Accident of being Pembrokeshire born

As junior doctors in England prepare to go on strike next week Welsh Health Minister Mark Drakeford has released a video enticing them to come and work in Wales. You can see it on Youtube.

Now I have known Mark Drakeford for a long time and admire him a good deal, both as an academic – he was Professor of Social Policy at Cardiff University – and as a politician. He was Rhodri Morgan’s political adviser for the whole time he was First Minister and in many ways provided him with the thinking that has sustained Labour in power in Cardiff Bay for the past 16 years. For instance, he came up with what became known as the ‘clear red water’ that separated Labour in Wales from Tony Blair’s right-leaning policies in England.

Mark Drakeford - glaring contradiction in Pembrokeshire

As Health Minister Mark Drakeford has sought to continue this approach. But anyone from Pembrokeshire watching his video will immediately spot one glaring contradiction. Much of it is uncontroversial, from a Welsh point of view. He speaks of the great advantages to be had for doctors choosing to work in our country, of the great sport and music on offer, and that wherever you live you are within an hour’s reach of the mountains or the sea.

He goes on to address directly the fractious dispute that English junior doctors are involved in, over their pay and hours of work, that has caused 98 per cent of them to vote for strike action. “All I want to say to about that is that the approach we take in Wales is always one of discussion, negotiations and agreement,” he says.

“We have a partnership approach with all those people who work within the NHS in Wales. When there are difficult issues that have to be addressed we do it by getting around the table together, by putting the issue in the middle of the table and making sure we solve that issue in a way that is common to us all. That is the way we do things in Wales. That’s the way we are going to approach our part of the contract negotiations. We won’t be changing anything in Wales until we know we have a proper way ahead.”

So far, so good, you might say, even if it is a bit general and unspecific. But listen to what he says next. “Coming to Wales would mean being in a country where the initials NHS still really matter. We have an national service here in Wales, a planned service, an integrated service, a service where what drives what you get is the level of your clinical need, not the accident of where you were born, not the accident of who you know, not the accident of how well placed you are to advance your own individual case or cause.”

What anyone from Pembrokeshire would say to Mark Drakeford is that the accident of being born here matters a great deal. It means that if a woman runs into difficulty during childbirth she will have to be rushed in an ambulance upwards of 40 miles on poor roads to Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen. This is now the nearest location where consultant-led maternity services are available since Mark Drakeford’s downgrading of Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest last year.

Never ending tour of the Welsh Bob Dylan

Dafydd Iwan - never-ending tour

Dafydd Iwan’s Wales-wide fiftieth anniversary tour comes to Pembrokeshire next week. The troubadour, politician, businessman, language activist, architect, song-writer and lay-preacher will be giving one of his inimitable performances in Fishguard next Friday evening.

He started giving anniversary tours in the early 1980s with the band Ar Log (For Sale). These events have now become so frequent that one can say that like Bob Dylan, Dafydd Iwan is on a never ending tour. It has always seemed to me that he has a lot in common with Bob Dylan, though he insists it’s the American’s model of political protest rather than his music that has had most influence.

Dafydd Iwan first came to prominence in the 1960s as a student activist with  Cymdeithas yr Iaith (the Welsh Language Society), and especially its campaign for bilingual road signs. Peintio’r Byd yn Wyrdd (‘Painting the World Green’) was one of Dafydd’s most notable anthems of that era. He was ‘discovered’ by the television news programme Y Dydd (The Day) and given a weekly slot. As a result he became  “perhaps the first modern Welsh language singer to become a teenage idol”, to quote the sleeve of his first record in 1966.

He became chairman of Cymdeithas yr iaith between 1968 and 1971, one of the most dynamic periods in the Language Society’s history. This was due in part to its stand-off with George Thomas, the Labour Secretary of State for Wales who had adopted a stridently anti-language profile. In particular George Thomas ardently supported the Investiture of Prince Charles at Caernarfon Castle in 1969, which Cymdeithas yr Iaith opposed. Dafydd’s satirical anthem against the event was entitled ‘Carlo’.

Soon, however, he began a more conventional career on a number of fronts. He co-founded the record company Sain (Sound) which became a hugely successful business. Utilising his qualification as an architect he became involved with the Cymdeithas Tai Gwynedd housing association, dedicated to providing affordable homes for local people. And he switched from direct action campaigning to party politics. He stood as Plaid’s candidate in the two 1974 general elections in Anglesey, became an influential councillor in Plaid-controlled Gwynedd, and was eventually elected President of the party in 2003.

Dafydd was born and spent his early years in in Brynaman on the western edge of the southern coalfield. But when he was twelve his father, a nonconformist Minister, was called to be a pastor in the village of Llanuwchllyn near Bala. This upbringing gave Dafydd an instinctively national rather than local identity.  His was a family of nationalists in any event – grandfather Fred Jones, another Minister, was one of the founders of Plaid Cymru in 1925.

But what Dafydd’s 50^th anniversary tour underlines is that throughout his career he has never ceased composing, recording and singing. Undoubtedly this has been his greatest influence and achievement. As the writer Simon Brooks once said, Dafydd’s songs have changed the cultural universe in which the Welsh people live.

A bad bet for Pembrokeshire

When I stood in the general election in Preseli last May one question I was frequently asked was what I thought about the European Union. This week Prime Minister Cameron has at last provided some substance to what he is trying to re-negotiate before the in/out referendum, likely to take place next year. So it is a good moment take stock of whether being part of the EU is good for Pembrokeshire.

I think that it is, for three reasons. First, in recent years we have benefited hugely from EU funding, initially the Objective 1 programme and now the continued Convergence funding which takes us until at least 2020. Take three examples: there has been £20m contributed by the EU towards the A40 by-pass around Robeston Wathen – more than half the £37m cost; Pembrokeshire County Council has received £5m towards its recycling programme; and Pembrokehshire Association of Voluntary Services has received £3m in the last few years to develop its activities.

 Robeston Wathen by-pass - brought £20 million EU funding to Pembrokeshire

The second reason is because the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy has been of enormous benefit to Pembrokeshire farmers. If Britain were to leave the EU I doubt that the Treasury in London – committed to reducing the amount of state spending - would give such priority to agricultural support.

And thirdly the consequences to the Pembrokeshire economy if we were to leave the EU would be dire. We would lose unfettered access to our main markets and there would be even less incentive for investment in new business to take place.

I was promoted to revisit these arguments by revelations last week by the shenanigans of some financiers in the City of London who are supporting the No campaign. I’m thinking of a number of very wealthy hedge fund managers who are looking to make a killing out of the stock market if, as they anticipate, it takes a dive following a No vote. These are some very unsavoury people indeed.

It’s worth taking a moment to understand the scheme they’re hatching known as ‘shorting’. Last week the US investment bank Morgan Stanley predicted that if the UK votes to come out of the EU, shares in the FTSE 100 could drop by as much as 20 per cent. For hedge fund managers that prospect has profit potential. Any predictable drastic movement in the shares of Britain’s biggest listed companies offers them scope for the following classic hedge fund manoeuvre. A fund ‘borrows’ shares from a City investor for a set period for a fee. The fund then sells the shares in the expectation of buying them back more cheaply when the price falls, and then returning them to the original owner.  The difference between the two prices is pocketed as profit by the hedge fund. That, in short, is ‘shorting’.

Can it be a coincidence then that a number of very prominent, and very rich owners of London hedge funds were reported last week as poised to give large sums to the Vote Leave campaign? This is seeking designation from the Electoral Commission as the official voice of the Out campaign. Amongst its backers is spread betting tycoon Stuart Wheeler, UKIP’s treasurer. It appears the No people are a betting crowd, but they’re a bad bet for Pembrokeshire.

Parent power should persuade council

In an extraordinary move last week the county council opened a new five-week consultation on its plans for the organisation of secondary schools in Haverfordwest. This followed the consultation on exactly the same issue that has taken place for most of this year and which has now been declared null and void. What is going on?

The Council wants to merge Sir Thomas Picton and Tasker Millward schools into a new English language secondary school and at the same time create a new Welsh medium secondary school in Haverfordwest. Most people agree that this.  However, the schools and most pupils and parents don’t agree with the Council’s proposals for taking away their sixth forms and creating a new Sixth Form Centre at Pembrokeshire College.

Indeed, there has been overwhelming and vehement opposition to this proposal. It's hard not to conclude that the Council’s main reason for re-opening the consultation for a much shorter period is a cynical mechanism to disregard this opposition.

It’s hard not to conclude, either, that the whole of the previous consultation was undertaken in bad faith. That’s because the Council had already made up its mind on the need for sixth form collaboration with Pembrokeshire College. Well before the consultation started last January the Council had forged links with the College to reorganise post-16 learning in Pembrokeshire as a whole, and not just Haverfordwest. Eventually, all Pembrokeshire’s post-16 funding would be routed through the college, which would also take responsibility for all 14-16 vocational learning. The local authority and the College commissioned a joint review which recommended the creation of a Sixth Form Centre. They then jointly appointed a transformation manager and an estates manager responsible for implementing the scheme.

But when they went out to consultation they ran into a brick wall of opposition in Haverfordwest and also in St David’s and Fishguard where parents were worried either by threats of schools closures or the removal of their sixth form. The local authority’s plans for centralising sixth form provision at Pembrokeshire College will also affect Milford Haven, Pembroke Dock and Tenby.

If the county council were to follow the responses they received in the last consultation they would do the following. They would establish a new 11-19 English-medium secondary school on the Sir Thomas Picton site and a new 11-16 Welsh-medium secondary school on the Tasker Millward site, making it clear that if there is demand after five years the latter will be extended to create a sixth form. Pembrokeshire College would focus on its primary purpose of providing excellent vocational courses, though pupils throughout the county would still be able to choose to study A-levels there. The secondary schools at St David’s and Fishguard would negotiate a federal arrangement with the new English-medium school in Haverfordwest to provide sixth form courses.

Is this argument about the best way to educate out children in Pembrokeshire? Or is it about shoring up the finances of Pembrokeshire College and about lightening the education responsibilities of the local authority? The Council now has a month to persuade us that the educational prospects of our children are uppermost in their thinking.