According to WalesOnline, Plaid Cymru strategists were planning on having Ynys Môn AM, Ieuan Wyn Jones, step down as Plaid's leader sometime during the next Assembly term. However these plans have now apparently been scuppered as IWJ's heir apparent, ex-Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP Adam Price, has just ruled himself out of standing in next year's Assembly elections.
Price stood down from his Carmarthen East and Dinefwr seat at Westminster at the last General Election in order to take up a one year Fulbright scholarship to Harvard University, telling the BBC "My aim will be to seek nomination and stand for election in 2011 as part of Ieuan Wyn Jones's assembly team". Today however he has confirmed that he will not be standing for the Assembly after all, ostensibly because his Harvard course does not finish until May. Apparently Price also wanted to stand for the same Carmarthen East and Dinefwr seat in the Assembly but the current AM, Plaid's Rhodri Glyn Thomas, has apparently refused to make way. Nothing to stop him putting his name forward for the regional lists though...
With Price's announcement coming so soon after Plaid's Chairman, John Dixon, also stepped down citing "that the party has moved, or is moving, in a direction which I cannot support, but being a national office-holder has fettered my freedom to say so", one has to wonder if there aren't more serious problems bubbling below the surface at Plaid Cymru.
As for IWJ, before he can consider stepping down during the next Assembly term, he first has to get himself re-elected...
UPDATE: John Dixon himself has just posted on whether it is Plaid policy or not for IWJ to step down as Leader during the next Assembly term. He effectively calls it "fiction".
21 comments:
Update..re: comment by John Dixon.
IWJ may fairly be described as at best a fictional representative of the People of Anglesey...his attention is elsewhere...he holds too many jobs....he is too ambitious for his own good...he is dour and personality-less...he is disliked by most...he is an ineffective negotiator for Anglesey........what`s good to say about him............?????
Plaid cannot identify a stronger candidate...... WE should identify someone who WE wish to represent us at Cardiff.
Ieuan...do the decent thing !
Just to add to the above post
'DO IT NOW'
IWJ apparently cannot find his way to Brynsiencyn !
He was to attend a ceremony last week to celebrate the delivery of some affordable housing....people waited...and waited...in the rain...he arrived very late....he`d got lost despite his satnav !!...stayed for a short time...had nothing much to say...dour....and buggered off back to Cardiff....need we say more ? So we are told.
We should identify someone who WE wish to represent us in Cardiff.
A strong effective negotiator for Anglesey who has no hesitation when it comes to standing up for the People.
Names Please. DO IT NOW.
23.22 Names Please ??
The DRUID whoever he/she is should be No.1 ??
No-one else has raised the Anglesey public`s awareness of our problems more than this person...has given us a platform to air our grievances about our local and national politicians and their obvious shortcomings...has encouraged debate....has led the discussions.........he must be a potential AM in waiting ??
"IWJ apparently cannot find his way to Brynsiencyn !"
Find his way to Brynsiencyn? Hell this nonenity couldn't even find his own backside to wipe it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-10872370
"In July, it was announced the festival was to be given nearly £250,000 of assembly government money over a three-year period.
The decision, by Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones, came days after the Arts Council of Wales cut grants to several arts organisations. "
Presumably the money will now go to the arts organisations that were excluded by IWJ decision.
Now I fully support the Vaynol festival, but it was 'no-boner' this year, as it followed on from the FREE Radio 1 event that featured a good and varied selection of artistes.
This years Vaynol has Westlife (personal yawn) and some other non crowd pullers; and tickets for an individual would cost about £125-£150 to attend the whole weekend. (bring the family - Not!)
Of course there's always the xenophobic humour of the 'pub landlord' stand up comedian. (maybe they could have made this one free for locals, well suited as it is to some of the sentiments expressed from time to time on this blog)
More concerning is the question of IWJ's commercial acumen and judgement in diverting funds away from other causes towards this ill-fated venture.
14.14 Come on old boy...IWJ and BTerfel are known close buddies !
They'd be better off testing babies properly, on the news last night there was a couple who's child had died of a condition that all newborns are tested for in England but not in Wales, they should get their priorities right
Of course there's always the xenophobic humour of the 'pub landlord' stand up comedian.
What an utterly stupid thing to say. Al Murray's character is supposed to be mocked for the stupid things he says compared to the situation he is in. For example, have you never noticed on the sitcom whn he rants about illegal immigrants that the barmaid is an Aussie? Do you not know why?
Obviously going over your head.
Of course I don't know why. I don't watch television.
I just went and looked at what Wikipedia had to say.
If you don't agree with their entry your most welcome to go and edit it of course; unless doing so is over your head.
And no, irony and satire are not lost me, as I'm British.
PS. The clue is in the ;-)
And I do take 'stupid thing to say' as a compliment for the situation I am in. (just like Mr Murray)
We have always relied on our MP and AM to help us out, the last decent man was Cledwyn Hughes and I really mean that, these past few years have been very violent, violent in the sense of the loss and damage we have all suffered in Anglesey.
Now, I thought IWJ would be a man that we could turn to in our hour of need, but he isn't. His efforts are everywhere else but here!
We were told that voting Plaid Cymru and also having IWJ as the leader of Plaid Cymru that we would be in a more favourable position, nothing could be further from the truth.
Our assets and our employers have left us in droves, the unemployed are now permamnetly wasted. Their children, our future, are looking at a bleak and barren wasteland.
Being nice to our politicians has got us nowhere, they have gained, while we have all lost!
He cries out for sympathy, yet does he listen to the families who cry for a job for mum or dad? I don't think so!
He can spin and scheme, but the truth is always staring at him in the face, when he looks in the mirror, he has let us all down, and he knows it!
Adam Price, is not interested in North Wales and Anglesey, his priorities is to to look after his own little patch, don't be fooled, by these idiots, their day has come, and gone, and we are still waiting for change, a change that will never happen as long as we are all led by the nose, to trusting these fools.
Trust your own instincts and listen to the wishes of the people, no politician is worthy of a vote if he is deaf, the sooner IWJ goes the better chance we have of SURVIVING this mess.
Huw Terry
18.45 Huw Terry is right.
Anglesey should not be condemned to another 4 years of IWJ and Plaid. For Anglesey`s sake, Ieuan, GO !
We find you so pathetic, lacklustre, ineffectual, insincere, dour, devoid of personality, charisma and humour,what are you FOR ??
Enough...Anglesey deserves better.
Whether it be Plaid, or another party...but certainly not you.
I am local, Welsh...but vehemently not a fan of yours.
19.25 Interesting...thats what many in Plaid also say...privately...he has overstayed his welcome !
Huw Terry should start his own political party, he sounds like a man that can lead us off the abyss.
19.47....possibly...but does he have sufficient intelligence ?
Huw Terry has been whingeing on another, now defunct, forum for some time now including trying to push his own brand of nationalism on his facebook page. The trouble with Huw however is that although many of us empathise with his and his brother's struggle to get justice after being shafted by this council and getting very little in the way of justice from the various courts they have attended in their fight, he has yet to make a public stand in person at any of the 'town hall' presentations. There have been a number of them in various parts of the island and I have yet to see Huw Terry stand up and challenge any of the representatives of the council or ask any questions. It is very easy for all of us here to sound off anonymously about our various rants regarding all manner of public mis-service by those that govern us but it is another thing to stand up and be counted in a public meeting. If you feel so strongly about something then that is what you need to do, stand up for what you believe and don't hide behind an anonymous wall such as this blog much as I admire many of the contributions on here. Personally I do not feel strongly enought to stand up publicly, I will make my own personal protest when it comes time to vote.
Just before the start of the march when Tinto was closing we were forming up outside Holyhead Town Hall and IWJ was stood there looking all lonely. I tried striking up a conversation with him and it was like talking to a statue. He was aloof and just ignored me and others who tried to talk to him. It was as if he thought he was better than us and shouldn't speak to us and you got a sense that he was there not because he thought he should be but because he just wanted to be seen.
@ ;-) said...
"Of course I don't know why. I don't watch television.
I just went and looked at what Wikipedia had to say."
Speechless.
She's an illegal immigrant. At that time loads of Aussies were in the UK illegally, many working cash-in-hand in London's pubs. Although The Pub Landlord appears to be rather rough humour in fact it's highly politicised and very sophisticated and challenges peoples built-in prejudices as at that time asylum seekers and illegals were high up in the news and most people automatically applied dark skin as soon as either phrase was used.
I think it's time for Huw Terry and his political party to stand up and be counted, what do you think Huw? Maybe the Druid should get involved here to help you start, your points are blunt and truthful but there's no hiding your nationalist pride. Maybe your campaign can be to bring into the open the Shell Fund?
Good luck.
12:53
The crack about the 'xenophobic pub-landlord' was an addendum to my main point about the cancellation of the festival and the money that had (temporarily we hope) been diverted to it, away from other Welsh Arts projects.
Do you not have any thoughts about the, to my mind more relevent issue, of effective expenditure of public money £250,000), or would you prefer to be astonished/speechless that I don't watch the tele?
or is it coz I's Wenglish?
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