Tom Bodden of the Daily Post has highlighted Ann Jones’ campaign on the use of tips to make up the minimum wage by several restaurants that have premises in Cardiff Bay. Apparently the chain Tragus, which includes Café Rouge, Strada and Bella Italia uses tips paid on credit cards to subsidise staff pay. As a result of this I have already encouraged some Lib Dem staff not to visit these places, an argument that has been made far easier by the opening of a very good Chinese all you can eat.

Ieuan Wyn Jones has been getting increasing criticism this week. Clive Betts points out that much of this is coming from our party, including the attack this week from Kirsty due to the fact that his department has lost the highest number of electronic items, including laptops and blackberrys. We still don’t know how much information has been lost, which could potentially be far more serious than the cost of physically replacing the laptops. Anything held by this department could potentially contain commercially sensitive information, including Ieaun’s solitare score.

After a week of being knocked out of the news by the results of the Euro elections last week, expenses reappears as an issue, with the Cynical Dragon providing a handy ‘list of bastards’ who’ve been accused of some of the stranger claims. David Cornock also takes a look at the expenses of two Welsh members with equally dodgy claims, David Davies’ payment of £2000 to his Dad is one, but as Alwyn Ap Huw points out, if Huw Irranca Davies realised he could claim for Whiskey, why did he only bother once?

Glyn Davies thinks that it’s important that the Conservative party keeps it’s promises. One problem, they’ve promised they’ll change and not be the nasty evil right wing Tory bastards that they’ve always been, but as Glyn highlights, they want to help the rich keep their wealth and let people kill furry things. It does seem to me that these promises may be slightly contradictory.

Tomorrow will see the decision taken on the new Speaker. Paul Flynn MP and Peter Black both report that the Labour whips are running a campaign for Margaret Beckett. Betting site Betfair now list her as favourite at just over 2-1. Should she win, I suspect this will cause quite a flurry on the opposition benches. It’s the kind of action that could see the end to hundreds of years of non-partisan tradition from the speaker.

Guerrilla Welsh-Fare continues his commitment to the line that the Lib Dems are split. Despite a lack of any sort of evidence or reasoning, he seems to think that we must be because…..well, I think that’s as far as his argument goes. This weeks reasoning is that Peter Black has announced that he may seek to change party policy on prescription charges, which is different to what Jenny Randerson did when she held the health portfolio. I hear rumours that next week he will base a similar post on the fact that Mick and Eleanor don’t like the same sort of sandwiches.

I couldn’t possibly think of a reason why Carwyn Jones has spent time travelling the country talking to members. It’s almost like there is some sort of contest coming up that he hopes to win. I guess we still don’t know if there will be a contest or a coronation for Labour, but over the summer things will start to seriously heat up.

The three Dewi’s of Politics Cymru have posted another video pod cast. I have to say it is pretty well done and far more watchable than some of the Welsh programmes produced by the BBC or ITV. However, they start slagging off West Brom within the first two minutes, so I’ve decided I hate them regardless. Anyway, aside from that, they discuss the Housing LCO and Scotland.

Sweet and Tender Hooligan picks up on the facebook and twitter campaign to piss off the Daily Mail. In an online poll on their website, 90% of respondents claimed they wanted to see Gypsies go to the front of the queue in the health service. The response of this from the Daily Mail was to remove the poll from the site.  Not that they’re facists are anything….

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