MEANWHILE OVER THE BRIDGE...

Interestingly enough, while Labour has problems with devolution in Wales, it is beginning to look like this is not the case over the bridge. In England, Labour has promised English cities more powers over transport, housing and employment to help close the "productivity gap" with London. If elected at the next Westminster General election, the Labour Party has pledged to hand £20 billion pounds to councils to spend on skills, back-to-work schemes and infrastructure, so says current Labour leader Ed Miliband. Ed has suggested that the Con Dem government has missed opportunities to give English towns and cities the economic levers they needed to generate new jobs. This announcement followed a review by the former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, a future Labour government would invite every local authority, local enterprise partnership and university (in England) to work together in partnership with local businesses to bid for resources. Apparently the doubling of existing devolved funding would amount to the "biggest devolution of powers to towns and cities in a hundred years." Perhaps the party formerly known as New Labour is finally beginning to speak for England. 

MAKING THE CASE FOR LIVING WAGE

For too long economic development in Wales focused on maximising our potential as a ‘low wage economy’ this short sighted strategy was never going to work in a globalised world where manufacturing and assembly work could be easily completed in the developing world. The two weeks from Monday 24^th March onwards are ‘Fair Pay Fortnight’ and Plaid has rightly repeated the call for the implementation of a living wage to lift thousands people out of poverty. The economic weakness of our economy has been highlighted by TUC research which shows the expanding pay gap between Wales and London. New research from the TUC shows that between 2000 and 2013, the pay gap between the top 10% of earners in London and the bottom 10% in Wales rose by 9.8%. Our economy has periodically struggled because of a combination of poor decision, poverty of ambition and ill-thought out public procurement policies none of which has helped when it comes to sustainable economic development. Plaid Cymru’s priority rightly focuses on rebooting and redeveloping the Welsh economy, part of this can be achieved by transforming Wales from a low-wage economy to a higher wage economy by developing high-skilled, well-paid jobs. 

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE?

Thames Water, the UK's biggest water firm, has paid no corporation tax this financial year not to mention making £145 million pounds in pre-tax profit. The company said that it had delayed paying corporation tax due to investments in its infrastructure amounting to £1billion pounds a year between 2010 and 2015. They blamed the government as ‘the government's tax system allows us to delay, not avoid, payment of tax based on how much we invest." Last year Thames Water increased bills by 6.7% last year and its revenues rose 6% to £1.8 billion pounds.

Meanwhile Dwr Cymru Welsh Water put £338 million pounds into capital projects in the past year, some £76 million pounds more than in 2012. Dwr Cymru Welsh Water has three million customers, and has kept bills to the same level in real terms as in 2001. Research by Cardiff University claims the company is worth £1billion pounds a year to the Welsh economy. Its financial results come in a different form to companies with shares on the stock market. As the company is owned by the not-for-profit company Glas Cymru means that savings or efficiencies are ploughed back into Dwr Cymru or used to keep bills as low as possible.

Glas Cymru was founded 12 years ago, and works from the premise that having a public service company, which is a monopoly, being run on the basis of profit maximisation for shareholders does not work in the customers' interest. The Glas Cymru non-profit model of ownership could work elsewhere in other businesses and industries including rail franchises and energy developments.

Research published by Cardiff Business School said that Dwr Cymru contributes £1 billion pounds to the Welsh economy every year. Basically for  every £1 spent by the company, another 56p is generated for the rest of the Welsh economy. The research also noted that the water regulator Ofwat saying that between 2009/10 and 2014/15 Dwr Cymru customers face the lowest increase in average household bills of all water and sewerage companies in England and Wales.

On top of the £338 million pounds spent on infrastructure last year, the company is already committed to spending another £650 million pounds over the next two years, which could result in jobs for around 1,000 construction workers. The company has also reported that their financial reserves amount to £1.6 billion pounds, that's a tenfold increase compared with 2001 when Dwr Cymru was taken over by Glas Cymru. Dwr Cymru's borrowing or gearing has also come down. It now stands at 63% compared with 65% last year and 93% in 2001.

A CRIME IS A CRIME

Let’s not waste any time trying to find anything logical in this brutal murder in Woolwich – there is nothing logical to be found. This evil act  is utterly unjustifiable and a life has been lost. As Billy Bragg said on Thursday, “The barbarous murder of an innocent man on the streets of London yesterday is shocking. What he did for a living cannot be used to justify what happened to him”. Such unjustifiable violent acts periodically emanate from the more fanatical corners of some sections of our communities. As has been said elsewhere the Woolwich murder has no more to do with British government policy than the Boston Marathon had to do with Chechnya. Terrorists and want-to-be terrorists or jihadists thrive on coverage in the media; the perpetrators of the brutal murder on the streets of Woolwich don’t deserve the oxygen of publicity. Violent people will often try to justify their actions by claiming that they are "political" we don’t need to do it for them. They will only be encouraged to do so if politicians appear to agree with them over their misguided motivations. The police and security services are best placed to prevent it, not the politicians. Extremists and fanatics may be attracted to use violence; we can and should treat the perpetrators of such crimes as criminals. Hannah Arendt’s book ’The Banality of Evil’ about the trial of holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, detailed the relationship between idiocy and evil – this same relationship can be found in the history and justifications of past jihadist attacks which have nothing to do with religion. Whatever their claimed cause there can is no justification for their actions. The life of Fusilier Drummer Lee Rigby has been lost in the most brutal of circumstances and a family left in mourning for their lost loved one. We would do well to remember that above everything else.

SO MUCH HOT AIR...

By the time the dust settles around the draft Energy Bill (rolled out at Westminster on the 22nd May) the best that can probably be said about it is that was a missed opportunity because of the failure to include the devolution of energy planning powers to the National Assembly. Plaid’s Jonathan Edwards MP, put forward legislation (Electricity Generation (Wales) Bill ) to devolve energy generation planning powers to Wales (last January), but that idea was voted down by Labour in Wales and Conservative MPs in Westminster – so much for standing up for Wales! At present, the Welsh Government only has powers to decide on energy proposals up to 50MW on land and 1MW on sea. One direct result of this state of affairs is that the recent decision to grant permission for the Pen y Cymoedd windfarm in south Wales (which will generate an estimated 250MW) was made by the Secretary of State in London and not by the Welsh Government in Cardiff. Another result is that all the hot air generated by the Welsh First Minister on energy infrastructure development is largely meaningless as along as his colleagues in Labour in Wales (in Westminster) and their Conservative friends in London continue to refuse to allow our country to make its own energy decisions.