That was the year that was – is this the year that will be?

A year on, are we still in love with Obama?

OBAMA, recession, the expenses scandal, the All Wales Convention, Twitter – these were the issues that dominated 2009. So what’s coming in 2010? Our contributors look forward to a General Election (and possible change of government), continued economic hardship, a changing media, and silverware for a certain football club…

Rob Williams

The dark clouds that have been gathering over the Welsh media for the last decade finally eclipsed the few remaining rays of sunlight this year. Welsh newspapers are reaching the point of no return and with ever increasing cutbacks at ITV and the BBC broadcasting is not far behind. All this makes 2010 a gloomy looking prospect for the Welsh media.

The ineffective response to the crisis from the Assembly has produced the profoundly unpleasant spectacle of a range of AMs pontificating about rescuing the Welsh media while developing plans that will surely put the final nail in the coffin.

In 2010 I would like to see new media on the front-line of the fight to save and improve the Welsh media. Let’s have no more talk of government bailouts for already super-rich media monoliths, or increasing WAG advertising in failing, unread, ineffective local rags. Instead let’s hear about journalists receiving support and funding for new start-ups, staff buyouts at local newspapers, IFNCs being awarded to unusual and talented newcomers. As someone once said: “‘Times change, and we change with them.” Times have changed. It’s about time the Welsh media did.

Adam Higgitt

2009 conjures two unsurprising words: recession and expenses. We’d been in continuous growth for so long we’d almost forgotten how to even describe a contraction, falling back on the euphemism of “negative growth”. Recession brought back on a mass scale all those things from the early 90s: home repossessions, boarded up High Streets and a cohort of young people unable to find work. Expenses, meanwhile, represented one of a very select number of moments in which a great institution of the British state teetered (the others being the Monarchy after Diana’s death and the BBC after Hutton).

2010? General Election. For political anoraks it’s still our World Cup. My hope is for a debate that edifies, in which the options for the recovery are explored (the mooted televised debates will, incidentally, be the anti-climax of the election period – don’t we see our party leaders going hammer and tong at each other every week?) My fear is that the campaign won’t be cathartic. Voter disgruntlement is the last thing we need: it leads to a few sacrificial lambs and continued antipathy. Let’s have some voter rage.

Daran Hill

2009 has been a year in which I proved to myself that despite having no free time I could still produce another 10 hours a week to help edit the best website in Wales.

For next year I’m looking forward to driving the content on the site forward as we move to a new column structure.

And on a professional level, having remodelled the Positif Politics team I expect it to be a year of consolidation and further progress.

Heledd Fychan

People lost even more faith in politicians in 2009. The expenses scandal was extremely damaging, but I am hoping that it will bring about real change in politics.

For 2010, I hope to see Plaid Cymru win more seats than ever before in Westminster. I am dreading what will happen if the Tories do well. I liked it when Wales was a Tory free zone and can’t believe how quickly they seem to have gained ground.

Personally, I’m hoping to significantly increase the Plaid Cymru vote in Montgomeryshire and give Lembit Opik and Glyn Davies a real fight. I’m also hoping that 2010 is the year we see a referendum on further powers for the Assembly being won. It’s about time we had some proper power and did away with the completely farcical LCO system.

Katie Chappelle

2009 has been the year of Twitter. Usage has increased by 1,382% this year and the site is changing the way people consume news. In June Michael Jackson’s death broke online (on the website TMZ) rather than through the traditional news channels, leading to a temporary shut-down of Twitter and Google as people logged on to find out more. During the year, more and more businesses also got wise to the fact that Twitter is an invaluable tool for promotion. Expect this to continue into 2010.

In 2010 I also look forward to seeing what could be the UK’s first social media election. Steve Grove, YouTube’s head of politics and news, has already predicted that this will be the UK’s ‘first YouTube election’. Social media provided a valuable part of the US election this year, with Barack Obama optimising the video sharing website, as well as using most other social media sites such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. Only time will tell if the party leaders in Westminster take a leaf out of Obama’s book.

Click for details on Google Android

2010 will see mobile phones used increasingly as hand-held PCs. Apple may launch yet another version of its iPhone while we’ll also see Google’s Android smartphone. Augmented Reality has the potential to advance the mobile phone’s  capabilities even further.  For example, pointing your phone at a building could show you the tweets currently being posted from within the building, where the nearest ATM machine is, and if there are any restaurant offers in the area. 2010 could be AR’s year.

Jenny Randerson AM

Aside from the obvious end of the Rhodri era and the subsequent change in the Labour leadership, 2009 saw deepening economic problems. Wales has fared far worse than the rest of the UK in the economic downturn, with unemployment levels climbing faster. But 2009 has seen steps in the tortuously slow process of devolution-building in Wales. Both the Holtham report and the report of the all Wales Convention have helped to build the case for fairer funding and a sensible set of powers for the Assembly.

For 2010, I hope to see a vote for a referendum in January in the Assembly, which will enable the referendum itself to take place before the end of the year. Hopefully that will lead to a yes vote which will give the new assembly elected in 2011 much greater powers. I am looking to Carwyn Jones as First Minister to give positive and enthusiastic leadership to the yes campaign.

I want to see the Labour-Plaid Government working much more enthusiastically to create highly skilled jobs which will raise average earnings in Wales. The Assembly Government will have to put much more money into education than it is currently planning. We have to educate ourselves out of our traditional low-wage, low-skill economy. In Cardiff Central, my great hope is to see new buildings at last appearing on the site of the Cardiff Royal Infirmary. It has been scandalously under-used for over a decade, while health services, and especially GP services in the area have become totally over-stretched. We badly need the new range of health services and facilities planned for the site.

Rachel Banner

The public response in 2009 suggests that True Wales speaks for many whose silence over primary law-making powers is presumed to be consent. Like us, they are worried about the continued lack of economic growth in Wales. Like us, they want the focus to be on reforming areas such as stroke services described by Consultant Physician Dr Tony Rudd as “scandalously bad”.  We want the NHS to be a national service again so that everyone in the UK, including in Wales, receives their entitlement to an equal standard of care. We also hope that Welsh schoolchildren will once again receive the same funding per head as their peers in England.  The whole point of an Assembly for Wales, after all, was to make government more accountable, more accessible and better tailored to our needs.

In 2010, we aim to ensure that ordinary people can have their say on their future: last year’s Assembly-sponsored tour can hardly be said to have achieved this.  With the leadership of every mainstream political party in Wales giving their full backing to a system in which the perceived prestige of law-making is likely to distract attention from more pressing public needs, it is essential that this issue is fully and openly debated.  In 2010, we intend to continue to promote the proposals outlined in our True Devolution Charter and to lobby for power to be placed into the hands of the people rather than further centralised in Cardiff Bay. We will be arguing that Assembly politicians should throw open the doors to the public, not withdraw into a world of comfortable privilege and navel-gazing.

In this year of the referendum, we would like to see a more considered response to some of the issues we have raised and will continue to raise. Presiding Officer Dafydd Elis-Thomas has led the way on setting the tone for this debate, rightly stating that the people of Wales “expect us to do our job whatever powers we are given, before they agree to give us more”.  In addition, given that cost estimates in 1997 were either inaccurate or wildly optimistic – Ron Davies’ statement to the House of Commons that there was no “proposal to construct a new building for the Assembly, or to create more bureaucracy” being a case in point – we hope to see some attempt by those in positions of influence to tell us realistically what that cost is likely to be.  We would like to be told how they intend to finance this significant constitutional change and why they believe that getting primary legislative powers matters more to almost everybody in Wales than family, work, housing, education and health.

Alan Davies

A lost cause? Many people in the UK think so, despite widespread support for our soldiers

2009 was a year of disappointment: lack of clarity on foreign policy and war fighting, expense scandals, banking crises, Copenhagen, wrongly chosen Noble Peace prize winners, poor progress by Obama and a UK government that lost the confidence of many in this country, as well as in its own party, all made the year a bit of a non-event. Most of the “news” was disappointing in that people in positions of trust and power failed to live up to the expectations and perhaps worst of all failed to “get it” when the people spoke.

My hope for 2010 is that we will enter an era when there will be more listening and caring on all sides. The imminent election will be the first real test of our politicians to engage in the age of multi and social media, and for those that embrace it there will be benefit. Those who fail will be exposed as not wishing to engage in a dialogue that requires listening on both sides followed by caring enough to embrace the messages heard.

Socially we need to be more inclusive and far more tolerant. Some of us live in a multi-cultural society, while others live in a world surrounded by foreigners. We all need to build bridges to engage and understand and learn from one another. It’s only through knowing that we can stop the hate in the world and the awful waste of life that goes with it.

Mat Davies

2009 started on a note of hope: I was genuinely excited by the inauguration of Barack Obama. Here, surely, was the leader we’d been looking for: a man to usher in a new age of content led politics and an end to reactionary, soundbite policy on the hoof. We are not there yet but the passing of the health bill is a massive step forward. Sadly it has been lost in the fog of war, in the deluge of mps expenses and the seemingly inexorable rise of SuBo and co.

In 2010 I’m hoping for a year of returns: of politics that extends beyond the Westminster village; of the novel as commentary not just escapism; of the album as coherent artistic whole not just an aggregation of digital downloads; and flair and intelligence to welsh rugby.

Id also like to see the return of people being famous for something not just for being famous and deserving causes not being afterthoughts. Maybe it’s the Virgoan streak in me but I’d like a simple life and a better level of discipline to do the writing I have so often promised myself. Oh, and some silverware for  Liverpool FC would be nice, too.

Angela Elniff-Larsen

This year was like a tornado with a huge tsunamis as far as MPs and AMs were concerned. Expenses overtook common sense.  Finally we had a change of leadership in Wales, which was well overdue, and some small change in the Cabinet. I had hoped for bolder moves, but there you go. My biggest concern was the decline in business and economic growth, leaving Wales even further behind the rest of the UK, topped off with a recession. No impact was made on the perennial unemployment problems or on the poverty of expectation and real time poverty for many of our communities.

In the coming year, I would like to see a more concerted effort from all parties to put Wales ahead of party politics. There will be an election and we have to wait and see if we get a Tories at Number 10 and what effect it will have on Wales.  I would love to see policy follow need and budgets follow policy. I would like to see Plaid make some changes and be bolder in pushing its agenda to win more powers for Wales. The Lib Dems need to find their feet and show they have a purpose in Wales. Labour has to reactivate its membership and find its roots again. I can see the Welsh Tories being very much brought back into line with Westminster if their party wins the General Election.

For the rest of us, 2010 will be a hard year. We will take time to move out of recession if we do not get business support right and revert to putting economic development into a department on its own, preferably taking it out of WAG and back to a re-modelled RDA, Wales will stay at the bottom of the development pile and unemployment will be as bad if not worse that it is now.

John Wilkinson

The past 12 months have been difficult for many people. We have seen the very real effects of the poor economic conditions in job losses, business closures and the threat of more to come. Personally, 2009 has been very mixed. While falling victim to the downturn and being made redundant in the spring, I have been able to fulfil my career-long ambition of becoming my own boss. The downturn, it seems, can be a good thing as it pushes people to examine their priorities and reassess what they want from life.

I have high expectations and hope for 2010. I believe it will be the year of the entrepreneur, in which lean operations offering cost effective services and products will be rewarded by their customers and clients. One would expect that to be the case at all times, but it is not. Businesses are as caught up by brand affinity and ‘celebrity’ association. In the same way as the local butcher and baker are starting to challenge the big supermarkets by focusing on quality, service and choice, so too the smaller businesses in other sectors can and should challenge the big boys and beat them at their own game.

Will newly-Blue benches in Westminster mean legislative trouble in Cardiff Bay?

I also expect there to be real political change in the year ahead. Even if Labour hang on in May, surely their position and strength in Parliament will change significantly, giving committees and the House far more say over how the country is run. I hope so. And if the Tories win, we will see the relationship between Westminster and the devolved administrations change beyond recognition. In that latter scenario, we absolutely must have a Welsh legislature that can properly argue for policies and laws that reflect the needs of Wales. If you think getting a LCO through is like pulling teeth now, just wait until the Senedd is dealing with opposition in a Westminster with its own, very busy agenda.

Debbie Green

2009 has been a year of mixed emotions for NDCS Cymru. We were pleased that for the first time, data on the educational attainment of deaf children in Wales became available. But unfortunately, the feeling was bittersweet as the statistics confirmed our fears that many deaf children in Wales are significantly underachieving. In 2008, deaf pupils were 30% less likely to achieve 5 GCSEs at grades A*-C than their hearing peers. Deafness is not a learning disability and there is no reason why deaf pupils cannot achieve the same as their hearing peers – so long as they are given the appropriate support.

The reality is that deaf children in Wales face barriers. For example, poor school acoustics, or a lack of deaf awareness, are preventing many youngsters from reaching their full potential. On December 31, I hope that Assembly Members, educational professionals, architects designing new school buildings, and many others will join NDCS Cymru in making an important New Year’s resolution – let’s make sure that deaf children and young people in Wales have the same opportunities as their hearing peers.

Ali Goldsworthy

In the eyes of most of the British Public this one has been a pretty disastrous one for politicians. The expenses scandal decimated the trust people had in politicians. People who had spent decades fighting for a more just (as they saw it) society appeared to say one thing and do another. Worse, this reflected badly on the entire political class – people who are, in the main, good people. They persevered, making tough decisions about how to square budgets and what to prioritise. Some got it right, others such as the Assembly on further education funding, were forced to change their mind.

These debates will set the pitch for next year. For my generation this election will be different to any other we’ve experienced. Rather than arguing about how to spend money it will focus on economic competence. Of course the Lib Dems here have a killer asset. Vince. Was. Right. Whoever answers that question best deserves to win the upcoming general election.

This election will see Clegg really cement himself with the public, repeating a pattern started by Charles and Paddy before him. Carwyn, and to a lesser extent, Kirsty, will get there chance to really do that in 2011. Carwyn’s warmer words towards a referendum than Ieuan’s were intriguing. I can’t help feeling that rather like the insecurities of someone who has pulled way out of their league, Plaid may get cruelly cheated on this one. I hope that’s not a prediction that comes true. Oh and I don’t predict they’ll be a March poll. Blatantly, Labour are just doing that to make the Tories spend money.

Duncan Higgitt

Last year was defined by two factors, a failure of imagination and an abrogation of leadership on the part of those that do and those that would lead us. An inability to devise third way solutions was evident in the mire of Afghanistan, and in the unregulated and un-restructured move back to business as usual in the City. The absence of responsibility was most obvious in the expenses scandal.

Here, there was some kind of attempt to answer electorate anger. But it is hard to believe that either of the two parties that are most likely to win the General Election will prove less deaf to voters’ concerns. Neither of them have a solution-finder on the level of Vince Cable, Labour is exhausted, and England appears to be on the brink of electing potentially the worst new government in a number of generations. Brown’s wounded beast of an administration is still managing to land blows on Cameron’s inexperienced team – surely an ominous sign for a party that should be out of sight by now.

But where leaders fail, others take up the cudgels. Without a doubt, the most moving development of the year was Wootton Bassett. A more decent and caring way of marking the passing of our war dead there could not be. And, in social media, we glimpse new possibilities for democracy – although we are not there yet, as the failed ‘Twitter revolution’ in Iran proved. But there is always hope.