The Western Mail report this morning that:

A MUCH-HERALDED project aimed at getting councils to work together has collapsed, throwing into jeopardy the Assembly Government’s strategy to avoid huge public sector job cuts.

Nearly half the local authorities in the country were originally involved in discussions over the South-East Wales Shared Services Project, which was intended to save millions of pounds by getting councils to collaborate across a range of functions.

But after years of meetings and reports the project has now folded with the participating authorities unable to agree on a way forward

Savings of some £2 Million a year were identified by PricewaterhouseCoopers from the South-East Wales Shared Services Project.  But plans to pool human resources, payroll and training service among ten Councils collapsed with “authorities unable to agree on a way forward”.

In July 2006 the Beecham Review gave Councils five years the work together of face reorganisation.  By my calculations they have a year left…

Any glance at the selections to replace retiring AMs will show that local candidates have been chosen: Mike Hedges in Swansea East and David Rees in Aberavon are recent examples.  In Cardiff West and Cardiff South the constituency party has opted for people who have track records as Councillors in the area.

In the Westminster selections too locals have been selected in target seats: Susan Elan Jones in Clwyd South, Ronnie Hughes in Aberconwy, Nick Smith in Blaenau Gwent are examples.   There are some exceptions in the Vale of Glamorgan and Carmarthen East where they’ve broken the mold and gone for someone from the constituency next door.

There aren’t many exceptions to the ‘locals only’ rule.  It is understandable that party members in Islwyn resent the fact that the shortlist has been drawn up by the central party, but perhaps they should ask Don Touhig why he decided to make his announcement so late in the day?

I believe that the premium placed on ‘local’ candidates is too strong.  As membership declines local activists become increasingly unrepresentative of the communities they are drawn from.  They often look to select someone in their own mould and those who don’t fit the bill are seen as a threat. 

The selection rules are now heavily stacked in favour of local activists.  It used to be possible for an ‘outsider’ to be able to appeal to the wider membership by making a game changing speech at a branch meeting.  But now aspirant candidates aren’t allowed to address members directly until the final shortlisting meeting – by which point votes are often committed.  It is a process which disadvantages women in particular.

From the little I know about Islwyn politics it seems that there are other forces at work which has led to the resignation of the four local activists.  That’s not to dismiss them.  But a narrative which presents a mighty party machines parachuting in candidates to the disadvantage of local candidates is way off the mark.

Its unanimous report on press standards accuses Rupert Murdoch’s senior executives of concealing the truth about the extent of illegal phone hacking by journalists on the News of the World.   The cross-party committee of MPs found that “a culture undoubtedly did exist in the newsroom of News of the World and other newspapers at the time which at best turned a blind eye to illegal activities such as phone-hacking and blagging and at worst actively condoned it”. 

But the Press Complaints Commission had already looked into the same allegations that the committee examined and cleared the tabloid.

The PCC had rushed out a report purporting to exonerate the News of the World that took the paper’s claims of innocence at face value. “We find the conclusions in the PCC’s November report simplistic and surprising. It has certainly not fully, or forensically, considered all the evidence” the MPs concluded.

It goes on to describe the PCC as ‘toothless’, but fails to recommend much to really sharpen its teeth.

There are many villains in this tale.  The need for change seems irrefutable.  There’s lots of political noise and indignation, but no will to take on the press.

At a Bevan Foundation conference recently, Prof. Duncan Lewis concluded that bullying is ‘complex, messy and open to multiple interpretations’.  He emphasised that bullying – as opposed to unpleasant behaviour – is persistent, is about power, is negative and it escalates.  Shouting,  or being hauled over the coals for poor work, isn’t necessarily bullying – some of the worst instances of bullying involve the silent treatment.  It also has to be recognised that claims of bullying are also sometimes made by people who are looking for a quick jibe against their employer.  

Good employers - which surely includes the civil service - have in place anti-bullying policies as well as grievance procedures that staff who feel they are being bullied can invoke.  The test of whether bullying has taken place is scrutiny through the proper processes.  No doubt we will never know whether working conditions in No. 10 constituted ‘bullying’ or were just robust as you would expect them to be. 

Whatever, Andrew Rawnsley has certainly had better publicity for his book than he dared dream of, while those who do suffer bullying are left no clearer about what is acceptable and what they should do about it.

At a meeting in Plaid Cymru’s conference in Cardiff Holtham disarmingly pulled apart many of the assumptions of his hosts.  Every time Helen Mary Jones or Dafydd Wigley lit a flame of hope, Holtham gently placed his fingers on the wick and extinguished it.

A fair share for Wales?  You’ll be lucky.  Though Wales is £300m under-funded by his calculations the Treasury say that’s within the margin of error and would quickly disappear with a different set of assumptions.  But the real problem is that using the same calulation Scotland gets £4.2bn-a-year more than it would if every part of the UK was treated the same as an English region.  With the SNP running strong the Treasury won’t consider change: ”If you think they’re going to change that, forget it” (quotes courtesy of Tom Bodden).

A fairer income tax regime in Wales?  Not on your nelly. The high earners would flee across the border: ”You would get virtually no revenue from the upper rate of income tax and if you raise it too far you would probably lose it…If you want to maximise revenue you would cut the upper rate of income tax, [and] put a penny on basic rate…How you explain that to the Welsh electorate I don’t know.”

How about a tax on natural resources then?  Small change.  Even if you could overcome the barriers a tax on water exported from Wales would only raise about £30 Million a year – and the Treasury would probably deduct it from the Welsh block in any event.   Not worth the grief.

But Helen Mary Jones refused to be sidetracked, this simply confirms that Wales needs to flex our muscles more she said.  The Scots have shown that extra support for the SNP gives the country greater leverage (though Plaid’s affection for the SNP may not last long if there’s a hung Parliament.  Dafydd Wigley said they’d be working at cross purposes and should hold separate negotiations with the Tories).

Helen Mary went on to say that the Conservatives might not mind “annoying the voters of Scotland” because they have so few votes there.  But I don’t buy that.  My reading of the Conservatives is that they see the generous Barnett settlement for Scotland as a price worth paying for keeping the Union together.

But Gerald Holtham did give leave his audience with some cause for hope. The Calman Commission in Scotland suggested extending the tax-raising powers on the grounds of accountability.  Without a stake in revenue raising the Executive will have too easy an excuse to blame London for not providing sufficient funds.  The UK Treasury have accepted his argument.  “That’s boxed me in” Holtham explained.  ‘How can I not recommend tax raising powers now’ he mused…

Apart from the obligatory house in Pontcanna (though the boundaries are edging wider these days), and the second home in Pembrokeshire, what else is on the checklist for joining the crachach?

Here’s a start, feel free to add your own:

1. A Kyffin Williams original, naturally
2. A copy of the Welsh Encyclopedia
3. A Melyn Tregwynt blanket
4. A fondness for skiing (can’t beat a slippery slope)

Anything else?

A very thoughtful man, he was the one who effectivley made Rhodri Morgan’s Governments hang together  – ideologically and organisationally.  The Professor of social policy at Cardiff University gave a short lecture to the Labour Grassroots ginger group at the end of January which I have just come across on the web

It is an interesting read on a number of levels but the point that struck me particularly was his fear that without strong political leadership over how to deal with spending cuts the civil service will lead the way in crudely slashing schemes they were never keen on in the first place.  Or as Prof Drakeford put it “unless we are prepared with our own democratically driven way of dealing with reduced budgets, the machine will take it over”.  

He warns there will be:

 -       An assault on the entitlement agenda: much despised as low populism, rather than the production of strong social capital which we know it to be;

-       An assault on jobs: a firm belief that the public sector is bloated here in Wales, with lots of easy opportunities to slim back and make room for the private entrepreneurial spirits which we have held back for so long;

-       An assault on  public services: those creators of dependency and sullen apathy which save people from the consequences of their own behaviour and teach them that, no matter what havoc they wreak in their own lives, and those of others, the state will always be along to bale them out.

In particular he foresees a temptation to engage in displacement activity by going after local authorities: “there are voices, at the Assembly, who believe that the solution will be found in an attack on local government in Wales”, he warned.  I half agree with his advocacy of PR for Local Government allied with a new settlement centred on “binding agreement around a small number of key outcomes”.  But can’t help observe that this has been done in Scotland without much effect on the culture of Local Government.  Anyway, that’s an aside.

Here is a man who intimately knows the way the Assembly Government works, at both a political and official level.  His warning about the ‘machine’ taking over is a sober one.  There are undeniable failings of delivery right across the Government in Wales.  Ministers need to deal with that and not let their officials get away with sloppy work.  But capacity problems pose challenges and there is clearly a fear that when the spending cuts bite and the fog of war descends, the civil service will have the perfect cover to cut the big schemes they never wanted (free bus passes, free prescriptions) rather than deal with the inefficiencies and inadequacies throughout the system.

So we must rely on “our own democratically driven way” to ensure the response to the cuts is driven by political priorities and not administrative prejudices.  But Mark Drakeford doesn’t seem confident that this will happen…

The Report talks about ‘positive attachment between a young child and the care giver’:

“Early, secure attachments contribute to the growth of a broad range of competencies, including the self esteem, self-efficacy and positive social skills that are associated with better educational, social and labour market outcomes in later life.”

In his BBC News interview Professor Marmot was more direct about what this actually meant:

Every child needs to be nurtured at an early stage.
“In one study, mothers were asked whether it was important to cuddle and talk to a child.
“I would have thought every mother would have said yes to that – but not all of them did.
“That made my hair stand on end.
“And it follows the social gradient – women from less well-off families are less likely to see this as important.
“But then by the age of three, these children had more behavioural problems and worse cognitive skills.
“Then they have less readiness to learn, and the problems continue.”

We know from research on Romanian orphans that by the age of three neglected children have irreversible brain damage on MRI scans. This fits with my experience as a Valleys general practitioner although the picture is much more complex: whilst it is common to find infants and toddlers strapped in pushchairs and baby seats on a home visit at some addresses, it is rare to find emotionally cold, show home-tidy and socially isolated homes in those streets.

Over the years I have got very angry with commentators who have told me that the answer to Merthyr’s problems is to make everyone middle class with middle class values. I have also been rebuked by Health Visitors and Social Workers when I have used sitting with an infant and reading as a measure of good parenting. How do those of us concerned with addressing these complex challenges bring about change sensitively and effectively and break the generational cycle of inadequately cwtched infants?

Buy-As-You-View likes to stress its respectable credentials, sponsoring the Inspire Wales awards, promoting ‘green’ working and most astonishing of all talking up its ‘corporate social responsibility’.  There is another spin, of course – blatant profiteering from low income households.  Inspire Wales? More like rip off Wales.

All three bidders for the £6 Million pilot to provide Welsh news for the third channel promised to democratise news provision by opening up news gathering to the masses.  Who needs professionals when you can have amateurs? 

Of course it could all go pear shaped as the Tories have promised to unpick any contract signed if they win the General Election.

But regardless of the outcome an important principle has been recognised.  Wales needs more than the BBC to provide a ‘plurality’ of news coverage, and if the market can’t provide it then the State has a role.

But clearly it is not just broadcasting that presents a problem.  Less than 1% of the population now read the Western Mail.  The business model of the regional press is imploding across the world.   As the Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger noted in his very interesting Cudlipp lecture “the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place”.

On Monday Sir Martin Sorrell, one of the biggest buyers of advertising in the world, suggested that governments might have to consider subsidising newspapers such as the Guardian to maintain a diversity of editorial viewpoints if their losses reached a point that would force them to close.

After all if banks are too important to fail why not newspapers?

I have little doubt that ‘hyper-local’ news will flourish in the digital age – as Rob Williams discussed in an excellent posting over on Wales Home.  My worry is the all-Wales level.  How can we sustain a democratic tier in the face of a profound information deficit?

As I’ve argued here before there’s a case for looking at a Welsh equivalent of the Scott Trust – the not for profit foundation that owns the Guardian Media Group. A public interest company underwritten by the taxpayer that could safeguard Welsh news.