It felt like today was the day I should write my first blog on Freedom Central. Heading up communications for the Welsh Lib Dems has been a busy business since I started a few months ago. With a few hours to breathe and one hell of a weird week to look back on, I thought I’d use this and future posts to give readers a communications perspective on the stories that you see in the Welsh media.
I’ve blogged alot at www.sustainwales.blogspot.com before but I’m blog-rusty so bear with me a few posts, hopefully I’ll make it worth everyone’s while.
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The team at the Welsh Lib Dems had been looking closely at International Business Wales (IBW) for a good while, prior to Monday’s release of credit card spending by IBW officials.
Our research had focused on assessing the effectiveness of IBW in directly attracting inward investment. We were also doing our best to build up a detailed picture of the IBW operation: Where are the offices? How many staff are in each office? What costs are involved? What are they doing? Why does inward investment fluctuate widely from year to year? Why could be only get figures for ‘promised investment’, ‘promised jobs’?
It’s surprisingly difficult to garner such information. From the IBW website you can see where most of the offices are located and who works in each of them but little else. A small number of focused information requests and a healthy dose of patience later, we were starting to get a grip on how IBW offices work.
It’s also worth mentioning that IBW and Ieuan Wyn Jones’ Dept. for Economy and Transport are doing fine impressions of leaky buckets, sieves and colanders of late. We keep being criticised for attacking Ieuan – in reality, we’re being handed, then dropping bullets onto him, not firing them. You can’t just sit on this stuff and I’d like to think the people who write to us with leads and concerns can see that we follow them up with decency and positive intent. We’re not slinging mud, we’re scrutinising the performance of government and many, even within government, are glad of that. We’ll always offer an alternative approach and we’ll always give examples of why the problems we identify matter in the real world.
It was becoming clear that much of what IBW do, was not being accounted for within logs of events held at IBW offices. We knew from FOI released to the BBC that all sorts of fun was being had at the New York Office. Hundreds of Welsh business greats had popped in:
“in the last financial year, the Centre, which is Wales’ focal point in North America, has received 230 announced visitors to the Centre (officials, politicians, BBC journalists, enterprises from Wales, academia, trade missions from Wales) together with 80 unannounced visits by individuals who recognise the Centre as being part of Wales. In addition, since its inception, the Centre has played host to a range of events and a range of high profile visitors including Steven Evans, the then BBC Correspondent for the United States of America, Elan Clos Stephens, the Chair of S4C, Peter Stead, the Chair of the Dylan Thomas prize, Guto Harri, the then BBC Correspondent for the United States of America, Katherine Jenkins, Carlo Rizzi, the Musical Director of the WNO and many others”
None of this sounded much like business time. In fact, it sounded alot like a jaded pastiche of Welsh culture ‘on tour’. I suppose Katherine Jenkins might persuade Bill Gates to set up a research institute in Bangor – but at what cost to the national rugby team? Lee Byrne would be left with Rhyddian to wet the pre-match eyes, while Katherine shuffled papers and carefully studied the FT on first class flights across the U.S.
By now our concerns had shifted – why had other Welsh business greats been left out? Why was Charlotte Church not searching San Diego for flagship investors in the burgeoning Welsh IT sector? Was there a hidden message in Tom Jones’ bizarre rendition of the national anthem at the Calzaghe v. not so Bernhard Hopkins fight – if you listen to it backwards it may just be the case that he’s espousing the virtues of Wales’ transport infrastructure. Perhaps Tom’s performance had more to do with the >£3k bash at Clancy’s Irish pub to welcome Calzaghe whilst wining and dining business people, as you do.
And then our request for information on credit card expenditure by overseas staff arrived. We wanted to sit on it, do loads of research, work out how much had been spent on Katherine’s rider, find out exactly how many first class flights there had been and who was staying in the Oberois, The Ritz, Hiltons and Crowne Plaza Beverly Hills?
- Why had thousands been spent at Pottery Barn Teen? What was Pottery Barn Teen?
- Why had thousands been spent at IKEA? Had the IBW staff made the mistake of following the IKEA ‘line’ and buying everything en route?
- What was the carbon footprint of all this travel? Is this what ONE PLANET WALES meant?
- Just how good does the steak at Bob’s Steakhouse in San Francisco look? How could they not go back the following night?
- Were there any staff vacancies with IBW?
- Why was the IBW website not available in Spanish, but was in Italian?
Attempts at humour aside, we weren’t surprised to see lots of expenditure, lots of travel and nice meals. As the Conchords say ‘it’s business time’ - and business costs.
We were surprised by the scale of expenditure, the decisions made on use of taxpayers money and the culture of spending across the IBW operation. This wasn’t about ‘civil service expenses’, it was about the culture of a worldwide, costly, taxpayer-funded arm of the WAG.
I’d settled on a fishing metaphor by Tuesday afternoon:
“Of course Wales should fish for investment, but more emphasis on the bait (the ‘offer’) and less on gold-plating our fishing rod please!”
Luckily, Kirsty was ignoring my garbled tosh – calling instead for balance and common sense in our approach to attracting investment – get the offer right first, the IT, the transport the skills.
We didn’t get the chance to dig further, the FOI was straight up on the Assembly website (for once!) and we had to raise the concerns we held. Did we provide journalists with a copy of the first class tickets on Monday? no. That took an extra 48 hours, buckets take time to leak, even when the holes are big.
By this point we’d been accused of lying, repugnance and an implied incompetence that had me spitting coffee onto Tuesday’s Western Mail. Kirsty was understandably peeved – nobody wants to be called a liar.
It’s a worrying time when you know you’re right but the First Minister seems pretty sure he’s right too.
Luckily, we’d done our research and we were able to produce two itineraries showing first class flights booked by New York office IBW officials. It’s amazing that we were required to produce these tickets and we weren’t expecting to have to do so. I would say this was an oversight but it was much worse, we’d foolishly trusted people to be as straight with Rhodri as they had with us.
Our concerns about the culture of spending, about effectiveness and approach had all gone out the window by Wednesday afternoon. The real scandal is that Rhodri Morgan was misled. The First Minister understandably felt sufficiently well-armed to shoot us down on Tuesday – the irony was that he only had words as evidence, where we had evidence for our words.
P J O’Rourke said that “A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them”.
After this week, you’ll see no fools at Freedom Central.
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