++ Serco wins RAF Valley contract ++

RAF Valley staff learned today that Babcock International has lost the Supply, Motor Transport, Workshop and Fire Services contract for the Hawks at Valley. Government services outsourcing firm, Serco Group — which, amongst other things runs hospitals, prisons and local authority education services — will take over Babcock's responsibilities from April 2012 after a six month handover period. Babcock will retain the Aircraft maintenance part of the contract until it comes up again for tender in a couple of years time.

Problems on the HORIZON?

Its being reported today that RWE N.power — one half of Horizon Nuclear Power, the joint venture company behind Wylfa B — is looking to pull out of the UK new nuclear programme because of the huge costs it is having to bear due to the forced closure of nuclear plants in their home market of Germany. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster the German government, under pressure from Germany's historically strong Green Party, decided to close down all of its 17 nuclear reactors by 2022.

It was always clear after the German decision to scrap nuclear power that the sums for Wylfa might begin to look decidedly shaky if the potential to duplicate similar new nuclear plants elsewhere was diminished — especially when you also add into the mix the deteriorating European economic situation. Indeed, this is not the first time that rumours about the demise of Horizon have appeared in the press — back in July the Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that both RWE and their other partner, E.On, were on the verge of shelving their UK nuclear projects. More recently there have been further rumours that Horizon had been looking for a third energy company to join the joint venture in order to both generate more investment and spread the risks further.

So, will this stop Wylfa B? My guess is probably not. Why? See the below diagram:

Source: The Economist

The fact is that most nuclear plants (including the current Wylfa reactor) and half of UK's coal plants are due to close over the coming decade meaning that of a total of around 75GW in generating capacity in the UK, 20GW will disappear by 2015. And as the current peak demand is around 65GW and growing, that means that the UK could be facing energy blackouts by as soon as 2015.

So ultimately the fact is that the UK Government needs Wylfa B far more than Horizon needs to build it. Lights will start to go off within a few years so there is no option but for the UK Government to ensure that plants like Wylfa are built, by hook or by crook… 

Anglesey Aluminium: Credit where credit is due

Following yesterday's announcement by Anglesey Aluminium of the preferred bidder for the final parcel of their land in Holyhead, we now know that the Penrhos site, which shed 450 jobs in 2009 when the Aluminium smelter closed, will soon provide for well over double that number of jobs.

This did not happen by accident. The credit for it lies not with the various politicians now queuing up to claim some of the kudos, but with Anglesey Aluminium's Works Director, Brian King. He persuaded the Rio Tinto Board not to take the easy option of a quick land sale to developers and instead resolved to only sell the site on to companies with concerete business plans to create sustainable jobs. 

So just two years on from when Anglesey Aluminium was forced to close, we now know that the site will soon provide work for over 1,000 people. This is a far better 'legacy' for Ynys Môn than Anglesey Labour Party's shortsighted demands that the site be gifted to the Island like the old Shell works at Rhosgoch — a site which incidentally still lies empty more than 20 years later. 

So hats off to Brian King for his vision and resolve to do the right thing by both Holyhead and Ynys Môn.

Wales v Africa

Clearly we would all rather be on Ynys Môn: the Indian Ocean paradise
of the Seychelles islands has an economy the same size as ours.

Last February Peter Hain made waves and was accused of considerable complacency when he stated that Wales was wealthier than Rwanda. Seeing as we are in the dog days of the summer and there isn't much else happening on Ynys Môn (today's Daily Post top Anglesey story: "Amlwch hotel boss told to travel 25 miles to pay off 1p bill"), I thought I would take a look to see how the Welsh economy does compare to those in Africa. As it turns out Peter Hain is right: Wales is wealthier than Rwanda: some 8x more wealthy. With a GVA of approx. £45,514m Wales's economy is actually somewhere between that of Ethiopia (£39,517m) and Tunisia (£49,332m).

The size of Ynys Môn's economy (£780m) compares almost exactly to that of the Republic of Seychelles (£770m), the Island paradise in the Indian Ocean. Gwynedd (£1,620m) is the equivalent of Eritrea (£1,668m) and Conwy and Denbighshire (£2,543) on a parr with Sierra Leone (£2,566m). Wales's largest regional economy, that of Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan (£10,108), is somewhere in-between Equatorial Guinea (£10,007m) and Chad (£10,200m).

For benchmarking purposes, you may be interested to learn that Scotland's economy (£103,532m) is more than double the size of Wales's, and is somewhere between Morocco (£81,471m) and Algeria (£172,500m). Northern Ireland's (£28,827m) is just slightly larger than Cameroon's (£25,275m).

England's economy is off the scale (£1,083,289m) and in fact the entire economy of the UK (£1,295,663) is only slightly smaller than the GDP of all of Africa combined (£1,411,370).

The full figures are below.

For stats bods, I used the 2009 PPP-basis GDP figures for African countries (and converted to £ using the average USDGBP conversion rate for the same year). For UK and Wales regional economies, I have used the 2008 Headline GVA figures which are a useful comparator to GDP.

If you build it, they will come.

Many, many congratulations to the fabulous organisers of the Llangefni Carnival, which this weekend made its triumphant return to the town after almost twenty years of absence.

The Seven grass-skirted organisers take a lap of honour
(Click to enlarge)

And the band played on... amongst the huge crowds in Llangefni town centre
(Click to enlarge)

The organisers were all volunteers, but between them they managed to breathe more fresh life into Llangefni in just one day than several other bodies I could mention have managed in years... Let us all hope it returns to being an annual event from now on.

Sense, Prudence, and Assassination Threats

Last week I attended the Adjudication Panel for Wales tribunal held at Tre-ysgawen Hall examining whether Cllr Peter Rogers had transgressed the respective codes of conduct of both the North Wales Police Authority (of which he is a member) and Anglesey County Council in light of his alleged behaviour at Holyhead Police Station in January 2010. Cllr Rogers had attended the station in support of a Rhosyr constituent of his who had been accused of threatening to assassinate another county councillor following a failed planning application. It was alleged that Cllr Rogers had sought to use his influence as a member of the Police Authority to gain an advantage for himself or others; and also that through having raised his voice at a Detective Constable, Cllr Rogers had behaved in a bullying or harassing manner. He was eventually cleared of all the above charges, and instead found guilty of the far lesser charge of having brought Anglesey Council and the office of councillor into disrepute and given the least consequential punishment possible: a slap on the wrist.

Although the tribunal itself was conducted in the very model of good sense and judgement, the same cannot be said in this instance of either the Police or the North Wales Police Authority which brought the original complaint against Cllr Rogers to the Ombudsman. The Police took over three months to investigate an obviously far-fetched claim then behaved in an unnecessarily heavy-handed manner in arresting, finger-printing, photographing, then keeping in the holding cells for several hours the man who had supposedly made the 'assassination' threat – even thought he presented himself at Holyhead Police Station willingly (Indeed this man suffered greatly because during the investigation he had also been prevented from continuing his job of teaching children with special needs how to play musical instruments). It was only when Cllr Rogers discovered that the Police had no corroborating evidence other than the original allegation that he is supposed to have shouted in exasperation, "you have no evidence", at the detective constable and said he wished to make an official complaint. The chairman of the tribunal in his summing-up pointedly remarked that the investigation "could and should have been brought to a close much earlier".

None of the Police Officers who gave evidence claimed that Cllr Rogers had explicitly stated he was a member of the Police Authority whilst speaking with them. The Police Authority's complaint to the Ombudsman was therefore entirely based on inference, i.e. as some of the Police Officers were aware that Cllr Rogers was a member of the Police Authority, they may have assumed that he was possibly acting on Police Authority business rather than as a councillor representing his constituent. It was on such a flimsy basis that North Wales Police Authority brought the original complaint to the Ombudsman's Office. So flimsy in fact that Mr Tal Michael, the Chief Executive of North Wales Police Authority (and known to readers of this blog from this episode), no doubt sensing which way the tribunal was likely to find, sought unprofessionally to introduce new evidence to the Tribunal at the very last moment to the evident disconcerture of Mr Peter Davies, the Tribunal Chairman. For his efforts, Mr Michael was gently but firmly "put in [his] place" by Mr Davies. The Tribunal found conclusively (and embarrassingly for the North Wales Police Authority) that the Police Authority code of conduct was not even engaged as Cllr Rogers was not present on Police Authority business nor did he give the impression that he was.

There were so many opportunities throughout this entire unhappy saga for sensible people to have shown some intelligence and discretion and thus avoided a huge and unnecessary waste of public money. The Police could indeed have brought their investigations into the ridiculous assassination allegations to a close much earlier with less disruption for everyone; the North Wales Police Authority could have discussed and resolved the 'shouting' issue with Cllr Rogers informally, rather than seeking to "throw the book at him" and thus triggering an expensive eighteen month investigation by the Ombudsman's Office and three day tribunal. The costs of everything, including the time of the Police Officers, barristers, clerks, Ombudsman's staff, various monitoring officers, rooms at Tre-ysgawen Hall etc. must be well into the hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money – money paid by all of us in tax. Unfortunately sense and prudence with public money was sadly lacking from all involved.

Declaration of Interest: Cllr Peter Rogers is a family friend and also endorsed my candidacy in this May's Welsh Assembly Elections.

Ysgol Goronwy Owen and Commissioner Gareth Jones

Where are you Commissioner Jones?

Following a serious and unprofessional falling out between the Headteacher and staff at Ysgol Goronwy Owen in Benllech, five teachers have now been on 'sick leave' for six weeks. In consequence only one full time teacher has remained at the school and the majority of lessons for its 150 pupils have been performed by supply staff.

As this unhappy situation seemingly rumbles on and on endlessly, and with parents now threatening to withdraw their children from the school, one would be entirely justified in asking why Anglesey County Council has not acted quicker and more decisively to end the dispute. Afterall the Welsh Assembly withdrew executive power from our elected County Councillors back in March and replaced them with five Commissioners who are able to act with unfettered executive power. Each is paid handsomely at £500 a day for their services to the Island and have a hotline direct to Cardiff Bay. Yet despite this, the shambles in Benllech continues with no resolution in sight before the Summer holidays.

Interestingly the Commissioner who holds the portfolio for Education and is therefore responsible for sorting out the problems at Ysgol Goronwy Owen, former AM Gareth Jones, is also the Commissioner who is apparently least frequently seen at the Council... Is there a connection?