Chivenor Five-O

I daresay we've all done it at some time.  Scraped ourselves out of our salty bathing costumes and squeezed ourselves into damp dayclothes via a sandy towel and the back of a hatchback. 

There was quite a lot of that going on at Rest Bay yesterday, where the surf was up and hordes of athletic types dressed as sealions were making the most of it. As I stood there, wondering if it was as much fun as it looked, were they wondering what the crowd of people in macs was doing, gathered round the lifeboat station, glints of sunlight bouncing off the occasional mayorial chain?

The irony is, probably not. Yet a surfer's more likely to need search and rescue helicopter than most.  Yesterday, thanks to the determination of Porthcawl town councillor Sean Aspey, over a hundred people rallied to pledge their support for campaigners across the Bristol Channel, who have been fighting to retain search and rescue cover from RAF Chivenor.

Since the closure of Brawdy, South Wales - and a fair chunk of Mid Wales too - has looked to North Devon for this service. There are an average of 1000 search and rescue calls a year, with helicopters flying from sites all over the UK.  RAF Chivenor is by far the busiest, covering a quarter of all calls last year:  This year it's already covered over 300.  Half those calls are from Wales.  A third of them are for evenings and night-time assistance.  Over two million Welsh people can be very grateful to RAF Chivenor.

Two years ago, Labour's monumental cock-up over helicopter cover for Afghanistan meant that search and rescue crews were diverted from our UK bases to the warzone.  Quentin Davies, Labour MOD minister, tried to cover the shortfall at home with a PFI contract for new, but fewer, helicopters with the consortium Soteria. While the standard of cover was guaranteed, the extent of it wasn't, and Chivenor is having to consider halving its cover to just 12 hours.  Yet, at a cost of £6bn, there is no gurantee that part-time, part-privatised cover will cost any less than the existing arrangement.

A general election has, mercifully, stopped this process in its tracks, and the whole idea is being reviewed by the Coalition government.  I don't know if we're committed - aircraft carrier style - to this contract or not.  Or whether the chronic state of our finances threaten the service. Just don't go surfing after 6pm until we know.

Especially as surf dudes are coping with the loss of one of their other most gnarlacious champions, James MacArthur, who died this week.

For most of the '70s, Detective Williams prowled the streets of Hawaii's surf heaven in a gas guzzler, chasing baddies and popping into 4711s to buy hairspray for the great Kahuna, Steve McGarrett.

What he didn't do while he was there was throw a packet of Recital into his basket to cover his shame.  For, as you can see, MacArthur was a proud member of Gingers for Justice.  A fine organisation, which requires six-weekly donations via the hairdressers in order some of us to to maintain our membership.  Like his modern equivalent (that would be H from CSI:Miami), Detective Williams wasn't going to let a few freckles and lack of air conditioning put him off his mission to protect the national interest.

Similarly, I would be surprised if the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is bothered by those discriminatory remarks by Labour's Spokeperson for Equality.  But, Mr Alexander, for those of us who've had enough of Harriet Harman, please do us a favour.

Book her, Danno.

Denley Moor

We need a bit of rain.  For the garden, you know.  Well, I'm looking out of the window and it's so wet that I wouldn't be at all surprised if Poseidon popped by to borrow a cup of salt.  Just look at my ConDem Coalition roses.  Condemned indeed.  Planted in the spirit of goodwill and amity, they had flourished, despite their exposure to disapproving gusts from the south.  Now, thanks to the rain, they look like the victims of common assault and public order offences.   

Having sploshed back from the paper shop, wondering whether my Bronze Life Saving medal might belatedly be of value, I can see that United Utilities has responded to the soaking not with life rafts, but a hosepipe ban in the North West of England.  A part of Europe so rainy, I'm surprised anyone even has a hosepipe.  And - in case an overdose of A-level Wordsworth had you switching off at the sound of the word "Cockermouth" -  the location of some pretty awful floods last November.

Bizarrely, you are still permitted to fill your swimming pools and hot tubs.  Perhaps this exemption is some sort of World Cup consolation prize for all those Cheshire footballers and their WAGs.  You may also continue to hose down your dogs and cats, which, as far as I'm concerned, is clear proof that no-one at United Utilities has ever owned a cat. 

For we are, despite today's celestial bath-emptying, in the throes of a drought.  Journalists feel obliged to refer back to 1976, when the whole country was simmering away like a Vesta curry, too hot to worry about Uncle Jim and the forthcoming Great Debate on education.  Perhaps Michael Gove is hoping for the same weather to prevail in the early stages of this government.  (Ironically, a different sort of stubborn high pressure is affecting Powys County Council as its secondary school modernisation programme is slowly bringing communities to boiling point.)

In the Cynon Valley, that baking summer meant that mains water was shut off.  Kids, mams and dads on stop fortnight visited the standpipe daily, at pre-set times, with as many buckets as it took to fill the bath with cold water.  Now the South Wales valleys can give Cumbria a run for its money when it comes to abundant precipitation.  So you can imagine the topic of conversation when it was discovered that we were on rations but the rain-lite middle classes of Cardiff were wantonly enjoying the pleasures of running hot and cold. 

Liverpool was enjoying a decent water supply a hundred years ago, thanks to Lake Vyrnwy in Montgomeryshire. Severn Trent, which owns the reservoir and dam, is offering the surrounding 23,000 acres on long lease - the biggest land sale in Britain this year.  The reason given is that agricultural estate management is not its core business, which is true, but after 100 years, it will inevitably have built up a specialist knowledge of the estate which will be hard to match.  Over the years, I've acted on the sales and purchases of various properties on the estate, and have found Severn Trent pretty reasonable to deal with, which isn't always the case with trustees of large estates.

Perhaps the reason is more prosaic; even in this property-driven recession, agricultural land has maintained its value. Two years ago, Ofwat imposed its biggest fine ever on Severn Trent  - £35.8m - for fraudulently supplying incorrect data to the regulator. Ofwat's draft determination of Severn Trent business plan for the next five years required a net capital investment programme of £2.2bn plus an over-all reduction in bills of 8%.  A costly time for a private company in a Britain grappling with its deficit.

Regulatory consultations on the sale will begin soon.  Wales has notoriously sacrificed communities to safeguard English water supplies in the past.  Here's hoping a possible financial drought doesn't see history repeating itself.

In It For The Long Haul

Which is more surprising to watch?  Two men locked in unprecedented sporting combat in front of a disbelieving crowd, or two men locked in unprecedented political agreement in front of a disbelieving crowd? 

The Mahut-Isner match today (and yesterday....and tomorrow) is set to become a set question in pub quizzes for years to come.  Last year's Federer-Roddick match was enough to make anyone reach for their fingernails, but today's record-buster had me braving the depths of an old rucksack in the hope of finding a bit of Kendall's mint cake left over from that trip to Fort William some time before the kids were born.

Today's Wimbledon may have provided us with a marvellous spectacle of endurance, but there was very little sense of heart-stopping, winner-takes-it-all competition.  No murderous tribalism in the crowd.  Just an appreciation of two brave souls locked together in a piece of history, with tennis the ultimate winner. (I think I'd better give sport a miss tomorrow.  I'm coming over all cliches and sentimentality.)

The media, of course, is trying to create a partisan feud story on the back of the Budget.  The Montagues and Capulets in this contrived drama are the public and private sectors, and tonight we saw a dress rehearsal, courtesy of the BBC.  Well, you might have.  I was busy with my mint cake and my musings on whether Tim Henman is, in fact, the third Miliband.  I only caught a clip of "An Audience with Dave and Nick" on the news.

That clip showed Cameron and Clegg giving us the full Chuckle Brothers routine ("To me, to you"), fervently, unitedly defending a Budget which seemed to me to biff the rich, inconvenience most earners and discourage welfare dependency as a lifestyle choice.  But it also acknowledged the need for an incentive to work, acknowledged that lower paid workers may need a straightforward benefits bonus to be able to stay in work, and that small businesses - essential in Wales - need to be financially stable so that they can provide that work.

It's not, as the BBC audience in the news clip seemed to suggest, a crazed attack on the public sector.  There are some nutty and pointless jobs financed by the taxpayer, and they should just go.  But the majority of public sector jobs are valuable, including some in the backroom.  Where I have a problem is when I hear that the deficit isn't the fault of the teaching assistant, the paramedic or the social worker, so why are they punished for the greed of the banks? And the policies of Gordon Brown, I add, sotto voce.

Well, the shop assistant, the cleaner and plasterer weren't responsible for the deficit either.  In rural Wales especially, private sector workers have had poorer pay, conditions and job security than their public sector neighbours.   And while George Osborne gave us all due notice that "we are all in this together", many private sector workers were all in this together a lot sooner than others.  When the Chancellor confirmed last month that some government departments would have to anticipate significant budget cuts, my Whitehall butty opined that he didn't care what Osborne did as long as he left his pension alone.  He didn't seem to realise that many private sector workers don't even have a pension, let alone one with employer contributions.

Now, before this turns into a whine, and I play right into the Beeb's hands, let's be clear what I'm saying.  We are all in this together.  Like Cameron and Clegg, we have got to put our sense of grievance to one side, and get on the same side.  The public and private sectors are not at war with each other.  Our common enemy is the Labour legacy, and both sectors need to co-operate willingly to overcome that enemy. 

Two brave sectors locked together in a piece of history, with Britain the ultimate winner.

Planting Evidence

Like all hayfever sufferers, I've long objected to my reluctant role in the sex life of plants.  I am not a bee.  Nevertheless, like thousands of miserable pollen sniffers, I am a martyr to my role in the horticultural seraglio.  And while my generous sneezes may assist in the creation of a new generation of trees, I have not overlooked the irony that a considerable number of them will have to be chopped down and turned into paper in order to feed my seasonal Kleenex habit.

So forgive me if I am not moved by the plight of the lesser spotted meadow thistles of Tycroes.  Apparently these plucky little chaps have endured a century of unnatural and unwanted celibacy.  Every summer, just when things started to suggest it was time to lock the bedroom door, they were trampled underfoot by boisterous primary school children.  While this may be a situation familiar to anyone who owns one or more primary school child, the lesser spotted meadow thistle had had enough after a hundred years; the school playing field was dug up and moved to Waun Las Nature Reserve near the National Botanic Garden of Wales.  The smokily named Natasha de Vere, head of conservation at the Garden, reports that the thistles have exhausted their frustration, and that they have been blooming profusely.

As, it seems, has the profligacy of the Welsh Assembly Government.  Darren Millar - the AM, not the Eastenders character - has obtained figures which show that, in the last five years, £195,000 was spent on maintaining plants sited in WAG administrative offices. 

That's a lot of care and attention for leafy decoration.  But then, maybe these are the famous trees that Labour and Plaid think the money grows on.

Waiting Rooms

Son has done his arm in, sacrificed on the altar of the beautiful game - again.  This is what comes of not taking after his mother, preferring instead to ferret about in the biology cupboard for some sporty genes.  Last time this happened, I had to abandon the UK Shadow Minister of Agriculture and the Welsh Shadow Rural Affairs Minister on an official visit to Builth Wells, while I sat with him in A&E for what seemed like aeons, watching TV ads for crutch replacement services. I didn't realise they were offering double entendres on the NHS.

While we're sitting in the fracture clinic today, clocking up some more Hywel Dda Trust loyalty points, I can ponder on some other health news.  The first is the rumour that up to 16 further beds could be cut at the Princess of Wales hospital in Bridgend, some of which are used as overspill for A&E admissions.  As you may have gathered, A&E services are close to my heart, especially with the disappearance of minor injuries units in Powys - hence our 30 mile journey into another trust area every time Injury Boy decides to play lemming.  To think that bed closures are still being contemplated when senior managers are still being paid not to work after the trust mergers is enough to send everyone's blood pressure soaring.  And how much would that cost in free prescriptions?

The good news is that £1m has been confirmed for Breast Test Wales to replace its fleet of mobile screening units with seven new ones.  The present units are not accessible to anyone with mobility problems, as highlighted for me, when I was a parliamentary candidate, by the irrepressibly good-humoured Mrs Bradbury of Llangammarch Wells.  Llangammarch is one of the "deep rural" communities consulted in the recent-ish Rural Observatory report on standards of living and access to public services in rural Wales.  Mrs Bradbury's access to breast cancer screening services proved to non-existent when she was unable to climb the steps of the unit which visited Builth Wells, 12 miles from her home. Her mobility problem meant she can't sit for long enough to make the journey to Cardiff.  So tough.

That's why the investment in new units is such good news.  Women like Mrs Bradbury won't be discriminated against just because of where they live.  Old cynics like me, though, can't help notice that only 7 new units are promised, replacing a fleet of 10.  Perhaps these seven are in addition to another three. Or will there be fewer visits to existing locations, or even that fewer locations will be visited?  Will the lost Crickhowell visit be re-instated?  And when will we get to see these units?

Don't keep us waiting Edwina.

Blindly Thrashing

It's no good.  All I can see is Huw Irranca Davies, thrashing around blindly, trying to keep the winged food snatchers off his fruitbowl.  His personal harpies are the media, according to the Western Mail.  Or would that be "Medea"?  (Don't all laugh at once.  I'm not Lembit Opik).  I don't think Jason and his Argonauts are going to turn up at a dramatic moment and rescue the MP for Ogmore though.

Labour's own Phineas has been making wild prophesies about haemorrhaging valleys and wilful malevolence.  According to Mr Irranca Davies, we must challenge the consensus on the need for immediate spending cuts, engendered by those fiendish Conservatives and their media butties.

Apart from the obvious observation that the Conservatives and the media in Wales are not exactly first choice for Lovebirds of the Year, you have to wonder why Mr Irranca Davies thought it was good idea to start going all Conspiracy Theory on us when everyone else just gets it.  Big debt.  Labour's fault.  Going to be painful.

And maybe it will feel especially painful in his constituency, where years of Euro-money and Labour representation has done nothing to resolve worklessness, poverty and dependency.  Occasionally some cash falls into the right hands - like Creation in Blaengarw - and some decent Big Society chinks of light start to illuminate the future that our repressed communties could have.

Would it be churlish to point out the neighbouring Labour authority of Neath Port Talbot is urging schools to dive into their reserves and "splash out" on their pupils and students?  Keeping a moderate reserve is sensible housekeeping, so is the suggestion that too many schools have been hoarding too much?  With years of gimmicks and underfunding of the better policies, maybe it's no surprise that NPT schools have been extra careful, fearing that the funding fog would eventually become the rainy day.

The advice to get spending is not only very dissonant in the week that cuts dominate the headlines, but is very likely to get up the noses of the teachers, parents and pupils of Powys, which have struggled with poor Assembly government settlements for years, while their brothers and sisters in the valleys of South Wales have been able to access all that Euro-cash.  The Outline Strategic document is now up on the Powys County Council website (search "School Modernisation"), and it's plain to see that the closure of schools or sixth forms is still very much on the table. 

When we spend more on interest on the national debt than we do on education, you can see why some of us see Labour's legacy as something of  a Greek tragedy.

Bags of Gossip

Plastic Bag Levy.  Headliners at Glasto? Top tip for the Man Booker?  Or just another Assembly government good intention paving the way to hell? Again.

The "levy" (election-speak for "tax") turns out not to be a tax at all, but a means of charitable giving.  I like this.  What I don't like is that the Cardiff Bay government wants to spend £400,000 of the money we did pay in tax to tell people about it.  Shall I groan for you too?

We've all done it.  A trolley load of shopping with a boot load of carefully conserved plastic bags out in the car park, and a testy queue of post-work shoppers collectively willing you to get a move on.  So you sigh, agree to add 30p for a clutch of new "single use" bags to your bill of £120, and vow never to do that again.

I'm pleased that my pence will go to charity rather than the supermarket itself. But it's not that that will change my behaviour.  I'm getting better at remembering to get the bags out of the boot first, but the Assembly government doesn't seem to be getting better at spending money.  Still thinking Prada rather than plastic.  Or maybe it's getting extra Nectar points.  We should be told.

Untimely spending sprees are the subject of a little bit of gossip from Powys County Council.  Fans of Glyn Davies (MP!)'s must-read blog, "A View from Rural Wales", will have become very fond of a certain Edna Mopbucket over the years.  There has been much speculation as to whether she has indeed been seconded to polish Eric Pickles' pens and pencils, but readers will be pleased to know that her niece, Kylie, is currently on work experience, hoovering the corridors at County Hall.

Rumours that the Powys Independent-Lib Dem Alliance (oops, almost said coalition then) is rather keen on a cabinet-style government aren't new, but Kylie seems to think that a formal request to the Chief Exec is imminent.  I've always thought it a bit strange that the Lib Dems, champions of proportional representation, would be keen on this most exclusive form of local government, but that's what they're looking for in 2011.  Or maybe Kylie misheard over the sound of her Henry.

Because an expensive consultation on changing the style of local government is just what we need right now, isn't it?  (This Nectar point conspiracy theory becomes more credible by the sentence).  Powys CC can't say it wants to close schools with one breath, and then throw money at itself in the next.

Anyway, we're already due an important consultation.  On Powys ward boundary changes, reducing the number of councillors in the county - it's late starting.  Which political group/s will lose out when that consultation is complete, and will a decision be made before the local authority elections in 2012?

I'll be in the carpark, filling my boot with plastic bags, if anyone wants to find me to tell me the answer.  Oh, that was quick.  Looks like Kylie was right.  Council to vote on this before the end of the month - at least a year before there's any legislative obligation to do so.  It must be those Nectar points ...

Brock-ing the Bank

Caught a repeat of "Who Do You Think You Are?" last night: Sue Johnston from The Royle Family.  Her great grandfather's first family had lived in the overcrowded Lanes of Victorian Carlisle.  His wife and three children were all killed by TB.  The library photos of the area were pretty grim.  I used to think that family pics of my great grandmother on some tyddyn on the Loughor estuary looked like a set from the first series of Blackadder, but these little bits of urban history remain strangely shocking.

Kids were still having TB cysts removed after the war in Wales.  Some of our poorer immigrants still bring it into the country with them.  And, like the poor, TB seems to be always with us.  Today we hear that leave to appeal has been given to the Badger Trust, allowing another pop at the Welsh Assembly decision to carry out a limited cull in Pembrokeshire this summer.

At the moment, we taxpayers spend rather a lot (about £100m this last decade) compensating farmers whose TB-infected cattle have to be destroyed because we have a public health threat which is not being contained adequately.  If the cull goes ahead and proves that controlling badger numbers reduces the rate of infection, we wouldn't have to pay so much in compensation.

Instead, compensation payments remain high and now we'll have to pay to defend this appeal as well.  Times may not be as 'ard as for Sue Johnston's great grandfather, but public spending is about to be slashed.  Now is not the time to be forking out on badgers' rights, sorry.  What's more, the last time wild animals dominated our headlines, the small matter of the non-appearance of WMD was all but overlooked as Parliament ate up hours of debating time on fox hunting rather than on hunting for reasons to be in Iraq.

Nice To Be Out

Sitting in the hairdressers with a half head of foils, looking in the mirror at a noseful of Gower sunburn, is not the way to hear about the death of Stuart Cable.  But that's how it happened.  I'd glanced up from an article congratulating Tom Jones on being hot and 70, when some passing emissary stuck their head round the door and announced the sad news to the assembled shampoos and sets.

Whenever anyone mentions the Stereophonics, it just gives me a flashback of after-school ballet lessons in Aberaman.  This was before extra-mural competitive parenting became the standard fare of chick lit and twitchy Sunday newspaper columnists.  Anything more than Brownies and Sunday school and it was a definite case of "'oothe'elldoyewthinkyeware".  Ballet gave way pretty quickly to a late afternoon Nesquik on the settee in front Wacky Races.

Thomas Woodward obviously had a bit more dedication to his art than I, although our passion for hair dye might count as a shared interest I suppose.  Until recently, of course, as Sir Tom is now grey and gorgeous. Today he joins the elite crew of Welsh "names" who are 70+ - including Elaine "Descent of Woman" Morgan and Margaret "Erotic Dancer" John, whom I remember as a very staid lady on Owen MD but is better known to sprightlier audiences for her dotty totty doings in Cwm Pen Ol and Barry.

Not everyone's Sian Phillips or Anthony Hopkins though.  Age Concern research reveals that a million pensioners admit to being lonely often or always.  Today the Big Lottery Fund has allocated £20m to alleviate the social isolation experienced by some older people in Wales.

The emphasis seems to be on befriending and projects that run from 3 -5 years and "developing support services to empower older people by representing their interests and obtaining the services they need."

Now befriending I understand.  When it works, it's massively enriching for everyone involved.  It helps improve confidence, create friendships and encourage socialising.  It helps control depression, anxiety and other illness.  It's a service commonly provided by voluntary community support organsations, which run on fourpence, usually headed up by a super-stressed, underpaid adminstrator, scrabbling for small grants to stay afloat, and wondering why so much public money gets eaten up by unnecessary umbrella organisations or the Assembly's cunning plans.

So let's see if the Big Lottery can show some Big Vision and invest in building the Big Society.  Don't throw away the money on duplication, or one-size-fits-all, nice office, endless meetings, jargon blather initiatives.  Give the existing groups a chance (and ditch the word "provider" while we're at it) to build up a stable base and acquire a critical mass of work and an entrepreneurial spirit which doesn't take them out of the sphere of the communities they serve.  Loneliness fades when you have friendship and respect, not reports or mission statements or fancy launches with the Minister.

Other people, not another Sector.

Nostalgia Ain't What It Used To Be

I can smell the Palmolive and taste the Tooty Frooties.  A time when the cards we swapped were from packs of PG Tips, clackers were banned from the schoolyard and our transport home was a spacehopper.  My friend Gail went one better with one that looked like a giant tomato.  She also had a brother who shot at us with his airgun.  He's a doctor now.

Yes, I'm talking about a childhood where road safety was dominated by Billy Beacon and a visit to our school by the BBC.  They'd come to film us for "Heddiw", that little bit of black and white Welsh current affairs, safely steered into the early evening schedules by R Alun Evans.  I still don't know why they came to our school.  None of the kids spoke Welsh, although not knowing the anthem was a dap offence.  For the boys anyway:  the girls got the ruler.

The Secret Squirrel generation had another rodent hero.  Some of us still have the Tufty Game and remember the goodies that the half-a-crown membership of the Tufty Club got you.  (Burglars note - I carry my badge with me at all times.  Along with my Tessie Bear from the Ricicles box tops, so don't bother breaking in.)  But Tufty's gone all modern.  He's got his own website, http://www.tuftyclub.org.uk/., and a marketing consultant in Newport who wants to bring him back to teach the grown-up version of road safety.   Despite numerous warnings, parents are still parking outside a Malpas school and causing a safety hazard.  Clearly not pitching up on space hoppers.

Funny to think that when I was learning to look right, look left, look right again, Parliament was acting on the decade-old Wolfenden Report and introducing the Sexual Offences Act.  The Hart-Devlin exchanges which preceded it still made essential reading on legal philosophy courses twenty years later, and maybe still do. 

David Laws was just a toddler when the law was changed and I was standing on the kerb.  Perhaps I should rephrase that.  Because the Wolfenden Report also discussed the rise in street prostitution at the time, which it associated with "community instability" and "weakening of the family".

Words which could have come from the Conservative manifesto.  2010.  In the week that we all feel sympathy for Laws but wonder whether we should have paid for his sensitivities, we also learn that three street prostitutes have been murdered in Yorkshire. 

Half a century on from Wolfenden, which is the real scandal?

Magic mirror on the wall

Further to this morning's post (below), I've just heard on Radio 4 that John Redwood doesn't approve of these capital gains tax hikes either.  I agree with John Redwood? What's happening to me....?

Responsibility Tax

Going into work today, to see if I can remember what it's like to be a solicitor.  There's a file there so big, so hefty and so permanent that I might try and patent it as a new building material.  Especially with faith in good old bricks and mortar so low - and about to get lower.

I've lost count of the mammoth days and Saturdays spent working in the two housing booms of the last decade.  Way before Northern Rock became Northern Pebble, lowly conveyancing-belt solicitors like me were raising their hands in class, enquiring "Sir! Sir! What's a 125% mortgage?  Are these self-certified mortgages safe, Sir?", but as the Treasury and lenders and insurers were behaving like the Vicar of Dibley with that chocolate fountain, I don't think Headmaster Brown ever really heard us.

After Brown's pension raid and periods of uncertainty with the stock market, the rush for property was inevitable.  An explosion of wildly overpriced buy-to-lets and free money led to speculator overload.  When it all fell in on itself, I almost expected the Doctor to appear and confirm that the bad guys had all been sucked into an interstitial time prison, configured in secret and only to be understood  in three series time when Steven Moffat has written the script.

But what about the extras?  Those with no Equity card, and now with less equity.  Those who were encouraged by government to go and stand on set, and perhaps have a go at investing in property in a small, personal way?  All those people who believed that buying a bigger house, or maybe even a second one, was the best way to save for their old age.  An old age which could easily require long term care.

The collapse in the housing market has meant that retired people, looking to downsize and realise some of their savings, haven't been able to do that.  HIPs cost for the seller and high stamp duty for the buyer, plus a drying up of credit have had careful pensioners trapped in their big houses on little incomes.  That's why I didn't like the thinking behind the Lib Dems' mansion tax, and why I approved of the Conservatives raising the inheritance tax threshold (although, maybe £1m was a bit generous once house prices started to fall).

Now we have a similar threat to those who placed their savings in a second property, especially on the verge of retiring.  No mortgages available at that age, so maybe using matured policies (contributions taxed) and savings (interest taxed) to buy a property.  Earning a little income (taxed) and maybe having some equity to help pay for old age.  Come to sell it now - even at the deflated price - and you'll have even less money than you expected.

The Lib Dems - and now the ConDems - call capital gains tax (CGT) a voluntary tax.  In a business setting it can be rolled over or legitimately avoided, even set off against losses.   If it's a professional investment setting, you can hang onto it or take the CGT hit as part of usual investment business.

But if it's your second property is your personal savings vehicle, you're going to need to liquidate it.  To live on, to help your children get on the housing ladder, to help with grandkids' tuition college fees and, ultimately, to pay for care.  The things you planned to do, carefully, responsibly.  You were promised a tax-efficient way to save.  Now - when you've retired and not in a position to alter your plans - the new government wants some of your savings as additional tax.  CGT is not a voluntary tax for you.

You meet many pensioners when you're knocking doors during a general election.  Those who'd looked after themselves and put a bit by - just enough to keep them in the lower income tax bracket.  They inevitably thought the Lib Dem policy of raising the income tax threshold was "fair".  They didn't think the same way about the corresponding desire to clobber some of them with higher CGT.

Gordon Brown, the Golden Chancellor, effectively told them that saving in property was the only safe way to save (remember SIPS?).  Should a new government punish those who believed him?

Slim Fast

So, the Welsh Assembly government has to find some savings.  Hardly a bolt out of the blue is it? 

Yet, just two and a half weeks after the election, we're apparently seeing the catastrophic effects of  "yet another direct Tory Liberal hit on Wales", sighs Peter Hain.  If you can sigh and explode simultaneously.

When the Labour government in Westminster imposed cuts of quarter of a billion last year, I don't remember Peter Hain saying "This is yet another direct Labour hit on Wales", despite us already having the highest unemployment, highest child poverty, oh you know the rest.  If he has to have his say, could he please change the record.  We don't want worn, scratched old vinyl in this i-Pod age.

As it's time for some new voices, it's pleasing to hear from the new Plaid MP for Carmarthen East & Dinefwr, Jonathan Edwards. His calculator tells him that the cuts in Wales are a third higher than the rest of the UK apparently. 

Maybe one of the primary areas for these extra savings in Wales is the cost of governing it. Just like Whitehall, Cardiff Bay needs to cost less. If WAG doesn't want to be treated like a government department, then it needs to start behaving more like a government. That means going on a diet instead of moaning about the cost of burgers.

Rhodri Glyn Thomas AM is right to resist deferring savings that can be made now, and right to resist equal cuts across all areas of expenditure.  Russell Lawson of FSB Wales agrees and says that public services should “look towards the private sector” to introduce efficiencies:
“There have been studies that show that if the public sector had adopted the practices of introducing efficiencies of the private sector, public services would be in the region of £58bn cheaper today, which is obviously a significant amount."

Mr Thomas also mentions the pending loss of 500 lower paid jobs in Carmarthenshire County Council, and asks why the higher salaried posts aren't going.  Good question, and one that could be applied the to Assembly itself.

Only this week, the Assembly's response to an important report into the serious problem of people trafficking is to recommend a new post of trafficking director to deal with the problem in Wales.  The typical Assembly response - create a new job/civil servant/quango.  However, there is already a single point of contact and senior police officer in place in each of the four Welsh forces who is the dedicated work lead in the area of human trafficking.

As any dieter knows, it's about changing your eating habits. Time for the Welsh Assembly government to be thinking of that Austerity Bikini, and going for locally sourced, low-fat alternatives.

Remember the Defer-endum

I was just musing whether the name "Peter Hain" was an anagram of "Procrastination", when it dawned on me that you can get "Pan-era Hypocrite" out of "O! Crappy Peter Hain". An extra "d" would give you "deferred" out of "referendum" too.

It's almost three years since we were offered a referendum on greater law making powers by the Labour/Plaid coalition in Cardiff, and we're still at the bickering stage.

Yet it takes Cameron and Clegg a fortnight to be a position to create an Office for Budget Responsibility, and for Eric Pickles to turn the Potato Marketing Board into lunch.

Pinning a late referendum on the Tories won't cut the mustard or butter parsnips. Shame, as Pickles needed something to go with those potatoes... A moment on the lips. A lifetime on the HIPs (if he hadn't abolished those as well.)

Natural or acrylic

"I was lying. Your cuticles are terrible", barked Tracey Barlow, bristling at Gail Potter-Tilsley-Platt-Hillman-McIntyre's insistence that she is an innocent woman. This despite the fact that Corrie's answer to Zsa Zsa Gabor was sporting a very professional French manicure. Clear evidence of the Lib Dems' soft sentencing policy having made it into the coalition agreement maybe?

Some coalitions, however, are destined to create havoc on the fingernails. Angela Merkel's are putting Gordon Brown's to shame at the moment. Hardly surprising, with the Germans coming over all fretful about Mutti bailing out reckless adoptive Mediterranean children. All she did was warn her euro-brother and sisters that they were all in this together (I know those words from somewhere...?). Isn't that what families are for?

New York, London and Japan had a fun morning sticking pins in the euro. France wagged its immaculately groomed finger and the markets wobbled for a bit.

Both France and Germany are asking for a further - but not the same - transfer of national powers to the EU. Merkel wants new rules to deal with members' insolvency: Sarkozy is after a centralised "economic government" and a eurozone council which would sideline the UK. Yet neither seems to believe the other is willing to yield the element of sovreignty required by either plan. So what will happen?

In the meantime, the UK's non-euro status will have many Brits mopping their brows with relief. UKIP enthusiasts are basking in the glow of high-grade schadenfreude - or would be if it weren't so damned European. The ConDems are going with "Yah! Phew!", and hoping that that Frau Pandora won't really open the box marked Lisbon Treaty.

The near-parity of the euro and the pound has been a godsend for Welsh farmers, but if the euro is as wobbly as it is, what does the similarity say about the stability of sterling?

With Sarkozy's financial best friend offering a stereotype's shrug at our triple-A rating, and stage-whispering "IMF" at every turn, we must hope that tomorrow's ConDem austerity measures are real not fake.

It matters, because we can't hang on by our fingernails much longer.

Fantastic Mr Field

There can be nothing more irritating for the nascent blogger than the arrival of a worm bot (or maybe bot worm) on the laptop. A combined treatment of Ivomec and ignorance has failed to defeat the intruder, and I'm off to see Uncle Darren at Blues Digital in Newtown tomorrow morning. A techno-enema from a professional computer doctor is required.

In the meantime, I have negotiated the release of the home PC from long-term captivity by my in-house teenager (who is wandering around the house singing "Life on Mars", and waving a pack of Oreos round like a light sabre, and, therefore hasn't noticed).

That's because I wanted to give a verbal round of applause to PM Cameron for choosing Frank Field to be the country's new poverty czar.

"Czar" and "poverty" usually end up in the same sentence in less than wholesome ways, but this has to be one of the most positive and inspired ideas politics has seen in a long time. Anyone who still thinks Cameron is the heir to Blair can see the mistake exposed here in this single appointment.

Field was famously charged with "thinking the unthinkable" as Blair's Minister for Welfare Reform, but - rather like Mo Mowlam - came up with something that dimmed the Bambi glow (pinning his demise entirely on Brown and Harman is just a bit too convenient.) The result was an unacceptable reshuffle role; a kind of green bench constructive dismissal. He has been rattling New Labour cages ever since.

Looks like Cameron is made of braver stuff. Field is already sympathetic to the aims and findings of the Centre for Social Justice, and so should find an easy ally in Duncan Smith at the DWP. We're going to see some pretty stern frowns from that quarter in coming months, so it'll be interesting to see how the Lib Dem elements of the new government cope with forthcoming proposals.

After all, Clegg seems to be saying that the Big Society (or "patronising nonsense" as he called it before the election) was basically what he was talking about all along, just speaking from a different lexicon. Removing entrenched over-reliance on the state is part of the Big Society philosophy; a differently balanced Social Contract, if you like. If IDS (and Field) are serious about making it difficult for people to view a life on benefits as a career choice, replacing a sense of entitlement with sense of responsibility is bound to mean stick as well as carrot. Already the Lib Dems are muttering elsewhere about human rights. Perhaps we had better check now to see if Clegg's lexicon includes the words "Yes, but..."

Another cage rattler seems to be surfing the zeitgeist, this time in Powys. Not content with being the County Council's newest Board member, Cllr Price is also Llandrindod's new town mayor. Congratulations Gary. Man is born free but everywhere he is chains....

Wigs and Whigs

Was going to wax lyrical about Ken Clarke and his fancy garb tonight. Never did a wes'cut and gaiters befit a man so well. But, instead, let's have a look at the controversy over the new "55% and you're out" rule, which seems to have resulted in periwigs being wrenched from scratchy scalps and fits of the vapours all round.

The question of Parliament being able to bind itself in perpetuity is the stuff of first year law degree essays. Laws change all the time by will of Parliament. So relax.

You can see this as some amazing devolution of power away from the prime minister, or you can see it as restriction of the ancient freedom to kill off a government with a simple majority of one.

Even if it's just a pragmatic attempt to staple these parties together for an effective period, it can all be changed by Parliament in the future. And if you're worried about a future government's ability to claw back powers, just remember how many powers this last Labour government assumed over you in the last 13 years.

Interesting times in Wales and Scotland today. Head Girl for the Lib Dems discovered a whole new repertoire of facial expressions for Cheryl's visit to the Assembly. Think we all remember George Osborne's openness on the issue of the Barnett Formula, and Cameron's willingness to see the referendum on additional Assembly powers go ahead. And we'll be waiting, chaps. Though Scotland may not be quite as up for that Barnett formula review as Wales is, when it comes down to it.

Quick word on Stephen Timms MP, who was stabbed by a constituent today. Met Mr Timms at a Centre for Social Justice event a couple of years ago. Ok, he's Labour, but he struck me as a genuine parliamentary good guy. Committed to his constituency, committed to helping people, and seeking no acclaim for something he was honoured to see as his job. Good to know there are some like that, isn't it? Get well soon, Stephen.

Lembit - groan

Judging by this week's edition, the County Times is going to miss its role as Lembit's chief hagiographer. "Parliament's loss is undoubtedly television's gain", says Nelson. Some of us may quibble with the first assertion anyway, but after LO's performance on "The Sharp End" last night, maybe even the County Times may have to re-assess its judgement call on the second.

Hats off to Andrea Benfield for keeping a straight face as Mr Opik, who "never lies on shows like this", piled into the appointment of Cheryl Gillan as Secretary of State for Wales. Always after the telly reference, he referred to her as the "Weakest Link" and had a pop at her for not naming the date for the referendum on additional powers for Assembly.

Strange that Opik didn't have a go at Peter Hain for letting the referendum papers languish in his intray for months. But then, having a go at the Labour government was never his strong point. No, he thought Cheryl wasn't up to it because, just 24 hrs in, she hadn't named the day that we would be invited back to the polling booths to decide on one of Wales's most significant constitutional reforms.

In a painful performance by any standards, he continued to take gratuitous, unsubstantiated swipes at the new Secretary of State for Wales; hardly in keeping with the new Cam-Clegg special relationship. At one point, he even suggested that Roger Willams be appointed. Roger must have been shaking in his shoes - we all remember the Curse of Lembit.

Lembit seems to believe that, unless you're in a headline, you don't really exist. His essential criticism of Cheryl Gillan is that she isn't a headline chaser.

Well, thank goodness for that. We're all hoping she'll be a bit too busy and a bit too serious to be yesterday's chip paper

Unsettled fronts

Good lord. Derek's just mentioned "Radnorshire" on the weather. Didn't pick up on the atmospheric pressure affecting the Lib Dem councillors on Powys County Council though. Seems like it's not just Swansea valley voters who are upset with Mr Clegg.

Now we know that Head Girl, Kirsty Williams, has a problem with the idea of Lib Dems and Tories working together. But we're somewhere over the Rainbow - for the moment. Maybe not in love yet, as Jeremy Hunt's observed, but it seems to going well in this marriage of convenience. Ironically, it seems there will be no immediate restoration of the married couple's allowance to acknowledge the stability of this publicly announced union.

So how about a bit of wedding reception bonhomie to wish the couple well. Surely the prospect of Eric Pickles in government is something to be celebrated. Somewhat grumpily, the Telegraph has focused on helpful tips on which policy points are likely to be grounds for divorce. Maybe they could put them together in a handy free wall chart to help sell the Saturday edition. I note, however, that David Laws' choice of ties seems to has been omitted as a possible source of disharmony.

My favourite appointments? Cheryl Gillan for Wales. Caroline Spelman at DEFRA - someone who understands farmers feed us. And IDS at the DWP - a committed social justice warrior just where we need him.

Getting On With It

Sales of Red Bull are returning to normal. Candidates and their campaign teams have caught up with the hoovering and "Ashes to Ashes" on Sky Plus. Cameron and Clegg have shared smiles in the rose garden and Gordon's gone.

The relentless TV coverage may have owed more to football punditry than political commentary, but that'll be over soon as well - maybe.

Labour's Peter "Boo Hiss, the Tories are behind you" Hain is still getting air time, I see. Kim Howells (also Lab) has been characteristically up front with his widely-shared views about Lib Dem campaigning. Now it's Neil Kinnock (er, Lab again) on the box. And David Cornock's got a quick smack on the head with a rolled up newspaper for Cheryl Gillan for the crime of not representing a Welsh seat and - confound her! - still getting 8 Welsh Conservative MPs.

Please tell me we're moving on from all this. Time to say goodbye to this soap opera and let the real story unfold. This baby government needs to given a fighting chance to mature, without the media poring over every milestone like over-anxious, over-dramatic first-time parents.

But, if you still like your "doof doof" moment, wait for this time next year. When all those outraged Labour tactical voters take out their ire out on the Welsh Lib Dems in the Assembly election.