What a load of cobblers! so the United States is one of the poorest countries on Earth.

Ultimately, however, I do believe that those who may not feel the economic downturn quite as severely as others should do the right thing and offer what they can in making sure that their neighbors have a roof over their heads, food on their tables, health care and education for their families. The strategy outlined by Evans I believe responsibly affects this value.

Re: Matt Davies:
“One thing that does continue to irritate though is the continuous false premise that the forthcoming election is only about England, implying the UK Government is somehow anti-Welsh.”

I do not think what Evans was saying implied that the UK Government is somehow “anti-Welsh”. It is simply that England enjoys the largest electorate with a preponderance of MPs, and a professional media based in the largest population centers. It is a truism that politics on the UK national level simply speaks to the concerns of the largest population.

I wasn’t advocating theocracy, don’t worry! Oppression happens when people, mainly Muslims, try to legislate morality. Christians in Wales believe that you can’t legislate what goes on in a man’s heart; therefore thats why, thankfully, we have a long tradition of the separation of Church and State in Wales. But that doesn’t change the fact that a changed heart leads to a change in society – history shows this, it happened in Wales before. E.g. During the 1904-05 revival the Police in Bethesda had nothing to do because crime levels dropped so they went on to establish a choir to keep themselves busy!

What I was saying was that different spheres of society need to be addressed by different institutions. Some by the political parities/government, some by the Church and some by the family and together they all tackle different aspects of poverty.

It will be a bitter-sweet Wales if we end up being a materialist wealthy country some day but still full or moral and spiritual poverty.

Haven’t got a clue about the tram system but the M4 relief road was quite clearly not environmentally acceptable to any Government that takes climate change even a little seriously.

The airport link road is not needed and Cardiff Airport have now denied that they want a new road. Its more of a vanity project to get the taxpayer to even further underwrite the St. Athan Academy.

And that’s without saying there isn’t enough money in north-south links to even pay for the M4 relief road let alone Jeff’s trams, unless you wanted to cancel the trains I suppose.

It might be worth commending the fact that St. Athan has not been mentioned once during this discussion on the Welsh economy. Because its complete rubbish that 1,000 cleaning jobs constitutes anything significant to the Welsh recovery. But that’s the reason they (a handful of Labour politicians) want an airport link road, it certainly isn’t because the Airport wants or needs one.

It looks to me like Nerys is writing about her party’s political priorities ahead of the election, rather than a ‘path out of poverty’. There’s been some discussion of the Welsh poverty question by the likes of Adam, and I think to weigh in with a proper contribution to that debate Plaid would have to produce an economic plan, like they used to through the likes of the late Phil Williams, Wigley etc. In terms of wealth creation I’d like to think the best is yet to come with IWJ looking to turn the Welsh budget around. Perhaps Nerys could have acknowledged that. Other than that you need skills (the education budget to be protected) and infrastructure. Although it only benefits the south of Wales, Plaid should make electrification of the railway all the way to Swansea a red line issue for any Hung Parliament negotiations.

However, is Plaid really wrong to call for the protection of the Assembly budget? No they are not. Sir Jon Shortridge has also pointed this out. Protecting Welsh finances (and Wales patently did not unleash the forces that created this recession) is entirely justifiable once you accept that Wales has specific needs and has been relatively impoverished by the Union, compared to other parts of the UK. This argument wouldn’t be good for that Union but Plaid is right to make it.

Jeff Jones’ point that money is somehow being wasted on north-south links should be rejected. Anything that tries to bridge internal divisions should be promoted and could well be important for building an actually Welsh economy in the future.

Finally, it is ridiculous to even accept cuts without looking at why the cuts have to be made. Even if you accept the reality of cuts (which Plaid does) you don’t have to argue that they’re normal, you don’t have to think they are moral, and you’re under no obligation to think they’re right. It isn’t right to propose cuts (except perhaps for inside the Assemblys fixed budget where you’ve got no fiscal powers) without addressing the cause of the recession. The recession was caused by quite specific circumstances engineered by the world of high finance. If you still have to bring the debt down (or the deficit, which is a separate issue) then fair enough but only do it if you’re asking the public-owned banks to maybe curb their excessive bonuses, and perhaps pay back some kind of levy. It neednt be a crippling levy or tax, but a solid return for the taxpayer would be nice.

We might, if the previous situation left the NHS badly under-managed. Of all the public debate that depress me, the ones that feature attacks on so-called NHS bureaucrats are perhaps the worst. Anyone who has spend any time in a hospital, either at A&E or on a ward, will know that it is characterised by often chaotic administration; patients moved wards in the middle of the night, confusion about the administering of drugs, having to tell 10 different clinicians all your details. What the NHS needs is tight and efficient management to make its budget go further. More managers (by which is often meant all staff who are not clinicians, including cleaners, caterers etc) would probably pay for themselves several times over.

(besides, the bed to ratio manager is also a measure of the changing way people are treated: far fewer need an overnight stay nowadays)

No serious left of centre politician can argue against the need for cuts. The debate should be where the cuts should be and ensuring that fairness is a key element in any decisions. Attacking the bankers might make you feel good but it doesn’t solve the mess we are in. It’ might already be too late to cancel the aircraft carriers but we need a serious debate about Trident as part of a much needed defence review. As for the other cuts Assembly politicians should be looking at all the assembly’s expenditure with nothing ruled in or out.

Economic spend in Wales , for example , was the highest in the UK yet we remain bottom of the league on most indicators. There should be a major debate on whether the decision to abolish the WDA was the correct one. Can we really tolerate any longer a situation where in 1997 there were 12 hospital beds per manager and now there are just 4? There are now nearly 40,000 individuals earning over £50k in local government where once there was under 4000 and all of this in an age of low inflation. Cuts can be made but as Mark Drakeford points out in an interesting speech they have to be driven by the politicians not the civil servants. Why , for example, is the Assembly intending to slash the capital budget in the next few years? Particularly when research by the IMF shows that increasing capital spending by 1% leads to a permanent boost to economic growth of around a third of 1%. Instead of wasting money for political reasons on the route to North Wales the Assembly should be spending money to boost the potential of the Cardiff City region. Cardiff should be the economic power house driving recovery for much of the area where the majority of the population lives. They could start by reinstating the much needed improvements to the M4 in the Newport area, constructing a road to the airport and dusting off the old Mid Glamorgan/South Glamorgan scheme for a tram system to connect the valleys to the capital.

This is so true it is bordering on a truism but she doesn’t then really get to grips with any kind of policy that can deal with this. The article goes on to worry about pensioners and public sector services and the horrendous deficiencies of previous and current administrations, but surely this is missing the point. The ‘path out of poverty’ is through economic regeneration and giving people hope and opportunity though jobs and wealth creation (another truism!).

Rather than formulating policy around fiddling with the distribution of a rapidly diminishing public expenditure budget we need to generate more wealth and the essential first step in this means intelligent restructuring of the financial systems of Wales so that business can flourish. This means introducing ‘locality financing’ through credit unions, a solution for which the powers to implement already exist in the WAG. So I keep on asking, if the solution exists why is it not being implemented and why is it not at the forefront of policy?