Rewarding Failure

It typical of a lacklustre and mostly irrelevant Welsh Assembly campaign that two days before the vote things start to get a bit interesting

The final leaders debate, the first debate I have seen or heard during this campaign was dire, full of platitudes and hackneyed old clichés that people continue to fall for, I could on, but Denis Campbell over at UK Progressive has a great take on last night’s charade worth a read if you haven’t already.

Then this morning we learnt of a couple of incidents that might affect the results in two Valleys seats

The first Huw Lewis, Labour AM for Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney accepted a £10,000 donation from Millar Argent, the owners of Ffos Y Fran Open Cast Mine to his leadership campaign, the same Ffos Y Fran that has done so much to damage to local resident and the town.

The most damming quote is from Alyson Austin, of Residents against Ffos-y-Fran said: "We have had no support from him at all. We had a job to get him to come out of the Welsh Assembly to receive a petition we had against the development"

My initial thought was what a pity this has only seen the light of day this week, but then again it will probably make little difference to the result in Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney on Thursday.

Then we have Labour flexing their muscles in Caerphilly where the race between current AM Jeff Cuthbert and Plaid Cymru's Ron Davies remains tight with a few days left. Plaid Cymru has accused Labour of taking its placards down and blithely a Labour MP Wayne admitted that he had.

The sheer fact that Labour feels it can ask a resident to take down opposition party placards without any valid reason and with total impunity should ring alarms bells with voters and not just in Caerphilly, but this is what happens when voters continue to reward self serving Labour candidates at every Welsh election.

I said back last year that Caerphilly would a dirty fight and it’s proving to be true, it seems that challenging Labour in its heartlands remains as difficult as ever, what a sad indictment of 21st Century Wales.

Finally of more concern is the BNP who seems to be everywhere, both yesterday in my street and today outside a I meeting went to, they were out with their loud hailers, urging people to vote for them – if the parties do nothing else after May 5th they need to tackle this head on because Wales has enough problems without giving the BNP traction to spread their ignorance, lies and hatred.Any source