Gold medal winning hypocrisy

Paralympic legend Tanni Grey-Thompson has appeared in The Independent, giving answers to a few questions. The questions range from boring hardly newsworthy ones on Scottish independence to topical question about Tom Daly's sexuality, real hard hitting journalism. What caught my eye though was what Cardiff born Tanni said about devolution.

"It doesn’t make sense to do something differently in England to the other home countries."

In other words, devolution doesn't make sense to Tanni. My hypocrisy alarm did buzz slightly because Tanni had already answered a question about Cymraeg and she sounds quite pleased that children are learning Welsh in Wales. Now since they don't learn Welsh in England, Scotland or the six counties you might naturally start to question if Tanni really does believe that it doesn't make sense to do things differently. But then we did things differently before devolution so I decided to have a little google.

I know the feeling Jackie, my mind is full of it too. Share via twitter | facebook

The exact search phrase I used was "tanni grey thompson devolution", which any hard hitting journalist could have typed in. About the 12th link down the search results was a (.pdf) from a Sport Wales group in which Tanni chaired.

On page 5 of the report the following statement is made.

"the development of devolution has offered a massive opportunity to look forward, and to offer something different, visionary and transformational which would help Wales’s ambition to be a world-leading nation in sport and physical activity."

So here we have the hypocrisy, on one hand we have a Tanni led group outlining the "massive opportunity" that devolution offers us in order to be a "world-leading nation". And on the other hand "It doesn’t make sense to do something differently in England to the other home countries."

It's also worth pointing out that Tanni's official title is "Baroness Grey-Thompson, of Eaglescliffe in the County of Durham", I've looked on google maps and I can't find that anywhere in Wales. It must be one of those places in that UK nation that doesn't have devolution.

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The West Anglia Question

You may have heard about "The West Lothian Question". It dates back to 1886 in one form or another but it's present incarnation (and catchy name) stems from 1977 when a Labour MP from West Lothian asked the following question.

Original pic from here

Government Expenditure and Revenue Wales

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Up in Scotland they have the GERS report. It stands for Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland. It is published on the Scottish Governments website and based on UK Public Sector Finance Statistics that are published in January.

How to e-petition the National Assembly for Wales

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Anyone, anywhere who has access to the internet can start an e-petition with the petitions committee for the National Assembly of Wales. The only criteria you need to meet is that the petition falls into one of the 20 devolved areas.

These are as follows.

The numbers game

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On the mission statement for this site I state the following...

“It's become quite apparent to myself that this United Kingdom is anything but united. There is a focus on building up London and the South East to the detriment of every other "region" of the UK. It doesn't matter whether it is a Conservative or Labour government in charge, the end result of a weaker Wales is always reached by the time they are voted out.”

The Crown Estate

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In a previous article I briefly mentioned The Crown Estate. Or rather, how MP Jonathon Edwards raised a bill in Parliament to have energy generation (and The Crown Estate) devolved to Wales. 25 of the 26 Labour MPs and 8 out of the 8 Conservative MPs that represent Wales voted no (or stayed in bed, either way they betrayed us all).

Clearly proving that Labour and the Conservatives are against devolution. No matter what their minions in the Assembly say.

What now for Labour voters?

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Welsh poltics used to be so simple. The average person in Wales just turned up at their polling station on election day, put a cross in the box next to Labour and went home safe in the knowledge they have played their part in the democratic act of "not letting those bloody Tories in".

Even after devolution and the formation of the Welsh Assembly the only thing that really changed for the average voter in Wales is that they were now able to vote for Labour twice as often.