Welsh Government Green Investment Bank bid update

Following the many tweets started by Vaughan Roderick and my blog post, it was good to see momentum kept up by Owen at the Oggy Bloggy Ogwr and his comprehensive take on the Welsh Government’s hatchet job of a bid to secure the Bank for Cardiff.


But i have been surprised that there hasn’t been more sustained political reaction especially since there are local elections in a few weeks, this along with the mess at AWEMA should surely be appearing the opposition's local election literature.

Yes Tory leader Andrew RT Davies raise the bid at FMQ’s before the Easter break but considering he had an open goal he was the one who ended up getting slapped down by Carwyn Jones and the First Minister’s half hearted apology so eagerly reported by the welsh media for spelling and grammar meant an end to their interest but it. However the apology hardly makes up for embarrassment caused and the further dent to the Welsh Government’s reputation among voters, business leaders and other Government’s in the UK.

The Lib Dems Eluned Parrott did ask for an urgent question on Tuesday but it was unsurprisingly refused by the Welsh Government, but Kirsty Williams went on the pre-prepared dental survey at FMQ’s and despite strong condemnation by Jonathan Edwards MP and Simon Thomas AM on the weekend, Plaid’s new leader Leanne Wood went on renewables at FMQ’s on Tuesday.

All 3 opposition leaders can ask the First Minster questions on the same subject, but last week highlights the lack of shared interests and co-ordination that currently exists among the Parties and their leaders and how easy it is for Carwyn to pick them off one by one, to be effective and for the sake of the health of welsh democracy the need to find a way to work together or Carwyn and his Ministers will keep getting away with things like this.

However Labour may have successfully swept this under the carpet, but business partners included in Government’s bid such as Lloyds Banking Group and Cardiff University and Labour’s favourite anchor company Tata Steel among other have now seen the bid and I fully expect this matter to be raised when they next meet Carwyn Jones or Edwina Hart and ask some uncomfortable questions asked about the poor standards within the Welsh Government and Civil Service that the media and opposition seem unable or unwilling to do.

It’s also been noticeable that we haven’t heard a peep from Business Minister Edwina Hart or her Department on Cardiff’s bid, who even before the bid farce was being considered for another role after extensive lobbying by the business community because of her inability to communicate, her lack of understand of her portfolio and general attitude and hostility towards the business community.

Labour will successfully shift the focus to the Tory/Lib Dem car crashes of last week, the pasty tax, petrol shortage disruption and the granny tax for the foreseeable future, but they need to remember that not everyone has such short memories and attention spans and what happened with the Green Investment Bank bid and AWEMA will come back to bite them eventually.Any source