Banksy's Blog

Consultancy website

2011-10-11T12:16:00.002+01:00

Hello, if you're here looking for the website of my media law consultancy, you will find it here:

http://davidbanksmedialaw.wordpress.com

If you're looking for media law training, advisory services and journalism training, you will find all the details you need there.

Steve Jobs and working on an Apple Mac

2011-10-06T23:24:00.000+01:00

There will be millions of words written about Steve Jobs in the coming days, weeks and months. If you read one piece, make it Stephen Fry's eloquent summation of the man.

I will just say this.

I've spent many years working in newspapers on PCs and Macs. PCs are ok, they do the job, most of the time, but they are never, never a joy to work on.

Macs on the other hand have always been a constant source of delight. Every day you would find some lovely little quirk that just made your life as a writer, sub-editor or page designer that bit easier.

Macs work beautifully.

One of the jobs I loved the most was night editing the Daily Post. The accompaniment to the start of a shift was the welcome chimes of the ranks of subs' Macs as they switched on. It's a sound that I will always associate with getting a newspaper out and all the excitement, frustration and fun that involves.

Steve Jobs and his company's products made my working life that bit easier and more pleasurable. For that I'm very grateful.

A new business

2011-07-20T09:37:00.001+01:00

AFTER six years working in higher education I handed in my notice to the University of Sunderland today.

From September I will be fully self-employed as a media law consultant, journalist and journalism trainer. It's a nerve-wracking moment, taking the step of relying totally on the business I can find myself to make a living, but an enormously exciting one.

I have also been writing more than ever and it has been a joy to get back to what I originally started doing 23 years ago this month - journalism. It's a fascinating time to be involved in this area, with first libel reform and now phone-hacking attracting a great deal of attention to media law.

Some of you reading this will already have attended one of my law seminars or journalism courses and I look forward to seeing you again in the future.

The business offers media law training to journalists and non-journalists. You can see from my biog on the right some of the clients with whom I've worked. Recently, it has been interesting to see the number of non-media organisations who have called upon my services, such as charities, the police, unions, local government and others. This growth has prompted my move to go full-time as a consultant.

If you would like to talk about how I can help your organisation, please contact me at d.banks3(at)btinternet.com

Hackgate and PCC reform - I told you so (sort of)

2011-07-14T00:02:00.002+01:00

AT the launch of the 20th edition of McNae back in 2009 I got into conversation with, I'll call him 'an insider', from the Press Complaints Commission.

There had been rumblings, as ever, about reform, but this time, I thought, there seemed to be a bit of political will behind them. I said that a new Parliament might bring with it a desire to look once again at statutory regulation.

The chap from the PCC was totally dismissive, describing John Prescott, who was one of the main voices for reform at the time, as 'a prat.'

Since then I've had a couple of pops at the PCC which, I felt, was failing to respond adequately to legitimate criticism of the way it worked.

I mentioned it here on this blog, and here in a piece I wrote for the Guardian.

Both times I warned that a new Parliament, with a new crop of MPs unblemished by expenses scandals would be willing to look again at regulation of the press, possibly on a statutory basis.

At this stage I ought to declare an interest in that earlier this year I applied, unsuccessfully, to become a public commissioner on the PCC. If they do pay any attention to lone bloggers, I would just point out that I have been making this point for a long time, and well before my application to join them.

The extraordinary events of the last two weeks have given Parliament the opportunity it was waiting for to have a go at press regulation once more.

If the PCC does not survive this episode then it only has itself to blame. Its lack of any sensible response to criticism levelled from everyone from Gerry McCann to the former DPP has left it in a very vulnerable position.

Its excuse that it was lied to by NI over the hacking allegations served only to point up how weak it was as a regulator.

It has sleep-walked into a situation where we are now staring statutory regulation of the press in the face, which is a disaster for a free press.

If the media organisations who fund it through Presbof, have any sense, they will start working on its replacement now, looking at Ofcom as a model - with proper powers of investigation and fine, before MPs come up with something much more draconian.

The Times, Kate Middleton and nasal mutation

2011-03-01T22:53:00.000Z

It's a brave editorial writer in England who ventures into the choppy waters of Welsh. Many have floundered and the latest victim is none other than The Times.

In a broadly positive editorial, although a touch patronising in parts, the Thunderer wrote of Kate Middleton's first official engagement at Prince William's side in Wales.

"The skill that eluded John Redwood when he was Welsh Secretary, that of singing fluently in the Welsh language, has already been mastered by Kate Middleton," gushed the leader writer.

"This Thursday, on her first official engagement at Trearddur Bay, Anglesey, the fiancee of the next-but-one heir to the throne did not put a word out of place as she sang Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nadau, the Welsh national anthem, known to those of us who do not speak the language as well, as Land Of My Fathers."

Well, up to a point, Nadau, you see, means cry, or clamour. What had foxed the Times writer was the nasal mutation that turns Tadau, fathers, to Nhadau. So the correct title is Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.

A minor point perhaps, but they wouldn't misspell the words to God Save The Queen, would they?

Molecular chemistry, contempt of court and the reporting of the Joanna Yeates case

2011-01-02T01:20:00.003Z

Let me introduce you to the optical isomer, also known as a mirror image molecule.

Fascinating things. The one on the left has a sedative, hypnotic and anti-inflammatory effect. The one on the right has a teratogenic effect.

With me so far?

The diagram is the thalidomide molecule. The sedative, hypnotic effect cured the symptoms of morning sickness. The teratogenic molecule - caused birth defects. Both molecules were in the drug given to pregnant women worldwide, causing terrible birth defects in children they were carrying.

The drug caused the death of 100,000 unborn children. The families of the children who survived, some 10,000 globally wanted to know how this had happened and here in the UK some of the families were talking to the Sunday Times Insight team - at the time one of the world's very best investigative journalism teams (sadly disbanded in 2005) The ST started running articles on thalidomide and its manufacturers, Distillers (later acquired by Guinness and now part of Diageo)

Because compensation cases were still being dealt with in courts the ST could not properly investigate the origins and testing of the drug (it had been invented by accident in Germany) The Sunday Times, under the legendary editor Harold Evans decided to challenge the law that was preventing their investigations - common law contempt - which would punish publication of material which was seriously prejudicial to proceedings that were 'pending or imminent.'

They took the case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, where it was held that UK common law contempt was not in keeping with the UK's oblihations under the European Covention on Human Rights. A country in this position has a choice - either withdraw from the ECHR (and take a seat at the back next to North Korea) or amend the law.

And so, eventually, we got the Contempt of Court Act 1981, which is, in effect, a liberalisation of the law. Gone is the old woolly 'pending or imminent' - now to be in contempt you have to create a substantial risk of serious prejudice or serious impediment to active proceedings. For proceedings to be active an arrest needs to have been made or a warrant issued for someone's arrest. It also includes a defence of discussion of public affairs, to reflect the Sunday Times situation - which means that just because there is an ongoing court case, it does not follow that all discussion of the issues involved in that case is forbidden.

On the downside, it is a strict liability offence, which means that the the prosecution do not have to prove intent on the part of a publisher. So you can't claim that yo accidentally published something prejudicial if you are prosecuted for contempt - you've done the deed, you're guilty. This forces publishers to take care not to publish contempts - you train your reporters, newsdesk, subs (if you've still got them) to know the law and abide by it.

There is also an unlimited fine for contempt of court - which ought to concentrate editors' minds.

It has to be said that since 1981 contempt of court proceedings against newspapers and broadcasters are relatively rare. You have to make some effort to fall foul of it. The Sun managed it when they published the photo of a man accused of murder before he was due to take part in an ID parade, causing the collapse of the case (the ID witnesses could not longer be relied upon to use their memory of the offence when picking a suspect out of the line-up) The Sun was fined £80,000 and Kelvin MacKenzie, its then editor was fined £20,000 personally - this remains the record fine for contempt by publication in the UK.

The Sunday Mirror did it by running an interview with an assault victim's father in the Bowyer and Woodgate trial. The father talked about racist attacks he had suffered when the issue of race had been excluded from trial. This was published during jury deliberations and caused the abandonment of the first trial.

But the Contempt of Court Act was enacted long before the internet was invented. The most powerful media in potentia jurors and witnesses lives were newspapers, TV and radio. The legislators of 1981 cannot possibly have envisaged the effect the internet firstly, and social networks latterly, would have on pre-trial publicity.

Which brings me to the reporting of the Joanna Yeates case. The Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, has warned the media about some of the coverage. Some, it has to be said, has been excessive, and its cumulative effect, some might say, has been prejudicial.

Then we have Twitter and the court of public opinion expressed there, where some are not even in nodding acquaintance with the laws of libel, contempt or any other such constraints. The boyfriend of Ms Yeates criticised the press and internet coverage of the case yesterday.

The difficulty is that Twitter and Facebook simply carry the sort of conversations that might be going on in homes, office and pubs across the UK. But Twitter amplifies these conversations. The only way I can see a Tweet resulting in a contempt action is if it perhaps links to longer prejudicial material and is tweeted or retweeted by someone with significant numbers of followers. Whether the Attorney General wants to take this step of going after Twitterers is another matter. At the moment he seems more concerned with what the mainstream media, especially the redtops, are doing.

I would advise those openly speculating on this case both in mainstream and social media to keep their powder dry. As well as any person's fundamental right to a fair trial I have seen enough criminal trials to know that predicting their outcome on the basis of very preliminary 'evidence' is folly.

Sex, death, brass bands and libel by photograph

2010-07-19T23:48:00.000+01:00

Lest I be accused of being a little holier than thou in my attitude to The Sun in the post below, let me assure you I know just how easily a photograph can ruin your day as a journalist.

Let me share with you the story of one such disaster, which, sadly, I had a hand in.

This is back in the days when I was a jobbing hack on the Daily Post and it was my turn to 'do the calls.'

This was the round of phone calls made several times a day to the emergency services to see if there were any crimes, deaths, disasters or other human misery happening for us to report on. It was also in the days when such calls were made to human beings - usually a duty inspector in the police control room, or a desk sergeant at individual police stations. Since then these humans, who one could have a conversation with, have been replaced by pre-recorded 'voicebanks', which are a journalistic dead-end and should only ever be used as a starting point for a story by any reporter worth their salt.

Anyway, I digress, back to the sex and death. You see the virtue of talking to a human is that they do love a bit of gossip and so it was that morning when I made the call and was informed of a sudden death in a nearby market town, woman in custody as a result. Slowly, but surely, the story emerged.

It would seem the local brass band was a hotbed of illicit passion. She was 30, he was in his 60s, and after band practice they would adjourn to the local marshes in his roomy estate car where they would consummate their affair. Both were married.

The police were holding her as they believed she'd hit him in a lovers' tiff, causing a fatal heart attack. She said he had died during or shortly after they had made love. She had shagged him to death.

So, I set out hotfoot to the market town with a photographer, and crucially got to the bandmaster before word had spread of just how this bandsman had died. The family were letting people know of his death, but were, understandably, not sharing the grisly detail.

Most important, we got a photo of the band. Dead man, back row centre, and the bandmaster never queried it, but we got him to name every single band member, and there she was, in the front row - the, quite literally, femme fatale.

So, were were very happy with ourselves, we had the story, the picture, the whole shebang and off to Liverpool it all went to be printed the next day in the Daily Post.

The next day, when I opened the paper, it was one of those moments as a reporter and you will all have them, when you close the paper, wanting what you see not to be true.

Because, on the front row far right there was a bloke in a wheelchair, and there was no-one sitting or standing behind him, what a designer would call 'dead space' a blank wall. So the man in the wheelchair was cropped off to neaten the pic. However, when the caption, which has already been written, reads: "Mrs X, fourth from the right," the crop means that the identification moves along to the right. So instead of accusing the femme fatale of shagging to death a fellow bandsman, we accused the 16-year-old schoolgirl sitting next to her.

So, I have some sympathy with the Sun messing up the picture in the story about Maj Gallimore. It is easily done.

But if you do do it, then get it sorted quickly, which is precisely what the Daily Post did.

Firstly, we didn't wait for a complaint. Eric Langton, who was on the DP newsdesk - one of the best news editors I've ever worked with, a real newsman, totally unflappable and a pleasure to work for - went straight round to the girl's family with a letter of apology from the paper.

Her dad, you will understand, was not a happy man. Let's face it, his daughter is 16 - she's not on drugs, she's not pregnant, not a tattooed death metal fan. She plays in a brass band for heaven's sake, she is every dad's vision of perfection, and here you have the Daily Post suggesting she kills elderly bandsmen with sex.

But, in typically civilised British fashion, he was polite with Eric and said that what action they took depended on how she reacted, she was at school and hadn't seen the paper yet.

She arrived home, took one look at the Post.....and burst out laughing. She didn't think anyone in the town would really think it was her, and didn't think it would be taken seriously. So, they didn't sue us. Nor did they want a correction, which they felt would just draw more attention to the story.

A close call, but a lesson that being straight with people and admitting your error, no matter how stupid it may make you look, can get you off the hook.

Oh, and the femme fatale? She was acquitted at trial.

Welsh Guards, naked congas and Sun cock-ups

2010-07-18T00:40:00.005+01:00

If you want to find mistakes in newspapers, just look at the pictures.

It is a fact that day-in, day-out that's where you will find everything from the plain daft to the outright libellous.

Not sure why, but I think it's something to do with the process by which pages are put together. Quite often the designer who draws the page, the sub who subs the copy and writes the caption, the person who crops the picture are all working in isolation and not always communicating.

That's the charitable way of considering what happened to a friend of mine who pitched up at my house on Friday with a copy of that day's Sun in his hand.

Mike Newbould is a former captain in the Welsh Guards, and a man who served his country with nothing but honour up until his retirement several years ago.

He was therefore somewhat surprised to be bombarded with calls and texts from brother officers on Friday morning who said he was in that day's Sun.

"We thought you'd left, but take a look at page 27," they said.

Sure enough, there on page 27, and on the Sun's website was a story about a Welsh Guards officer, Rob Gallimore, who, the Sun claimed, had got into hot water having allegedly stripped off in the NCOs' mess on the Falklands and tried to lead a naked conga.

But, and this is where it gets messy, a mugshot, purportedly of Maj Gallimore, was in fact a picture of Capt Newbould, taken when he was serving with the Welsh Guards in Macedonia.

Now, the caption read "Gallimore", but given the number of calls Mike took when his picture appeared, it was clear he was recognisable as the person in the photograph.

Mike decided to call The Sun, to point out the error, but, he said, got nowhere. The best they could offer, when informed of what is clearly a defamatory publication was: "I'll put you through to the picture desk."

The picture has since been removed from the version of the story on the Sun's website.

At this stage Mike has not involved lawyers, all he wants is a correction, and a small donation to Help for Heroes - a charity for which he has raised funds with an epic bike ride, and one of the Sun's favourite charities too. You would have thought that would not be too much to ask.

This is where my sympathy for libel reform is somewhat taxed. For every honest journalist gagged by the chilling effect of a libel threat, you have the sort of moronic response displayed by The Sun to a very genuine complaint. Quite frankly if they haven't the wit to sort this out then they deserve everything they get.

If I were on The Sun's newsdesk, I would get on the phone to Captain Newbould pretty bloody sharpish, before a no-win, no-fee lawyer with pound signs in his eyes gets there first.

POST SCRIPT: By Monday morning the article about Maj Gallimore had been removed entirely, although, as is often the case, Google's search results still carry the gist of what had been published. Not sure why this is, the pic had already been removed, so whether the story is subject of another complaint I'm not sure. Haven't seen today's print edition of the Sun, but there's no apology to Mike that I can find on the website.

Texting jurors and the Contempt of Court Act

2010-07-15T09:15:00.000+01:00

So, you're on your final hours of jury duty. You've heard the closing arguments, the judge has summed up and now along with your fellow jurors you're seated in the jury room beginning your deliberations.

Then the judge pops his head round the door and points to a box in the middle of the table.

"Erm, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in that box there's lots of information about this case which I've ruled inadmissible, or it's been kept out because of legal restrictions. Just don't look in it ok? Thanks a lot."

You look at one another, one of you whispers that surely a peek wouldn't hurt, another says you might get into trouble with the judge if you look. The judge's head appears round the door again and he says: "Oh, if you do look and keep schtum about it, there's nothing we can do, we can't even ask you if you looked after you've reached a verdict."

This about sums up the attitude of the courts to the internet and jurors. They are warned not to look, not to conduct their own Google-investigations. But unless a juror is reported for bringing in material by another juror, there's no way the courts can 'detect' such practices. Indeed the Contempt of Court Act 1981 forbids anyone, even a Royal Commission on Justice, from even asking jurors how they reached their verdicts - eg, did you reach it as a result of evidence, or did Wikipedia give you a helping hand?

This week we have seen the latest use by a juror of technology. A teenage juror texted another on the same trial to give a running commentary on evidence, as reported here in The Guardian's new Law section.

The recipient of the text reported the matter, both were discharged, and the texter was given a suspended sentence, showing how seriously the courts take these matters.

This is something I've been pointing out for some time now. While the print media in particular, broadcasters too though they generally do less court reporting, are all under dire warnings of the dangers of contempt, very little is known of what jurors do when they sit at home in the warm glow of their laptop.

An indication of just what is available was shown in the 2004 trial of David Bieber, who stood trial and was later convicted of the murder of PC Ian Broadhurst, and the attempted murder of two other officers.

I was teaching in Newcastle, where the trial took place, and seeing the police presence outside the court, Googled 'David Bieber.'

Now, before the results, I should mention that the reporters in court were told not to mention anything about Bieber's background, previous offences. His photgraph was banned too as 'identity was at issues' - ie he was claiming he didn't shoot the officers, a mysterious Mr X had done so - I know, this goes some way to explaining his conviction.

Top of the Google results was a site called America's Most Wanted which helpfully informed a viewer that Bieber, aka Nathan Wayne Coleman, was on the run for a suspected murder in Florida. It also carried his police mugshot.

If I were a trial judge I would be far more concerned about the Googling or texting juror than the court reporter sitting on the Press bench.

There's an interesting paper by Prof Michael Bromby of Glasgow Caledonian University.

The last government announced that it would conduct research into juries and how they reached their verdicts. It is to be hoped the present government continues this research. It might come to the conclusion that the Contempt of Court Act, enacted almost 30 years ago - long before the internet, Twitter, Facebook and blogs - is long overdue some revision.

Tasker's legacy lives on

2010-06-08T18:24:00.001+01:00

Two police officers accused of misconduct in public office - they are alleged to have tried to avoid paying speeding fines - tried today to have their addresses withheld in court.

This has been tried many times in the past by defendants for all manner of reasons.

Most ask the court to place an order under S11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 - a banning order - preventing the publication of this detail.

One judge who resisted these orders and whose judgement is frequently cited by reporters in court fighting such orders, is the late, great, Sir Tasker Watkins.

When he sat in judgement on a request to place a S11 on a defendant's address in Rv Evesham Justices, ex p McDonagh [1988] QB 553, he said that S11 'was not enacted for the comfort and feelings of defendants.'

It is there to assist in the administration of justice, not as a shield behind which a defendant can hide. We have open courts and that means a defendant's name and address are given in open court.

Tasker is a hero of mine and literally a hero as well. When most of us were of an age to be barely starting our career, he was an officer commanding troops on the D-Day landings. He led bayonet charges through field raked by enemy gunfire, singlehandedly took on enemy machine gun posts and was awarded the Victoria Cross for actions which changed the course of a batte in which 10,000 enemy were killed and 50,000 captured.

Most would say he had done his bit then, but he came back to forge a career in the law which saw him become Deputy Lord Chief Justice and a stout defender of press freedom to openly report the courts.

Today's judgement shows that while Tasker may have passed away in 2007, the principles he maintained of open justice, still hold true.

And to cap it all, as if that's not reason enough to tip your hat to him, he was Welsh.

My thanks to Twitter followers @Ovidus and @davidelstone for pointing me in the direction of today''s case.

And what's not in Lord Lester's Bill

2010-05-28T11:18:00.000+01:00

As far as I can see this Bill does not provide the radical change to the laws of libel that many have been calling for - but I'm not wholly sure that any Bill can.

The Bill does not, in my opinion, really address the fundamental problem that many have with the libel laws as they operate at the moment and that is the issue of costs of defending an action.

The Condional Fee Arrangement has made it easier than ever to sue for libel, but defending an action is just as expensive and the prospect of being awarded costs from an unsuccessful claimant, sadly small.

This issue was addressed by Lord Justice Jackson in his report earlier this year. Jack Straw introduced welcome moves to cap costs, but they were kicked into the long grass in the House of Lords over concerns they would limit access to justice by those of limited means.

But this is all tinkering at the edges of the problem. I travel round the country talking to journalists and editors on regional papers and frankly the moves to reduce costs are not enough for them.

One North West editor told me that 90% of the libel threats he was getting were emanating from a few firms doing CFA business. They had absolutley no intention of taking their claims to the High Court, but were relying on the fact that the papers don't have the budget to go there either and so they get a small-ish settlement to end the case.

Of course some brave souls soldier on into court, despite limited resources and the action soaks up their finances and their time - Simon Singh for example.

But he is the exception to the rule, most simply don't have the stomach, or rather the cash, for the fight. Many regional papers abandoned libel insurance long ago because of the high premiums. Also when you get into a fight the insurer often urges early settlement to avoid hefty court costs.

So you can strengthen the old defences, strike out actions, create a public interest defence - but many publishers won't go that far. Ands that is the really insidious thing about libel. Not the way the courts necessarily operate, but the environment it creates outside the court, where an aggressive litigant can stifle legitimate debate by constant threats of libel action.

Solutions have been suggested, such as making the burden on the claimant greater. However, it would be very difficult, for instance, to reverse the burden of proof in a libel action, requiring a claimant to prove they did not commit the defamatory behaviour alleged. We do not require that of those accused in criminal trials, and so such a move would probably not bear a challenge in Europe.

But what if there were an alternative way of resolving disputes? A forum that the courts themselves would say: No, you must try there first before you come to law?

Well, what about the PCC? Before you dismiss it, I'm not saying that in its present state it could do the job. If you were a lawyer advising a libelled claimant what would you say: Go for the High Court and big buck for both of us, or go to the PCC where the best you'll get is an apology and you don't need my expertise to do it?

If we really are going to get radical reform of the libel laws in this country then I see it being tied to a regulatory system that is far more pro-active than the PCC, and one which has ultimate penalties that are more serious than a requirement to print an adjudication.

Of course, the idea of a PCC with teeth is not a new one and it has been batted away by the PCC and the industry as being unworkable and that it will inevitably drag those expensive , time-consuming lawyers into the process. That argument might hold water if there were not a great big elephant in the room called Ofcom - which can and does levy fines and does not seem to take inordinately long to give broadcasters a caning. Of course, we'll have to see if it survives not the Coalition Government is in power.

But as newspapers increasingly move their content online and onto video, the line that differentiates them from broadcasters is being blurred and I'm not sure the argument against them having a regulator similar to Ofcom is as valid as it used to be. Of course, I know, the existence of Ofcom has not stopped broadcasters from being sued for libel. But if you put in a regulatory system of first resort, you might have a chance of heading off libel threats.

This will require some action from the PCC. They are very good at publishing customer satisfaction surveys for those who use their service and are happy with the outcome, but what they need to do now is look at why people do not use them, and instead go to law.

Defamation Amendment Bill 2010 - Analysis

2010-05-27T13:12:00.001+01:00

This is a swift analysis of the Bill published today, introduced by Lib-Dem peer Lord Lester as a Private Member's Bill.

As I mentioned earlier, this first thing that struck me was Section 1 which establishes a statutory defence of publication in the public interest, and it seems to be based on the Reynolds defence.

Prior to this, the defence was one at Common Law, developed by judges and stemming from the case of Reynolds v Times Newspapers. The difficulty with Reynolds for publishers is that it is a defence where there is almost an acceptance that you have to fight in court to get it. Unlike the other privilege defences, which often head a case off before it has even got to court. There are so many hurdles to Reynolds that it if you as a publisher want to claim it, you have to accept that your journalistic practices are going to be scrutinised in court in order to establish whether you get Reynolds or not.

This Bill in Clause 1a and 1b establishes a defence if the matters were published in the public interest and the defendant acted responsibly in doing so. However, it then goes on to define reponsible publication and use some, but not all, of the language of the 10-steps of the Reynolds defence described by Lord Nicholls in that case.

When the Ministry of Justice working party on libel reform reported on this it stopped short of recommending the codification of Reynolds. Instead some of its members, notably those representing NGOs, writers and the scientific community, recommended that consideration be given to a new public interest defence where publication dealt directly with politics, science, commerce, sport healthcare, the environment, public administration or was a form of artistic impression and that any relevant professional codes and standards had been followed by the publisher.

I'm not especially advocating the working party plan, but it's interesting that Lord Lester's Bill goes for a Reynolds model rather than a new defence.

The second thing of note is that in the the second clause of the Bill the defence of fair comment is renamed as honest opinion. This is a more accurate title for the defence, and has been described thus by judges in such cases as Branson v Bower [2002] QB737. It's worth noting that the Bill in describing how a defence of honest opinion is established says at 3(6)c it does not matter whether the facts that led to the opinion are included in the publication or not. So, if you had this defence, you would not need to publish: This is what I think and this is why I think it.

Clause 4, eminently sensibly changes the name of the defence of Justication to Truth.

A defendant would have to show words to be true, or capable of a less serious meaning, according to the Bill. Note that the Bill does not reverse the burden of proof as regards truth. The onus is still on the defendant to show the truth of what they have published if that is their defence.

The defences of absolute privilege and qualified privilege in the Bill look broadly similar to the existing defences, as do the schedules defining what they cover.

Clause 9 of the Bill is interesting in the defence it provides for broadcasters and websites where they are not the authors or editors of the defamatory material. A claimant is required to give notice of the words complained of; why they are defamatory; what is untrue and why they are harmful. The defendant the has a notice period of 14 days from receipt to remove the offending material.

Clause 10 would appear to answer the concerns of those publishing on the internet by stating that as long as what you publish is by the same person and has materially the same content, then the date it was first made available to the public is the first date of publication.

Clause 11 makes an important change in requiring corporate bodies who want to sue for libel to show substantial financial loss.

Clause 12 continues that theme in requiring the court to strike out an action for defamation unless the claimant shows substantial harm of the likelihood of substantial harm to their reputation.

That's a brief summing up of the points of interest from a quick reading today. I'm sure others will find more to chew on in the days and weeks to come.

What happens now depends on whether the coalition government uses Lord Lester's Bill as a template for reform and gives it parliamentary time, or whether they want to introduce their own Bill, as promised in the Queen's Speech.

Lord Lester's Libel Bill in full

2010-05-27T09:03:00.000+01:00

Here's the Bill on libel reform introduced by Lord Lester. Via @martinjemoore of the Media Standards Trust

Will blog soon, but one quick point, it's opening section effectively codifies the Reynolds defence.

Libel reform in the Queen's Speech

2010-05-25T23:33:00.002+01:00

Proposals to reform libel laws were included in today's Queen's Speech revealing the Coalition Government's legislative plans.

The Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill will, among other things, reform libel laws to protect freedom of speech.

Of course, the detail of the Bill is all-important, but the commitment to legislate is to be welcomed.

It promises to be an interesting Bill for journalists in another way in that it also includes a strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act. This, if it happens, is also to be welcomed, because FoIA, useful as it has proved, has too many exemptions allowing public bodies to avoid disclosing information.

Lord Lester's libel reform bill

2010-05-24T10:00:00.000+01:00

Lord Lester is introducing a Private Member's Bill on libel reform to the House of Lords this Thursday.

He was interwiewed on Radio 4's Today programme this morning about the bill and you can listen to the it again here.

The Bill, he said, would 'assist' the government in looking at reform of the libel laws. He said it would include measures requiring claimants and corporate claimants to show actual damage - something they are not required to do at the moment, damage is 'presumed.'

He said the Bill would also require libel trials to be heard by a judge alone. It would also examine libel defences such as privilege. He pointed out that the last reform of the law was in 1996, with the Defamation Act of that year. This was, he said, before the spread of the internet, web hosts, bloggers and so on, all of whom are affected by libel laws.

Lord Lester has been active in this area for some time and has been planning his defamation reform bill last year, as reported in The Times.

It will be interesting to see the details of his Bill this week. All the major parties gave commitments to libel reform in their manifestoes. The Lib Dems' was the most specific. It will also be interesting then to see what reception Lord Lester's bill gets from Government, because to have any hope of proceeding the Government will have to agree to giving it time in Parliament.

Why the coalition is wrong on rape

2010-05-21T23:15:00.002+01:00

Rather to the surprise of a few the coalition agreement published this week by the Conservatives and Lib Dems included plans to reinstate anonymity for defendants in rape cases - reported in The Guardian here.

I say reinstatement, because it has been tried before and the experience was not a happy one. Anonymity was granted to defendants in rape case by the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976, which also granted anonymity to victims in any offence which included the word rape - rape, incitement, attempted, aiding and abetting etc.

Interesting to see whether this anonymity applies only to rape or to the whole raft of sexual offences on the statute books now - grooming, voyeurism, trafficking etc.

Anonymity for defendants was brought to an end by the Criminal Justice Act 1988 for many of the reasons cited by those opposing this latest move. Namely that many sex offenders are repeat offenders and that seeing a defendant charged encourages other victims to come forward.

While I agree with those arguments, my concern is for the wider principle of open justice. Once you allow special pleading, ie, that a defendants life will be ruined by the mere accusation of the offence, then you set a dangerous precedent. if we accept that certain crimes are particularlay damaging to a defendant by their very nature, the you open the door to many other defendants trying a similar argument.

An accountant accused of fraud might argue that an accusation of fraud was specially ruinous; a teacher accused of hitting a pupil would say such a charge would be career-ending. Once you accept the argument that certain offences are especially damaging then you accept a principle which threatens open justice.

News organisations are already withdrawing from the courts, once a staple source of news. Putting another obstacle in the way of open reporting of the courts is a mistake.

Just a thought on the new government

2010-05-12T00:06:00.003+01:00

OK, put yourself in Peter Mandelson's shoes. Do you stand idly by while the Tories and Lib Dems get all cosy as they negotiate Labour out of government? Or do you....interfere.

No, you set a hare running that there's a possibility of a deal with Labour, raising the hopes of grassroots Lib Dems round the country that they are not going into a coalition with the Tories, thus taking the blame and the fury for the cuts they will impose. You also raise the hopes of the many people who voted Lib Dem to keep the Tories out, only to face the prospect of putting them in.

Now, Mandelson, knows these talks will fail, he knows the mood of the party and he knows the mind of very senior colleagues who will not allow a deal with Lib Dems to go unchallenged. It is doomed to failure. The negotiating team went in clinging to things, such as ID cards, that the Lib Dems could not live with. The talks were doomed and intended to be so.

But you've done two things. You've raised the hopes of Lib Dem rank and file, making them realise the horror of what they're getting into. You've also made the Lib Dem leadership look like flip-flopping, duplicitous opportunists, auctioning off power to the highest bidder.

Now, all the above might be fevered fantasy on the eve of a Tory Government.

Or else it might be an act of Machiavellian political maneuvering worthy of.....Peter Mandelson.

And lest we forget. In 1997 Labour won 418 seats - 418 - now that was a majority, that was a mandate to govern. The Tories were utterly destroyed and left with just 165 seats.

Labour now have 258 seats, easily enough to come back at the next election and take power from what they have ensured is a very shaky coalition.

Oh and the Labour Party website servers went down last night, such were the numbers logging on to join the party. At the same time the Tory and Lib Dem recruitment pages were running just fine. Maybe they've got better servers.....maybe.

Who would be an MP?

2010-05-09T23:28:00.001+01:00

Pity the poor MP.

He or she has pounded the streets of their constituency for a month and been involved in an election that has been a real battle. Then on election night there is the euphoria of winning the seat and going to Westminster as duly elected Member of Parliament. Thrilling stuff.

But it doesn't take long for your feet to get planted very firmly back on the ground by your beloved electors.

Take a look at the blog of David Jones, MP for Clwyd West, where he thanks the electors for returning him. And it was a good win. Notwithstanding the national mood now, with a slender 133 majority when he won the seat from Gareth Thomas (Lab) in 2005, it was number 2 on Labour's list of seats they wanted to win from the Tories.

Well, he increased his majority to a much more comfortable 6,419, a very decent result by any standards.

But look at the messages of congratulation, and especially one from 'Hugh' who says that Mr Jones's victory was helped 'in no small part' by his efforts on behalf of Colwyn Bay Pier - sod the economy, schools, hospitals, the war in Afghanistan, it's aging Victoriana we really care about. What's more, inquired Hugh, was there anything to report on this from the Steering Group.

I know that Mr Jones will take the matter as seriously as a conscientious constituency MP would, but you'd have to have a heart of stone not to forgive him a roll of the eyes and a muttered: "Give me a break."

David and I are politically poles apart, but I think he's a sharp MP. The problem with record gains for the Tories is that in that group of newbies you'll have a few chinless wonders who you wouldn't want running a whelk stall - no offence, Labour had its fair share of lobby fodder in 1997.

If they do form a government the Tories need to make the most of those in their number who have the intellect to make a go of it. I'd keep an eye on Mr Jones in the coming months.

So farewell, Google Ads

2010-04-27T23:25:00.000+01:00

I've dropped the Google Adsense link from the side of the blog.

No great hardship, I wasn't going to retire early at the rate things were accruing.

The final straw came when one of my final-year students Josh Halliday screengrabbed and tweeted my blog, with a no-win, no-fee defamation lawyer at the top of the ads.

They've been on there for some time, betraying the fact that Google Adsense has no sense of context, or irony for that matter.

There was also the small issue of a competitor consultancy pitching up on the blog too.Not good business.

Anyway, Mr Halliday has suggested Addiply as an alternative, so I'll check that out and see if they can have me putting my feet up at 50, which is sooner than I care to contemplate.

Paxman gets Paxoed by the man from Plaid

2010-04-27T12:50:00.001+01:00

Lovely clip from Newsnight.

Slightly sneering reference from Paxman to Eurfyl ap Gwilym's 'august' position as deputy chairman of the Principality to start off.

What follows is a beautiful example, as an interviewee, of how to deal with the aggressive interview.

Know your stuff, stay calm, and get your digs in when you can.

Eurfyl to Paxo: "Do your homework."

Paxo (truculent): "I have done my homework." (sound of shuffling papers as he finds that, actually, Eurfyl is right)

Eurfyl is obviously Wales's very own Vince Cable.

Post Script. If traffic to this blog since I posted the above is anything to go by, Mr ap Gwilym is an electoral smart bomb that Plaid could do to drop a little more often between now and election day.

With all three of the main parties today accused by the Institute of Fiscal Studies of being too vague in where they will make cuts after the election, an economist who knows what he is talking about would seem to be just what they need.

Jack Straw's Soapbox Blog

2010-04-19T10:21:00.000+01:00

Take a look at the blog by one of Jack's self-described 'bag carriers' as Mr Straw tours the country with his soapbox speaking to, and taking questions from, the public.

In the interests of political impartiality (not that a blogger needs to be) if the other parties can point me in the direction of something as entertaining, I'll link to it too.

Tories and Lib Dems commit to libel reform too

2010-04-15T10:40:00.000+01:00

Both the Conservatives and Lib Dems have included libel reform as a manifesto commitment.

Conservatives: "We will review and reform libel laws to protect freedom of speech, reduce costs and discourage libel tourism."

Lib Dems say they will: "Protect free speech, investigative journalism and academic peer-reviewed publishing through reform of the English and Welsh libel laws - including by requiring corporations to show damage and prove malice or recklessness, and by providing a robust responsible journalism defence."

So it's a commitment by all three main parties, with the Lib Dems being the most specific. Who will deliver though?

Labour's libel reform commitment

2010-04-12T13:04:00.001+01:00

Labour has included libel reform in its manifesto.

"To encourage freedom of speech and access to information, we will bring forward new legislation on libel to protect the right of defendants to speak freely. "

Election law

2010-04-06T23:30:00.004+01:00

Well, they're off, so here's a brief rundown of the legal problems that can arise when reporting elections.

Firstly, libel, it's always with us, but elections are that special time when candidates lay into each other with abandon and occasionally say something defamatory. Remember it is no defence to say you are simply reporting what someone else said (but see below). Anyone who repeats a libel is potentially liable for it and a defamed candidate may decide to sue the relatively wealthy media outlet that has repeated the libel rather than the relatively poor opponent who originated it. Beware accusations of racism, fascism and plain old lying.

However, if you are reporting remarks made at a public meeting, or press conference, then you have a defence of qualified privilege, so long as you are reporting fairly, accurately, on a matter of public interest and without malice. Don't get overly worked up about malice - the malice of the speaker does not 'infect' your report of their speech and has never yet destroyed a defence of qualified privilege mounted by a media organisation.

False statement about election candidates. Section 106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 makes it a criminal offence "to make or publish a false statement of fact about the personal character or conduct of an election candidate, if the purpose of publishing the false statement is to affect how many votes he/she will get."

The false statement must be statement of fact, not opinion. It is a defence to show at the time of publication you had reasonable grounds for believing the statement to be true. A journalist who published false claims that a candidate was homosexual was fined £250 in 1997. Note that it is no longer defamatory to say that someone is gay (unless it implies they are dishonest by concealing their true sexuality) but it would contravene this law. The reason being that if the voters included those whose religious beliefs cause them to hold anti-gay views, then such a statement could affect turnout for the candidate.

The 1983 Act also makes it an offence to publish a false claim that a candidate has withdrawn from the election if you know the claim is false and it is being made to promote the election of another candidate.

Impartiality of broadcasters. The Ofcom code and BBC Editorial Guidelines have detailed guidance on achieving impartiality. Several radio stations have been fined by Ofcom after presenters declared political allegiance on air.

Exit polls. Section 66A of the 1983 Act makes it an offence to publish the results of an exit poll before polling has finished. The reason being if the exit poll reveals a runaway winner it may discourage people from voting an thwart the democratic process. It is also an offence to publish a prediction of an election result if it is based on such a poll.

Election counts. Admission to the count is the responsibility of the returning officer. There is no national media policy, so best make contact early to make sure of arrangements for the night.

Libel law giveth and it taketh away

2010-04-02T11:20:00.004+01:00

By now I'm sure those of you with half an interest in libel law will have heard news of Simon Singh's successful appeal in the action brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association. A very good summation of the hearing and what might happen next can be read in The Times report of the case.

To sum up, very briefly, Simon Singh, a science writer whose publications include the excellent Fermat's Last Theorem, wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian in 2008 in which he alleged the BCA promoted 'bogus treatments' for childhood conditions like asthma, colic and earache.

The BCA sued him for libel and in an earlier hearing in the High Court, Mr Justice Eady said that Singh's article had contained assertions of fact and so he could not use the defence of 'fair comment' which normally protects statements of opinion.

Singh might have given up then as his legal bills were already soaring, but he fought on to appeal that point, that he should be allowed to use fair comment as a defence. And that is what he won yesterday, the Court of Appeal said he ought to be allowed to use fair comment as a defence.

The judgement is interesting for a number of reasons, but I particularly liked phrases such as: "This litigation has almost certainly had a chilling effect on public debate which might otherwise have assisted potential patients to make informed choices about the possible use of chiropractic." And that in suing Singh personally and rejecting an offer of an article in reply from the Guardian "The unhappy impression has been created that this is an endeavour by the BCA to silence one of its critics."

The full judgement is beautifully crafted and has been put up on Scribd by journalism.co.uk as part of their coverage of the case.

Heartening thought the judgement is, it's taken two years and £200,000 to get this far and it's only half way. The ball is in the BCA's court. It can go back to trial, with Singh allowed to use fair comment, it can appeal to the Supreme Court or it can drop the case. As the appeal court judges said, this is no way to pursue scientific debate.

The problem is that Simon Singh is the tip of the iceberg. He is the brave writer prepared to devote the time and cash to the battle. But for every Simon Singh there are hundreds of publishers who drop articles apologise and pay out of court simply to avoid the ruinous expense of a libel action.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw, to his credit, has begun to do something about this and had introduced reforms into Parliament that would cut 'success fees' for no-win, no-fee lawyers. This is the system where a lawyer who takes on a case on a conditional fee - no-win, no-fee - can be awarded 'uplift' - a success fee if they win the case. This means, dependent on how much uplift the court awards, they might double the fees they charge.

Now the order introduced by Straw has been voted down by a committee of MPs. Straw is hopeful it might be revived when it comes to the Commons.

Somewhat strangely, one of the MPs who opposed the order was Chris Mullin, a former journalist of great repute. He said he felt lawyers would not take on tough cases any more.

This is a much more important issue for the regional press. I travel a lot talking to regional editors and they tell me that as much as 90% of the libel threats they get are coming from CFA lawyers and that in the vast majority of cases they settle rather than face the crippling costs of an action.

Straw's reform would have cut the fees that CFA lawyers could expect to get. This would make fighting an action more realistic as it would drive down costs.

For the regional press the issue of the potential cost of a libel action remains the most pressing concern and until that is addressed the chilling effect of libel will suppress freedom of expression.

Libel reform and the working group report

2010-03-24T12:55:00.004Z

By now you may have had a chance to read the report of the working group on libel, and read some of the coverage of it and the response from Jack Straw.

There was a mass lobby of Parliament yesterday on this subject, and the minister, as well as opposition spokesmen attended.

There are a number of changes in the offing, some achievable by tinkering with regulations and therefore reasonably speedy, others requiring legislation and therefore the commitment of an incoming government, be it Labour, Tory or some combination involving the Lib Dems.

There will be those who say the changes proposed by the working party do not go far enough. The working party, being a broad cross-section of those representing media, NGOs, academia, claimant and defendants, was always going to reflect a multiplicity of opinions.

However, read the proposed changes being put forward and look at them in the context of a reduced costs regime as proposed by Jack Straw.

What you will get if the changes as proposed are all put into effect is, and this is a very broad brush description:

1. Less likelihood of being sued for libel due to changes to the multiple publication rule and restrictions on libel tourism.

2. If you are sued, a better chance of defending yourself if you are publishing in the public interest.

3. If you are sued and you lose, it will be less ruinously expensive due to the curtailment of the 'uplift' success fees charged by no-win, no-fee lawyers. The cuts in success fees will also, I would imagine, take some lawyers out of this market, again cutting the likelihood of getting sued.

So, a step in the right direction, a rebalancing of burdens. Not everything that those campaigning for reform might have wanted, but more then their opponents might have wanted to give.

What matters now is how much of this is put into effect, pre, and post-election.

Libel working group report published

2010-03-23T13:19:00.002Z

The Ministry of Justice has published the report of the working group on libel, you can download it here

Libel working group report

2010-03-23T09:12:00.002Z

The report of the Ministry of Justice working group on libel is due to be published this morning. Should be up on the MoJ website within the hour.

More later.

Is old law bad law? Nick Clegg thinks so, but he's wrong.

2010-02-08T10:30:00.005Z

Nick Clegg was on Radio 4 Woman's Hour this morning and first question in was what he thought of MPs accused of expenses offences possibly using parliamentary privilege as a defence.

His quick answer was that it was wrong to use a defence dating back to 1689 in this day and age.

And some might agree, how can archaic laws possibly apply in this modern age.

But hang on, there's a lot of law out there and just because it's old, doesn't make it bad per se.

For instance, habeas corpus, the law which allows us to take action against unlawful detention by the state, dates all the way back to 1215. I doubt somehow that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems would rush to do away with habeas corpus simply because it's a bit long in the tooth - albeit that European arrest warrants have rather undermined it already.

Yes, there's a lot of arcane law on the statute books, but to say that something is wrong simply because it's old is rather a foolish argument.

One could equally say that old laws have stood the test of time and so encapsulate fundamental principles which have prevented the need for repeal over the centuries.

Nick Clegg might have justifiable objections to the use of parliamentary privilege, but let's hear something a bit better thought out that simply saying: It's an old law, it shouldn't be allowed. That just insults our intelligence.

Furthermore, he might not like the use of a defence of parliamentary privilege, but surely that's a matter for a jury to decide upon. I would have thought that a Liberal leader, of all people, would defend principles like the presumption of innocence and right to a fair trial, even of his political opponents. Unless of course, that chance to score a few points before an election means the temporary setting aside of such principles.

Former DPP says the PCC is 'farcical'

2010-02-05T00:18:00.005Z

Sir Ken MacDonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions and now visiting professor of law at the LSE became the latest figure to attack the PCC last night.

He has advised lawyers and media organisations to withdraw from it.

This is the latest blow to the reputation of the PCC. In November, Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor, resigned from its code committee after if failed to rule in favour of The Guardian over its phone hacking investigation.

Rusbridger said last night that the PCC's credibility was clinging by its fingertips.

Other voices have criticised the PCC recently. Roy Greenslade described it as an effective mediator of the regional press, but less effective at regulation.

The PCC has been a bit flat-footed in its response to serious criticisms like this, some might say arrogant. It needs to heed such voices.

A new Parliament will be elected this year, and one which will perhaps have more of an appetite for statutory regulation. Criticism like that of Sir Ken MacDonald should be regarded as fair warning.

Working group members

2010-02-04T14:41:00.002Z

Here's the membership of the working group on libel:

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, chief executive of the Medical Research Council

Tracey Brown, managing director of Sense About Science

Desmond Browne QC, of chambers 5 Raymond Buildings

Rod Christie-Miller, partner and chief executive at law firm Schillings

Robin Esser, executive managing editor at the Daily Mail

Jo Glanville, editor of Index on Censorship

Jonathan Heawood, director English PEN

Tony Jaffa, head of the media team at law firm Foot Anstey

Sarah Jones, head of litigation and intellectual property at the BBC

Marcus Partington, chairman of the Media Lawyers Association and legal director of Mirror Group

Gill Phillips, director of editorial legal services at Guardian News and Media

Professor Gavin Phillipson, of Durham Law School

Mark Stephens, a partner with law firm Stephens Finers Innocent

Andrew Stephenson, a partner at law firm Carter-Ruck

Paul Tweed, senior Partner at Belfast-based law firm Johnsons

Sunday Times editor John Witherow

...and me.

The presence of Rod Christie-Miller might explain the 60 or so visits to this blog last week by someone at Schillings. Pity them having to wade through my Welsh column archive, they could have just called me.

Ministry of Justice working group on libel

2010-01-06T00:07:00.003Z

Over the Christmas break I was invited to join the working group being set up by the Ministry of Justice to look at the law of libel.

It is an area of law that's creating a lot of 'heat' at the moment - issues such as 'libel tourism', conditional fee agreements and the burden on a defendant have all attracted a great deal of attention from the traditional media as well as bloggers and the Twitter community too.

The working group is to meet four times in January, February and March before reporting to Jack Straw with its recommendations.

As yet I don't know who the others members of the working group are, although when announced it was said to be made up of editors, lawyers and academics.

Incidentally I've also advised the MoJ on opening up the family courts and the plans to allow further media access.

I'll blog whatever I can, whenever I can. although I suspect the discussion may be confidential until the report to the Minister is made public. So watch this space.

Happy Christmas

2009-12-24T14:17:00.002Z

A happy Christmas to those who visit the blog.

Especially to the bewildered souls who wonder why more of my graffiti art is not on here (wrong Banksy, sorry)

Have a good break all of you.

Apparently 10am tomorrow morning is the optimum time for the family arguments to kick off. So, eyes on the clock, stiff drink in hand and let's try to stay civilised until 10.05am.

Have a good one, eat a bit too much, drink a bit too much, go out for a good walk and fall asleep in front of the TV. It's Christmas, them's the rules.

Media Guardian web article

2009-12-12T23:44:00.002Z

I attended a debate organised by the Family Justice Council on Wednesday which discussed proposals to open up the Family Courts to greater press scrutiny.

It was a lively event, and I was one of a very few voices there raised in support of greater access.

I've written a piece about it for the Media Guardian website, which you will find here.

You know you're getting old when....

2009-11-25T15:09:00.003Z

Something you remember writing like it was yesterday appears in the publication's 'Looking Back' column.

Richard Williams, ex-assistant editor of the Daily Post and now Wales director of RNID e-mailed to say he'd been back up north and picked up a copy of The Leader, as it is now having dropped Evening from its title, and there in the Looking Back page was a piece I'd written 20, Dear God, 20 years ago. There had been an earth tremor in North Wales and I'd done a backgrounder on it. I remember the day it happened and suggesting the piece to the Leader's features ed.

Richard has said he'll send it up to me, I'll scan it in and put it on here when it arrives.

Richard, incidentally, was another of the losses to journalism Trinity Mirror managed to achieve in recent years. He was one of the most talented editors I worked with with a real, and all too rare, feel for what readers are interested in and knew how to keep a paper in touch with its community. He was one of a number of really talented journalists who flourished on the DP under the editorship of Ali Machray, which is worth a blog post in itself(to follow soon). He left journalism when he was editor of the South Wales Echo.

TM's loss is RNID's gain.

The newspapers I love

2009-11-25T02:02:00.003Z

When introducing myself to students or training delegates for the first time I'll describe myself as an inky-fingered old hack. This is literally true. When I started work on the Evening Leader back in 1988 the reporters still bashed away at old 'sit-up-and-beg' typewriters, on two sheets of folio paper (half A4) with a sheet of carbon paper between to produce a 'black' copy. The carbon paper would deposit its ink on your fingers and anything else you touched afterward.

When I started in journalism there were just two papers I wanted to work for. The first was the Liverpool Daily Post. I had grown up in North Wales reading this paper, where despite its 'Liverpool' title, it was the region's paper, a respected and trusted title, a serious newspaper. The fact that it was produced from Liverpool mattered little as most of North Wales looked to Liverpool as their major city, far more so than Cardiff because of simple logistics.

I ended up on the Post after four years on the Leader, and worked at the paper from 1992 to 1999, first as a reporter, then chief reporter, night news editor and finally night editor.

I did not take the well-trodden path from the regions to shifts on Fleet Street in hope of a permanent contract, so never looked like fulfilling my hope of working for the other paper I loved The Guardian.

I began reading that back in college, persuaded to give it a try, I kid you not, by the TV ad campaign back in 1984ish, featuring the likes of Harold Evans and Edna O'Brien.

When I went to University College, Cardiff (as was) to do a journalism course, such was my devotion to the paper that one of my fellow postgrad hacks, Steve Busfield, gave me a badge of the Guardian masthead.

Steve made it onto the Guardian, where those of you who Twitter can follow him as @Busfield. I did not.

But then via a circuitous route that saw me go into training and media law, I ended up as co-author of McNae's Essential Law for Journalists and as such able to write about that niche subject. So for the past couple of years I've been filing contributions to Media Guardian on the subject. The pieces, though small, give me disproportionate pleasure. To get my name in what I regard as one of the world's great papers gives me as much of a buzz as getting my first front page on the Evening Leader back in 1988.

Still a hack then, just not so inky-fingered.

Guardian article (on the PCC)

2009-11-23T14:27:00.001Z

I've contributed to a piece in Media Guardian today, on suggestions for PCC reform.

PCC (Slight Return)

2009-11-18T15:17:00.005Z

Baroness Buscombe has pre-empted the collective response heading her way. Reported here on Roy Greenslade's blog.

She says: "My point was that, as there is already pressure to increase regulation of the internet, it is important to make clear that this must not lead to some form of statutory interference.

"Rather, a system of self-regulation (such as exists by the PCC for newspapers) would be more appropriate, if any bloggers wished to go down that route."

Hmmm. And the advantages to bloggers of such a route would be what?

Remember the newspaper industry signed up for the PCC facing the loaded gun of statutory regulation.

Despite what Baroness Buscombe says, there is no impending statutory regulation of blogs and so no perceived need by bloggers to run into the regulatory embrace of the PCC or anything like it.

Why the PCC could never regulate bloggers (and shouldn't even try)

2009-11-18T14:11:00.004Z

There has been much chatter about Baroness Buscombe's comments on Ian Burrell's Blog regarding the PCC and regulation of blogs.

She is quoted as saying the PCC should "consider" whether the PCC should seek to extend its remit to the blogosphere (Burrell's quotation marks intact there, just on the word consider).

Cue righteous indignation from, among many, Iain Dale, a collective response which had attracted a couple of hundred signatures at the time of writing this, and a more sceptical view from Guido Fawkes' Blog.

I don't know just how seriously this has been considered by the Press Complaints Commission. But those who think it has any likelihood of becoming a reality misunderstand just what PCC is and also cannot really understand the nature of blogging and the internet.

To appreciate what is onvolved you have to go back to the birth of the PCC. This was the late '80s early '90s, there was a widely-held beliefe among some politicians that the press, particularly the then tabloid press, was out of control. David Mellor, minister of state for culture memorably said that the press were 'drinking in the last-chance saloon.'

There had been a circulation war raging between The Sun, Daily Mirror and The Star and the tactics employed to outdo one another gave ammunition to those who believed there needed to be statutory regulation of the press.

The then regulatory body - The Press Council - had been discredited, its adjudications ignored by papers, and even attacked in print by the same papers. It was seen as offering little or no protection to those who found themselves in the pages of the papers.

The Calcutt Committee of Privacy, in its report to Parliament, stopped short of recommending statutory regulation of the press and its recommendations were accepted - self-regulation was to be given a last chance.

So how does this relate to bloggers? Well, if you look back at when the PCC was established there was a political will supporting its establishment and remit - indeed many wanted to go further and have it on a statutory basis. There was a demand for what it was going to do.

Where is the demand, political or public, for the regulation of bloggers by the PCC?

Of course, it might be coming from some quarters of the newspaper industry who see bloggers breaking stories and doing things they think they can't. But as for politicians or the public - nothing of any note. The idea that any politician is going to alienate 10m plus bloggers by putting the PCC in as their overseer is ludicrous.

Furthermore, the PCC is a self-regulatory body, not statutory. Bloggers would have to sign up to be regulated by it and I can't see that happening any time soon.

To be imposed upon bloggers it would have to be put on some sort of statutory footing (cue squeals of outrage from the newspaper industry who would fight that tooth and nail) And they would have a very hard time making the logical case for statutory regulation of bloggers whil retaining self-regulation of newspapers.

But just how would it impose its will upon something as mercurial as the blogosphere?Overseas hosting would mean evasion of its clutches would be a simple matter. Blogs would spring up and disappear before any adjudication could be made, no matter how 'fast free and fair' it might be.

Also, what makes the PCC think it has the capacity to govern so large and diverse a group as bloggers?

If they think they can do it, they'd better start recruiting now.

The Lowry, Salford and The Pitmen Painters

2009-11-02T00:55:00.004Z

Off to The Lowry in Salford Quays, Manchester, at the weekend to see a production of The Pitmen Painters.

Written by Lee Hall, he of Billy Elliott fame, it is based on the true story of a group of miners from Ashington, who, inspired by a WEA lecture, took up painting themselves and became a feted artistic group.

It was a good production, funny, poignant, moving at times and definitely worth seeing. Hall has great fun with the language of the miners and the confusion it causes to their tutor. One memorable line to the bemused tutor being: "Ye dee dee ort deen't ye?" Trans: "You do do art, don't you?"

And when the brass band started playing Gresford - The Miners' Hymn commemorating the disaster that still resonates in Wrexham, you'd have to be an unfeeling soul not to get a lump in your throat.

But then came the touch that for me detracted very slightly from a great play. As the play finished the slides that had shown us the miners' works of art, turned to text, informing us that their hopes of a "University of Ashington' had not been realised. Their pit had closed in the early '80s, and that Labour had abandoned its commitment to workers' ownership of the means of production.

It was just a bit clunky, a bit like a great big hammer blow of political pointmaking, when so much had been concealed before in the story itself.

I don't need a subtitle at the end of the play to tell me the socialist miners of the 1930s and '40s might feel betrayed by the way the Labour movement has abandoned its principles.

I'm slightly suspicious of plays, films or books which tell a story and then rather clumsily say: "Right, here's the moral and here's how you should think about it." Let people decide for themselves having seen it.

Having said all that, it was still a great production and worth catching on its UK tour. It's on at Sheffield's Crucible this week.

Cameron has got me confused

2009-10-06T15:40:00.004+01:00

I don't think the teaching of history, so often the cause of hand-wringing by those sections of the press who retain a devotion to the memorising of dates, has got so bad that we have forgotten who won World War II.

And even if the state sector lets its young charges do double glue-sniffing rather than list the King and Queens of our great nation, I suspect Eton would make sure its pupils know who was victorious.

So, that's why David Cameron's assault on the Human Rights Act has me a little puzzled.

You see, because it is based in Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights is therefore confused with all things European by those swivel-eyed sections of the media who cannot hear the word Europe without having an attack of the vapours.

The slight historical problem for Mr Cameron is this. The convention was brought into being by the British, to afford our poor European neighbours the same common law rights we had enjoyed for centuries and had just defended from the beastly Hun.

It was born in the smoking ruins of Europe and a central role in its drafting was taken by DAvid Maxwell-Fyfe, a Conservative, and a brilliant lawyer whose cross-examination of Hermann Goering is considered to be one of the greatest in legal history.

So, the ECHR, a Churchillian scheme to stop the Europeans sending each other to the gas chambers again, and drawn up by a Conservative lawyer. What's not to like about that if you're a Tory?

It must be because it's in Strasbourg. Perhaps if it had been sited in Bognor they'd be more comfortable with it. Maybe if it had been called the British Convention on Human Rights for our European Neighbours, they could have lived with it.

The Human Rights Act is nothing more than a restating of convention rights in English law. To repeal it will mean that UK courts no longer need to take the HRA into account. But, we are still signatories to the ECHR, so Strasbourg would still remain as a court of ultimate appeal on human rights.

Unless of course Cameron plans to withdraw from the ECHR. An unthinkable proposition that would put us on a par with pariah regimes such as North Korea.

And not, I would suggest, a fitting way to treat the legacy of Winston Churchill.

Simon Kelner's farewell to the Neath Guardian

2009-10-02T00:32:00.004+01:00

Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of the Indy and Independent on Sunday, started as a trainee on the Neath Guardian.

Here in an article printed in its last edition he remembers the beginning of his career and mourns the closure of his first paper. Reprinted in Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog

The Bravery of The Sun

2009-09-30T23:39:00.004+01:00

Courageous move that by The Sun, backing the Tories, or rather, abandoning Labour.

How upset Labour are depends on where your bullshit detector points between Harriet Harman's, rather tepid "we're all angry but we won't be bullied" rant; rumours that Brown berated Sun execs with a four-letter tirade and Labour spin that it doesn't really matter.

Look, Labour, or rather Tony Blair, would not have courted Rupert Murdoch the way they did if it didn't matter. But perhaps they were taking the Sun Tzu approach of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. Either way, after the paper's declaration in 1992 that "It's the Sun Wot Won It" when John Major defeated Neil Kinnock with a little help from his friends at Wapping who exhorted the last person to leave Britain if Kinnock won to turn off the lights.

But that was 17 years ago, when the internet was just being born and things have changed in the way people relate to newspapers.

Not that newspapers had as much impact as they would have you believe if you take account of this study which states that while papers might hold some sway over individuals, it would be wrong to overstate their influence on the outcome of elections.

A view echoed by Alistair Campbell, who writes on his blog: "...people will make their own minds up. What a daily paper urges them to do will figure marginally if at all in that judgement, and provided Labour continues to defend the record, take the fight to the Tories, and set out the forward policy agenda with clarity and vigour, the battle ahead can still be won."

My point is that back in 1992 The Sun might get away with claiming its part in the Conservative victory. But now, in a political scene no longer dominated by print media, where 24-hour news and internet sources are far more likely to break political news than The Sun is, it's a brave move for a dead-tree outlet to claim as much influence as it does.

Of course, if the gamble pays off then it will no doubt run a suitably self-adulatory headline the next day. But what if they don't?

What if the economic recovery is just round the corner and its effects are felt before the next election? What if the electorate decides that on balance things are looking up and they don't want to gamble on the Tories?

The Tories will weather it of course and hope to be back next time. But for the paper that backed them and failed to get Cameron into Downing St it could be far more devastating. An unmistakable sign that the paper had been emasculated and its political influence was at an end.

Neath&Port Talbot no more

2009-09-25T11:03:00.004+01:00

On BBC Wales this morning talking about the closure of the Neath and Port Talbot Guardians, which have been announced by Media Wales, a division of Trinity Mirror.

The company has blamed the economic downturn for the closures, which will result in the loss of 13.2 jobs (who's the .2?)

One might forgive the company this sad decision, had it, during the times of massive profits, ie five years ago, invested in its newspaper operations to make them a more attractive proposition to readers and advertisers. Now, in a time of not-quite-so-massive profits, decisions to close loss-making operations might have been justifiable.

But let's just look at what the senior management of this company have done in the good times to equip Trinity Mirror for the bad times that now afflict them.

Their 'big idea' was to send in the time and motion men. Blokes with reams of paper, who surveyed every inch of the business looking for fat to trim so that it could post the even-bigger profits its shareholders demanded.

Every newsroom had a visit from these people. Who came up with stunning ideas like: "Rather than check, rewrite and add to press releases, why not just cut'n'paste them into the paper, saving time and money?" Brilliance like that is beyond price.

As a result newsrooms were slashed. Not through redundancy, but by non-recruitment of trainees and non-replacement of staff. A gradual process of attrition that has left these places understaffed and lacking in experienced reporters.

And that was in the times of plenty. Ad revenues were good, circulation was in a gentle but manageable decline. These businesses were very, very profitable.

Then the bad times come round and what's their big idea now? More cuts. This time redundancies which, understandably, have been seized by some veteran journalists who were the heart and soul of these operations. And who can blame them leaving newspapers where their knowledge, contacts and expertise are treated with such contempt by national management?

Now we get closures, such as the ones announced in Neath and Port Talbot.

But here's the thing. Not so long ago the BBC was planning a network of ultra-local TV output. The regional newspaper industry squealed for all it was worth at a plan which they said was using the licence-fee to duplicate services they were already providing. The BBC's plans were abandoned, to the delight of the newspaper industry.

That argument holds water as long as you are not closing newspapers. Where are the people of Neath and Port Talbot going to get their news now? (Incidentally there are 130,000-plus people living in Neath and Port Talbot, if you can't run a profitable newspaper there then one wonders where you can run one at all)

From TM's 'digital platforms' - I don't think so. From the Western Mail? - can't see it getting down to the nitty-gritty of parish pump stuff from Neath somehow.

If TM cannot or will not give local communities the service they want, then I hope the BBC's ultra local plans are revived and this time the protests of newspaper corporations are ignored.

On the radio, again

2009-09-24T22:29:00.001+01:00

On BBC Radio Wales tomorrow morning, 8.45am, talking about the closure of the Neath&Port Talbot Guardian.

On the radio

2009-09-01T23:42:00.002+01:00

On BBC Radio Wales tomorrow morning (Wed) talking about why the Evening Leader is no longer an evening paper.

I started work on the Leader as a junior reporter, back in 1988.

You do get a whizzy button though

2009-08-26T23:08:00.003+01:00

In the past week or so some of the blogs I read have started sporting a new button.

The button boasts their ranking in the various categories of the blog awards run by totalpolitics.

There are all sorts of categories - Welsh blogs, MP blogs, media blogs, Scots blogs, etc, etc.

The recipients of awards and a shiny widget for their blog are perhaps justifiably proud. I say perhaps, because if you take a look at the awards section it explains how the voting was sorted out and quite openly states that 'more than 1,500' people voted in the awards.

One might argue that 1,500 people is a respectable sample and not far off the size of sample that might be taken by a polling organisation to determine who might win a general election (usually their sample size is 2,000 or more) Therefore, a proud winner might argue that though the number of voters is small, it is representative of the blogging public and therefore quite an accolade.

That might hold true for something like MP blogs or, maybe, media blogs, where there are a lot of people voting in those categories. But how many voted in the Wales categories for instance? Those voted to the top in there might find they have attained their position on a very sparse sample indeed.

Naturally, if you cast your eye rightwards you'll see no button on this blog linking you back to totalpolitics, and so this post might be accused of vintage sour grapes. Maybe. But firstly, I did not engage in the shameless vote-garnering that some blogs did. Secondly, even if I had, I'd never be in the running for an award, the blog isn't active enough, and it's now a selection of random meanderings posted on a less than occasional basis. You would have to be very short of candidates indeed to vote for this in any poll.

But more than all this, why, when the blogosphere is supposed to be this free, anarchic, random, chaotic, joyous rabble, do people buy into blog awards run by anyone? As soon as your blog gets an award its become part of the establishment, respectable, and you should have the decency to shut it down.

One of the strengths of blogs is their freedom from the restraints felt by the dead-tree press. So why seek validation from a blog award system voted on by so few people?

If you are any good, people will visit your blog, you shouldn't need spurious blog awards to make them do that.

Hello to The Hindu

2009-08-11T22:14:00.002+01:00

Thanks to what I assume is a Guardian syndication deal my piece on Twittering jurors appeared shortly afterwards in The Hindu.

Media Guardian article

2009-08-10T00:42:00.001+01:00

Occasionally I write pieces for Media Guardian on law.

I've got one in today on Twittering jurors.

RIP John Hughes

2009-08-07T00:40:00.002+01:00

John Hughes, creator of the Bratpack teen movies of the '80s has died, aged 59.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off was a favourite of mine, but others included The Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, and he wrote Home Alone.

When he hit upon a winning plotline, such as Pretty In Pink, he wasn't averse to reversing the roles and remaking it, see Some Kind of Wonderful.

Ferris was his greatest creation though, his philosophy being: "Life moves pretty fast and if you don't stop and smell the roses once in a while it might pass you by."

Gravity sucks

2009-08-03T10:14:00.003+01:00

Never underestimate how slippery a muddy hill is.

Never overestimate the amount of grip semi-slick summer tyres will give on said hill.

Never underestimate the chances a rock will come into contact with your knee when you go arse over elbow on hill.

Never overestimate your pain threshhold when you get two inches of North Yorkshire's finest sandstone inserted into your knee joint.

Never underestimate your ability to carry on biking to get home when you've no mobile and no choice.

Never overestimate the amount of time it gets taken to get seen in casualty if you walk in actually bleeding (they don't like it on the floor).

Never underestimate just how painful 'irrigating' a wound can be - my, my it smarts.

Never overestimate your ability to walk afterwards.

Some tendon and nerve damage, but I'll live to bike another day. Worst injury I've had in 12 years of mountain biking, so pretty lucky really.

Quotations (slight return)

2009-08-03T09:43:00.002+01:00

A postscript to the post below.

David Jones has now added a link to this blog, to his own. Which should do this one the power of good in site traffic.

Theatrical quotation

2009-08-02T23:04:00.005+01:00

It's a well-known, and derided, practice by theatres to selectively quote a review for the purpose of their playbills.

So a reviewer's comments such as "quite how this pile of drivel made it onto the stage is utterly amazing" becomes "utterly amazing" for the playbill.

When I said that David Jones MP was 'smart, acerbic and writes a very good blog' before going on to point out that those commenting on his blog were a bunch of roaring buffoons, perhaps I should have anticipated what would happen next.

Ah well, a journalist complaining about being taken out of context is beyond the pale though. But if he thinks enough of my opinion to quote me, perhaps he ought to link to my blog.

I might not agree with what he says, but at least you can find a link to what he does say here.

Iain Dale's Diary and the sheepshagging Welsh

2009-07-27T23:27:00.006+01:00

Iain Dale, famed blogger, has found 15 sheep.

They wandered onto his land and he decided to enlist his readers' help in finding out where they came from in an amusing post.

So far, so good.

Then his readers started commenting.

It took, oooh, three posts for the first Welsh sheepshagger joke to surface. Are they, this wit inquired, Welsh asylum seekers.

"They probably originated in Wales, then were dumped after some Welsh person had his wicked..........sorry, forgot where I was for a moment :)" said another.

The smiley face makes it ok, of course. And almost inevitably one compared the find to a Welsh leisure centre.

If you are going to make sheepshagger jokes about the Welsh, and I know it's an instinctive thing with a very few English people - it's almost like the word Welsh triggers something deep within the hypothalamus (look it up Dale Diary posters) and as soon as they hear the word Welsh, they cannot restrain the word 'sheepshagger' from popping out unbidden - then at least try to make them original and...um, how to put this...funny.

But be warned that this is what you'll get if the Tories gain power at the next election. For all the 'call me Dave' mateyness of Cameron, the legion of gofers and hangers-on that will come with them have a default setting of knuckle-dragging idiocy.

For every sane and seemingly rational, photogenic candidate they put up for election, there is a tide of braying idiots behind them that David Cameron has managed to persuade the party to keep in the backroom at least until they're in power.

Unfortunately they break loose now and again and post comments on websites like Dale's Diary and they give you an inkling of what Cameron's Britain will be like - imagine living in the Daily Mail.

Take David Jones MP, for example, smart, acerbic and writes a very good blog, but then you get to the comments section and you cannot help but think, dear God, how does he put up with such roaring buffoons?

Unfortunately, if they win the election we'll have to put up with them too.

Duck islands and plasma TVs

2009-05-29T11:39:00.003+01:00

The list of just what MPs have claimed for has been quite interesting really and might, in the end, prove more damaging to some than others as it highlights their similarities and differences to their electors.

For instance, some Labour MPs seem to be in trouble for flipping, claiming max allowances or overdoing it on the plasma screen TVs. Margaret Moran standing out somewhat for claiming dry rot treatment on a house nowhere near her constituency.

That's going to be pretty irritating to their voters, but they can, perhaps, comprehend the desire for these things - more cash, lower housing costs, a nice TV.

Now, look at the Conservative excesses and you have duck islands and moat cleaning. For the middle class voter that Labour captured in 1997 and who the Tories need if they are to win the next election, that is another world. They have nothing in common with someone who builds 'servants' quarters' at the taxpayers' expense.

This is the sort of troughing that makes the voter want, in the immortal lines of that great revolutionary, Wolfie Smith, to line them up against the wall - bop, bop, bop.

Gordon Brown should go to the country now on a platform of greed that we can comprehend.

As for Julie Kirkbride's claims to be a mum struggling with childcare. That will only enrage those parents out there facing the same dilemma, but unable to rely on the public purse to build them an extension to help.

Who is in it the deepest?

2009-05-28T12:41:00.002+01:00

It must be an interesting time for Gordon Brown at the moment. Interesting in the Chinese sense that is.

But not entirely gloomy.

When the Telegraph broke the story it led with Labour figures, but it's been pretty even-handed in handing out the kickings ever since. After all, as its journalists delved into that hard drive, they must have been bewildered by just how much dirt there was on politicians of every party. Where do you start? Moats, mortgages, or dry rot?

It has been universally bad news for all the parties.

Gordon Brown may be in the mire, but is he as deep in the mire as David Cameron.

What's more, are voters who traditionally back the Conservatives - the party that has always associated itself with law and order - going to be more outraged and for longer, than Labour voters?

This is not to say Labour voters condone what's gone on, but they might not have an attack of the vapopurs so severe as their Tory counterparts when they discover their MP has been claiming for catfood.

It might not turn voters from one party to another, but it may affect the turnout. Elections are decided in marginal constituencies where parties manage to 'get the vote out'. In those constituencies it will depend how long the whiff of corruption lasts, which party it clings to longest and how much it bothers the voters in that constituency.

David Cameron might secretly be hoping he rids himself of his Julie Kirkbrides as quickly as he can, because I suspect this scandal will bother his voters and particularly his potential voters much more than it will those for other parties.

No moral authority

2009-05-23T23:08:00.002+01:00

I have to say that not having the weekly deadline of a column to file has been a release or sorts. The blank screen staring at me at, usually, 1am on a Sunday night when I used to write it, is not something I miss.

But the past few weeks have been an exception.

This whole expenses thing may just blow over. But then again, unless some big event - a war, a terrorist attack - comes along to divert our attention, it could colour the way people vote.

It would have been a joy to have been writing the column this last month, if only to have been working in such a target-rich environment. Never let it be said I passed up a chance to shoot fish in a barrel.

The problem Labour and the Tories have is that they have shown themselves to be so pathetically driven to claim whatever they could, from cinema systems, to moats to cat food, all at our expense.

It becomes very difficult for them to argue against public sector pay rises and for tax rises when they have shown themselves so willing to spend our money on giving themselves a very comfortable life.

Of course, there are a few voices who have commented on the irony of journalists criticising anyone's expense claims when their own are so legendarily exorbitant. To a certain extent they are living in the past. Expense accounts may still be generous on some national papers, but not all, and certainly not to to the extent they were in the past. There was a time when not only could you claim a camel on expenses, but also the cost of its burial when it died in the course of duty (see Stephen Glover's 'Secrets of the Press')

Indeed when I started out as a lowly junior in North Wales and mentioned to my superiors that my wage was less than generous, I was told to 'bump up' my expenses to supplement my paltry pay. OK, I didn't get my moat cleaned, but the principle is the same. Except it was never with public money, and that is different.

Gordon Brown must be hoping that events will come to his rescue and something will happen in the next 12 months to rescue the reputation of his Government.

Does anyone care about this e-mail 'scandal'?

2009-04-19T20:36:00.006+01:00

When I started what I might loosely refer to as work, as a junior reporter on the Evening Leader, in Wrexham, the then editor Reg Herbert, who was a newsman through and through, had a phrase he would use when a story didn't grab his attention.

"That won't be read by my old aunty in Garden Village," he would say, consigning it to the spike (these were the days when papers weren't so short staffed and desperate for copy and so stories did get spiked as opposed to shovelled into the paper come what may)

I don't know whether Reg had an old aunty, but Garden Village was one of the districts of Wrexham, and his old aunty was Reg's version of the man on the Clapham omnibus.

Now, apply Reg's ruling to this e-mail scandal. Do you think come election day anyone in the country is going to cast their vote on the basis of what some spin doctor said in an e-mail to Derek bloody Draper?

No, they don't give a stuff. What will win or lose the next election is whether we're in jobs or out, whether we can get a mortgage or not, whether we've managed to avoid bankruptcy personally or as a nation. That's it.

And, as one very perceptive letter writer to the Guardian pointed out, the Tories might not have engaged in quite this depth of spinnery, but then they've always had the right wing tabloids to do it for them.

Attacking ministers' wives beyond the pale? Not if you live in the very, very odd world of the Daily Mail.

Andy Burnham's wife wore a dress that did not meet the approval of the cat's-arse-mouthed fashionistas on the Mail.

Any Tory voices raised in disapproval of this unwarranted attack? All very quiet.

Any Conservatives disapproving of the treatment meted out to Cherie Blair, Pauline Prescott, Glenys Kinnock to name but a very few over the years?

Nope, nothing, zip, nada.

This is not to defend the juvenilia aimed at Tory wives in the e-mails, but the high horses mounted by the Conservatives do begin to look a little lame when the same treatment and worse was, and is, dished out to Labour spouses day-in, day-out.

Ross, Brand, the BBC and just a whiff of hypocrisy

2008-11-02T23:33:00.002Z

Firstly it wasn't 'edgy'.
Phoning Andrew Sachs and being indiscreet about his granddaughter is not edgy. It's oafish, cruel and has a touch of the bully about it.
When Chris Morris tricked various MPs and celebs to join his campaign to eradicate the menace of a new drug called 'cake', that was edgy. The various bods complaining that the past week's events will somehow stop comedians from pushing the boundaries were perhap forgetting just how unchallenging Brand and Ross's exchange with Sachs's answering machine had been.
But that's not the real point.
The BBC broadcasts countless hours of material every week and some of it will offend, most will not.
Those in BBC management who are promising to put systems in place to stop this happening again are fools. You cannot possibly achieve anything like that level of control in an organisation that large.
You could possibly promise never to phone Andrew Sachs again. But to suggest that something equally as offensive might not happen again is nonsense. Of course it will.
What they might promise is that they will have a management response that does not leave them flat-footed when they are in the crosshairs of the Daily Mail et al.
Finally, while the BBC response was poor, the behaviour of the tabloids shows that writing for them requires the ability to suspend one's sense of irony.
Howe they raged against this dreadful intrusion into the life of a much-loved actor and the invasion of the privacy of his granddaughter.
Yes, and pray who was it whose excesses in recent years have had the courts busily developing the very law of privacy that was flouted this week by Ross and Brand?
Step forward the UK tabloid press.

Liverpool (Slight Return)

2008-10-21T20:59:00.004+01:00

Twenty-five years ago almost to the month I started at Liverpool Poly (as was) as a law student.

I remember travelling in with one of my fellow students one day in those first weeks. He was Wirral-posh and clearly disappointed not to have been snapped up by Oxbridge, forcing him to slum it at the Poly.

"What do you think of Liverpool," he inquired.

"S'alright," I replied, it was early, I was a student, conversation was not high on my priorities.

"D'you not think it's a bit.....grotty?" he asked.

Hard to convey his tone, but it was heavy with contempt for a city that even it's most ardent supporters would admit had seen better days. These were after all the early '80s, the days of the Militant Tendency. Soon we were to see a miner on every street corner with a bucket urging us to support them.

Liverpool was grotty, but it had character and you wouldn't mistake it for anywhere else.

I was back in Liverpool at the weekend for a Queen (+Paul Rogers) concert, which tells much about my age and musical taste. The place has changed.

The grime has been sand-blasted away from the Capital of Culture. Everywhere sparkles and every last corner has been filled with public art or fountains.

The city centre is packed with shiny new stores, and there lies my problem with the place. The shops and stripped wood bars have nothing about Liverpool in their character. You could be anywhere. This is not just true of Liverpool of course, every city centre is going the same way.

It's hard to argue against change when a place is so run down, but it's also sad when improvement involves the homogenisation of our cities.

The concert was great, but I watch Queen with mixed feelings following the death of Freddie. I saw them for the first time at the Liverpool Empire in 1979 on the 'Crazy Tour' (so-called because when they could fill stadia it was crazy to play a series of small venues as they did). That was a great night and hard for them ever to measure up without Fred fronting them.

As one tout outside the Echo Arena put it when he could not sell any tickets: "Dey're nottin' widout Meerrrcury."

Picture courtesy me old mate Chris, who was there in '79 and there again last week.

Trinity Mirror

2008-09-29T22:50:00.001+01:00

In among the news of Trinity Mirror's closure of several weekly titles in North Wales, including the Rhyl Visitor, which was sad enough, was the announcement that it was also to transfer printing from its Liverpool printworks to Oldham.

I'm sure someone in the management will manage to justify it, but I'll just say this, unless they are buying a fleet of much quicker vans, you can't get papers from Oldham to Liverpool as fast as you can get papers from Liverpool to Liverpool.

About 10 years ago before I started teaching journalism, my last job as a real journalist, as opposed to a blowhard columnist, was as night editor of the Daily Post, a job based in the Liverpool head office (this was before the title was split into distinct Welsh and English operations and the Llandudno Junction offices of the Post opened)

The building was and is unlovely, brutalist, concrete and won't be mourned if it's pulled down. But reputedly if Scouse workers there, who are proud of industrial achievement, are to be believed, it had the largest concrete roof in Europe.

The roof featured in one of my favourite stories about the legendary Post sports editor, Len Capeling. At the time of the docks strike, not sure which, there have been many, one senior editorial executive would take to the roof to watch the pickets through binoculars - what he thought this would achieve that couldn't be had by simply sending a reporter to the scene is anyone's guess. After spying on the strikers he arrived at the afternoon news conference and when the subject of the strike came up announced pompously: "I have a little intelligence."

Quick as a flash Len says: "This is conference, we only want to hear breaking news."

Evolution

2008-09-23T21:03:00.002+01:00

Time to breathe a little life into the blog. Although it has been very encouraging to see the numbers pitching up even when I haven't been posting. Or should that be depressing?

Most are lost souls in a fruitless search for the graffiti artist which I ain't.

Now this blog will be mostly about the media, law in the main, and anything else shiny enough to catch my eye.

I might take it off the Welsh Blog roll though, as I'm not sure how relevant they'll find it. Sad, because I liked the flag.

Last column for the Daily Post, July 1, 2008

2008-07-01T10:23:00.003+01:00

WHEN they try to find the exact place Magna Carta died they might well point to a spot on the River Dee.
Magna Carta dead you say, I didn’t even know she was ill, which sort of proves my point.
But she, or rather it, had a good run, 800 years or so since signature by King John and his acceptance that his power, the power of the state could be limited.
Now the legal scholars among you – and I know there are many – may point out that our Magna Carta rights have been frittered away over the years and even habeas corpus went out the window when they decided any Eurocop with a warrant could cart us off to countries where they can bang you up without a judge sticking his nose in.
But it’s the principle isn’t it, and the idea that there are some limits to the power of the state?
That idea was laid to rest when Nigel Conway was arrested, photographed, fingerprinted and his DNA taken. His alleged crime was paddling along a stretch of the River Dee without paying a disputed fee for doing so.
The club that leases the land either side of the river called in the police and so Mr Conway found himself getting the sort of treatment one might expect to be reserved for much more serious criminals.
Except that it isn’t. If you are arrested for anything, no matter how minor, your DNA is taken and placed on a national database and there it stays forevermore, no matter how innocent you may be.
There are, of course, those who will argue that as long as those whose DNA is taken haven’t committed an unsolved crime in the past, or don’t go on to commit a crime then they have nothing to fear from having their DNA on a database.
There are those who go further and argue that we should all have our DNA on a database so that when a crime is committed and a sample found at the scene then they just run it through the lab to track down the culprit.
Except that that stands upon its head the basis on which we are policed.
The vast majority of us, no matter what certain histrionic London tabloids would have you believe, are perfectly law-abiding people and so why should we have our liberty and privacy interfered with just to assist in the enforcement of laws which we have not broken?
Because, if you accept the ‘if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear’ argument, then by rights we should have a CCTV camera in every sitting room in the land just to keep a check on us.
But back to Mr Conway, incarcerated for a couple of hours over his refusal on principle to pay a few quid to paddle part of the River Dee.
Some of us might find it rather distasteful that someone can lay claim to a river, or even a stretch of it. By all means take the banks, but that water itself that flows through it? How can you claim to own that, because it flows, the bit you claim is hundreds of yards away in a matter of moments?
Of course, you could lay claim to the river bed. But my ownership of my house doesn’t entitle me to claim the airspace above it, so why should a riverbed owner own the water that flows over it?
All these things should be tested in court, but as a civil matter, not a criminal one. This is surely a matter for the finesse of the civil laws of trespass, not the sledgehammer of the criminal courts.
But is it an exaggeration to say that poor old Magna Carta has been dealt a fatal blow by the case of Nigel Conway?
Well no, because a state that can arrest you, fingerprint you and take your DNA for paddling down a river is a state that feels no restraint on its powers. If this was a story about some benighted tourist caught canoeing in a banana republic we’d be demanding the intervention of our ambassador.
This is not a police state, but an impartial observer might be hard-pushed to tell the difference.

MUCH is being made by Plaid Cymru of the decision to hold the Olympic mountain biking in 2012 in Essex, a county not so much renowned for its mountains as its flatness.
While I’m as keen as the next Welshman to jump on any bandwagon suggesting that once again the dastardly English have down us down, I’m afraid I’ll pass on this one.
That’s because those who think mountain biking can only take place on mountains haven’t done very much of it.
Mountain biking is about terrain and how you and your bike cope with it, not the sheer number of feet you ascend or descend, we’ll leave that to the kings of the mountains in the Tour de France.
So it is perfectly possible to build a world-class course in the flatlands of Essex.
Where Plaid’s Adam Price has got it right is in asking why they should do that when there are already world-class tracks in Wales.
Could it be that while the London Olympics has been sold to the UK taxpayer as a games for the whole country, there is a reluctance to share out the benefits anywhere beyond the South East of England?

I’VE always felt that long goodbyes by columnists are a bit of an indulgence, so I will keep this brief.
After nine years and half a million or so words of variable sense, this will be my last column.
One of my earliest memories of newspapers is reading Fritz Spiegl’s column in the Daily Post, so I have always regarded it as a privilege to have ended up with my own.
Many thanks to the readers who have persevered in the often fruitless search for whatever weekly point I was trying to make, and especially to those of you who have taken the time to write in, particularly those telling me that, on careful reflection, they had concluded I was an idiot.
It’s been fun.
Farewell.

Column, June 24, 2008

2008-06-24T22:58:00.000+01:00

I SAW a film last week called ‘The Lives of Others.’
It was set in Cold War East Germany and depicted the terrifying extent to which the secret police, the Stasi, spied upon their fellow citizens.
Mere suspicion resulted in surveillance, arrest, interrogation, imprisonment and the ruination of countless lives. Worse still, friends and family were forced to betray one another by the state.
But, evil though it undoubtedly was, at least the secret police were spying on those they believed to be enemies of the state, no matter how spurious their grounds for believing so might have been.
The Stasi did not, to my knowledge, deploy their considerable talents of surveillance to track down those guilty of dog fouling. The clearly missed a trick there which our own municipal watchdogs could have taught them.
This week every council has had a letter telling them to stop snooping so much. Well, it’s worded a bit more delicately than that, but basically they’ve been told they’re overstepping the mark in using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
This was an act that was intended to give guidance and restrainto to the like of the police and security services when they use covert surveillance like phone tapping and so on to tackle terrorist threats.
How some nameless, faceless bureaucrat decided it should be used to snoop on people suspected of cheating school catchment rules is anyone’s guess, but that’s what some ingenious little nosey parker has used it for.
It is like a sort of municipal Murphy’s Law. No matter how much you assure us that middle-ranking pen-pushers will not be able to authorise the tapping of our phones, if they are given that power, they will use it.
That’s why the Local Government Association has written to councils reminding them that they ought not to use these draconian powers on trivial matters.
Unfortunately when I said ‘every council’ earlier, I should have qualified that by adding ‘in England.’ Wales is apparently not getting this warning.
It would be nice to think that is because our authorities are blameless in this and have left their RIPA powers gathering dust.
Sadly not. Conwy Council, it has been revealed, felt that the security of the state was sufficiently threatened by someone working when they were off sick that they deployed their RIPA powers.
If they’re doing that when someone fakes a sickie, it rather makes you wonder what they would do for a really serious offence, like fly-tipping – deploy the nuclear option no doubt.
There may be some who say that if you are doing nothing wrong, then you’ve got nothing to fear from a bit of surveillance by your local authority.
But it’s all a matter of proportion isn’t it? Sure, if someone is plotting the downfall of the state, I rather hope someone from MI5 is listening in on their plans. If all they are planning is to get their child into a good school, then I’m thinking spying on them is a tad excessive.
The ability to spy upon citizens is an extreme one and ought only to be undertaken by those who we consent to police us, not some jumped-up council officer with a power complex.
I do hope that someone at the Welsh Local Government Association is penning a similar warning to councils here as that sent to authorities over the border.

I TAKE a hefty pinch of salt with ministerial suggestions that we should all tighten our belts.
Those who enjoy hefty Cabinet salaries and ridiculously generouls allowances, all funded by the taxpayer, ought not to give us advice on how restrained we should be in our salary ambitions.
With fuel and food on the rise, it’s understandable that people might like to see their wages go that way too. But no, no, the government doesn’t like that, it’s inflationary.
So the public sector gets to feel Alistair Darling’s icy hand exercising restraint and the private sector follows suit.
The thing is that people who see their fuel bills rocketing are going to twig sooner or later that that has an inflationary effect, but what exactly are Messrs Darling and Brown doing to curb that? Precisely nowt. See above, my advice on pinches of salt, ministerial advice for the use of.
What I’m slightly puzzled by is Gordon Brown’s seeming belief that somehow people are not going to vote him out of power at the next election because of the ruination their finances are in.
He is like the Mr Micawber of British politics, adamant in the belief that ‘something will come up.’ He had better hope so, because the electorate are not going to sit thetre being reposessed and paying through the nose for food and fuel without some hapless politician being strapped into the backside-kicking machine come election time.
Micawber was saved by Dickens’ deus ex machina, and Brown, son of the manse that he likes to remind us he is, is apparently hoping for similar divine intervention.
I reckon they’ve got about 12 months to get something sorted, and by that I mean something more competent than messing about with the 10p tax band. If they don’t come up with the goods then I don’t think it will make a blind bit of difference what the economy is doing come election day, people have long memories for this sort of pain, and Labour will be out on their ears.

WELL, my record of sporting tipping maintained its consistent record of being, well, rubbish, with the departure of Italy from Euro 2008.
Admittedly it was a choice based purely on the kit my son was given, but hey, better than my usual selection method involving a pin.
The one prediction I will make is more Grand Slams for Wales, and I base this purely on Charlotte Church and Gavin Henson’s fertility. Congratulations to the pair on the impending arrival of another baby. Charlotte reportedly said she’s happy to have a baby whenever Wales win the Grand Slam.
Marvellous, I look forward to Charlotte and Gavin producing a whole choir.

Caught up

2008-06-17T14:26:00.000+01:00

Apologies if I've clogged your aggregator. I'm up to date now.

Column, June 17, 2008

2008-06-17T13:18:00.002+01:00

SO the battle of the tick box has been won.
The 2011 census forms will include a box for people to indicate they are Welsh, not just British.
A trial run will be held in Anglesey next year and those who are Welsh will be able to express that. Good job it’s being held in October though, when the swallows of summer have left, otherwise the result might have been skewed and we'd think Anglsey was full of the English.
In a way I’m a bit sad about it. The absence of the tick box might have meant the revival of my old friends, The Independent Wales Party. My, the column inches I’ve had out of them.
We could have looked forward to another month of frolics as they gambolled from eisteddfod field to eisteddfod field, filling their coffin with forms that the Welsh refused to fill in because they could only declare themselves’ British.’
But no, some bureaucrat with no sense of fun has robbed them of their main raison d’etre and they can tick away to their heart’s content.
But wait, I think they might be missing a trick if they think the war of the census forms is won.
You see the forms let you say that you’re Welsh, but they don’t let you say just how Welsh you are.
There’s got to be gradations hasn’t there, otherwise everyone whose had a donkey ride on Talacre beach will be claiming they’re Welsh won’t they?
So can we work out a tick box system so people can choose just how Welsh they feel on census day?
Rather helpfully, I’ve got a few ideas of my own, see where you fit in.

A bit Welsh – once ate a stick of Llandudno rock
Quite Welsh – bought all of The Alarm’s CDs
Welsh – bought a Dafydd Iwan CD – haven’t returned it yet
Very Welsh – claim to like laver bread
Very, very Welsh – Lloyd George knew my father, but he knew my mother rather too well
Extremely Welsh – I’m a regular at the pub where we all speak English, but switch to Welsh when the English walk in
Ultimate Welsh – petrol – check, matches – check, now, where’s that holiday home?

Of course, I missed out the category pseudo-Welsh, where you knock out a weekly rant about Wales from a bolthole in England , but hey, it’s my tick-box form I get to edit it.
In the victory celebrations over the fact that the Welsh can declare themselves Welsh in their own country, we miss one important point. That is, will the Welsh get a tick box in England .
I suspect not. I rather think that if we are minded to declare our Welshness then we will have to do it by ticking ‘Other’ rather than British and then explaining where it is we come from.
Of course, we could risk the wrath of the census takers and add ‘Original’ before the word British, because that’s what we were before the Saxons crowded us out.
And in a way ‘Other’ is appropriate as the very word Welsh means strange, and I guess ‘Other’ is what we are in England .
The reason some were so vociferous about wanting a tick box is that they think it will bolster their ambitions of independence, as if a few thousand people ticking a box means you should start building your own navy and seceding from the rest of the UK .
It will provide a few headlines on the day they give out the results – ‘Lots of Welsh people say they’re Welsh – shock’.
What would be far more interesting and far more useful to know, would be how many people, like myself, count themselves as Welsh, but have left Wales .
I’m guessing there will be thousands in the job hubs of Liverpool, Manchester and most importantly, London .
All this talent (and I exclude myself from this point, naturally) is lost to Wales . We all have anecdotal evidence of young people leaving Wales . The traditional excuse if that they can’t afford a house, but I think it’s lack of opportunity not lack of housing that drives them out, because they aren’t finding cheap house in London let me tell you.
Let’s not let that get in the way of a good victory celebration about a meaningless tick box eh?
But if the exodus of young people continues, the coffin they carry in a few years won’t be for census forms, it will be for the nation itself.

HOW teacher Geraint Jones must have regretted his choice of practical joke that day at Ysgol y Creuddyn.
After all, there are so many he could have opted for – the whoopee cushion; the water-squirting flower; itching powder; electric handshake.
But no, he chose the old ‘fake bomb in colleague’s bag’ trick – always a winner, until, that is, the school is evacuated and the emergency services are called in.
It does make one rather wonder what life at the Llandudno school is like though. Because if I were to look in my bag and see what looked like a bomb, my first instinct would be to think – someone is having a laugh, not, oh my God, Al Queda’s latest fiendish plan is to take out teachers in schools in Wales thus bringing civilisation crumbling round our ears, we’re doomed I tell you, doomed.
Either that, or Mr Williams, who has been cautioned for his jape, does a convincing line in fake bombs. I take it it was more sophisticated than the old black cannonball labelled ‘BOMB’ with a fizzing fuse attached.
We never had anything like fake bombs in my schooldays. No, when I was in school one lad broke in and turned on all the gas taps in a fairly serious attempt the blow the place to smithereens.
So I suppose fake bombs are progress, of sorts.

Column, June 10, 2008

2008-06-17T13:18:00.001+01:00

IT’S unusual for police officers to speak their mind.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but like so many public servants they seem sworn to some Trappist vow of silence when it comes to expressing an opinion.
Oh sure they’ll reel off facts and statistics and descriptions and warnings to the public, but ask them to comment about stuff like politics and they insist on their right to silence with all the enthusiasm of the petty crooks they question.
And who can blame them, after all they’ve seen so many predecessors sent to the career equivalent of Siberia for giving the merest hint of disapproval of their political masters.
So when one is brave enough to stick his or her head above the parapet it’s probably worth listening to them. You might not agree with them, but give them a hearing because speaking out will have caused them a good deal more pause for thought than, off the top of my head, a blowhard newspaper columnist.
So when Andy Williams, an inspector from Anglesey said that the ne’er-do-wells of his patch fear being banned from the local pubs more than they fear the penalties imposed by the courts, that tells us two things.
Firstly, and really quite encouragingly really, the effectiveness of the Pubwatch scheme. I have to say I’ve often seen the signs behind the bars of the pubs I frequent for the very occasional half a shandy, and I’ve wondered about their effectiveness. But I’m reassured by the picture Insp Williams paints of criminals apparently indifferent to all other punishments, who are reduced to pathetic pleading when threatened with being banned from their local.
Jack Regan never resorted to that in The Sweeney did he, and he missed a trick: “You Slaaag, sign that confession or you’ve had your last pin in the Dog&Duck.”
The other thing that this tells us, and this is a bit more depressing, is that the criminals to whom Insp Williams refers hold the courts in contempt.
Now you have to realise that Insp Williams is coming at this from a certain angle and the yoghurt-knitting, wool-undie-wearing social workers among us might disagree and think that all car thieves need is a good hug. Until, of course, their Citroen 2CVs get nicked and burnt out, when suddenly they get a bit Genghis Khan about the whole thing, wanting to wreak vengeance on the car thief, and the car thief’s children and the car thief’s children’s children and…you get the picture.
But, in the carefully chosen words of Insp Williams, the courts “are bogged down in the politics of the government of today, which I feel has some extremely pressing issues in terms of both prison populations and the balance between punishment and rehabilitation.”
Someone not straightjacketed by a lifetime of public service, like, off the top of my head, a blowhard newspaper columnist, might put it like this: “The courts would like to bang them up, and you and me would like to see them banged up, but we can’t bang them up because the prisons and full and so we have to try and rehabilitate people who don’t wan to be rehabilitated, they just want to carry on nicking.”
What the answer is I don’t know, for a change, but Insp Williams points out the problem of a jail population that;’s bursting at the seams, resulting in a criminal population who don’t take the justice system as seriously as we would like them to.
The problem is the frustration that must cause Insp Williams and his fellow officers who know that we are worried about crime and yet, when they catch a criminal and put them before the courts – and believe me, they do this in the vast majority of crimes, there is no such thing as a criminal mastermind, the phrase ‘thick as thieves’ refers to their intellect as well – the crooks can shrug it off because they know they’ll get a slap on the wrist.
So, do we buold more prisons? Not popular because very few people want one of those in their back yard. Or do we have more punishments that actually mean something to those who commit crime – like pub bans. It might sound facetious, but if the threat of it works and reduces crime then who cares?
And if Richard Brunstrom’s willingness to speak out has filtered down to lower-ranking officers then that can only be a good thing. As I said, you might not agree with all they say, but they are empowered with enforcing the law and it is imprtant that is they are brave enough to express an honest opinion about that, we should listen.
I hope we hear from more officers like Andy Williams.

SO the fuel protests are coming to the A55.
A Facebook group has been set up – the nation quakes – and theur plan is a 20mph go-slow down the A55 from Stanlow to Colwyn Bay.
No doubt the COBRA committee is meeting in Whitehall to discuss ths latest threat to civilisation.
Apparently, the plan is to drive in convoy along the A55 holding everyone up to make the point that fuel is a bit expensive.
Somehow, I’m thinking, it’s goinbg to take a little more than that to get OPEC’s attention, but call me a whinging nay-sayer.
But I’m afraid to say there is one, crucial problem with their protest idea. The speed they’re planning to travel – 20mph on a Friday towards the North Wales coast.
Others who have endured the hell of the A55 on a summer weekend will be laughing as the read this – 20mph, we dreamt of travelling at 20mph, 20 yards an hour more like.
If they manage to get to Colwyn Bay at an average speed of 20mph, do they realise tat they will be carried shoulder-high along the beach by grateful holiday-makers, delighted to have got down the expressway in record time.
They’ll be given the freedom of the borough and hailed as the saviours of the North Wales tourist industry.
Why not walk along the A55 to give your support on the day? But not too fast eh?, You’ll leave them behind.

Column, June 3, 2008

2008-06-17T13:17:00.001+01:00

LET’S start at the beginning shall we?
The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago, and 3.8 billion years ago the oaceans were formed. Unless of course you are of a particularly literal religious persuasion, in which case it all happened over six days or so about 6,000 years ago, and if you believe that you’d best stop reading now.
But, what I’m getting at is that the Earth, the oceans and the Moon have been around quite a while now, and as a result, so have the tides. 3.8 billion years of the tide coming in, and going out, coming in, going out, coming in, going out, coming in, well, you get the picture don’t you?
You do, but the 70 people rescued from sand banks off the beaches of North Wales at the weekend did not.
Even as the water rushed in behind them, reportedly, some of them refused to heed the warnings of their rescuers of the danger they were in. Only when they realised they would have to wade waist-deep to get back to the shore did they, hopefully gratefully, accept a lift back from the RNLI.
Perhaps on the Croeso i Gymru signs on the border we should add “please check your brains in here”.
Even the common winkle, a mollusc not known for its extraordinary brain capacity, knows when the tide is coming in, but not, it would seem, the crowds paddling at Rhyl, Towyn, Llandudno and Pensarn.
Perhaps these holidaymakers were more accustomed to the puny tides of the enclosed Mediterranean, which lulled them into a false sense of security when they came to North Wales.
They might just be forgiven if they residents of the American Mid-West, for whom the sea was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But we are an island race, the furthest point from the sea is a mere 70 miles. Nelson would be turning in his grave to know a nation that once ruled the waves had been reduced to such a bunch of lubbers.
Still, I suppose it makes a nice change for them to be hauled from the sea rather than plucked off the mountains by helicopter after they tried a winter ascent of Crib Goch equipped only with flip-flops and a Mars bar.
Maybe there’s another way of looking at it. Perhaps this was evolution in action, some lemming-like instinct kicking in. These people through sheer stupidity were trying to unwittingly do the human race a favour by removing themselves from the gene pool. Or maybe it’s a crude attempt to return to the waters from which we evolved.
It’s a tribute to the dedication and persistence of the RNLI that those who refused help until the waters threatened to wash them away were brought safely to shore instead of being given a short, sharp swimming lesson.
It would seem there is a business opportunity for some bright entrepreneur who wants to set up a stall on the beaches of North Wales selling commonsense by the ounce – there are some visitors in dire need of it.

NORTH Wales Assistant Chief Constable Ian Shannon was out with the troops on a licensing visit to a pub when a sign caught his eye.
‘Polite Notice – Positively No Travellers’ it said.
Mr Shannon raised his concerns about the ‘bigoted and unpleasant’ sign on his blog and it was reported to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the sign, in a pub in the Flintshire and Wrexham area, has removed the sign.
Its author ought perhaps to have remembered the original purpose of many pubs and inns was to provide a place of rest for travellers, so it’s a bit rich barring them now.
As the credit crunch takes hold mine host might also find his regulars tightening their belts and he cannot be so discriminating, or discriminatory, about his clientele.
Of course, I dare say travellers are used to this sort of prejudice, whether it’s advertised by a notice or not. You can make someone take down a sign, but it takes a bit more effort to change what’s going on in their bigoted little head.
A couple of points to make about this. Firstly, it’s heartening to know that senior officers get out and find out what happens in the real world rather than rely on junior officers to tell them – other forces take note.
Secondly, good to see that the matter got sorted out without recourse to lengthy and costly legal action.
And finally, to signwriters everywhere, if you find yourself penning the words ‘Polite Notice’ on a notice, you’ll find it invariably isn’t, polite that is, and it’s perhaps best to put your paintbrush away.

AND now to the vexed question of who to support for Euro 2008.
The BBC has been focusing on this heavily in the run-up, as if we are all in a real quandary now that England are not in it, the assumption being that we would all have been flying flags of St George had England not been dumped out in the qualifiers.
Who to support has always been an issue this side of the border, so it has taken a little thought.
It was settled in the Banks household by a gift from Banks junior’s uncles. He was presented with a full Italy strip, on the grounds that they might win, and that’s a good enough reason to support the Azzurri.
It might seem fickle supporting a team on such a tenuous basis, but a Daily Post colleague from deepest North Wales has been a lifelong fan of Spurs as a result of the gift of a strip at an early age, footballing allegiances defy logic and rightly so.
They’re in a tough group though, with France, the Netherlands and Romania, so if they go the way of my previous football predictions, we could be looking for a new team upon which to bestow our support rather soon.
Until then, Forza Italia!

Column, May 20, 2008

2008-06-17T13:16:00.003+01:00

IT’S probably fair to say that when Paul Murphy entered politics his inspiration was not Marie Antoinette.
But when a politician tells people they’ll have to make do with sub-inflation pay rises while all about them prices are shooting skyward, it does rather smack of comments the ill-fated queen made about the starving masses eating cake.
The common refrain of Government ministers these days from Gordon Brown down is that they ‘feel our pain’, or as Mr Murphy put it, “People in Wales are feeling the squeeze.”
Yes, They’re feeling about as uncomfortable as a Labour MP in a marginal seat I would say.
However, Mr Murphy had few comforting words for those facing debt, foreclosure and poverty – aka feeling the squeeze. No instead he warned any of them in the public sector that they shouldn’t expect any help from their employers – ie him.
No, Mr Murphy, whose salary as a Cabinet Minister could be as much as £138,000, warned that inflation busting pay increases were not the answer to our woes.
To his credit, he and other MPs, have accepted a below-inflation 1.9% pay rise this year. The uncharitable among you might point out that someone trousering £138,000 a year can afford to take a below-inflation rise once in a while without feeling the squeeze too much, but remember, Paul feels your pain.
It is statements like Mr Murphy’s that make me think that there are a few people at the very top of New Labour who really do not quite comprehend what is going to happen when they summon up the courage to call an election (that is of course, assuming that they do summon up said courage and don’t cling on by their bitten fingernails until the final day possible)
Electricity bills are up, gas bills likewise, food bills are rocketing and you have to get a move on when you’re filling your car with petrol for fear of the price going up while you’re pumping it in.
At the same time our AMs, those who have taken it, have enjoyed a very healthy, inflation-busting 8.3% pay rise which took their annual salary from £46,804 to £50,692. That’s just over twice the average Welsh wage of £24,544 a year. A wage which, incidentally, even before the credit cruch was not enough to buy an average-priced house in Wales. There are plenty of people here who will be welcoming a collapse in house prices.
But wage inflation, says Mr Murphy, is not the answer, that fuels inflation and they’re not going to take us back to the bad old days of the ‘80s and ‘90s when it was out of control.
Yes, dumping cash into an economy will have an inflationary effect, he’s quite right. Odd then that his government have sat back and watched the housing market dump huge amounts of cash into the economy as people cashed in their equity in recent years.
But then house price inflation was giving everyone a rosy glow about the government wasn’t it? All of a sudden people were taking equity out of their homes to buy stuff to fill those homes with; to buy second homes and to fund expensive foreign holidays, And to have interfered with it would have been an unwarranted meddling in the free market which has served us so well, up until now.
It was a bubble that had to burst, and so it has with predictions of a ‘correction’ in house prices by as much as 30%. So if you’ve just bought a house for £200,000, it might soon be worth £140,000. Try remortgaging that.
That is the sort of pain Mr Murphy and his fellow Cabinet members feel with us, insulated though they may be from it all by generous allowances that fund and furnish their constituency homes.
But Mr Murphy’s faith in the electors not to punish his government for their failings is touching. “At a general election people look at the policies and they will see that the Conservative promises do not add up,” he said.
Nice try Mr Murphy, but you’re fooling no-one. No, Mr Murphy, at a general election people who are feeling the squeeze will look at the contents of their bank account and vote accordingly.

I CAN reveal that the Oasis Hotel’s pink makeover and their orders to tone it down are nothing new.
You will remember that the Oasis was touched up in pink, but it was too vibrant a shade and the owners have been instructed to redo it.
Charlie Roberts, former painter of this parish, writes in to tell me of a similar incident back in 1966.
“Back in 1966 working as a painter for a local firm we had the job of painting The Washington Hotel on the prom, also in Llandudno, a deep cream, as I recall.
“We finished the job on the Friday, but on the following Sunday, Lord Mostyn, who was sailing in the bay as commodore of the yacht club, turned to his chief henchman, George Hillier, and said ‘What is that monstrous colour on that hotel George?’
“When he was told it was a sort of cream he said tell them to change it immediately. So we went back on Monday and done it again!”
“So Mr Banks, nothing has changed in 40 years. Bloated capitalists or what?”
“Yours faithfully, Charlie”
From the dates Mr Roberts has given, this is the previous Lord Mostyn, the fifth Baron, Mr Roberts refers to, not the present Lord Mostyn
You’re right Mr Roberts and the French have a saying for it – plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same.
But then, the French also guillotined the class of people who might presume to tell them what colour to paint their hotels.

Column, May 20, 2008

2008-06-17T13:16:00.001+01:00

BARRISTERS say that you should never ask a question in court you don’t already know the answer to.
Government consultations work in a similar way, only then they never ask a question they haven’t already decided the answer to.
So when they say: “We’re considering closing down your local post office, and we’re now consulting you to see what you think of that”, what they actually mean is: “We’re closing down your post office and you can blether all you like, it’s going, tough cheddar, you can write in to complain if you want but it’s a waste of a stamp, and you’re going to be hard pushed to find somewhere to buy one of those soon.”
Let me give you one small example of just how mad this policy of slash and burn of local post offices is.
They claim that you will be within three miles of a post office, but as the Daily Post revealed, that’s actually quite likely to be nearer six miles. But that’s only applies to when you want to go to a post office yourself. In some situations you will have to travel much, much further.
In my work I get a lot of parcels sent to me recorded delivery. Now, at the moment, if I’m not in, the postperson drops them off at the village post office for collection later, which involved me walking all of 200 yards, on foot, no car involved, no pollution.
I say ‘involved’ because that’s what used to happen. The post office closed today. So now, although the nearest post office is about three miles away, because of the way the post office arranges its deliveries, these packages will go back to a post office 13 miles away.
So though you might be three, or six miles from your nearest post office, that might not be the one you have to go to in order to pick something up.
So now, to pick up parcels, it’s a 26-mile round trip, probably once a week. That is going to mean my car pumping a quarter of a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere because of the closure of my local post office. And that is just me, there will be thousands more like me, all having to make unnecessary journeys because our post office has shut.
I know the economic arguments and how much the post office network costs and so on. But just as village schools provide some of the social glue which holds a community together, so does the local post office. It’s closure might make sense to those who count beans, but then they rarely have an appreciation of anything the delivers value to a community rather than profit.
And I’m disinclined to listen to arguments about the unreasonable cost of running the post offices from a government that has squandered billions on an illegal war in Iraq and found billions in a ham-fisted attempt to bribe voters in wake of the mess that was made abolishing the 10p tax rate.
The thing that we all know is that the closure of the post offices will have its most devastating effect in rural constituencies where Labour does not traditionally fare well. They figure that their urban voters will not be affected by the change and so they can weather the fall-out from it. Once again they have shown themselves to be the party of the city-dweller.
So that’s what you get when you’re consulted – a deaf ear, a blind eye and a closed notice on your post office.

IT was, perhaps, inevitable that Cardiff City were going to lose in the FA Cup final with Portsmouth.
Not because they were in any way the inferior team, as we saw on Saturday, they pften played the better football.
No, it’s just there is is just so much good fortune a country can expect and Wales has had more than its fair share this year.
Winning the Six Nations – which would do us for the whole year most of the time, Joe Calzaghe beating everyone in the world, Duffy topping the charts and so on.
No, if Cardiff had won where would it have ended?
Bangor University causing a bit of an upset on the Thames when their scratch team of rowers from the rugby 3rd XV beat Oxford and Cambridge in the boat race?
A donkey off Ffrith beach winning the Grand National? (Even if it didn’t win it would do better than the knacker’s yard candidates usually backed by your truly)
The fearless bridge divers of Betws-y-Coed taking an unexpected gold for synchronised belly-flopping at the Beijing Games?
All of a sudden the planets would align, the Holy Grail would be discovered in a cave in Wales, carried aloft by the risen King Arthur.
Just think of the increase in traffic down the A55, sometimes it’s wise to hide your light under a bushel. Hard luck Cardiff, but it was for the best.

A PINK hotel might not be to everyone’s taste, but a shabby one is even worse.
What would Mostyn Estates rather the Oasis in Llandudno look like? They’re not happy that owners Ann and David Blanchard touched up its pillars a shade of pink and it now looks like it will be back to a less in-your-face shade.
At this stage I should say that decisions on the appropriateness of colour are not my preserve. Like the majority of the male population should I ever mistakenly pick up a pain colour chart – looking for the TV guide or somesuch other important document – I would see lots of little blocks of colour which I could not choose between.
Whereas Mrs Banks sees all the hues of the rainbow arrayed before her.
But it’s the principle of telling people what they can and cannot do when they are actually doing no-one any harm.
Yes, a vibrant pink might not make your heart skip with joy, but it does no harm, so lets allow a little individuality into our lives shall we? Lets not resort to the red tape simply because someone does something every so slightly different from the rest of us.
Of course, they’ll say where will it end, if the Oasis is allowed vibrant pink what shade will the others choose?
Can I refer you to Tenby, whose houses and hotels are decked out like a maypole and whose reputation, and visitor figures, don’t seem to have suffered too much as a result.

Column, May 13, 2008

2008-06-17T13:15:00.001+01:00

IT’S a good job we’ve got the mountains.
Because when the globally-warmed waves, swollen by the molten ice-caps, come lapping at our ankles, we will at least have somewhere to retreat to as civilisation crumbles around us.
I know we don’t always see eye to eye with our English neighbours, but watching them slowly become and archipelago seems a slightly extreme way of settling our differences.
But why should the Welsh blame themselves for these impending ecological disasters?
Well, it might have something to do with the latest figures to be released by the Office for National Statistics, which looked at just how ‘green’ we were all being.
Here we are in Wales, a nation criss-crossed by quiet country lanes with barely a motorway worthy of the name in the entire country, and just how many miles, on average, do you think we cycle?
I’ll tell you – just 20.
The only people who cycle less then us are those who live in the West Midlands, But at least they have the excuse of the fact that pretty much every road in their neck of the woods is a motorway.
Of course, you could argue that Wales being, well, a bit on the hilly side, is somewhat offputting for the would-be cyclist. And that argument might hold water just long enough for you to see that the Scots, with more and higher mountains, cycle more than we do.
Safety then, that’s the reason, it’s simply not safe to cycle, it’s madness out there, you’re taking your life in your hands just putting on your bicycle clips.
Again, that sounds convincing until you notice that the residents of London, smoggy, traffic-choked, barbaric London, beats us as well, where people cycle an average of more than 50 miles a year.
Personally, I think we’ve got it into our heads that cycling isn’t safe. And in some circumstances that’s right. The increase in traffic has made many major A-roads simply unpleasant to be on because of the volume and speed of traffic and the pollution that comes with it.
But that doesn’t mean we should abandon bikes altogether. With a little thought alternate routes can be found away from heavy traffic and as long as you keep your wits about you cycling is not the white-knuckle danger some imagine it to be.
But in a way it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – the fewer of us there are on the roads, the less prepared drivers are to cope with us. This when confronted with a cyclist drivers either tail you for miles, nervous of passing you lest you get sucked beneath their wheels; or else they are oblivious to you and pass you at 70 with millimetres to spare.
This is the ethos of the Critical Mass movement which forces drivers to acknowledge the existence of cyclists by arranging demos involving such huge numbers they outnumber the motorists.
By penning cyclists into cycle lanes and traffic-free cycle paths it all looks very safe, but it is counterproductive if it gives drivers a giddy fit when they see someone on two wheels.
The other figures that make for depressing reading from the ONS are those for the percentage of children who travel to school by car. Once again Wales tops the league, but not in a good way, with 38% of our children travelling to school this way.
I know we have managed to convince ourselves that there are predatory paedophiles lurking on every street corner and that our children walking or cycling to school is an unacceptable risk (despite the fact that the number or children killed by paedophiles every year remains an unacceptable five, while the number of children killed by their parents remains an even more unacceptable 100, so you do the math as to who is a greater risk to your child).
This is yet another reason not to close village schools, as if there weren’t enough already. But closing village schools and opening super-schools will only result in more children being ferried by mum and dad taxi service.
Mark my words, in a few weeks we’ll get another set of figures telling us how fat and indolent our children have become and we’ll wail and gnash and send them to after-school clubs to try to shed the pounds and then pitch up at the school gate in the Chelsea tractor to ferry them home to their video games and wonder where it all went wrong.

THOSE of you with long memories and an enthusiasm for chapel on a Sunday may remember my comments some time ago about Cliff Richard and the monster he released in our midst when he set the Lord’s Prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.
I wasn’t a fan, but the many, many people who took the trouble to write in clearly were. I didn’t like Cliff’s evangelising, they clearly did, and my can they put pen to paper when they feel the need.
So of all the people you’d guess you would find in church, leading the singing, I don’t think I would be top of your list. It doesn’t stop there though, I was playing guitar, and, as we were heading to the beach straight afterward…wearing sandals. I admit, I could have grown a beard for the occasion just to complete the stereotype, but there are some lines which cannot be crossed.
Quite how I ended up there has something to do with living in a small village tended by a persuasive vicar, and being the only guitarist available. There may have been a brief moment of temptation when I could have given them a rendition of AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells, or Van Halen’s Runnin’ With The Devil, but was persuaded instead to gently strum along to ‘One More Step Along The World I Go’.
Still, no bolts of lightning descended to despatch me into the great hereafter, which shows that should the Lord indeed exist, he has a well-developed sense of irony.

Column, May 6, 2008

2008-06-17T13:14:00.001+01:00

IT’S the economy stupid.
This was a catchphrase coined by Bill Clinton’s campaign team in his successful bid to beat George Bush Snr to the presidency.
Bush had a lot going for him, the Cold War was over and he had just beaten the Iraqis in Gulf War I, but back home there was a recession and Clinton made much ground reminding people of that.
So when Labour comes to sift through the ashes of last week’s political bonfire they might like to dwell on those four words.
Naturally, I don’t expect Labour stalwarts to pay me any heed, after all, I’m regularly accused of being a raving Nat or some sort of Tory fellow traveller. But as the son of a steelworker brought up in Deeside when they shut down Shotton I’ll leave you to guess where my political allegiances lie and if labour choose to ignore the likes of me then on their own heads be it, because they are ignoring the sort of people who put them in power in 1997.
It’s really quite simple. Firstly look at what’s going up. Food prices, fuel prices and the cost of your mortgage. It must come as something of a relief for some people to get turned down for a mortgage nowadays, because they know full well that even if they had got the mortgage they would be able to afford to heat the place or stock the larder.
Have any of those rises been accompanied by an equivalent, or even close, rise in average wages? No they have not.
And in the midst of all this carnage being wrought upon people’s finances, what did the Government go and do? Abolish the 10p tax rate.
Of course, note everyone lost out in that move. I count myself among the big winners. It turned out that all the income tax that was handed back to me by the new 20p tax rate was then snaffled back in National Insurance. All bar £1 a month that is. I’m a whole £12 better off – I’m going to spend, spend, spend.
But a large group of people who Labour might regard as their voters are going to be worse off and though we’ve had climbdowns and U-turns and promises of help from Ministers, when you look at the detail it’s clear there are going to be plenty of people who will not get a penny in compensation and for them it’s tough luck. Tough luck for the Labour candidate they might otherwise have voted for as well.
Secondly, look at the behaviour of the banks in all of this. The Bank of England has made cut after cut to its base rate and have those cuts been passed on to the poor homeowners? Not a one.
And yet whenever the Bank of England base rate has risen in recent years did the mortgage lenders ever baulk at passing on the rise to us – not once.
I know that interest rates have to go some way before they hit the crippling levels that they didn in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when they were in double digits. But back then the banks were not lending people five times their income and 110% mortgages which is what they have had to do now to chase a housing market inflated by themselves because of the amounts of cash they were dumping into it.
And yet the banks neatly absolve themselves of any responsibility for the mess created by the housing market bubble – they didn’t force us to borrow the money did they? Well no, but they fuelled that meant people needed to ask for such huge mortgages and they lent out huge multiples of people’s salaries.
Yet know they are being allowed to sit there, failing to pass on rate cuts, refusing to lend and raking in the cash to protect themselves against the recession that is coming and which they helped to create. If they did this sort of thing in wartime it would be called profiteering and the bank chief execs would be doing a spell in Pentonville to atone.
Instead we have the giant economic brain of Gordon Brown claiming that last week’s cataclysm at the polls was somehow because of a failure to get Labour’s message across.
Eh?
Does he really think that had he been able to explain more clearly Labour’s ‘message’ a family facing bankruptcy and repossession would have said, “Ah, now it’s all clear” and meekly trotted to the polls to pub their cross next to New Labour.
If he does then he isn’t the giant intellect some claim him to be.
Do you think Marie Antoinette, on her way to the guillotine said: “Zut alors, if only I had been able to explain to the unwashed mob what a nice alternative cake is to bread, then all of this nastiness would have been avoided.”
Brown need to forget about everything except the economy – schools, prisons, foreign policy, and Labour’s blessed ‘message’ – all that he can leave to ministers he has appointed to deal with it. He should focus entirely on getting through the next year or so without all of us ending up sleeping beneath the railway arches in cardboard boxes.
Do that and he just might find enough people well-disposed enough to him to turn up and vote for him at the next election.

THE above message applies to most of North Wales, save Gwynedd, where it should read “It’s the schools stupid.”
Because if there was ever a stupid policy suggestion it was closing the small schools of Gwynedd. The very thing that might encourage people to move there or for people living there to stay was the quality of education in the small primaries across the county.
To have closed them would have been a betrayal of Wales’s heritage as a country where education really mattered.
Now the election of councillors for Llais Gwynedd and the end of Plaid’s overall control ought to have consigned such barmy policies to the waste bin and hopefully another route will be found to achieve the savings they need.

Column, April 29, 2008

2008-06-17T09:52:00.001+01:00

WE had better start making a list.
The English are voting on whether to become part of Wales and if we haven’t got a list before we know it they’ll all be in.
Alright, it’s only started with the little village of Audlem , over in Cheshire , but you know what they say about wedges having a thin end.
Not that I’m saying we won’t welcome them all should they so choose to exercise their democratic right to become part of God’s Own Country, but we might want to exercise a little discretion.
Of course, you can understand why they all want in. After all, we’ve won the Grand Slam, Duffy’s top of the charts, Cardiff in the FA Cup, Doctor Who setting up home here, Gavin&Stacey’s Bafta, Joe Calzaghe a world champion twice over. We pretty much rule the roost, so you can sympathise.
Pub bores everywhere are suddenly finding Welsh great-grandmothers in their lineage and that’s enough for them to order their Grand Slam pullover and get all teary-eyed during Land Of My Fathers, even though not a couple of years ago they could be heard belting out ‘Swiiiiing Loooow, Sweeeeet Charrrrr-iiiii-oooott’ at the merest peep of a white shirt.
The people of Audlem, however, 63% of who want to be part of Wales , voted for far more practical reasons. They believe that they aren’t getting the services they deserve in England and believe being part of Wales will see them better provided for.
Well, with free prescriptions for all and no SATs tests for kids you can’t say they are far wrong.
So Audlem, formerly in Cheshire , but now part of what I am going to call Greater Wales – Croeso, Welcome.
The nay-sayers at Wrexham County Borough Council have raised the small matter of Audlem being quite a way away from us and Whitchurch being in between. Let’s not let that get in the way of things eh? Let’s annex Whitchurch too. I would say today Audlem, tomorrow the world, but it sounds a little too much like a chap whose ambitions ended badly.
But rather than seeing it as the English joining us, perhaps we ought to regard it as a return to Wales of what is rightfully ours. After all, Audlem and much of that part of the world was Welsh until we lost it to Northumbria 1400 years ago.
So.if we get Audlem, and Whitchurch, where else should we absorb into Greater Wales (got quite a ring to it that hasn’t it, Great Britain , but Greater Wales).
Well, we’ll have Liverpool for a start. We built it, we’re having it back, and we’ll put a stop to them tearing down the ‘Welsh Streets’ as part of Prescott’s grand renovation scheme.
We can quietly take Shropshire, but I think we ought to draw the line at Birmingham , on the grounds that it’s good to have someone outside Wales who also gets the mick taken because of their accent.
Most of Herefordshire and the West Country should surely be ours. Cornwall , I imagine, would be quick to secede too. The M4 corridor could see Welsh tanks across the Severn and on the outskirts of London before breakfast. If Wales had any tanks that is, and given how quick we take umbrage it’s perhaps best we don’t.
Keep the border creeping eastwards and once we’ve taken Yorkshire even I’ll be back in the fold. No need for hiraeth, I’ll be home.
Naturally there is the small matter of most of these communities not speaking Welsh. But I don’t think we ought to let that get in the way because except for the North West corner, most of our own communities don’t either.
It’s a whole new take on independence as well. You’ve no need to be independent of the English if they’re signing up to join you in their droves.
So, come one, come all, vote early, vote often to join the fastest expanding nation in the UK .

AS an exiled Welshman, albeit self-imposed, it’s always nice to bump into those with links to home.
So when I pitched up in a tiny North Yorkshire village it was a pleasant surprise that my nearest neighbour is an ex-office in the Welsh Guards.
We had a chat about the relative merits of North Wales guardsmen and South Wales – we agreed that North Walians were far the superior, although that might have something to do with Wrexham soldiers always being up for a fight.
Anyhow, Captain Mike is doing his bit for those injured in Iraq and Afghanistan next month in aid of the Help for Heroes charity.
This charity is raising funds for a swimming pool and treatment centre at Headley Court , the forces’ centre where service personnel recover from injuries received in action.
Captain Mike and hundreds of other riders will be cycling through the battlefields of France to raise money for this charity in late May.
You can read all about their efforts on the charity website http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/ If you would like to sponsor Captain Mike, drop me a line at my e-mail address d.banks3@btinternet.com, and I’ll put you in touch.

PERHAPS the fact that the English are voting to become Welsh is not entirely unconnected to news that a church in Wales has applied for a drinks licence.
The Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth could soon also be known as mine host as he wants a licence to serve alcohol at St Peter ad Vincula Church in Pennal, near Machynlleth.
It might have the ministers of the dry Sunday chapels turning in the grave, but in these days of declining church numbers the sort of social function where alcohol is served is one way of getting people through the door.
And apart from the nonconformist suspicion of the demon drink, the Church has always had a close association with brewing, especially the monasteries.
And if my shaky recollection of The Bible serves me, and I think it does, Jesus turned water into wine, not the other way round.

Column, April 22, 2008

2008-06-17T09:51:00.001+01:00

IF in doubt, blame the media.
In fact, strike that, there’s no need to actually be in doubt. It’s a rule we should all live by – get up, shower, breakfast, feed the cat, blame the media and go to work.
There are few sticky situations you will find yourself in where you can’t buy yourself a bit of wiggle room by blaming the media.
I’ll bet as the crowds departed from Calvary someone piped up that it was the Scribes that were to blame for the death of Our Lord.
Now, I’ll accept that I’ve got a bit of a vested interest here, being an accursed hack, and yes, one, who, on occasion would turn up on the doorsteps of those in dire circumstances and inquire whether a word with the papers might help.
And now, it seems, we are to blame for Welsh Rugby’s decision to shift a match to a Friday night.
As WRU spokesman John Williams put it: Our view is that we already have Friday night rugby in the Heineken Cup, the Rugby World Cup and domestic rugby and we are heavily dictated to by the media.”
“Dictated to be the media” eh? And just how does that work then.
As soon as the television deal was signed did the men in jackboots march in saying: “A-ha, ve haf vays of making you play on a Friday night, for you Dai, ze days of daytime rugby are over.”
No, I suspect that by dictating, what our man at the WRU was indicating was that TV will pay for Friday night rugby, on the grounds that they can sell adverts into it if they’re commercial, or they can get audience share if they are the BBC.
Either way, I don’t think the dastardly media types were saying give us Friday nigtht rugby or we won’t show it at all.
So it was open to the Six Nations Committee and the WRU to say, well, actually, on reflection, no, we’ve always played Six Nations on a Saturday or Sunday, so there it stays.
But then, name a sporting association since the invention of TV that has resisted the blandishments of broadcasters?
But can we honestly say they have all benefited? OK, snooker, I’ll give you snooker. Once a pastime for those who needed something to fill the intervals between smoking and drinking it was dragged out of the shadows and thrust into the spotlights of the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield .
But apart from that, what sport hasn’t sold its soul when it dealt with TV?
You only have to look at what football has become to see where rugby will go. Football long ago abandoned any pretence of consideration for the fans that filled the terraces. They are just another asset to be stripped of cash via ticket prices and ever-changing replica shirts.
And if they complain, so what, the Premiership clubs know they can fill seats many times over, and even if they can’t it doesn’t matter because the TV cash will fill any void left on the terraces.
Now, the money-persons at the WRU may shake their heads at my naivety and say that’s the way things are in today’s hard-headed commercial world. But do we really want rugby to go the way of football?
To its credit rugby has managed the transition from amateurism, via ‘shamateurism’ to become fully professional without players turning into the preening clothes-horses that afflict the Premiership.
The sad fact is that the Six Nations will probably get away with this and many fans who would like to have been in Paris will, of course, tune in to watch on TV.
But it’s one snub to true fans would otherwise have made the trip to France but now can’t because of work commitments. Such small blows add up until slowly but surely the face of a game we love has changed forever.

GREAT to see the BBC comedy ‘Gavin & Stacey’ do so well at the BAFTAs on Sunday.
Firstly, because it’s very, very funny and deserves the plaudits.
Secondly because much of its humour features the Welsh and yet it manages to refrain from that humour revolving around the rib-tickling revelations that a) we talk funny, and b) there are a lot of sheep in this country so there’s got to be some shenanigans going on there hasn’t there?
Thirdly, because anything featuring Rob Brydon is worth a gong, he’s a genius.
It was also a relief to see the BBC costume drama Cranford do so appallingly badly. It is dull beyond words and it was nice for once not to see awards going to a drama based on the yardage of crinoline used in its production.

Column, April 15, 2008

2008-06-17T09:49:00.001+01:00

WATCHING Wrexham FC was always a bit of a white-knuckle ride.
Cajoled into abandoning my armchair support for Liverpool’s glory-boys by a couple of Daily Post colleagues – who were probably looking for someone to share their pain – I spent three or so seasons on the roads less travelled of the football league.
Let me tell you there is little joy to be had on a rainy day in Hull, which then had an open away end. The only laugh raised as we lost was when a ball hit the roof of the home supporter’s stand and they could all be seen brushing off the rust that had descended on them as a result. And then we couldn’t find a decent fish and chip shop open – in Hull. It was a long, long trek home.
But for all the cold, wet trips to see losses or 0-0 draws, there were more than enough moments of unrestrained delight to make up for that, and that is the joy of watching a team as unpredictable as Wrexham.
There was the Peterborough cup match when one of their fans, enraged at the drubbing they were getting by the on-form Reds, ran the length of the pitch to confront the Wrexham support. I think his sprinting years were some time behind him and by the halfway line he was flagging and grateful to be led away by the stewards for a cup of tea and a rest.
Who can forget Aresnal and West Ham, and Middlesbrough whose cup hopes were dashed on the rocks of unexpectedly brilliant Wrexham performance.
Who can forget 1-3 to dump Birmingham City out of the cup? Not me, because I had them at 30-1 with the stadium bookies to do just that.
But it wasn’t just the days of cup glory that I remember of Wrexham. It was moment like Jonathan Cross’s shot against Crewe one night as both teams vied for the play-offs. He took the ball on the bounce just inside the Crewe half and then lashed a shot at goal. Time seemed to stand still as we began celebrating one of the best strikes any of us had ever seen. Then it hit the crossbar.
All the time were were trogging round the backwaters of the football league though we could but wonder at what was going on off the pitch. Wrexham’s tribulations have not always been helped by those who have not always had the club’s best interests at heart.
Perhaps it has been a mercy that work has taken me away from the cruelty of being a Wrexham fan. My nearest league team is York now and having been there as opposition I can’t bring myself to switch allegiances and visit Bootham Bar as a fan.
Remember the plan to turn the pitch through 90 degrees, redeveloping one end and at a stroke rendering half of the newly-built Pryce Griffiths stand completely useless? Genius like that always seems to rise to the top in the lower reaches of football.
But that is the whole point of following a lower-league team. Let’s face it, few of us are ever going to achieve promotion to the Premiership.
You don’t do it for the abundant glories of watching Liverpool, or Man United or Chelsea do you? Following them disappointment comes when you are second best, not bottom of the league.
Following Wrexham means flirting with disaster. Travelling long distances for little or now reward and then still finding something positive to talk about on the long drive home.
That is what being a true football fan is about. Sure we can choose our team according to the wealth of the owner and guaranteed showings on Sky every week. But that’s not being a fan, that’s just a glorified version of shopping.
Being a fan means supporting your local team, no matter how dismal their performances are week-in, week-out. You keep the faith.
Now we are all but mathematically relegated, nine points from safety with 12 available. Miracles can happen, but some might say that Wrexham have had more than their share of them in recent years.
If the worst happens, and Wrexham drop, then we only have to look down the road to see that all is not lost.
To our unrestrained joy, Chester dropped out of the football league, but they’re back. Not without difficulties of their own, they’re hardly riding high, but they did claw their way back up.
It sticks in the craw to hold up the old enemy as an example, but sometimes you have to swallow your pride and admit they did what they needed to do.
Wrexham can do the same. It will be tough – takings will be down, players will be harder to come by. It will take a massive effort. But the loyal supporters who trail after them on dark winter nights, of who I was once one, deserve nothing less.

ST Deiniol’s Church, in my home village of Hawarden, is a big church, and it takes someone special to fill it.
Mark Parry, a school friend was that sort of person and his death, cruelly early, saw hundreds crowd the pews last week.
It was a sad day indeed, but the service reflected the joy and the music and laughter that Mark brought into so many lives.
The singing, by a Welsh congregation, was transcendent, I tell you, if you want a head-start toward Heaven then have Welsh women sing you on your way.
And it was typical of a man who brought happiness to so many, that he left the church to the tune of Laurel and Hardy’s ‘Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia’ – Mark ‘Paz’ Parry, as ever, trying to make us smile.

Column, April 8, 2008

2008-06-17T09:43:00.000+01:00

SOME people clearly have far too much time on their hands.
How else can you explain the complaints about a pub in Caernarfon called The Black Boy.
The complainants apparently believe it is racist. They’re almost right.
It was racist, when it was named, but that was 250 years ago, people held some pretty obnoxious views back then. Not just opinions though, slavery was yet to be abolished and we were enthusiastically shipping off black boys, girls, women and men to the colonies to work on plantations.
It is all very shameful, but it is also history. We don’t do it now, nor would we, and we shouldn’t apologise for what we didn’t do ourselves. Nor should we expunge it from our public buildings.
A week ago I was holidaying in the Peak District and pitched up in a town called Ashbourne, were a hotel rejoices in the name ‘The Blacks Head’, and across the street. Did I read that right I wondered as we passed, but there to confirm my suspicions of the racism of our forefathers, was a cast iron archway topped by a crude depiction of a black man’s head.
It did look rather odd in these days when we are fortunately more enlightened about equality. But should we tear down symbols that were put up centuries ago simply because we would not put them up now?
There are lots of episodes from history that we are not particularly proud of, but ou cannot pretend they did not happen. That doesn’t mean you are in any way celebrating them, but nor are you denying their existence.
It’s true that if you built a new pub and you were sitting down with a focus group brainstorming what to call you new hostelry, ‘The Black Boy’ wouldn’t be top of your list would it?
That’s not to say some new names can’t offend. A landlady in the West Country got into trouble recently when she renamed her pub ‘Hawkins Meeting House’ after a heroic sailor who assisted Drake in fighting the Armada. Trouble is he was also a slave trader and her pub was opposite the local race equality council building.
But if we start tearing down pub names simply because they offend modern sensibilities then where are we going to stop?
Are we going to do away with the Fox and Hounds, Hare and Hounds, Anything being pursued by Hounds because the animal rights brigade take offence at these glorifications of hunting? Are White Lions offensive to differently-coloured Lions?
Is it the end of the line for the Duke of Wellington, the Admiral Nelson and The Trafalgar for fear of offending our friends across the Channel?
No, leave them where they are and be thankful that the attitudes that informed their names do not prevail today.
And let’s be particularly penitent when we sup in that inn whose name must be a thorn in the side of every wife who enters its portals – The Nag’s Head.

ANYONE who watched the documentary about Josie Russell on BBC last week cannot help but be hugely impressed by both her and her father.
I think what struck me is their refusal to conform to the stereotype that so much of the media tried to pen them into – tragic victims, struggling against adversity.
Instead they seem to have returned to a community that Mr Russell knew would be supportive and then got on with living.
One thing I did notice though was that Josie’s school, Ysgol Baladeulyn, is one of those earmarked for closure under Gywnedd’s proposals for reform.
It was obvious in the programme just how much this little school had helped Josie in the immediate months and years after the attack.
Of course, one cannot argue that a school should be kept open on the off chance that a child should suffer the sort of attack that Josie did. But given what the school was able to do for her, how much do you think it could help children with other challenges?
Keeping small schools open is difficult, but undoubtedly worth it, as this programme proved once again.

THE progress of the Olympic torch through London was an unmitigated disaster, but whether it will advance the cause of a free Tibet is another matter entirely.
I somehow doubt that a beardy bloke shouting at Paula Radcliffe is going to melt the hearts of the men in Beijing and lead to a withdrawal of troops, but it makes for a nice photo opportunity.
I can’t say I’m much moved by the disruption of the torch’s progress though, as a spectacle it doesn’t amount to much and it is a tradition that dates back to the Olympics in berlin in 1936 when the Nazis were lionised in the film by Leni Riefenstahl. Not a tradition with its roots in ancient Greece then.
If you are moved to support the Free Tibet cause though, restrain yourself from shouting a some poor sportsperson or minor celeb (and just how did Denise Van Outen get in on this particular act?) carrying the torch.
Instead inspect your underwear for the tell-tale signs of collusion with the forces of oppression. In there you will, in all probability find a little label reading ‘Made in China’. If not there, you’ll find it one many of your child’s toys.
So, are you prepared to buy your clothes and toys from more ethical, and expensive, sources? Until we are then the protests in London will not amount to any more than empty gestures.

MILLIONS of pounds of public money and many lives disrupted and we reach the conclusion that anyone who lived there could have told you years ago for free – that turning the A494 in Deeside into a seven-lane super highway was stupid idea.
The noise and pollution it would create would be bad enough, but all it would achieve would be to shift the bottleneck a few more miles down the A55.
Still, the abandonment of the scheme is a good thing and we’ll probably end up getting what we should have had all along, a crawler lane up the hill for slow moving traffic.

Column, March 25, 2008

2008-06-17T09:39:00.001+01:00

SOME of you may be reading this in the haze of a near-diabetic coma brought on by Easter egg indulgence.
Others may be ruing that where Easter tumbleweed used to blow down the high street shutting every shop in sight; now it’s an annual festival of DIY, funded by what’s left of the limit of our overstretched credit cards.
One thing is reasonably certain, and that is that very few of us spend the holiday as it was meant to be – a holy festival marking the death and resurrection of Jesus. Easier to think about planking in B&Q isn’t it?
Not that I’m getting all holier than thou about this, you understand, although given the fact that I did attend an Easter service – albeit one organised by my son’s school – I do have dibs on casting the first stone, if I might be allowed a little Biblical imagery there.
A couple of things struck me as odd this weekend. Firstly the fanfare given to the fact that bookies were allowed to open on Good Friday for the first time. Hurrah, yet another day to go in and get fleeced betting money you can’t afford on sporting events you have no idea about the outcome of.
No, no-one is forcing them in there at gunpoint, but that’s not really the point. It’s another small step in making what were national holidays, just another day like any other.
The other was the fuss that was being made about Easter being early this year, and how inconvenient it was that it was on a different date every year.
Acres of newsprint and hours of airtime were devoted to debating this and the constant refrain was that wouldn’t it be better to do away with this tying of Easter to the phases of the Moon and let’s have a nice convenient set date every year.
Convenient for who exactly? Some mad education authorities have decided to separate the childrens’ two-week break from the actual Easter weekend, for what reason I know not.
But I cannot for the life of me see the reason for doing away with the moveable feast of Easter, although you have to go to the incredible difficulty of looking at a calendar to find out when it falls each year.
Of course, you detect the undercurrent behind these calls for Easter to be regularised, is that it would be more convenient for business to have it one the same date every year.
And these presumably would be the same businesses benefiting from the Easter being treated less and less like a holiday and more like an opportunity to make money.
I’m not saying we should be trooping to church in the numbers we used to, but we seem to have lost sight of the fact that holidays were one just that – holy days, and surely we can find something better to do with them than go shopping.
Christmas Day and Easter Sunday are just about the only days of the year now when you can find a bit of peace, when everyone isn’t on one headlong rush to get to work or the shops.
But as Good Friday is eroded, Easter Sunday will be next, and Christmas Day will surely follow. All to the consternation of the church that will be powerless to do anything about it because it long lost its ability to dictate to us our behaviour when it stopped getting us through its doors in the numbers it once did.
We go to different churches now, where the only bells that ring are on the tills.

IT was we apparently ‘have to admit’ a substandard Six Nations.
England and Ireland were ‘teams in transition’ – which means, not as good as they used to be but their selectos haven’t worked out what to do about it.
France were just mad, Scotland are a shadow of their former selves and Italy still find form elusive.
So, we should just pipe down a bit over here in Wales because no-one else is making too big a fuss about it all. Just put the trophy in the cabinet and thank your lucky stars you’ve got it.
Thus was the theme of the London-based press when they condescended to talk about the Welsh Grand Slam, which was often sidelined to make way for coverage of Danny Cipriani, the new golden boy of English rugby.
Fine. Except I don’t remember, in years gone by, a lacklustre Wales being a reason for downplaying English victories in the Six Nations.
Jeremy Clarkson summed it up thus: “I truly enjoy a seeing a downtrodden people being given a crumb of something that makes them happy.”
The sour grapes are being harvested across the border and it promises to be a vintage year.

SPEAKING of which. Gavin ‘Show Pony’ Henson was on again at the weekend, this time for the Ospreys, blowing through the Saracens defence like it wasn’t there.
At some point his, mainly English, critics will have to accept that for a show pony, he puts on some show.

TRAVELLING home to North Wales on Good Friday seemed like a ticket to hours in a traffic jam with a festival of roadworks welcoming all those approaching the A55.
But we slipped through the chicane of barriers with barely a pause, which pleasantly surprising as it was, should also be worrying.
It might be the fear of wintry weather that caused people to stay away, but on the evidence of Friday afternoon they were not heading our way in the droves we would have been hoping for on a Bank Holiday weekend.
A couple of hours earlier we had been leaving the opposite coast in England, where the world and his wife, despite the weather, was hitting the beach.
If I were working in Welsh tourism that apparent discrepancy would worry me.
If it is the weather that is keeping people away then we can just hope for a better summer. If it’s more than that though, then we have a big problem.

Column, March 18, 2008

2008-06-17T09:38:00.000+01:00

IT was a tough decision – feed the kids or watch the rugby.
Mrs B was away and I was in charge.
I thought the boys might understand. The four-year-old shouts for Wales whenever they’re on (born in Newcastle , living in Yorkshire and thanks to his dad’s allegiances, now guaranteed a school-life of being chased around the yard by an angry mob.) The 18-month-old is a stout little chap, Celtic build like his dad. Surely I could hold off meal-time for 80 minutes?
But there they were, half an hour before the start, asking what’s for their tea. All they needed was a bowl in their hands and they’d be a pair of little latter-day Olivers.
For a moment I hesitated, thenI pictured the scene at court as the prosecution explained to the English judge: “Yes, your honour, the defendant, charged with neglect and cruelty of a most odious nature, is a Welsh rugby fan. His children were found begging for food as he danced round his lounge singing, somewhat sadistically, you might think, Sospan Fach, a Welsh song about, ahem, a little saucepan, your honour. Sadly, the only saucepans to be found in the Banks household that day were in songs and not on the cooker. We ask for an immediate, and lengthy, custodial sentence.”
No problem, I thought, set the video, feed the kids, bath, book and off to bed with them and then settle down to watch the match having studiously avoided all news channels, text messages and e-mail.
Job done, boys asleep, and I’m ready for the big, delayed, match.
Press rewind, the video whirrs. For a very…short…time.
Seven minutes, that’s all I got. Seven minutes.
While all of Wales was shedding tears of joy in one corner of North Yorkshire I was just shedding tears.
But a glimmer of hope, wasn’t the BBC banging on about making the unmissable, unmissable with some free internet wizardry.
And so it was six hours later, plugged into my laptop and on the BBC iPlayer site, I I watched as Wales put France to the sword. Late it might have been but, sweeter still for nearly having been missed, and thank you, oh thank you, BBC.
What a match, what a team. What a Grand Slam.
For me the defining plays of the game belonged to Gavin Henson who showed what defensive rugby was all about.
Time after time I thought he must be offside, but no, every time the French tried to run the ball Henson was up in their faces on the blitz.
He’s a good-looking lad, you can’t help but notice the teeth, the hair, the tan. That don’t look so lovely when it’s coming at you full pace, you’ve just taken the ball and you’ve got about a millisecond to do something clever before 14st 11lbs of Gavin folds you in half.
I’m surprised that when he got sin-binned the French didn’t ask for him to stay on, the one thing they didn’t need was Henson back on after a ten-minute breather.
If there are sports teachers out there wanting to teach young rugby players the art of being a centre, just let your young charges watch Henson’s performance.
The truly incredible thing about Saturday’s game was the devastating, unrelenting pace at which it was played. Right until the end Wales , and France to their credit, were at it full tilt. In the past the game would have died as fatigue took over and the ball stayed in the ruck while everyone gasped and prayed for the clock to go faster.
The thing the southern hemisphere sides have always had on us was the ability to play for 80 minutes at that pace but at last we seem to have produced a team that can match that effort.
The only thing that saddens me, and it was a comment by Brian Moore after the game, that the Welsh victory was all the more incredible because the players do not come from all over Wales , they are drawn from a narrow corridor down South.
And he’s right. But much better we could be if the pool of talent that we could draw upon included young players from the North.
Surely it’s not beyond the wit of our schools to use this victory as an inspiration and to get more children in North Wales playing rugby in the hope of emulating the side we saw on Saturday?
But that is for the future. And now we go to South Africa to test ourselves against the World Champions in summer.
For the moment though let’s dwell on a Grand Slam that began all those weeks ago when England decided that having got the lead it was nap-nap time and then watched as Wales showed the pace with which they would win the championship.
Let’s enjoy the memory of the Irish and French dismissals of our threat. Nothing to be frightened of, not New Zealand , after all. No, not new Zealand, but faster and stronger than Ireland and France .
Let’s wonder at just how fast Shane Williams can be; and how strong a pack must be to win a scrum against the head (and when was the last time you saw that at international level?) when France were camped under our posts; and how grateful we are that Martyn Williams decided retirement was over-rated.
Let’s look forward to what comes next, because everyone has said that this is a Wales side that can only get better, as if they have not given us enough already.
Let’s give a grateful prayer of thanks to Warren Gatland, Shaun Edwards and Rob Howley who engineered all this and let us also pray the WRU tie them to Welsh rugby with golden handcuffs – diamond-studded if need be.
And let’s remember that in winning they played the sort of rugby we recognise as Welsh – fast, creative, a joy to watch and none of the percentage kicking game that has threatened to kill the northern hemisphere game as a spectacle in recent years.
There is a school of thought that says we should not as a nation let ourselves be defined by the stereotypes of rugby-playing and singing. But to hear the national anthem all but lift the roof of the Millennium Stadium and then watch a Welsh side play the way they did, sweeps all doubt aside.
If you are going to be defined as rugby-playing choristers, then let’s always play like that, let’s always sing like that.

Column, March 11, 2008

2008-06-17T09:36:00.000+01:00

QUICK quiz.
You are on patrol in Kandahar province, Afghanistan , one of your Land Rovers has just been flipped by a landmine and you’re now outnumbered 3-1 by Taliban dug in around you and peppering you with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, machine guns and AK-47s. What do you do?
Most of us might say dive into the nearest hole and pray that Prince Harry is on hand to call in an air-strike to get us out of the proverbial.
But most of us are not Fusilier Damien Hields, or once he pays a visit to Buckingham Palace , Fusilier Damien Hields MC.
No, rather than keeping his head down Fusilier Hields followed the trail of the rocket-propelled grenades coming towards him, and then started giving the Taliban some back.
Just hang on a minute, let’s hit the pause button there, He followed the trial – got that – of rocket propelled grenades – yep, got that too – coming towards HIM? That’s where he loses me, because that’s where I would have been up and out and running as fast as my little legs would carry me.
Fusilier Hields however, is made of sterner stuff than soft-as-shandy newspaper columnists and to the evident misfortune of the Taliban attacking him, he was also armed with a grenade machine gun. I didn’t know such things exist, but if ever you are in a tight spot it is clearly the thing to have on your side and best to have Damien Hields at the trigger.
Having followed the trail of the RPGs fired at him, and I’m still utterly amazed by that, Fusilier Hields was able to spot the positions of the Taliban and started firing his grenades. Six boxes he got through in 15 minutes – that’s 192 grenades.
The Taliban understood the nature of the kicking they were getting from this one-man army and concentrated fire on him, turning his Land Rover into something more reminiscent of a tea strainer.
Fusilier Hields only stopped shooting back when they finally hit him, shattering a rib and he was dragged out of it to get treatment.
As well as winning the Military Cross, the third-highest award for gallantry, because this was a NATO operation he was also awarded the NATO Meritorious Service Medal. However, army rules do not allow soldiers to wear non-British medals, an anomaly which the pen-pushers at the MoD whose desks are a safe distance from the front line ought to put right straight away.
There’s been a lot of fuss in the past week about servicemen and women wearing their uniforms in public because of abuse aimed at them by those opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan .
I’m guessing that if you’ve got the nerve to follow the trail of an RPG fired at you, you can cope with the odd adverse comment from the misguided. Especially when the vast majority would applaud your actions.
Which brings me to the question of when we are to be allowed to do just that?
After Fusilier Hields receives his MC will the Army organise a parade of the 1st Battalion Royal Welsh (Royal Welch Fusliers) through the streets of Denbigh, and the other Welsh home towns of these soldiers?
I hope they do so that we can show our appreciation of the actions of someone who truly deserves to be called a hero.

ANOTHER weekend and another step closer to the Grand Slam.
The Irish said Wales hadn’t been truly tested thus far in the Six Nations. I take it they don’t think that now. We were tested, but it was they who were found wanting.
Strange how though, if you read the coverage of the London media, it is still all about England , the only team who deserve to win in their view, have let the championship elude them.
Wales, they grudgingly concede, are on track to win an ‘unlikely’ Grand Slam. Good of them to let us know eh?
And Shane Williams, once again, defied the laws of physics, which tell you that a 5ft 7ins player weighing 12st 8lbs (Williams) when tackled by a 6ft 2ins player weighing 15st 8lbs, ought to come off worst. But what does Shane do? He gives him the hand off and scores.
Another criticism levelled at the Welsh team is that that still haven’t played as well as they could. God help them when we do.

WOULD that we all had an independent panel setting our pay like AMs do.
Then we could all, with heavy heart, take our inflation-busting 8.3 per cent pay rises and insist that we don’t really want the money, but it’s being forced upon us by an independent panel, our hands are tied, our mouths are stuffed with gold etc, etc, etc.
What those AMs who are accepting the pay rise do not seem to understand – and it says something for the standard of intellect that the Assembly attracts - is that they can blether on about independent panels, commissions until kingdom come – their constituents are all facing low or no pay rises, spiralling mortgages and increasing bills.
They do not have the luxury of independent pay awards and they have little patience with politicians who take such awards while advocating restraint for the rest of us.
Congratulations to the Plaid AMs who had the decency to turn this award down. Their opponents call it posturing while trousering their cash. In the light of what we’re all facing in the real world, it was the right thing to do.

GOOD to see the Assembly doing its bit to put off the second home brigade this summer by sealing off Wales to visitors.
You might think of it as roadworks, but to those wanting to come her to buy a home it is more of a barricade. Two hours on the hell of the A55 and they’ll be turning back home to tune into ‘A Place In The Sun’ and buying somewhere on the Costas.
Of course, their might be one or two casualties in the Welsh tourism industry when the day trippers and holidaymakers fail to battle their way to our resorts, but hey, you know what they say about omelettes and eggs.
Fortress Cymru, you know it makes sense.

Column, March 4, 2008

2008-06-17T09:33:00.001+01:00

ONE of the less well-advertised perks of being a reporter is the press freebie.
Not something we shout about too much when we’re getting on our high horse about MPs fiddling their expenses, but on any given day you’ll find a fair few hacks in most airport departure loungse, off on a jolly to some tropical paradise at someone else’s expense.
These things are usually dished out on the basis of how decent a job you’re doing and the likelihood of you heading off to pastures new if the boss doesn’t keep you vaguely happy.
My first such trip was to the Isle of Man, in November, in a gale. Make what you will of how well my career was doing at that stage and how worried they were at the prospect of my departure.
Any road up, some years later I was dispatched to Arizona, so by then I’d managed to keep my nose particularly clean.
We were on a tour of towns of the Old West and pitched up in a swanky resort hotel in the town of Prescott. Now, one of the oddities of America, the land that gave us Vegas in all its neon glory, is that in many states gambling is actually illegal.
However, the Native American reservations get to make their own rules in that respect and if they want a casino on reservation land then so be it.
At this point you may be wondering what the blimminy flip this has to do with Wales, but bear with me, I’m getting there, but in all too roundabout a way.
So, in Prescott we were the guests of the Havasupai Indians, on whose land the hotel had been built. We were invited to take a look at the casinos it boasted and were given the choice of the upstairs, upmarket casino, or the downstairs, more, ahem, down to earth model.
Being hacks we chose the budget version and what an eye opener it was. If I ever had ambitions of becoming a high-stakes, high-roller they died the moment I set foot there.
The very polite, but also very firm and very burly security at the door told us we would not be taking any photographs there. And you could understand why as soon as you took a look at the clientele.
This may have been owned by a native american tribe, but they certainly were not its target market for punters. No, the people sitting at its vast ranks of slot machines were exclusively elderly, white Americans.
It was the Indians’ revenge. They might have been killed, driven from their homes and shepherded into reservations that are dwarfed by the ranges they used to roam, but now they’re extracting a payment from the descendants of those who did it to them.
The superannuated gamblers were assisted in their endeavours by a steady stream of waitresses who would get them drinks and giant cups of change – anything to keep them pumping the machines with their cash.
And this is where we finally get round to North Wales. You see, up until then the only experience I’d really had of gambling of this nature had been the arcades of the coastal resorts. And you have to say that tacky as they may be, when it comes to fleecing customers they are rank amateurs compared to the slot palaces of the USA.
And now the arcades of our coastal resorts claim they’re in trouble. The latest gambling laws mean they’ve had to reduce the minimum stake in their high-paying machines, from £2 to £1. And by high-paying we’re talking £500 – hardly the life-changing sums that people play the Vegas slots for.
Part of me would not mourn the disappearance from our seafronts of the cheap and not very cheerful arcades. But that’s just my own snobbery and that shouldn’t determine how people spend their time at the seaside.
No-one lost their home solely playing the seaside slot machines. But plenty have done just that in Vegas.
If the seaside arcades go to the wall it isn’t as if there isn’t something replacing them. This government’s inexplicable love of the gambling industry has ensured that casinos and online gambling are flourishing and taking money off people like they have never done before.
Spare me the blather about them being regulated and having to pay out a certain amount. The classic tactic of the card sharp, divert attention to one hand so they don’t see the devilry the other is doing.
So if it’s a choice between Vegas and the delights of Rhyl, give me Rhyl anyday, but don’t expect Labour to be standing at the next slot machine.

A CALAMITOUS piece of diary planning means that when Ireland are being put to the sword by the unstoppable, rampaging juggernaut that is the Wales rugby team, I will not be watching live.
House guests, non-rugby fans, will have arrived and they’ll need entertaining.
Of course, I could suggest that they might like an explanation of the intricacies of rucking and mauling, forward passes and just what in tarnation is going on at the lineout. It’s one of those suggestions that is greeted by a frosty glance from Mrs B and she carries on talking as if I’d never spoken.
So, do I secrete a radio about my person and try to explain away my delighted little dances as mere high spirits.
Or do I tape it and then try to avoid all media that might reveal in advance the result?
One things is certain, if we do the Irish then with France playing the sort of headless, attack-at-all-costs rugby we used to be guilty of, then the Grand Slam is our for the taking.
Then, and only then, might the BBC accept that the story, just for once, is not about England.

ONE quick question, or rather two.
How much did it cost to establish a news black-out of Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan? Wouldn’t that money have been better spent better-equippping the soldiers who are already out there.
The MoD, a ministry famed for getting things totally and utterly wrong, has once again shown itself to be run by dullards of the first water.
They have treated Harry as if his demise would be a psychological blow to the nation so dire that we would never recover and would have to wave the white flag to the beastly Taliban.
Utter nonsense, I’m sure he would be the first to say that his death would be no worse than the death of any other soldier serving there.
And as for the argument that he will draw fire and put comrades at risk – well, only if he goes into battle carrying a big notice that says: “Here’s Harry”
He should have been sent along with his regiment, no special measures, and spend the money and effort on the news blackout properly equipping him and his fellow soldiers for the job they’re doing.

Column, February 26, 2008

2008-06-17T09:32:00.001+01:00

THERE’S no doubt that North Wales needs a prison.
There’s also no doubt that the UK doesn’t need any more at all.
That might seem contradictory, but given the state of the prison system, which is not just creaking at the seams, it’s burst and overflowed into police cells, it’s not as daft as it sounds.
It’s hard to have a sensible debate about this because you are dealing with convicts and from the time of Elizabeth Fry onwards prison reform has always had to contend with the impulse to lock ‘em up and throw away the key.
There will always be a few who would like our prisons to resemble an oubliette, but unless we wish to return to mediaeval standards of human rights we have to look to creating something a little more enlightened.
The fact is that the vast majority of prisoners do not actually go there for a long time. Whether they should spend longer there than they do is a different debate and one I’ll come onto in a while, but for most convicts are looking at a few months or a very few years behind bars before they are released back into the community.
The question is, what do we want to have happened to them in that intervening period for our, not their, benefit?
Now, I would suggest that for our, not their benefit, it would be best if they had not become a more hardened criminal, chock-full of criminal ideas garnered from their cellmates and just bursting to try them out on an unwitting public.
I think it would be best that prison is unpleasant enough that they don’t wish to return, but equips them with the tools to make sure they don’t. And by that I mean the social skills to make themselves a law-abiding citizen, not a more successful criminal.
And this is where a prison in North Wales comes into it. At the moment convicts are carted off to Liverpool or elsewhere, where it’s not as easy for family to visit. Research has shown that prisoners given a reason to want to be out are less likely to end up back inside and one good reason not to get banged up is your family. You aren’t given that motivation to go straight if your family can’t visit you.
As you read this you have to resist the temptation to say: “Well, they committed the crime, they’ve brought in on themselves.” They have, but I don’t see anything in the penal code that says wives, partners and children should be punished as well.
So putting prisoners closer to home makes sense if we are trying to encourage them to want to be at home rather than in prison.
But notwithstanding that, what we definitely don’t want is an extra prison in North Wales just to accommodate the vastly-expanding UK prison population.
The UK now has the largest prison population in Europe and last week it reached the crucial 82,000 mark where there were more prisoners than there were cells for them to go in.
All this might, might, just be justified if we had the most peaceful, law-abiding streets in Europe as a result of banging up so many of our citizens. But we haven’t.
The Magistrates’ Association was squawking in protest at a gentle suggestion by Jack Straw that they should look at alternatives to sending people to prison. But we send too many people to prison for short stretches for ‘acquisitive’ crimes like minor theft and fraud, and not anywhere near long enough for crimes of violence.
Petty thieves and fraudsters, pain in the backside as they are, should not be sent to prison where they just cost us more money. People who resort to violence should know that in all likelihood they will spend a long time behind bars.
We can’t go on like we are, jailing so many people that the prisons are so-overcrowded we are forced to release people early when some of them should definitely be staying behind bars.
And a North Wales prison is a good idea if it helps cut North Wales re-offending rates. It must not just become a dumping ground for an ever-growing prison population that is doing nothing to actually cut crime.

IT was a bit odd the way the BBC reported the weekend’s rugby.
It wasn’t the weekend when Wales went top of the table, the only team unbeaten so far and with a massive points advantage should it come down to that.
No, no, it was the weekend when England got themselves back in contention.
Odd that.
But it did nothing to dampen the joy of watching two Italians make the mistake of thinking they had caught Shane Williams, only to be left grasping at thin air as he crossed the try-line.
To explain how he managed this you need to consult that famous fan Welsh rugby, Albert Einstein (fact, would I lie to you?). It’s all to do with relativity.
You see Shane is so quick, he’s actually faster than light, so what the Italians were grabbing at was the image of Shane, while the real Shane was several yards ahead of himself. Simple really.
You want to know why he looks so young? He’s moving so fast he’s stretching time – a year for mere mortals is a day for Shane Williams.
Shane Williams is so fast, when he turns the bedroom light off, he’s in bed before it goes dark.
Speeding bullets want to grow up to be as fast as Shane Williams.
The cheetah is the fastest land mammal, but only because it wants to catch Shane Williams.
When Shane nips down to the shops, he’s so fast he meets himself on the way back, and he can help himself carry the shopping.
There’s gale-force winds, hurricane-force winds, and shane-force winds – that’s when you’re in trouble.
Other rugby-players are dial-up, Shane Williams is broadband.
Shane’s so fast that if you look carefully during matches, you’ll see his shadow on panting on the sidelines, taking a breather.
Roll on Ireland .

Column, February 19, 2008

2008-06-17T09:31:00.001+01:00

THERE are any number of ways of knowing you’ve hit rock bottom.
When a drink with friends involves a park bench and the sort of tipple that could double as paint stripper; waking up in police cells; or when the only callers that ever darken your door are the bailiffs.
As low as those predicaments all seem, there is one situation that is the true nadir of human existence, a pit of Stygian gloom so murky only the glare of TV studio lights can penetrate it – an appearance on the Jeremy Kyle Show.
If you have yet to sample the delights this daytime TV show, and surely it can only be viewed by the clinically obese who cannot make it to the remote to turn over, then see if any of the following apply to you:
· My brother has at least seven children and is still sleeping around
· Can you prove your son's my brother?
· I'll prove I didn't abort another man's baby - the results
· You stopped me aborting my baby...please let's be a family again
· Confess you're a cheat or I'll prove I'm the father of your eldest daughter
· Deserted by my dad every time he gets a new girlfriend
These are just a few of the titles of Mr Kyle’s shows and yes, I was confused as you were by the injunction to “confess you’re a cheat or I’ll prove I’m the father of your eldest daughter.”
The titles give a small hint of just how chaotic the lives are of those that appear on what passes for daytime entertainment nowadays. Like a car crash, its viewers know it’s going to be messy, but all the same they can’t help rubbernecking at the devastation of the lives of others.
When Jean-Paul Sartre said hell is other people I’m guessing he didn’t know Jeremy Kyle would one day be selling ringside seats to witness the fact.
One who surely must be contemplating the wisdom of appearing on the show is Craig Platt, of Kinmel Bay . He had agreed to appear because his wife Jane’s ex-boyfriend had wanted to find out who the father of her baby was – yes, I’m lost again too.
Platt, eaten up by jealousy following the show, according to his barrister, ended up pointing a loaded air rifle at his wife, who escaped through the bathroom window.
The producers of Kyle’s show, of course, deny that the parading of his wife’s alleged infidelities before the nation – or rather that dysfunctional portion of the nation who watch the show – had anything to do with his decision to chase his wife round the home with loaded air weaponry. He willingly took part and neither he nor anyone else involved was manipulated, they said.
Perhaps not, but there are a number of ways in which relationships under strain can be patched up. Airing your dirty laundry in front of a studio full of whooping morons and a wider moronic TV audience is probably not at the top of Relate’s list of marriage guidance techniques.
Of course, my sympathies for Platt probably end at the point at which he decided a reasonable way out of his difficulties was to pick up his trusty air rifle. But nonetheless, you do have to ask yourself whether his incarceration, at taxpayers’ expense, might have been avoided if he hadn’t been humiliated in front of millions.
It is like the Bedlam of old, where people would pay to look at the lunatics, only now it’s not the mad who are on display for entertainment, it’s the sad, ill-educated, inarticulate underclasses, who have to turn to Jeremy Kyle, God help them, to express their rage at the pathetic misfortunes visited upon them in their lives.
Everyone needs someone to listen to their woes, and maybe Kyle, as he says on his website, is a good listener, doing what any mate would try to do. Only your mate doesn’t listen to you in front of TV cameras. Your mate doesn’t have researchers working on your problems. Your mate doesn’t enquire, as the Kyle show website does, as to whether a lie detector test would save your relationship.
No, my guess is that if your relationship has reached the stage where it is suitable material for Jeremy Kyle, then it’s time to call in the lawyers; start divvying up the CD collection and decided who gets custody of the dog, because you’ve reached the point of no return.

THE British Army don’t mind being outgunned.
In fact, while building an Empire that spanned the globe, most of the time they did so in the face of overwhelming odds.
One who had to face them said the British infantry was the best in the world, and it’s a good job there are so few of them.
They have, for centuries, fought our battles in foreign fields and many of them were buried there before we decided to bring them home for funerals.
But what we should mind, what we should mind very much indeed, is servicemen and women putting their lives at risk and being sent into battle without at least a decent amount of kit with which to fight our battles.
Last week yet another coroner laid into the parsimonious incompetence of the Ministry of Defence that was sending Paras into battle against overwhelming numbers without night vision equipment so they could see who they were fighting.
Inevitably, one of their number, Captain James Philippson, was killed in a firefight with the Taliban. The Paras had repeatedly asked for night vision equipment to be provided, and scandalously, even after Captain Philippson’s death, the kit still was not delivered to the troops.
Here’s a quick question: Do any government ministers have a son or daughter serving in Afghanistan or Iraq ?
I’m guessing the answer is no. Do you think the under-equipping of our services might be solved overnight if they did? Answers to that one on a postcard to 10 Downing Street .

Column, February 12, 2008

2008-06-17T09:30:00.001+01:00

HE probably won’t thank me for mentioning this but I think the Archbishop might have hit upon something with this sharia business.
I know that Lambeth Palace are tiptoeing about the whole business, hoping that yesterday’s speech that threatened to send communities around the country up in flames will be tomorrow’s chip paper, but I think they need to show a bit more gumption about it all.
Yes, sharia courts have got themselves a bit of a bad name what with the cutting off of thieves’ hands, floggings and the stoning women who have been raped. I know, I know, that’s just one reading of sharia and I’m sure there’s lots of sharia courts who let thieves off with a slap on the wrist rather than something altogether more surgical.
The national tabloids may thinks he’s a bit of a weird, beardy Welshman, but I think the Archbishop may have hit upon something with the idea of a return to the religious courts.
Let’s face it, the courts nowadays are not the crowd-pullers that they used to be. Oh, sure, we’ll pitch up like a bunch of tricoteuses when there’s a multiple murder on, but back when Dickens was reporting the courts they were packed to the rafters for every tuppeny ha’penny thief that was sent to the gallows.
With a return to the church courts we could have a return to real justice, red in tooth and claw, an eye for an eye and no eyes off for good behaviour.
Justice – if you can call it that, and let’s, just to make it a bit easier on the Archbishop – is a lot more entertaining the wall-eyed fundamentalist way.
Out in Afghanistan , before the lunatic Taliban was bombed out of power they came up with come innovative crime prevention policies. Sex offenders were put one side of a wall, a tank was put the other, tank knocks down wall and does wonders for your re-offending statistics.
Similarly, when you were hung there, it wasn’t from something as wimpy as a gallows, it was from a crane. When you were hung in Afghanistan , you stayed hung.
On top of that we had a return to stoning as a punishment, which has been much overlooked in the UK penal code, I think. It’s environmentally-friendly, using only natural materials, and it gives the participants plenty of exercise of the throwing arm.
And our police bound by red tape would suddenly find themselves unshackled where they allowed to employ the tactics of the Inquisition. The red hot poker, judiciously applied, would do a power of good to the detection rates, I warrant.
And it’s not just human defendants that a return to the church courts would sort out, oh no. We could keep the animals in line as well, after all, the church courts of Europe have a fine tradition of trying pigs, rats, dogs, beetles and weevils for all manner of crimes.
And of course if we returned to the church courts we could once again resume the hunting of witches too. It wasn’t long ago that we put a woman on trial for witchcraft. 1944 to be precise, when Helen Duncan, aka Hellish Nell, was put on trial by a government fearful her séances would give away secrets to the Germans in the run-up to D-Day.
The ducking stool was a much misunderstood vehicle of probative justice. Only the guilty need fear it and the innocent, well,
Now, there may be those of you who believe that we haven’t gone through centuries of painful separation of church and state, one of the cornerstones of our society, only to throw it away because it doesn’t suit one more devout section of the community.
You may feel that to yield up precious liberties to people judging you based on their interpretation of religious texts might just be a backward step of, ooh, three or four hundred years or so.
You’ll feel differently once the Inquisition have turned up on your doorstep. No-one expects them.

ANOTHER week and another report whioch shows how children in the UK are being failed by the school system.
This time reputable researchers from Cambridge University no less came to the conclusion that children in the UK start school too early and when they do get to school they are thrown into ‘stressful’ maths and English lessons and there is a culture of high-pressure exams.
To anyone who has paid even the scantest of attention to our school system compared to that of our European neighbours this would have been apparent for decades.
In Sweden and Finland children don’t start formal schooling until the age of seven, and do we see them lagging behind?No we don’t, in fact by age 11 they are outperforming their UK counterparts.
Successive British governments’ obsession with shovelling kids into school and cramming them for exams could just, only just, be excused if it were producing results, but it plainly isn’t.
And rather than listening to this advice the Government is figuring out new ways of getting pre-school children into new forms of lessons even earlier. They seem to think a child’s brain is some sort of barrel to be filled and the earlier you start filling it the better. Absolute educational garbage.
Isn’t it about time the Welsh Assembly Government looked at this and, like its abandonment of SATs, thought again about the age at which Welsh children start school?
It would take some nerve, but so did scrapping the tests. If it’s in their power, they should do it.

OH, you try not to dream don’t you, but then you look at the table and only two teams on there have played two and won two, us and the French and it’s only points difference that’s put them above us.
It’s a long, long few weekends to go, and you daren’t utter the two words in the same sentence. Grand is one. Slam is another.
The last game is against the French, and of course dreams could have been trampled in the mud by then. Alternatively it could be the greatest finale ever.

Column, February 5, 2008

2008-06-17T09:26:00.004+01:00

YOU’VE not really made it as a miserable nation until you’ve featured in a Radio 4 drama.
Part of my work sees me trekking to various parts of the UK behind the wheel of my car and I listen to a lot of radio.
I can’t abide the clatter of Radio 1 and I’m not yet able to surrender to the pipe and slippers feel of Radio 2, so it’s usually Radio 4 for me.
As a news broadcaster it’s without equal, but when it ventures into drama, it doesn’t matter how sunny your disposition, you’re in for a bad time.
It’s always the same, the afternoon play opens with the howling wind sound effects, a bit of lashing rain in for good measure, and more often than not in the distance a child can be heard wailing plaintively in the teeth of the storm.
Then a Celtic voice begins – Irish or Scots – to explain just how they came to be in this benighted state and wasn’t it all the fault of the English, so it was.
And it’ll continue in this vein for a good 45 minutes or so until the various protagonists all die of potato blight, or else make it to the USA where they find a land of milk and honey and the Mob, and the 3 o’clock news puts us all out of their misery.
I’m just waiting for the day the play opens with the sound of lapping water and a Welsh voice intones, to the sound of crying children in the background: “Tryweryn, drowned by the English.”
Then we will have made it into the ranks of the truly miserable, the permanently aggrieved. Then we’ll be able to hold our heads up among those whose crofter ancestors were evicted during the enclosures, or who are descended from those who barely survived the potato famine.
And we’ll deserve the title of miserablists because this very week a council near Aberystwyth is contemplating spending £1,000 preserving a wall, upon which graffiti is daubed urging us to remember Tryweryn.
Remember Tryweryn, how could we ever forget it?
And I've been as guilty as the next man, banging on about it, usually in the face of some Englishman who beleives we've never been treated with anything other than the sort of stern kindness meted out to a disobedient puppy.
And who was Tryweryn drowned for can you tell me? Yes, on the face of it the dastardly Liverpool Corporation, boo, hiss. But who was it working for? The people of Liverpool and a good proportion of them were, like it or not, Welsh.
There were 80,000 Welshmen and their families who migrated to Liverpool in the 19th century and their presence is evidenced by the 70 Welsh chapels that were there. Any Welsh child will tell you where the Eisteddfod of the Black Robe was held.
We built Liverpool and we even named many of its streets after our homeland. Voelas Street, Bala Street, Madryn Street weren’t given those names just because the English had been down our way for a holiday.
The inconvenient truth is that the drowning of a Welsh valley may have been done to us in an arrogant way, but in doing so it was for the benefit of many Welsh people.
The fact is that Liverpool was the capital of North Wales and it remains the creative and cultural magnet that draws many of our young people to earn a living there when their own country, to its shame cannot provide such an opportunity.
For all Cardiff’s claims to our allegiance, Liverpool remains a city that we have invested much in, and we should not let one event, however unjust, shape our relationship with it.
Remember Tryweryn by all means, but there must surely be better things to spend £1,000 on a than a bit of daubed masonry.What will they do if the wall falls down, daub another entreating us to remember the wall that told us to remember Tryweryn?

ONE of the more successful offerings of Channel 5 has been the US drama Prison Break.
In it, an unfeasibly handsome young man gets himself sent down so that he can save his incarcerated brother.
The key to their escape is contained in the intricate tattoos that adorn every inch of his honed body that can be decently shown on TV.
I suspect that someone in the Welsh team is similarly tattooed, only that can explain the jailbreak mounted at HM Prison Twickers on Saturday. My money’s on Henson.
It was looking like a grim Six Nations at one point, weeks of hard labour just to avoid the wooden spoon.
But the one of those magical moments happened that show you how a game can turn.
Lesley Vainikolo entered the fray to the admiring cheers of the Ruperts who have always admired a bit of beefcake on the move.
Mark Jones, the Welsh wing, had the misfortune to take the ball, facing the wrong way and he must have felt as well as heard Vainikolo bearing down on him like an express train.
In the crowd kindly fathers must have put a protective hand over young eyes, not wanting them to witness a Welshman disappear in a puff of blood and wintergreen.
Then Jones ducked.
Not elegant, but sharp, very sharp, and it did the job. Vainikolo looked for all the world like Wiley Coyote, speeding at full tilto toward the roadrunner in some death-dealing machine, only to be sidestepped yet again. By the time the Tongan’s mass came to rest he was somewhere in the upper tiers.
Speed of thought, hands, feet, have always terrified the opposition in rugby and Wales put 20 unanswered points past the World Cup finalists.
The day before the Welsh had been an unflattering 8-1 to win the tournament. Yesterday those odds had halved. And no, I hadn’t put a bet on them either.

Column, January 29, 2008

2008-06-17T09:26:00.001+01:00

THERE’S something decidedly rum going on in the state of Ceredigion.
It appears that if you want a planning application approved, despite the council officers being ranged against you, the best advice is to make sure you speak Welsh.
Now, I’ve come across some pretty arcane planning requirements in my time, having numbed my backside during many a council meeting – drainage, landscaping, noise abatement – the usual stuff, but never the language of the applicant.
Of course, we all know why they’ve done it, it’s to try to protect the local Welsh-speaking community. That’s a laudable aim, but it’s a questionable tactic to adopt in trying to pursue such an aim.
Now the assembly’s inspector, Ian Osborne, has said that granting permission for plans on the grounds the applicant was a Welsh-speaker was discriminatory. Now the council’s senior planning officer has warned councillors that they could lose their planning powers if it continued to make such decisions.
The thing is that planning laws are designed to deal with buildings and the environment. They are complicated, but they are nowhere near a sophisticated enough tool to deal with the fraught issue of the survival of Welsh-speaking communities.
It is madness to think you would get away with granting planning on the grounds of language, when English-speakers might have got shorter shrift from the council.
But more than that, I’m concerned about the image this gives of Wales. Yet again we are open to portrayal as some sort of banana republic because a council has played fast and loose with the law.
And the English will have a field day as they nurse their beer bemoaning the refusal of permission to put a three-storey extension on their tiny Welsh cottage complete with en-suite bathrooms for every bedroom.
“Of course,” the pub bore will declare, “I would have got it through if I could speak more Welsh than yakky-da (I know that’s not how it’s spelt, but it’s how they say it), one law for them, one law for us, they’d probably have burnt it down anyway etc, etc, ad nauseam.”
And the problem is that you can’t really argue with that, even though most of it is complete rubbish. Once you bend the rules, even with the best will in the world, you’ve given your critics ammunition.
All the reasoning about the death of small communities will be lost as they shout back: “Well, what if we did that in England, only allowed planning applications by the English? We’d be strung up, it’s political correctness gone mad I tell you?”
You wouldn’t mind if it was a proper planning scandal a la T Dan Smith and the despoliation of the North East of England, fortunes passed from hand to hand in brown paper envelopes. But no, we can’t even do that, we have to go about it in an algtruistic, albeit misguided manner.
The fundamental problem of course is not whether a handful of people gain a tiny advantage in the planning process because of the language they speak, but why councillors would feel they need to behave in such a way.
It can only be because they are casting about to find some solution to the perpetual problem of why people are leaving Wales. It’s the perennial problem and it’s why the row over the census in Wales and the Welsh tick box was a red herring. We don’t need to know how many people in Wales count themselves as Welsh, we need to know how many of them there are in England and then figure out why they went there.
I know the second homes market gets the blame, but that cannot possibly be the root cause when the whole of the UK has been afflicted by rampant house price rises.
Young people aren’t leaving Wales to get to some mythical Xanadu over the border where a first-time-buyer can get on the property ladder easily. It’s not easy anywhere, but over the border they’ve got a better chance of a better-paid job that gives them a greater chance of making that start.
Property is more expensive in England, not less so, so it cannot be house prices alone that are causing the Welsh diaspora we are seeing.
The planners of Ceredigion may have had their hearts in the right place, but they let them rule their heads in these few cases. It would be shame for them to lose their planning powers over such an issue, because they obviously care about the communities that have elected them and that is to their credit.
It’s all very well the Assembly government telling them they are out of order though, unless they come up with a lasting solution then the overwhelming pressure on local authorities will be to do something because the Assembly government is doing nothing.

SO farewell then Peter Hain.
Having previously backed Rod Richards in his travails it would seem that a vote of confidence from this column is akin to a football club chairman backing a losing manager – ie the kiss of death.
And on that basis I would like to give my firm support to Gordon Brown, he’s doing a fine job, and anyone who says the economy is down the pan and we’re mired in two wars we can’t win is a moaning minny.
That should do the trick.

IT’S that time again.
When I suddenly develop a passion for DIY jobs around the house.
Mrs B, who normally has to fulfil the role of foreman, finds it strange that all of a sudden I’m in my decorating gear and up the ladder every Saturday or Sunday.
She hasn’t quite made the connection between all of my jobs taking about 80 minutes or so, with a brief break for a cuppa halfway through, and all jobs, crucially, to be carried out within sight of a TV screen.
It’s Six Nations time again.

Column, January 22, 2008

2008-06-17T09:25:00.001+01:00

IN January a middle-aged man’s fancy turns toward his next holiday.
The rain is coming down in stair-rods, in the days when the sun does show through the perma-gloom of the clouds, it briefly shows it face above the horizon long enough to raise your hopes before setting and dashing them moments later.
Animals are walking round two-by-two as the waters rise and it’s got so bad there are rumours that water companies are even considering revoking their hosepipe bans for a day or two.
Having bagged one Welsh peninsula last year, the Llyn, we’re working our way down to Pembrokeshire this time in the hope that a more southerly aspect will help us escape the deluges that threatened to wash us into the Irish Sea last summer.
Mrs Banks is in charge of selection and she has found the perfect spot, and then revealed the price.
Apparently there is also a Pembrokeshire in Las Vegas which is the exclusive hang-out of the high rollers when they are taking a break from winning a losing fortunes at the tables. That could be the only explanation for the price Mrs B quoted me for a small cottage that she had found.
It must be set in rolling acres and enjoy fixtures and fittings the like of which we haven’t seem since the British Army liberated one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces and availed themselves of his gold-plated loo seats.
When I said I’d like to stay in. Pembrokeshire I didn’t mean renting out te whole region for my own personal use
But no, it’s a pretty modest bungalow, with a small garden, but it’s the going rate for that sort of place at that time of year – the school holidays.
Because it is the school holidays that bring out the spiv in just about every businessperson associated with the tourism.
Book at any other time of year and they’ll fall over themselves to fit you in. But try to get that six-week window of opportunity that coincides with your child’s holidays and all of a sudden they’re sucking their teeth and quietly sticking up their prices.
Yes, when it comes to getting away in mid-summer there’s more fleecing going on then in my uncle’s sheep-shed at shearing time.
The rule of thumb seems to be this – pick a figure that would make you wince – and then add another £200 or so.
Of course, you could argue that instead of going to the beaches of Wales, the more economical option would be to book a bargain bucket flight to somewhere overseas where there would be a far better chance of decent weather for a seven-day stretch.
But that would mean queuing in a British airport with a two-year-old and a five-year-old. That’s a whole new circle of Hell that Dante missed.
So instead of sitting in a departure lounge trying top control a small riot, I’ll be driving down through glorious Mid-Wales pointing out the landmarks of childhood trips where I, like my sons after me, inquired insistently from the back: “Are we nearly there yet?”
The other option would have been to take our son out of school to go on holiday during term-time. But a friend who had done the same warned us against this at the weekend. Did we realise we’d have to sign forms acknowledging our failure as parents for depriving our child of a week’s education, and did we accept full responsibility when he later dropped out only to reappear as a mugshot on Crimewatch, all because of our desire to get a cheap holiday?
So Pembrokeshire in school holidays it is and of course we’ll have a great time, despite the eye-watering hike in price.
But the tourism industry that has for so long relied on families like mine to fill its holiday homes should beware. There’s a chill in the air of the economy and just as retailers have had a miserable Christmas, so belt-tightening will extend to holidays too.
The expensive break in the UK will be replaced by a cheap one to Spain , or abandoned altogether.
The holiday home owners will blame market forces for the high prices, but it will be those same forces that may be their undoing in the next few years.
That’s the problem with sheep, you think you’ve got them all lined up to be fleeced, you turn your back on them and they’ve wandered off.

THE North West Wales NHS Trust has hit upon a brilliant way of cutting down on those troublesome infections like MRSA and clostridium difficile.
As many of these infections are believed to be carried in to thehospital, or spread, by visitors, they’ve planned a hospital with a unique way of dealing with that tricky problem.
Their plan for Ysbyty Alltwen, which will serve the Porthmadog area has 70 parking space, and more than 60 of them will be taken up by staff.
Brilliant. No visitors, no dirty hands on the wards, no infections.
It is brains like these they need at the very top of the NHS, they would cut waiting lists in half in a week, probably by halving the number of operating theatres.
Of course there are some moaning minnies who say that people in hospital would like the odd visitor. They’re nay-sayers the lot of them and I look forward to this policy being adopted by hospitals across Wales . Close the car parks, barricade the doors, together, or rather apart, we’ll beat the superbugs.

AMID the furore surrounding Jamie Oliver’s exposure of the cruelty of the chicken industry in this country there was a suggestion that it was somehow more ethical to eat game birds that had at least had a decent life in the wild.
Well, that would depend what you meant by wild. If you mean raised for most of their life in pens where they are fed and watered, then that’s a strange definition of wild.
Given a few brief weeks freedom before the shooting season starts, they are absolutely bereft of any natural wiles at all. I know, I live in shooting country and they practically flock round my ankles looking to be fed.
They are the stupidest creatures and when any other animal would lie low or fly away, they will fly straight into you. The one crouching in the hedgerow as I drove past should have stayed put, or at best flown in the opposite direction, but no, straight at the car was what its instinct told it and so my wing mirror was neatly excised and the pheasant met its end.
I couldn’t even find it for the pot, and yes, I know that’s illegal, but at £120 for a new wing mirror I think it would have been the most expensive pheasant ever killed.
Like fox hunting I think there are better things for our lawmakers to be doing than turning their attention to shooting, but the shooting enthusiasts ought to keep their heads down and avoid dubious claims about animal welfare.

Column, January 15, 2008

2008-06-17T09:23:00.000+01:00

I BLAME Casualty.
If you were sitting in your local A&E and hoping to get the attention of the staff there would you want to be cast as a stoic, but unimportant extra, or would you want to be the sort of attention-grabbing drama queen who has Charlie wandering round looking even more careworn than ever, if that’s possible?
Of course, if you were ever sitting in A&E and basing your behaviour on what you knew from a fictional TV drama then you would either be in need of the help of the psychiatry department, not A&E, or else you would be the proud possessor of a skinful of beer.
And that, I suspect, is the answer as to why staff in hospitals and GP surgeries in North Wales have had to put up with 792 attacks on staff, as revealed by the Daily Post. Skinfuls of alcohol, that is.
On the face of it, it would seem to make no sense. Poll any group of members of the public about their favourite, most respected professions and I’ll bet doctors and nurses come out top.
But clearly the public being polled are very different from those being admitted to A&E, or else they’re sober when polled and drunk when admitted.
However, it is an enduring mystery why people in need of medical treatment feel the need to threaten or attack those treating them. It is an extreme form of the boozed up punter who goes into and Indian restaurant and abuses the staff while ordering – good move that, racially abusing people who are just about to prepare your food.
Same deal in A&E, is it really your most sensible decision to threaten and abuse a nurse or doctor who is making decisions about your treatment. Not that I think a nurse or doctor in North Wales would base their decisions on anything other than clinical need – but, having been threatened they may well feel that the patient needs a little longer to sober up – a good long sit in the waiting room with only the Reader’s Digest for company ought to do it.
Part of the problem is the current obsession with ‘respect’. If you don’t get what you want, when you want it, if not earlier, then the person denying you is obviously ‘disrespecting’ you.
This philosophy seems to be based on the outlook of American rappers and sadly has made it’s inevitable way over here, where the viewers of daytime TV show with subtitles like “My mum’s lesbian lover ran off with my man” have adopted it as their philosophy in life.
Of course, acting like a decent human being is too much to ask if they are not being given their due quota of respect – usually pronounced ‘respeck’. And once ‘disrespecked’ this excuses any amount of vile behaviour from that point on.
Personally I think they should all be breathalysed before entering A&E and if they or their acolytes are even remotely over the limit they should be barred until whatever it is that ails them causes them to lose consciousness and thus they no longer pose a threat to anyone.
Of course, this will all change when the Government’s 24-hour licensing laws take full effect and the drinking barns that blight every town shut down in favour of the café society we were promised when they pushed through this barmy law.
We all know that A&E is often a repository for self-injured drunks and that they very often become aggressive. We shouldn’t be too surprised then that the people working in those places have to put up with violence and intimidation on any given night.
But that doesn’t make it acceptable in any way though and while, having known a few trainee nurse, I don’t always buy the Angels tag appended to them, they are in a caring profession and deserve protecting from the generation of raging drunks our licensing laws are creating.

THERE are a couple of things you should know about Peter Hain.
Of course, you might think you know a lot about him what with the all the noise about campaign donations.
I must say that I’m mystified why anyone would want to spend so much money to get a non-job like deputy leader of the Labour party, but there you go.
No, what I wanted to remind you about Peter Hain was that back in 1972 the South African security police wanted him out of the way and so they sent him a letter bomb.
It didn’t go off, others had, and they had killed their targets.
Hain remained such a thorn in the side of the apartheid regime in South Africa that they tried to frame him for a robbery that took place in 1974.
So, while politicians today remain obsessed with public this latest funding scandal might yet cost him his job, remember this about Peter Hain, while the world was watching South Africa oppress its people he stood up and was counted, at great personal risk.
Those whose greatest political risk was losing a debate in the comfort of Oxbridge ought perhaps to think about that before calling for his head so readily.

IT’S no bad thing to have been the city that gave us The Beatles, that should do as achievements go.
But having been crowned European Capital of Culture 2008, Liverpool should do more than just remind us of that fact.
Yet the two events that seem to have dominated proceedings so far are a launch event featuring Ringo Starr and a concert later this year by Sir Paul McCartney.
There is, I’m sure, a lot more to it than that, there better be. But when Liverpool won the title, up in its rival city of Newcastle posters went up saying ‘Remember 1968’, implying, with a little sour grapes, that Liverpool’s bid was more about the past than the present.
The Beatles heritage is a rich one, but Liverpool has much more than that to offer and it would be a shame if all 2008 amounted to was a historical re-enactment.

Column, January 8, 2008

2008-06-17T09:22:00.000+01:00

PICTURE the scene, 1351, the Black Death has swept the world, reducing its population by about 150 million.
Edmund, the dung collector, has turned up for work and is awaiting the arrival of his colleague, Osric.
Edmund: “What ho Osric, thou lookst a little under ye weather today.”
Osric: “Me Edmund, no, fit as ye flea be me, never had a day’s illness in my life, ye dung needs collecting and groats don’t grow on trees.”
Edmund: “But what about that suppurating rosy rash on thy cheek and the unsightly swelling beneath your armpits?”
Osric: “That, oh that’s nothing, a poultice of bat’s droppings and I’ll be right as…atishoo…atishoo….Edmund, why hast thee fallen down?”
Every workplace has them, the Lemsip heroes, who despite being down with the flu, bravely dose themselves with whatever remedy they can to struggle in to the office, often loudly declaring that they’ve never had a day off ill in their life and a little sniffle won’t stop them.
No, but if it is flu and they’re still infectious it may well put a stop to the rest of their departments when they all go down like ninepins thanks to Typhoid Mary turning up with the aid of paracetamol.
The latest epidemic afflicting us is the dreaded norovirus, or winter vomiting bug, which has shut hospital wards to new admissions across North Wales.
You may well be reading this having made your first venture back onto solids after a couple of days spent hovering within dashing distance of the loo. If so, you have my sympathy.
The headlines have been full of it this week, the cases are expected to peak about now as everyone returns to work after the Christmas break and those struggling in with the aftermath of norvirus will duly infect the rest of their workmates.
This would, it was said, cost British industry billion. Well, if the captains of British industry were a bit less like the bloke who beats the drum in a Roman slave galley, then perhaps I would share their concern at the loss in production. While some people turn in for work because of misplaced heroism and a mistaken belief that the place will fall apart without them; many others go into work when they should really be off sick because they fear for their job if they don’t.
The Protestant work ethic as espoused by management has been the cause of many an employment tribunal when people’s genuine illnesses have been treated unfairly. That’s what you get when you understaff an operation and then expect it to function as normal during times of illness, such as this week. It’s not poor staff attitudes to work that are to blame, it’s plain bad management.
So instead of headlines saying “Norovirus to cost economy £3bn”, they should have read “Incompetent bosses send economy down the Swanee.”
Now I’m not making excuses for the malingerer, and we all know some of them, the sort who phones in coughing and spluttering in the middle of summer, claiming to have “the flu.” This despite the fact that there is no flu around at all at that time of year and for them to have developed it all by themselves would be nothing short opf a medical miracle.
For the malingerer, a headache is always “a migraine”, or a “crippling migraine” if he wants added sympathy; backache is “a slipped disc”; indigestion is “food poisoning” and a cold is most definitely the flu.
God help them when they get something genuinely awful, “Hello boss, I can’t come in today because…. (Thinks…now, I’ve told him I had typhoid, malaria, beri beri and Yellow Fever, so what’s left? I know)….because I’m dead, yes, doctor prescribes complete bed rest, worst case of death he’s seen.
This all comes from bitter experience. Having spent much of my professional life hale and hearty, I then had a family and that is like spending your life sampling the delights on offer in an isolation ward.
Your children’s immune systems are just building themselves up, and so they’re like boxers having a tilt at the world title – they take infection after infection, virus after virus, shaking them off and emerging from each one ever stronger.
Meanwhile, my sad 43-year-old immune system is lying in the corner throwing in the towel.
First one son, then the next, has brought a succession of coughs, colds and noroviruses into our home. I’m grateful to the Department of Health’s advice to us all to wash our hands to stop the spread of the winter vomiting bug, but when junior has emptied the contents of his stomach all over you, there’s only so much you can do.
The only thing they managed not to give me was chicken pox, but that’s because I had the foresight to have that before.
So if you get the call from someone who’s claiming to have gone down with this bug, my advice is play it safe, don’t make them feel guilty, tell them to stay home.

A HOLIDAY home burns down near Criccieth and while no-one is saying it yet I dare say one or two thoughts turn to Meibion Glyndwr.
Of course this might be an isolated act of criminal damage with no intent other than vandalism.
But I’ve always been puzzled by the act of house burning as a protest at the second home market in Wales.
After all, the houses are usually insured for their full value, and so all the house-burner actually achieves is to give the owner a new home. Upsetting maybe, but ultimately futile.
And what with the state of the market at the moment where virtually no-one is buying second homes and the first-time buyer at last seems to have a look-in, this would be a masterpiece of timing by the homeburners.

MATTHEW Parris ought perhaps to have thought harder and longer before writing a column suggesting that cyclists deserved decapitation for, among other things, their smugness and, apparently, the littering of a lane near his home.
He blamed them for the cans of fizzy drink found in the hedgerows.
No cyclist I know drinks anything fizzy while in the saddle, it’s a shortcut to throwing up in a hedgerow, never mind littering it. And we invariably carry drink in handly holders on our bikes that we refill every time we go out, as a moment’s research would have told Mr Parris.
Still, the Times columnist has apologised for his comments after the weight of advers reaction, including that of Rhyl Cycling Club, which knows more than most the risks cyclists face on the roads without ther added prejudice of Mr Parris, became overwhelming.
I like Matthew Parris a lot, he’s a very gifted writer and commentator. He got it wrong this time, but he said sorry. Let’s leave it at that.

Column, January 1, 2008

2008-06-17T09:17:00.000+01:00

HAPPY new year to you all and let’s begin 2008 as we mean to go on. Out with the old and in with the new.
And here are my suggestions.
Tolerance. Let’s have an end to that for a start.
Controversial I know, but than that’s what it says at the top of the page so I am in the words of the advert, doing what it says on the tin.
Yes, tolerance, way, way overrated and not, in my view, any great virtue and I’ll tell you why, because it lets other people get away with murder.
Oh we bang on about how tolerant and understanding we are and under our very noses people behave in the most beastly manner and we turn our failure to act upon their foulness into some sort of step towards sainthood.
This is all part of our British unwillingness to make a scene, so just as individuals we tolerate people jumping in a queue ahead of us, as a nation we do business with countries who behave in the foulest manner to their citizens.
So for instance there are only a select band of nations whose government sanctions the execution of children. Iran is one and we have pretty arm’s length dealings with them, well let’s face it, if we’ve got any infantry left after Afghanistan and Iraq, chances are we’ll be marching that way on the coat-tails of that other state executioner of children, step forward the USA, with whom we have a ‘special relationship’ – makes you proud doesn’t it?
So less tolerance of behaviour like that and more telling our special friends across the pond that until they stop killing kids they’re not our mates.
And let’s not tolerate things because of so-called ‘cultural differences’ eh? There are certain things which no matter how culturally different someone is, I’m not prepared to tolerate. The servitude and enslavement of women and children a start, execution of women who are raped for adultery and the execution of homosexuals will do as a starter. Your God might tell you this is the right thing to do, but he’s wrong, or more likely, the clergyman who tells you this is God’s will is mad.
Mobile phones – for one hour a day, one day a week, turn them off. See if anyone dies. If no-one does, then the next week do it for two days, three days the next and so on. Pretty soon the ringtone industry will go bankrupt and peace will reign.
Meetings. This is a plea to managers everywhere. If you are thinking of having a meeting that will go on for more than 20 minutes, don’t. Half of the people there will have lost the will to live, the other half will be using their mobile phones to do their Tesco on-line shopping.
Comedy Ring-tones. An oxymoron and the one thing that tempts me to re-think my views on capital punishment.
The professional Welsh. That small band beloved by the media who are wheeled on to represent us whenever some story breaks about us – usually a survey saying that we are the drunkest/fattest/most violent nation on Earth according to a survey of 50 people at Brent Cross shopping centre. The professional Welsh are the acceptable, neutered face of Wales. The sort that could be invited to be on the panel on Blankety Blank and trusted not to use the occasion to burn the Union flag.
Voter indifference. Also known as being bone idle. As the Yanks say, if you don’t vote, don’t bitch. For instance, there are thousands of parents currently fuming at Gwynedd Council’s decision to close village schools across the county. If they don’t turn out next election day to vote out the councillors who did that, then they have only themselves to blame. You might not have put them in power, but by not voting you allow them to remain in power.
The WRU. It might actually do us some good not to have anyone in charge at all for a couple of seasons. Just let the players sort it out among themselves. Stick a team sheet up on the door of the Millennium Stadium before match days, decide who’s bringing the half-time orange segments, and then hope enough of them turn up on match day. Alright, we might get stuffed a couple of seasons, but can you honestly say you would be able to tell the difference? And if we lose our fear of losing, who knows, we might find a way to start winning again.
Amusement arcades. Another oxymoron, and we can only pray for the perfect storm that would wash every last one of them from the sea-fronts of Wales. Can anyone, hand on heart, claim they are anything other than a means of fleecing children and the feeble-minded?
Welsh housing protests. Wake up, no-one can get on the housing ladder in Wales because no-one can get on the housing ladder anywhere. No-one can get a mortgage and houses over-priced everywhere. Pretending this is some sort of uniquely Welsh problem is starting to look a bit ridiculous.
Social, Welsh and Sexy. Any society which has to declare its sexiness is, by definition, not. More tiresome, professional Welsh.
Late night phone-in TV ‘quizzes’. Brought to you courtesy of ITV and Channel 5, who must be so proud to have created a new way of ripping off the sad, the lonely and the drunk.
Celebrities in rehab. Don’t they realise that their work will have more longevity if they actually die – worked for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon. OK, there is the slight drawback of not being around to enjoy the adulation, but hey, that is, or was rock’n’roll.
24-hour licensing. Anyone noticed an outbreak of the continental café culture that was supposed to accompany this masterstroke? Anyone enjoying a late night stroll down the boulevards to enjoy a digestif with friends after a spot of supper? Or are you to busy dodging the vomiting revellers and too wary of the gangs of marauding drunks? Thought so. A bad idea, let’s pack it in.
ID cards. This government, all governments, could not run the security on a whelk stall and so they should stop pretending that all the personal information held on ID cards would somehow, be completely safe. There will always be some small cog who brings down the machine and we’ll all be even more vulnerable. If we’re not breaking the law the Government has no business in our business and our grandparents fought and won a war against people who insisted everyone should carry ‘their papers.’

There; that’s got that off my chest and it’s only day one of the year. Well, start as you mean to go on.

Column, December 18, 2007

2008-06-17T09:16:00.001+01:00

THE conversation goes something like this.
New Acquaintance: “So do you come from Liverpool?”
Me: “No, North Wales.”
NA: “Oh really, you don’t sound Welsh..”
Me: “Well, this is what people from North East Wales sound like and trust me, it’s not a Scouse accent.”
NA: “It sounds a bit Scouse to me.”
Me: “It’s not.”
NA: “Are you sure?”
Me: “I lived there for three years, yes, I’m sure.”
NA: “Go on, I think you’re a Scouser really aren’t you?”
Me: “Yep, the game’s up, kiss your hubcaps goodbye and here’s my impression of Yosser Hughes….gissajob….nut!”
OK, the final line is a fantasy lived out in my head while manners make me smile as sweetly as I can manage. And not that there’s anything wrong with being a Scouser mind you, it’s just that I’m no more Scouse than they are Welsh.
My accent or the lack of stereotypical Welshness in it has been the subject of tedious dinner conversation or offensive pub banter for as long as I can remember.
The longer I spend among the English the less ‘Welsh’ it is and the more the Scouse gene asserts itself and while I could never have taken up residence on Brookside Close, I do could pass muster as an extra on Bread, a sort of Scouse-lite that everyone can understand.
Give me half an hour or so back in God’s Own Country though and all of a sudden there more of a roll to every ‘R’ I pronounce and give me the odd double l, d, or even a bit of nasal mutation and all of a sudden I’m doing a Rhys Ifans impression.
But what I’ve never considered doing, even if I could manage it, is to lose my accent.
And yet, according to a survey, that what half Welsh parents want their children to do.
Now, the problem with a lot of these surveys is that they’re done on a shoestring and they ask so few people to take part they are utterly meaningless.
But this one, for the Combined Insurance company, sampled 2,300 people – which is a respectable sample size – well it’s about as many as they poll when they’re trying to figure out who’ll be elected as the next government.
So what do we make of that, half of us with children want them to lose our accent?
I blame the homogenisation of our youth. They may think they’re expressing their individualism, but in actual fact the mass media with which they are so familiar means they are all equally exposed to popular culture.
Keeping a Welsh accent is just one way of standing out from the crowd, and it’s not always easy to do that.
But that doesn’t explain why parents should want their children to lose their accent.
Could it be that parents are worried about how their children will be perceived outside Wales? That Wales is seen, however wrongly, as somewhere backward, insular and ill-educated and their children will suffer from people’s prejudices if their accent gives the game away?
There are many, many examples of role models in the media, but when you start listing famous Welsh people it becomes a bit of a desperate attempt to curry favour with the English by listing as many as you can before hitting upon someone they like. It’s rather like the Scots’ pathetic bleats that one of their number invented television and they are therefore all deserving of our respect.
Personally I think such exercises in self-justification are a little futile and we should all get a bit more bloody-minded about it. I don’t think we should justify our existence just because Rhydian made it to the finals of X-Factor and Gethin did well in Strictly Come Dancing.
We, and our accents, were here first and we’ll be damned if we’ll surrender them to some homogenised drawl that’s a vile cross between estuarine English and US drawl. And no, we don’t all sound like miners from the Valleys.
In a world increasingly dominated by US culture, our accents are one of the few things that set us apart and so, far from being encouraged to lose them, our children ought to be taught to treasure one of the remaining signs of their identity.

SO the nation was given a free vote on what project they thought was deserving of £50m and what did they choose?
The Sustrans Connect2 project to expand its network of cycleways and footpaths, that’s what.
So, with the nation so universally in favour of expanding this network, you would think it would have to be a pretty stubborn, short-sighted, small-minded local authority that would stand in the way of this sort of development wouldn’t you?
And just which bunch of burghers would cut themselves and their town off from the national cycle network and the massive funds that Sustrans would pump into such a development?
Step forward Conwy County Borough Council, who in the face of huge public support for cycling, as evidenced by the Lottery Giveaway vote, still insist that cyclists should use dangerous roads rather than the North Shore Promenade, and in doing so went against the advice of their own environment scrutiny committee.
Their reasons apparently rest on reasons of public safety so tenuous and without evidential support that they border on the fictitious.
If the roads of North Wales were littered with the bodies of those killed by lunatic cyclists you might think they have a point, but they aren’t, so they don’t.
Local authorities around the country are queueing up to work with Sustrans to create safe walking and cycling routes and the continuing refusal by Conwy CBC to see the benefits of this development to Llandudno and the people who live and work there is simply shameful.

NEXT Tuesday being Christmas Day I won’t be around, which should aid the digestion of the turkey – especially if you’re a Conwy councillor.
So I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and I will be back in the Post on ?????

Column, December 11, 2007

2008-06-17T09:14:00.001+01:00

WHY would anyone want to become a councillor?
There may have been a time when the burghers were men (because it was predominantly male) of position, respect and influence.
Now, it just looks increasingly like a thankless task, balancing ever-decreasing budgets against spiralling demand.
But I guess if you asked most councillors to cast their mind back to their original decision to seek civic office, an awful lot will use words to the effect that they wanted to make a difference, to be of service, to help their community.
Of course there may be a little political ambition mixed in with those laudable aims, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
But I’m also sure that not long after they take office they find that their desire to serve and make a difference has to be compromised when faced with the harsh realities of limited budgets and massive demand for services.
The books have to be balanced and to them falls the unpleasant task of wielding the axe to make sure they do.
I am sure there are more than a few sleepless nights among those who try to keep the wheels of local government on track, as they wonder whether they have done the right thing, sometimes in the face of heartfelt protest by those opposed to their plans.
I am sure they try to do the right thing. I’m also sure that years immersed in the bureaucracy of local government blinds them to the effects of what they do.
Sometimes they may wonder if they are still making a difference to the lives of those they represent.
On Thursday they have a chance to do so.
Then the councillors of Gwynedd will consider the plans to close 29 small village schools.
The problem is that if you look at a small school on paper it makes no sense whatsoever. Economically it would always seem much more sensible to put children into bigger schools with better facilities and more teachers and have them taking advantage of economies of scale by teaching larger classes.
But that analysis only works as long as you’re looking at the balance sheet and not what goes on in the classroom.
Small schools serve their pupils better than large ones. They also serve their communities better, in fact they may be one of the few things keeping a community together at all.
The proposal to close the schools is being justified by, among other factors, demographic changes in the communities that serve those schools – falling pupil numbers in other words.
What does not seem to have been taken into account is the fact that the closure of the village school might well hasten such demographic changes.
A low-wage economy couple with rising house prices has made bringing up a family in rural Wales a tough choice for many people. It has accounted for a drain of young families over the border where a house is certainly no cheaper but well-paid jobs are in more plentiful supply.
One of the few advantages Gwynedd had was the quality and size of its schools. This would persuade some to stay and some to actually move there
Take away the school and you remove one more reason to build a life in that village. And that will inevitable mean more houses in Gwynedd’s villages being snapped up as holiday homes and so the demographic change is accelerated by the council’s own actions.
Pupil rolls might be low now, but this can change, and one thing is for certain, if you close a school its places will never fill up again, it is lost forever.
Any councillor sitting in the meeting on Thursday should dispel any doubts they may have about how much difference they make.
On that day they have a real chance to serve their communities. I hope they put that above all else and reject this plan to close Gwynedd’s small village schools.

INTERESTING to see that police officers incensed by a miserly pay award are seeking to strike over the matter.
That will make a fascinating dispute.
Of course the policemen will have a bit of an advantage in this. After all, if they’re on strike, there’ll be no drafting in cops to protect strikebreakers.
This does not bode well. There could be a breakdown of law and order. The last time there was a policemen’s strike – in Liverpool, would you believe it – the government of the day had to send a gunboat up the Mersey to keep the peace.
What would we do now, where would we get the able-bodied men to stop criminals running riot?
I have a bit of a plan, which I’m willing to share with the Home Secretary free of charge.
Coal miners. Or rather, ex-coal miners.
Alright they might be a bit long in the tooth, but they’re tough as old boots and one of them standing on every street corner, pickaxe handle in hand would deter even the most hardened criminal.
And after all, it would be payback for the coppers who were bussed up from London to break the miners’ strike back in the ‘80s. Revenge, as they says, is a dish best served cold.
The main challenge to my, I must say, brilliant, plan, is persuading the miners to cross a picket line. I think most miners would never let themselves be used to break a strike. Whereas police officers would, and did.

THE demise of the school nativity has been halted in at least one corner of the country, Banks junior has his first role.
Quite why schools have decided to abandon this wonderful occasion can only be guessed – lack of time, commitment, resources and possibly, a misplaced desire not to offend those of other faiths (it has to be said that whenever this is suggested to Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus, they immediately respond by saying anyone who thinks they would be offended is barmy)
But in our village school young Banks will take to the stage as the innkeeper’s assistant. Admittedly I wasn’t aware that innkeepers had assistants, but I’ll be there filming the whole occasion for posterity – and no, that hasn’t been banned either.

Column, December 4, 2007

2008-06-17T09:12:00.000+01:00

THERE comes a time in all our lives when the person we most need at our side is Sergeant Wilson.
He’s the quietly-spoken chap from Dad’s Army, played by John Le Mesurier, the reasonable foil to Captain Mainwaring’s pompous bluster.
If you’re of tender years and have yet to had the pleasure, I suggest you scan the Christmas TV schedules as chances are the BBC will be repeating an episode at some point.
Anyway, when Mainwaring was about to embark on yet another scheme guaranteed to end in disaster, Sgt Wilson would usually quietly intone: “Do you really think that’s wise Sir?”
He was invariably ignored and disaster ensued but if only the Captain had heeded his words of warning.
And that’s what I mean when I say we all need a Wilson at our shoulder. I’m sure we’ve all done things, said things, embarked on madcap schemes, only to wish that someone who had retained a nodding acquaintance with sanity had urged us to get a grip and stop.
If only Sergeant Wilson had been about when someone at the Victoria Centre declared: “Those kids are carolling too loud, I’m going to call the police.”
If only there had been someone there whose idea of what Christmas is about extends beyond jingling tills. If only someone had piped up: “Do you think that’s really wise.” Perhaps a finger might have paused before dialling for the cops, perhaps the Scrooge-like complainants might have had their hearts melted by a piping chorus of Silent Night.
But no. No Wilsonesque words of wisdom and so, yet again, the idiocy of a minority tarnishes us all as we are portrayed as a nation of miseries who never pass up a chance to spread gloom.
I mean, asking children, little children, to stop singing so loudly. What in God’s name were they thinking?
In most shopping centres you visit nowadays you are assaulted by piped music in every shop you enter, so to go somewhere where children were carolling is a rare treat.
Instead of praising them for their lovely singing, it’s bah, humbug and turn it down.
There are certain questions in life to which there is only one correct response.
When questioned as to whether your wife’s new hairdo suits her, it, naturally, most certainly does, and if anything it makes her look younger. Hesitate for a millisecond in answering and you, my friend, are dead in the water.
When asked by a police officer if you know how fast you were going, the correct answer is not: “Yes I do, and I don’t care what your little radar gun says.”
If a primary school child asks if you enjoyed their carols, the correct response is, yes you did, followed by a healthily heavy drop of loose change into their collection bucket.
Probably, on reflection, best not to dial 999.
Didn’t some little voice inside their head say: “These children will have their hopes and dreams battered enough by critics when they’re older, let them have their day in the limelight without calling in security.”
Centre manager Sue Nash admitted the situation could have been handled better. Surveying the headlines it has attracted, worldwide, it’s fair to say Ms Nash has discovered her own talent for understatement.
Still, the children have done well out of it. A heroes’ welcome when they went back this weekend – and no call to the cops. And an expenses-paid trip and an invitation to perform and a generous donation to school funds from the Savoy Hotel in London, where the spirit of Christmas is apparently still alive and breathing.
Those shopkeepers who complained ought perhaps to examine their consciences and realise that, for the most part, they are hawking their wares to parents and grandparents who take a dim view of killjoys who criticise kids’ singing.
And the tills will be jingling elsewhere.

DO I want the Welsh flag represented on the Union Jack.
At this point a pedant is already cracking open a sheaf of Basildon Bond to pen a missive informing me that what I’m referring to is the Union Flag, as the Union Jack flies only on a ship. They’re wrong, they’ve been interchangeable terms for centuries, so let’s move on.
Do we want the Welsh dragon on there in some form, as Wrexham MP Ian Lucas suggests?
Though I’m sure he means well, I would suggest most certainly not, for a few reasons.
Firstly, I don’t want to go where I’m not invited. When the Principality of Wales was absorbed into England there was no suggestion then of representation on the flag and I see no reason to rewrite history.
It has been suggested that the British national anthem should be rewritten for the same reasons, because verses that talk about “rebellious Scots” don’t go down too well north of the border, even if they are rarely, if ever, sung.
It’s sanitising historical fact, the Scots were, and still are, rebellious and taking the verse out of the anthem will not make them any less so.
Secondly, there is no way in the world the English are going to swallow a flag with a bloomin’ great dragon in the middle of it. At best we would be relegated to some corner, somewhat like we are geographically.
Thirdly, by allowing the rest of Britain to use a dragon we are diminishing its value as our symbol.
We are one of only two countries in the world with a dragon on their flag – the other being, my gift to pub quizzers everywhere – Bhutan. So why diminish what is an instantly recognisable brand by watering it down in some mish-mash with the flag of the Union.
And by absorbing it into the flag of the Union it might be suggested that there was some sort of union between us, when there never was. We were conquered, or rather some would suggest that attempts are still being made to conquer us, and we have merely been pausing for breath since the time of Owain Glyndwr.
Putting a dragon on the Union Jack carries with it the implication that we are one big happy family, when we are not. We are always going to be the awkward neighbours, the mountain people, with the strange language and forever, our own flag.

Column, November 27, 2007

2008-06-16T20:57:00.001+01:00

MURPHY’S LAW – Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

WE’VE had our letter of apology, so that’s alright then.
I dare say quite a few of you have had one too, well, if you’ve got school age children will have.
Suitably contrite it was too given that 25 million of us are now hoping that our bank details are languishing in some Inland Revenue post room rather than on the laptop of some hacker who is intent on booking himself a trip to the Bahamas courtesy of my overdraft facility (I’d get in there quick if I were you sunshine, because you could best sum up my usual level of liquidity using a phrase involving two farthings not being rubbed together)
I’ve got to say as cock-ups go it has a truly epic quality. I mean, this isn’t just a few missing millions, it isn’t the farming industry down the swanee with blue tongue or foot and mouth, it’s the bank details, national security numbers, addresses, kids’ names and dates of birth of everyone getting child benefit.
It is simply staggering in the monumental nature of just how idiotic this mistake is. But what elevates it from idiotic to supremely irritating is the way the Government has tried to pass it off as some sort of junior clerical error that could happen to anyone.
A minor clerical error costs you £10, a minor clerical error means you have to queue up for some sort of refund.
A minor clerical error does not leave the bank details and personal information of half the country wide open to use by fraudsters.
This passing of blame to some hapless pen-pusher, or rather mouse-monkey, out in the Siberian wastes of the civil service is, frankly, a little bit pathetic.
It’s like giving a five-year -old a hand-grenade and when the ensuing carnage inevitably happens, washing your hands of it, saying: “Well, he was under strict instructions not to pull the pin, the pulling of the pin was completely unauthorised.”
The senior management of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs set up the system to handle our date and they are answerable for their management of HMRC to the Government.
If they have set up a system whereby a junior member of staff is able to download the personal details of 25 million people, remembering Murphy’s Law, they should know damn well that that is exactly what will happen, no matter how many rules and regulations they have in place telling them not to.
If he is on £12,500 a year then he is not exactly a minor cog in the wheels of government, he’s the oily grit that gathers between the cogs, he has aspirations of one day becoming a minor cog.
I’ve got to say I was slightly irritated by national commentators suggesting that because he and his colleagues were only on £12,500 a year this made them somehow more likely to flog off our details to fraudsters – as if low income and dishonesty come hand in hand, if anything, the reverse is true.
But he is at the lowest level of competence and decision-making in the civil service and as such should not be in a position whereby he could download such vast amounts of sensitive information. It ought to have been physically impossible for him to have copied that data onto a disk without a big red light flashing in Alastair Darling’s office with a Tannoy shouting in his ear “Warning – election losing blunder alert.”
Because when you leave most of the country poring over their bank statements looking to see if anyone has been ordering champagne and caviar at their expense then that’s the sort of memory that lingers when it comes to the polls. Gross incompetence is not a vote winner.
You see for all his bluster about this being the action of a minor member of staff, what people want of Alastair Darling is that he put checks and balances in place to make sure a minor member of staff is simply not able to get anywhere near doing this.
But the fact is that this Government merged the Inland Revenue with HM Customs and cut staff as a result.
The inevitable consequence of such a move means more work for fewer staff and therefore work is delegated down to staff on lower levels and it ends up on the desk of hapless desk-jockeys who simply do not realise the implications of what they are doing because they do not have sufficient seniority or experience.
And who was in charge of this whole mess before Alastair Darling accepted what he might now be regarding as a poisoned chalice – that’s right, Gordon Brown, the Iron Chancellor, the steady hand at the tiller, the economic rock upon which New Labour’s success has been built.
I have to say that I don’t buy the idea that out there some Bond-esque villain is holding the discs with all our details on them laughing: “They’re mine, all mine I telly you, mwahahahaha!” I’ve spent too long reporting magistrates court to believe in criminal masterminds, the terms are mutually exclusive.
Most criminals are a) thick b) pitiful c) violent or d) any combination of the above and if this disc were to fall into the wrong hands it would more likely be passed off as a knock-off copy of Pirates of the Caribbean down the Dog&Duck for a fiver than used to siphon off our every last penny.
But that does not absolve Darling and his boss from blame. If you create a system whereby you are able to lay the blame for the loss of sensitive data about half your population on the shoulders of a junior civil servant, then it is you who should be collecting your cards, not him.
Any Minister out there doubting just how damaging this could be should be reminded about Murphy’s Law, and also Flanagan’s Precept, which states categorically that Murphy was an incurable optimist.

Column November 20, 2007

2008-06-16T20:55:00.001+01:00

THE Victorians gave us many useful inventions without which life would not be the same.
Railways, photography, electric light and the telephone to name but a few.
And one invention we still don’t quite know what to do with – childhood.
Of course the Victorians knew how to deal with some children – up chimneys and down mines, but for the better off it was the beginning of the idea that children were somehow different to adults.
Since then we’ve been trying to cope with the idea of childhood, and our basic attitude seems to be that we wish they’d hurry up and get over it.
How we deal with children was the theme tackled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, our own Rowan Williams, recently when he suggested that the age of criminality should be raised above its present level of 10 in England and Wales.
The Archbishop said that young people were drifting into gangs because of increasing family breakdown. He added that children who commit crime are still children and should be treated as such.
He is, of course, right, and it’s just a shame so few people go to church because the message might get through a little more if they did.
A child does not get to the age of 10 and suddenly decide to put aside the things of youth and mug a few pensioners. Something has happened to him or her that has made a life of crime a better alternative to playing with his train set.
And whatever got him to that point is not his fault. It is his parents responsibility to bring him up in a decent way and it is our responsibility as a society to make sure that children whose parents are unwilling or unable to do that are relived of that responsibility at an early enough age for it to make a difference to the outcome.
But instead of doing that we quite literally pillory them. ‘Naming and shaming’ laws allow for young offenders who would previously have been cloaked in anonymity to be publicly identified, and pictured.
This is aimed at preventing further offending, by identifying the offender to the community they know that if they re-offend they will be reported to the police. That’s the theory anyway.
It kind of falls down a bit when you know that most surveys of criminal behaviour conclude that the likelihood of detection does not enter their tiny minds when they are committing their master crimes, but there you go.
I’m sure that some of these young offenders boast of their notoriety when they have been named and shamed. Others genuinely shamed might live it down after a few months when another young hoodlum takes their place in the public eye.
But for some the shame is genuine and lasts and might just act to confirm them in a life of crime that might otherwise have been avoided.
Our attitude to children is somehow skewed. If we’re not allowing tjem to drift into a life of crime, we’re cramming them through an education system focusing entirely on exam results and blind to actual learning.
My own son has just started school this year and to listen to some parents you would think the next 14 years of education is a headlong sprint and the devil take the hindmost.
If I hear another proud parent trumpet how fast their offspring are progressing compared to others I will casually mention how junior split the atom before breakfast.
As I said, we can’t cope with children being just children and so we shovel them into adulthood too early, whether it is in school or in the courts.
On top of that we have created a society where often both parents have to work and so the job of childcare is at best handed over to grandparents and at worst delegated to nurseries where there is no way in the world young children get the devoted one to one attention they would, and should, get from their parents.
And then the products of this denial of responsibility are expected to have developed some sort of moral code by the age of 10 that allows them to know right from wrong.
Who are we kidding?
We have abandoned a generation of children and we are reaping what we sowed.

I WILL mention this next story only because if I don’t some foaming at the mouth petrolhead will accuse me of hypocrisy.
The death of a pedestrian knocked down by a cyclist in Cornwall was shocking, as was the suspended sentence handed down to the young man who was riding the bicycle.
But, how many cases of cyclists killing pedestrians can you remember?
Right, just this one.
So, awful as this case was, it cannot be said that it should lead us to believe that pedestrians everywhere should fear a mad cyclist bearing down on then on the pavement.
The fact is that the reason this case made the news is that it is so rare.
Compare it to the thousands killed every year by motorists and you retain a sense of proportion.
When you look right, left and right again it is not for the bike bearing down upon you, but the badly-driven car.

THERE is, of course, one little ray of sunshine in the wintry gloom this week.
That is the prospect of England crashing out of Euro 2008 tomorrow night.
OK, Israel did them a favour and now they only need a point from their game against Croatia, but that will make ignominious defeat all the more sweet.

AND finally, I’ll mention this story, only because another foaming at the mouth petrolhead will accuse me of deliberately ignoring it if I don’t.
A man in Scotland has been given a three-year probation order for trying to have sex…with his bicycle.
That’s just wrong. There are lines that cannot be crossed and whilst I love cycling, I cannot condone wanton lust for a pushbike.
We’re already in enough trouble for wearing Lycra, we can really do without this.

Column, November 13, 2007

2008-06-16T20:54:00.001+01:00

WELL, it was raining, and it was cold, and I’m sure there were more pressing things to do like visit B&Q.
Perhaps that might explain the paltry showing in our little village for a wreath-laying at the war memorial.
Just 20 people, huddled against the thin, sleetish rain being driven in by a bitter wind, bothered to turn up in a village of perhaps 200 or more homes, is not what you might call a fitting turn-out.
Not fitting when you consider that four of the twenty were the Bankses, and two others were a former Major-General in the Scots Guards and a former captain in the Welsh Guards, who probably have better knowledge that most of the sacrifices made by our armed services.
Of course, the grand parade at the Cenotaph in London is as much a spectacle as it ever was, but Remembrance Day is surely about more than that.
I understand the Royal British Legion’s need to remind the public of the need to donate so that ti can carry on the work it does with service personnel and their families.
But I wonder now whether some people sport a poppy out of a desire not to be seen ‘not’ wearing one and that the message behind the poppy has got a little lost.
Anyone can be shamed into wearing a poppy, but that surely isn’t what you want people to be doing, wearing their poppies for fear of being shamed for not wearing them.
War memorials like the one in my village are a constant reminder of the sacrifices made by small communities the country over in two world wars. You cannot help but remember the fallen when you pass a memorial to them.
But in how many villages did these war memorials go unattended on Sunday. How many are falling into neglect as the passing years make Remembrance Sunday increasingly irrelevant to a younger generation.
There was a time when there was no escaping Remembrance Sunday because there was no community which had not sent sons, daughters, fathers and mothers to the conflict.
But as time increasingly puts a distance between us and those who gave their lives for us the so war memorials will fall into disrepair, after all it’s easy to find ‘better’ things to do than drag your children out into the freezing rain on Remembrance Sunday, albeit for the brief 10 minutes that it takes to lay a wreath and bow your heads in thanksgiving for the lives listed on the memorial and recognition of the way they lost them.
Perhaps disaffection with the current conflict in Iraq keeps people away from remembrance services, which is a shame. You may disagree vehemently with the decision to go to war in Iraq, but your ability to express that disagreement was hard-won by men and women 70 or so years ago.
And if you are going to have armed services then you at least owe the men and women who take up arms, the knowledge that their death, will not go unmarked and unremembered.
This doesn’t mean buying a multitude of poppies, although any such generosity helps.
But simply turning up on Remebrance Day to show that you haven’t forgotten is enough.

IN all the furore over the use of the pictures of Mark Gibney’s headless body one fact seems to have been lost along the way.
That is, that in driving so fast that when he crashed he was travelling fast enough to knock his own head off, he also put others at risk.
Other people were involved in his death, a family was trapped inside their car with his headless torso embedded in it. That is something they will never forget, and yet they seem to have been conveniently forgotten in a story which has now become a cause celebre for bikers who regularly risk their own and others lives on the roads of North Wales.
What happened to Mark Gibney was a fact that deserved recording as a lesson to others just how dangerous the roads of North Wales have become thanks to a small group of people who believe that speeding laws do not apply to them.
Upsetting as it must be to have his pictures used in this way, I would respectfully suggest that it is nowhere near as upsetting as his death itself, and there is only one person to blame for that.

HAVING had my two sons succumb to chickenpox this year I can understand why a vaccine against it has been developed.
Far from being the harmless disease of childhood that it is often portrayed as, it was easy to see, with my sons covered head to toe in the angry red pox, how it could worsen to septicaemia or other life-threatening complications.
Six children have died as a result of such complications this year.
Sad then to hear that doctors may have to delay rolling out the vaccine because of the unfounded, superstitious fears propagated about vaccination by those opposed to MMR.
In North Wales we have a particularly vociferous anti-MMR group who will no doubt be peddling their mumbo-jumbo about overloading young immune systems in due course.
Vaccination is a cast-iron medical miracle that has saved millions of lives. Polio, that dreadful, disabling disease that was a blight on humanity, is now approaching total eradication thanks to polio vaccination.
The new chickenpox vaccine would best be incorporated with the MMR jab, but because of the worry that even more people would be put off having their children immunised, it may now be trialled in young adults.
Naturally this will not have the same preventative effect, and more children might die because of the stubbornness of a group of parents looking for something to blame for their child’s autism.
They are very good at quoting supposed proofs of their fears, but the cold hard facts of the death of children from measles and now chickenpox they seem able to blithely ignore.

Column, November 6, 2007

2008-06-16T20:53:00.001+01:00

THERE’S a statistic often quoted whenever anyone voices the slightest doubt about the safety of air travel.
It is that, worldwide, more people are kicked to death by donkeys than die in air crashes.
I’m not sure how much comfort it is to know, as you plummet towards the ground desperately trying to remember what the cabin crew said about inflating your life jacket, that out there somewhere a gang of donkeys are kicking to death the equivalent of your planeload.
Also, what happens in a year when there are more than the usual number of plane crashes? Do the donkeys suddenly get more murderous in order to maintain differentials.
But I guess what those who quote that figure are trying to say is don’t get in a sweat about disasters, because there are a lot more people out there dying in a very mundane way.
But I think it’s human nature. We’ll fret about the unknown threat far more than we will about the cast-iron, guaranteed thing that’s very likely to do us in.
So, for instance, outraged parents will go on the march against paedophiles they are asure are lurking on every street corner. And they’re right, that might happen to about five children every year. But 140 or more children will die on the roads – 28 times as many as are killed by strangers – and yet where are the baying mobs protesting at that?
All too often we are unable to properly assess danger, which means we’ll warp our kids in cotton wool one minute and expose them to unbelievable risk the next.
So it was with a degree of weariness I turned on Radion 4 the other day to hear the debate as to whether Snowdon should remain open to walkers.
This was, of course, in the wake of the terrible death of Liam Costello, the young boy who died after falling while climbing there.
The death of anyone in the mountains, young or old, is a dreadful thing, but it is all the more painful when it is a young life that is lost.
However, deaths in Snowdonia, when compared to the millions of people who visit, are tiny in proportion. To talk of closure of the mountains is a massive over-reaction to what is a small, if undoubtedly tragic, problem.
All too often now we hear about the obesity timebomb that is facing our children, that they never get out, that they spend all their time watching TV or on their Playstations.
It will come as no comfort to the Costello family I know, what could possible comfort them after all, but they were giving him experiences he would never have forgotten.
The joy of climbing the mountains is transcendent, it is beyond all experiences he would have had before and to take a child into the mountains is one of the healthiest things you could possible do for them, mind and body.
What would be tragic would be of parents, having read of the death of Liam, now decide not to go to Snowdonia because of the perceived risks.
With care, it is still a safe place to go and compared to other activities, or even a life of inactivity, it is by far the better thing to do for your children.
If you play it safe and let your child live a life of indolence they may safely make it to adulthood, but you will have sown the seeds of the heart attack that will rob them of an adulthood.
There are enough real demons out there, mundane as they are, there really is no need for us to conjure up any more. The mountains must remain open to us all.

SOMWHAT unfortunate that in the week a fire seems to have claimed four firefighters’ lives one North Wales fire chief should send out an ill-tempered memo about use of appliances after they appeared in a nude calendar.
As far as I’m concerned, if they are prepared to run into a burning building when everyone else is running out, what they do with their appliances in their spare time is their business, not mine.
And if it does no harm and raises a bit of cash for a good cause, it’s none of their boss’s business either.

YOU would have thought that the prospect of serving in Afghanistan and Iraq were worrying enough, but now another concern surfaces for our troops.
Insurance premiums.
Incredible as it might sound, troops are encouraged to take out extra cover when they are deployed to the front line.
Insurance companies, not slow to cotton on to risks, have realised the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq is a sight more risky than manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, and they’ve whacked up the premiums by an eye-watering 160pc. This means your average squaddy has to fork out £1,000 a year for the privilege of insuring himself or herself for active service.
Of course the MoD is denying any culpability in this shambles, saying it is the soldiers’ own decision to take out the additional insurance. But let’s face it, if you were off to Iraq, you’d want to know your family would be taken care of wouldn’t you?
It’s all very well committing troops to two highly dangerous theatres of war, but if you do so as a government then you owe them a duty of care.
Whenever this issue is raised there is usually someone who bleats about World War Two and how the soldiers weren’t compensated then.
No, they weren’t. But the enemy was on our doorstep and we were all in it together then. Now we expect a tiny Army, Navy and Air Force to do every job we ask of them and more.
The least we can do is assure them that should the worst happen their families will be taken care of without the need for them to take out crippling insurance.

Column, October 30, 2007

2008-06-16T20:52:00.001+01:00

THERE are few enough good reasons for living in Wales.
A lack of jobs and opportunities, worse than average health, house prices kept at eye-watering levels by second home owners etc, etc, etc, you know the list all too well.
But there has always been one thing that rural Wales has had to offer that set it apart from the cities that lure so many people away..
Good, small schools.
The village school has been a feature of Welsh life since education became the responsibility of the state. It is as much a feature of the villages in Wales as the chapels are.
And one should never underestimate the desire of parents to see their children well-educated. They agonise over where to send their children and will make enormous sacrifices to do what they see as best.
Plenty of my friends have made the financially crippling decision to educate their children privately. While you might not agree with such a decision, and many of us simply do not have the cash to fund such a move, you cannot fault their desire to do what they feel is best for their children.
So Gwynedd has in its midst a collection of schools that are of supreme importance to the communities they serve.
I’m sure that over the years many of the parents whose children were and are being educated there have had the chance to move away, perhaps to England where jobs and wages are more generous. But they will have chosen to stay, and the good village school will have been a major factor in that decision.
And so what do the bright sparks at Gwynedd Council decide to do with these little educational jewels? Shut 29 of them down, that’s what.
And these are the same people who will be bemoaning the departure of people from rural Wales, demanding action to control the housing market, which they will claim is driving young people out of their home areas.
Yet at the same time they will have been responsible for shutting down the school which might have persuaded them not to leave after all.
You can see why they’ve done it of course. If the only skill you bring to the table is an ability to count beans, then yes, small village schools that have low pupil rolls do not make a great deal of financial sense.
The beancounters will blather on about ‘economies of scale’, which basically means they would like every child in Gwynedd to be bussed into one purpose built school-barn where they could be educated in a cost-effective way.
The school is a community hub. Where once there was chapel, now there is the school to bring a community together. How many sports days, school plays, parents’ evenings, Christmas concerts, eisteddfodau and fetes do mums and dads attend and decide that they had, after all, made the right decision to live in a little corner of Wales instead of moving elsewhere?
In an age where there are fewer and fewer things that promote social cohesion, the village school is a beacon of sociability. It is the glue that bonds a community together by the shared interest in good education.
How many children educated in Wales think back and thank their parents that they were sent to a small school where they had the, almost, undivided attention of a teacher, rather than being one face among hundreds at a bigger school?
Gwynedd councillors have approved the plan to close the 29 primaries ‘in principle’ and now they embark on an extensive consultation process, which you have to hope is a genuine consultation rather than just a sop to the protesters before they push through the closures regardless.
Those who advocate the closure of the schools are, as Wilde once put it, people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
The price of Welsh village schools makes their retention untenable, but their value means that rather than closing them, we should be building more.

SMALL note for Visit Wales, whose campaigns of late have shown considerable style and creativity.
You might want to consider how you are marketing North Wales.
On telling English friends that the family had holidayed on the Llyn peninsula we have thus far been met with the blank stares of those who clearly have not got the foggiest idea where it is.
They all know Pembrokeshire and the Gower though, as we have to direct them up from a familiar place.
The Llyn has every bit as much to offer as its southern counterparts and should not be a mystery to potential visitors.

AS Remembrance Day approaches we would do well to remember that men and women are still making the ultimate sacrifice for their country today.
The Royal British Legion has launched its poppy appeal once again and rightly reminds us that it works as much with injured servicemen today and the bereaved families of those who are lost, as it does with the veterans of wars fought decades ago.
Mention has been made of the frustration felt by the armed forces that their efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not appreciated because of the political controversy surrounding those conflicts, especially Iraq.
Nothing should be further from the truth. While we have a right in a democracy to question our leaders’ decisions to take us into a war, we should never forget the sacrifice made by those who are prepared to die to buy us that freedom of speech.
It is as a consequence of the IRA tactic of murdering servicemen in uniform that the armed services stopped wearing uniform when ‘off duty’ – returning from service etc. So they are not as noticeable as they should be on their return.
Perhaps the regiments concerned ought to arrange homecoming parades in the regiments home cities. Not always easy when the men and women concerned are going to want to be back with loved ones and now barracks are often many miles away from the traditional recruiting grounds due to regimental reorganisation.
But nevertheless, this would be an opportunity for the public to show their appreciation for the bravery, dedication and professionalism that they continue to show while serving their country.

Column, October 23, 2007

2008-06-16T20:51:00.001+01:00

THERE was an odd moment watching the rugby on Saturday night.
Matthew Tait, a man who seemed destined to be remembered for being folded in a tackle by Gavin Henson, made THE break of the whole tournament.
A darting, twisting, sidestepping move that will have WRU selectors deliving through the records at Somerset House to see if there isn’t some Welsh blood in the Tait ancestry somewhere.
It was pure, instinctive brilliance.
It set alight what promised to be a tense, but ultimately unspectacular final – as so many finals are such are the stakes.
And in at the corner went Mark Cueto.
That’s when it got a bit odd.
Because I found myself on my feet cheering. Cheering a man in a white shirt.
I think I even shouted words to the effect: “Go on, get in there.”
Fortunately I was in a sitting room in the heart of England, not a pub in Wales, so I reached the end of the evening untarred and unfeathered.
But how could this be, how could I cheer on the old enemy? I’ve tried to work it out since Saturday and my best guess is that I love rugby more than I dislike England (the team, not the country, that is). And England showed more of what rugby is about than did Wales this World Cup.
A week or so ago I was invited to join a Facebook group. Facebook, for those of you fortunate enough not to have heard of it is a ‘social networking’ website wher bright young things can amass lists of friends who they can then inform what a wild time they are having at any given moment (when they’re really cutting their toenails while watching Corry, the soap, not the rugby player)
It also allows members to band together in groups of common interest and I was invited to join a group supporting anyone but England to win the Rugby World Cup.
Now, while I’m all for that sentiment when watching the overpaid nancies who play football, I can’t say the same for rugby, because rugby is different and I think unless you’ve played you won’t understand this.
In rugby you can spend 80 minutes trying to genuinely hurt your opponent, you go into a tackle hoping you’ll hit him so hard his grandmother will feel it. Or else, as was the case with me, you spend 80 minutes trying to run so fast that those intent on burying your mincing winger’s body beneath a pile of forwards cannot catch you.
And when it all boils over it’s proper punches, not the handbag-waving histrionics of footballers who have an attack of the vapours when someone so much as brushes their elegantly coiffed hair.
Yet at the end of those 80 minutes you clap them off the pitch, shake their hands, sink a beer, or two, with them and sing songs with them that are musically and lyrically off-key.
No hatred, no accompanying violence on the terraces, no matter how much they see on the pitch. That’s rugby.
And rugby is a team game, where effort, spirit, courage, and honour still count for something.
And I’ll tell you what, England had all those qualities in spades.
Before you tear up this page in a fit of what you think is patriotism, let me give you one warning.
Unless we learn to be more like England we are destined to forever repeat the dismal performance we put up in this World Cup.
By more like England, I don’t mean play like them, I mean try like them, care about it like them and show the sort of self-belief they did, even when everyone was dismissing them as over-the-hill. They were the antidote to Southern Hemisphere arrogance that we failed to provide.
Sadly there’s a certain karma to the fact that the try they probably did score but weren’t given in this World Cup has made up for the goal that they almost certainly didn’t score but were given in the World Cup in 1966.
But even that they have borne with the dignity expected of rugby players rather than the aggrieved whining we’re accustomed to from football managers.
Lest we forget, we had the beating of England since the last World Cup, and that impetus was squandered in a couple of short years.
Lets try to make sure that in four years time we have something to as proud of as the English do now.

CONTINUING the sporting theme, can anyone explain the amount of coverage devoted to Lewis Hamilton’s failure to win the Formula 1 world championship?
A sport whose dullness is inversely proportional to its volume does not seem to me to be the stuff of headline news, and yet night after night this past week it’s been on our screens in one way or another.
Reporter after reporter tried and failed to come up with reasons why I should care whether Lewis Hamilton became the first British driver since Graham Hill (maybe Damon) to win the world championship.
Still, at least they have got over the breathless way at the start of the season they reported that, whisper it, a black man was driving a fast car. The tone of surprise they adopted seemed to suggest they thought he was lucky not to get pulled over on suspicion of having stolen his McLaren machine.
For those of you who were too busy watching the paint dry on your walls, the world championship was won by someone else in a phenomenally fast car. You heard it here last.

YOU can see why Gwynedd Council has decided to take the axe to 29 of its primary schools.
After all, when it comes to cutting costs, closing schools will do the job for you..
But look at it another way. Gwynedd has a well-known problem of attracting and retaining young people.
One of the key factors young families will take into account when deciding where to live is whether there’s a good school in the area.
And what do Gwynedd go and do to attract young families into their rural communities? Close down the small local schools.
But that’s the sort of brilliance you get when all you bring to the table is an ability to count beans.

GOOD to see the Llyn peninsula and the Mawddach estuary both making it into one Sunday paper’s top worldwide ‘secret’ holiday destinations.
Had to laugh when the writer said that those queuing in traffic to the Lake District should have turned off for North Wales to avoid the jams.
Clearly he’s not been down the A55 during school holidays then.

Column, October 16, 2007

2008-06-16T20:49:00.000+01:00

ABSTINENCE does have its benefits – for one thing it is character-building.
They tried it in the USA for 13 years and it built a character called Al Capone.
When it came to creating a favourable trading environment for a gangster looking for an easy way to make a living, prohibiting alcohol must have been the answer to his most heartfelt prayers.
It’s simple supply and demand economics and so it’s surprising that the country that has grown so much as a result of the free market could fall for so simple a trick.
By cutting off the supply from legal outlets, the market was left to the likes of Capone who set up the supply routes for bootleg alcohol to satisfy the public thirst for booze. And as he had a stranglehold on supply, he could charge what he liked.
Naturally others wanted in on the action and thus Chicago became the gangland it was and the mob grew in strength as a result. Capone raked in millions.
As law enforcement measures go prohibition was an unmitigated disaster, and served only to strengthen the hand of criminals who corrupt US society to this day.
It also had the effect of killing the disparate independent brewing industries there, which has had the result of them inflicting upon the world the tasteless bilge they call beer because they lost so much expertise in actually making beer, as well as wine, when they prohibited its sale.
So prohibition doesn’t work. It’s been tried, on a massive scale, it was unworkable, unenforceable, had no measurable health benefits and was a gift to the mob.
So why are we trying it now with drugs.
Don’t get me wrong, this is no paean to the benefits of cannabis or any other controlled substance. Let me say at the outset I think they are all vile and those in their grip are at best tiresome and at worst unutterably sad individuals. Life must be pretty bad if oblivion is a better alternative.
But the fact is the war on drugs was lost long ago, in fact, the minute you declare a war on drugs you may as well surrender, for the very act of declaring war means that you hand control to drug barons who will turn a tidy profit as a result of your action.
Now and again you will read reports of victories by law enforcement in the war on drugs. Some shipment will be intercepted and millions of pounds worth of cocaine or heroin will have been kept off the streets.
But even if this has any significant effect on supply, do you think the dealers bat an eyelid?
No, if they’ve got less to sell, they just shove up the price so they make the same amount of money as they did last week, but by selling less product. And what does that mean for addicts, well they have to find more money, and that often means committing crime.
It’s usually petty stuff, theft, burglary, street robbery, car crime, but the sort of thing that makes life that bit more miserable for the rest of us.
If you want confirmation of this take a trip to magistrates court any day of the week and see how many defendants’ solicitors are pleading drug problems as mitigation for their clients’ crimes.
Richard Brunstrom recognises this and now wants drugs to be legalised and regulated and the old Class A, B and C system of classifying drugs to be scrapped.
It’s odd then that the opinion of a cop who is in charge of cops who have to haul in the same faces week-in, week-out for the same catalogue of miserable crime, is dismissed so easily by politicians.
Alyn and Deeside MP Mark Tami said: “As 280,000 Class A drug users are responsible for half of all crime, taking the risk of legalising such a dangerous drug is foolhardy and I would not wish to gamble so much on the health and well-being of our children.”
A laudable sentiment were it not for the fact that all that crime would not be committed were it not for the fact that the users needed to get cash to buy their Class A drugs from dealers who now they can milk an addict for every penny they’ve got as well as a few pennies they will steal.
Alyn and Deeside AM Carl Sergeant points to the link between drug use and poverty and that it is important to tackle the social deprivation that leads to such drug abuse. Another fine aim, but social deprivation is not going to be solved in this lifetime. In the meantime thousands of lives are being wasted in ineffective court cases and jail terms for people who need help more than they need punishment.
The only people benefiting from current drug policy are the dealers, the drug barons and everyone else in the supply chain all the way back down the line to the poppy-growers in Afghanistan who are defending their trade with rocket-propelled grenades launched at our troops over there.
Richard Brunstrom might not have the answer, but at least he is brave enough to confront us with the inconvenient truth that current drug policy has failed, in spite of the brave efforts of police officers who put their lives on the line trying to enforce it.
The least we can do is have a proper debate of where exactly we think our drug laws are going rather than blithely assuming we can carry on with the current plan which hands power to exactly the people it is trying to put behind bars.

A FRIEND in Cardiff calls.
He’s just received a text. It’s one of those annoying ones from a service provider telling him what new services he can enjoy at the press of a button.
It’s offering him a new ringtone.
Imagine his delight when he’s told he can now download ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ as his new ringtone.
I tell him that if he’s going to get it, better be prepared to run fast down Queen Street.