Catching up on Welsh blogs after my half-term break I was intrigued to see this post from Glyn Davies MP, who is the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Wales.
Writing about the alleged lack of consultation with the S4C Board and Welsh Government Ministers over the role of BBC funding of the Welsh Language channel, S4C Glyn says:
Firstly, according to people ‘in the know’ like Tomos Livingstone of the Western Mail, the decision came ‘out of the blue’ , and at the last minute. I certainly didn’t know – and why should I have known? Suggests that there might not have been time for consultation before the CSR was signed off. And secondly, there would inevitably have been concern about confidentiality – since previous discussions at private meetings between the Culture Secretary and Plaid Cymru seemed to have become public within minutes.
The clear implication here is that UK Government Ministers do not trust their Welsh Government counterparts to keep controversial matters to themselves. If this is the case then it would explain a lot about the arguments over the respect agenda.
I have said before that respect is a two way process. In contrast the Welsh Government appear to think that it is about them being involved in decisions on non-devolved matters on their terms. Something that may have been possible in a cosy one party state but is not so easy when the two Governments are of different political persuasions.
The extra factor introduced by Glyn, a member of the Government for all intents and purposes, is that there is a trust issue too. If the UK Government cannot trust Labour and Plaid Cymru Ministers to keep confidences then the relationship between the two is even worse than we thought.
Is this blog post meant as a message from Cheryl Gillan to Carwyn Jones that he and his Ministers need to get their act together and start to behave like grown-ups?
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Hello Peter, I didn’t mean the comment in the way you seem to have taken it. The reference applied to discussion in private meetings between the Culture Minister at Westminster and the Board of S4C, which seemed to become public vry quickly. Nothing to do with Assembly ministers at all. I tend to refer to the particular Assembly Minister as the Heritage Minister. Don’t relly know why, but I do.
Yeah Peter, Glyn’s ‘the man’ – I have great hopes for him – always said he will become Wales’s man (Welsh Secretary). He’s on the ‘high road’ for sure.
If Wales could get a decent return (in terms of job creating patents ‘JCPs’) we would not be having this conversation.
I know Peter you are aware of this issue too and spoken up about and I am very grateful for that – I think I can write that because I am Wales’s ‘man’ on patent protection (vis-à-vis the largest export market for patented goods in the world, namely the USA).
For sure, despite the over the top rhetoric from the likes of IWJ and the system (including the IWJ upgrade) of techno-transfer is not working in/for Wales as evidenced by the lack of registered patents from Wales in the USA, the largest export market for patent protected goods. Foreign universities in former third-world countries are outstripping Wales.
Welsh Labour hates comparing Welsh stats with other countries – preferring the ‘north of Watford’ mentality. Wales pays really cracking/whacking great salaries and perks to its university VCs – yet the #2 university in Wales with well over 10,000,000 invested in supercomputer hardware (Institution of Life Sciences) doesn’t have a single meaningful patent issued in the USA.
Just some while back a few MIT guys messing with a simple computer simulation (that did not require anything like the supercomputer kit at ILS at Swansea University) discovered a much faster way of recharging batteries – and boy, this is not ‘father of xyzee’ stuff, but boy did they file some patents on it.
How is it that MIT with fewer students than Cardiff University has 90 times more issued patents in the USA than Wales’s #1 University? Over 9,000% difference – yes, nine thousand percent difference). How so? Why is Wales sitting on a goldmine of Welsh IP (Simon Gibson – the chief executive of Wesley Clover) yet does next to nothing meaningful in terms of JCPs?
How so?
This to my mind is borderline evil – because it hits Welsh families VERY HARD. Very hard because they don’t have decent paying jobs; Very hard because some are compelled to pull their children out of the communities. I know what it’s like to be poor, to be born into a homeless Welsh family, and consequently grow up in some pretty rough estates in Wales and in London (via council house exchange).
There is no need for this – and yet it is happening in Wales under the very eyes of Ieuan Wyn Jones (Deputy First Minister) and yet Wales gives its university VCs fantastic salaries and empowers, yes empowers, academic empire building at the opportunity cost of not filing JCPs – job creating patents.
So you dont think open government is a good thing the Peter
Nowhere in this post is that conclusion stated, hinted at or even implied. I am in favour of open government. I think you need to read posts before commenting.