Today will be an important day for Ynys Môn as WAG Local Government Minister, Carl Sargeant, will be releasing a written statement revealing the results of the recent emergency audit of Anglesey County Council and what steps he intends to take in consequence.
In the meantime its worth noting that the WAG Local Government Measure which will give WAG power to forcibly merge up to three Local Authorities — widely interpreted as being an instrument designed to merge Ynys Môn and Gwynedd councils — was passed in the Senedd yesterday on the strength of Labour and Plaid Cymru votes. Both the Welsh Conservatives and Lib Dems voted against it.
As I noted last week, if Ieuan Wyn Jones is as opposed to a merger between Ynys Môn and Gwynedd as he claims, then the real test of his resolve would be whether he would instruct his AMs to vote against this enabling measure. He did not. Furthermore, he was not even in the chamber for the debate...
6 comments:
No surprise.
Just shows comrade Ieuan's usual sheer contempt of anything Anglesey ??
What else do you expect for a band wagon jumping tosser?
IWJ probably has other things on his mind...
According to Betsan Powys, Ieuan was busy proposing this year's Plaid, "foot in mouth" election proposal - a scheme to borrow £500M from the banks to build infra-structure across Wales - unfortunately the Treasury have just scotched (no pun intended) an identical proposal supported across the parties in Scotland, on the grounds of being too expensive - so there's as much chance of Plaid's central plank (again no pun intended) getting off the ground as an elephant in a chinese lantern.
As Betsan said: "The problem for Plaid is they've nailed their colours very firmly to the mast now on the Fund. This isn't kite flying a year out from an election, but number one on a list billed as "Headline proposals for the 2011 manifesto".
What do they do now? They will have to stick to their guns now, of course but it makes it far more tricky for them to "pledge" the £500m fund and their 50,000 jobs to the voters.
What they can do, mind you, is ask the Welsh electorate for a mandate to take their argument for a Fund to the Treasury. And when the Treasury say 'no', you can bet it'll be "London standing in Plaid's way".
- and so much for the 'Yes' referendum freeing Wales from Westminster's reins of control.
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/betsanpowys/
Raising it through bonds is a mad idea.
How exactly will Wales start raising the money to pay the interest? The 'austere' times are here for at least as longthe duration of this Parliament and will probably increase. To avoid more cuts in other areas it would have to be raised via new revenue streams such as a special element on all welsh council tax payers or toll booths on various choke points such as the Britannia and Menai Bridges, the A55 border, higher tills on the Severn.
I appreciate you've got to invest first, but the bond holders will want their interest payments so the income stream will need to be virtually immediate whereas it will be years before any economic benefit is felt from the infrastructure - if any at all.
Why does Ieuan want to invest in more infrastructure? The techniums are a failure and fibrespeed is a failure. Technology companies don't want to come here full stop.
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