obviously heading directly for another crisis since three of the Council's WM schools are already full for this coming September, and it is almost certain that one of the two remaining schools with places mentioned by Mr Davies is Cynddelw which is in Glyn Ceiriog, some 25km away from Wrexham itself. Therefore only one of the four schools in or anywhere near Wrexham has any space left ... a full six months before the start of term.
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But this is only a part of the picture. Back in December I wrote this post about Wrexham's belated proposals for increasing the number of WM places available. In it, I mentioned that Wrexham had conducted a survey of parental preferences of parents of very young children in October 2007, and the headline percentages were given in this news story from RhAG. I did try to find a copy of that survey at the before but it wasn't anywhere on Wrexham's website. But I've checked again and am pleased to say it now is, click the cover to read it:
The survey is particularly relevant now because the children in question are those born between September 2005 and August 2006, those starting formal education this year. The main figure is that the parents of 269 children would be very or fairly likely to send them to a Welsh medium primary school if there was one within 2 miles. This is not an extrapolated figure, it is the actual number of responses. The response rate was only 32% and it would be inconceivable that all of the remaining 68% would not want to do so. So that 269 is a minimum figure.
But the sustainable admission number of all WM schools in Wrexham is only 162, for although the temporary accommodation might allow for the figure to be increased for a year or so in the short term, there are seven year groups in total. So at a minimum there are at least a hundred children whose parents want them to have WM education, but for whom there are no spare spaces. That is solid proof that John Morris is right to say that parents are being turned away.
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So what is happening? I think the main reason for the difference is that parents usually make informal enquiries in the first instance. If they are told that the WM schools near them are full (and Wrexham have confirmed that three of the four in or near Wrexham already are for next September) they will simply not bother making an official application.
Another important factor is that if parents have been unsuccessful in getting their children into WM nursery education they might well feel that their children have already fallen behind, so that even though they might have wanted WM education a couple of years ago they now feel it is too late to catch up. This is very well illustrated in the diagram below, which shows that only 4% were able to get their child into a WM nursery or playgroup, which is very low even though about half of the parents thought their children too young to send to a nursery/playgroup at the time. To my mind this shows that we must make Parent and Toddler groups, called Ti a Fi (you and me) in Welsh, and nursery provision a priority.
But what surprised me most from the survey was the almost total lack of information given to parents by the Local Authority to enable them to make an informed choice. This is from the report:
Information for choosing a Primary School
2.12 Respondents were asked if they felt they had received enough information to make a decision about primary education for their children. The majority (64%) did not feel they had enough information to make this decision (Figure 14).
2.13 89% of respondents did not feel they had received enough information about the schools in their area. Only 74 respondents (11%) felt they had enough information regarding schools in their area (Figure 15).
2.14 An even higher percentage of respondents (94%) felt they had not received enough information regarding the application process for primary education. Only 40 respondents (6%) felt they had enough information on the application process (Figure 16).
2.15 Furthermore, 93% (579) respondents had not received information on Welsh medium schools (figure 17).
To my mind this borders on wanton negligence by Wrexham Council. It makes the figure of 44% who did respond positively all the more remarkable, and this lack of information might well be why the overall response rate only reached 32%.
All these factors act to reduce the numbers that make official applications for WM places, and I think it is reasonable to say that local authorities take advantage of this as an excuse for not supplying the number of WM places they should.
Now in Wrexham's case, the local authority do realize that they need to act, even though they have been leaving it rather late. They are currently consulting on these three options:
• building a new 1FE (210 place) school at Gwersyllt
• increasing capacity at Ysgol Plas Coch from 1FE to 2FE (420 places)
• building a new 1FE school at Gwersyllt and increasing capacity at Ysgol Plas Coch from 1FE to 1.5FE (315 places)
I think that the third option is clearly the best, because it provides more WM places than the other two. However, even if it is approved, it adds only 45 places per year to the 162 places currently available. It would still leave a shortfall of at least 60 places each year.
That means at least one more two form entry (or maybe two one form entry) WM schools are required in Wrexham simply to meet the demand that was surveyed back in 2007. One small amendment that would go some way to help would be to add this as fourth option:
• building a new 1FE (210 place) school at Gwersyllt and increasing capacity at Ysgol Plas Coch from 1FE to 2FE (420 places)
It's a great picture, and this is the largest version of it I can find (500 x 249). Feel free to link to it, or to let me know if there's an even bigger one available elsewhere.
For more detail on the joint Plaid / SNP policy, read this.
