Did your MP vote against bombing Syria?

What a difference a year makes. In September 2014 the London parties were desperate to vote for another war in Iraq and Labour MPs were ordered to vote in favour of bombing Iraq. In December 2015 Labour's new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had no choice but to allow his MPs to have a free vote because he was naive enough to fill his shadow cabinet with so many war mongers. We should keep this in mind before back slapping all those Labour MPs who voted against bombing Syria.

Since war is such an exciting subject the EBC's David Cornock has actually provided a full list of all of Wales' MPs and how they voted.

When you are bored with killing your own people, why not bomb another country? Share via twitter | facebook

Scumbag Labour - Lord Peter Hain

It has just been announced that serial trough guzzler, Peter Hain, has been made a Lord. As soon as I heard this I knew that it wouldn't take long to show that Peter, like his best mate Kinnock, was against the Lords until he got the chance to become one.

What I didn't realise was that I would find an example that was both so recent and on his own website.

“The Lords are an archaic anomaly which fuels disillusionment with British politics. It exists purely on a democratic deficit which has been allowed to evolve unchecked for centuries.” - Peter Hain

Lord Peter Hain - Share via twitter | facebook

'Battle of the Spring Gardens'

The annual Llanelli Riots March was held on Saturday 15th August. It's a commemoration of the 1911 strike which saw soldiers, who were sent in by Winston Churchill, murder two local men.

Every year the organisers have a theme and this years theme was austerity. The march, led by the Cambria Band, sets off from the train station at midday and heads up to the house where the young men were brought after being shot. After a bit of panto, with the organiser barking orders at the crowd and the crowd responding with boos, the march continues back into town where a rally is held at the sunken gardens. After the rally the procession heads to the cemetery where the murdered men were buried.

Me and my flag - pic from the Llanelli Herald

If you're still undecided

I don't know about you but for me the most important thing for an MP representing a Welsh constituency to do is to actually turn up at their place of work when they are discussing Wales in order to vote on matters concerning Wales and the people of Wales.

I used the website theyworkforyou.com in order to look at the three MPs in the Plaid Cymru target seats of Llanelli, Ynys Môn and Ceredigion. I've then looked at the three MPs who held seats for Plaid Cymru at the last election in order to see what the difference was.

The difference is stark - Click to enlarge

Leighton Andrews - Tweeted / Deleted

I see that Rhondda AM Leighton Andrews has been a busy boy over the last few days. First he was busy tweeting about the made up smear the London parties and Daily Telegraph launched on Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. And then he was busy deleting all the tweets when he finally realised that the whole smear was fake.

To read about the smear in more detail you should check out Wings over Scotland, but here's a quick summary. The Telegraph ran a front page story claiming that someone had been told that someone else had been told by the French Ambassador that Nicola Sturgeon had told the French Ambassador she wanted David Cameron to remain as PM. This is despite the fact the SNP have promised that should the Tories try and form a government they will vote against this.

In what should surely stand as a textbook example of the growing irrelevance of print media compared with the instantaneous nature of the internet the story was debunked before the papers even hit the shops.

Deleted tweets from here. Share via twitter

There is no such thing as Welsh Labour

By now we're all familiar with Labour in Wales being called Welsh Labour or Plaid Llafur, we're familar with people like Carwyn Jones even being touted as their leader. But I wanted to find out if there was any truth to the claims that there wasn't really such a thing as Welsh Labour and that they were merely a branch office of London Labour.

Off I trotted to the Electoral Commission to run a search*. I left only the tick in the political party section of the 'entity type' and ran a search for Wales. Only one result came back.

Parties with the word 'Wales' in their name

Scumbag Labour - Tony Blair's Blood Money

You all remember Tony Blair, the man who should be standing trial for war crimes but is instead jetting around the world giving speeches in exchange for oodles of cash? Of course you do. Well he has decided to donate some of his blood money to 106 'lucky' candidates around the UK. And thanks to LabourList I can show you exactly who the receipents in Wales are. And yes, one of my funky maps would be a great way of highlighting who Blair has bought off. But first here's the list of seats in Wales and Scotland who are getting Blair's bonus.

List originally published here. Share via twitter | facebook

Scumbag Labour - Peter Hain's austerity

Real life troll and supporter of Welsh apartheid, Peter Hain recently sat on his hands and did nothing whilst the rest of his mates in Labour voted for the Tories bill to make an extra £30 billion worth of cuts.

Despite abstaining (a cowards way out) he then started mouthing off about how bad austerity was to anyone in the London controlled Labour supporting media that would listen to him.

But it gets even better, now the scumbag is planning on speaking at an anti-austerity event. It shouldn't suprise you that he has a book coming out. After all he was trying to drum up sales of his Mandela books whilst his friend was on his death bed.

It's like he wanted one more scumbag post. Share via twitter | facebook

Parachutes and donkeys - Neath

Congratulations to Christina Rees on becoming the next MP for Neath. As most of us should now be aware the trough diving Peter Hain has decided to hand the parachute he used when he was given the ultra safe seat of Neath to a Bridgend Red Tory. I think we can all agree that at least Bridgend is much closer than Kenya.

Some might think it's a little premature to be congratulating Christina but if you look at the history of the donkey vote in Neath you'll realise it's entirely justified.

All in all it's just another donkey in Wales. Share via twitter | facebook

Scumbag Labour - Best Day Ever

Picture the scene, you're an MP and you have been an MP for 23 years. You were parachuted into an area you don't care about and this is now your job for life. Alternatively if you prefer to pretend to be an AM then let's pretend you've been an AM for an area for 15 years.

As an MP / AM you get to open things and meet people. Sometimes it's a shop, perhaps a park or if you're really lucky you get to open up a food bank.

This is the same face Hain pulls when receiving his expenses. Share via twitter | facebook

Scumbag Labour - The Fucking Welsh

Here's one from the archives that I only came across recently and even that was by chance. I had been asked on the facebook page to post the quote about the African visitor to Wales who stated that colonialism was more entrenched in Wales than any country he'd been to. After a google I found an extract from the book 'Neighbours from Hell' by Mike Parker.

At the bottom of the page was the quote, it isn't credited to anyone specific just a journalist from Africa who was sent over to Wales to cover the devolution referendum in 1997.

An African journalist, Cardiff 1997. Share via twitter | facebook