DIED OF A THEORY

The on-going energy crisis, made worse by the initial spike in gas bad oil prices when the war between Russia and Ukraine started, was not to be unexpected. The temporary solutions (including handouts) offered by the Conservative Prime ministerial candidates range from hand outs to tax cuts, will all fail to address the underlying long term problems that have  brought us to the current crisis. 

In the 1960's people were told that by the year 2000 energy would be so cheap that it would be impossible to bill people for it (as my late father told me - more than once). Now that never happened, as a direct result of the ideologically driven privatisation of the energy boards created a privatised (effective) monopoly and sowed some of the seeds of the current energy crisis which lies firmly rooted i the failure to develop sustainable renewable energy resources.

Once the ideology driven fiction of “market forces” set to work and time passed ( and merger, and acquisition followed merger and acquisition along with the asset stripping frenzy ) we were left with the big six energy suppliers (basically a dodgy cartel by any other name). The only real beneficiaries to all of this in the medium too long term has been the City of London and the Stockmarket - which to be honest was probably always the intention.

What was a bad idea to start with was mad worse with large nominal weak token gesture regulation and that despite some periodic and actually very effective work by Westminster parliamentary select committees. The cartel members have been able to get away with much - mostly at our expense (literally) - especially when it comes to the price of energy to consumers.

If the fictitious free market energy sector had a tombstone it could read “Died of a theory”. It is time to recognise that this costly ideologically theory driven experiment has failed and failed badly.  Much like the privatisation of the railways and the water companies in England. That said simply rolling the clock back to having it all run by the indifferent dead hand of a re-centralised post Brexit Brit state is not a realistic option. 

I will be honest, I don’t trust any Westminster government to leave state run utilities alone - particular if they make a profit. From what I have read about pre privatisation state utilities, the more profitable state run enterprises were periodically pillaged for funds - which were transferred to other less successfully state run enterprises. 

That's partially how we ended up in this mess to start with. We need to do something quite different - firstly we need to make sure that we don't get fleeced over our energy bills by the members of the 'Big 6 Energy Cartel' - who have all made fat profits over the years at our expense. 

Secondly, we  need to see in motion the energy utility companies from dividend profit to non dividend profit enterprises, which are not run by Westminster (or having seen Labour in Wales in action over recent years ) by the Senedd either.  

Now in Cymru / Wales having recognised that what we have does not work, we need to change the rules of the game and to create a national energy company for Wales to generate sustainable and reasonably priced energy, which can also be part of the solution to create a low carbon society. 

There is no reason to suggest that similar solutions would not work in parts of England. Ynni Cymru, should be run as a not-for-dividend company at arms-length from the Welsh Government. This would prevent the agencies of the state from skimming profits off the top and ensure that they get reinvested.

This is a realistic vision for energy ( development and supply ) and the environment to reduce our energy sectors carbon emissions, harnesses our ample natural resources sustainably, and provide opportunities in the low-carbon and circular economies. The link between energy and climate change has to be clear. 

A number of actions could fall into the remit of Ynni Cymru, including: reducing the cost per unit of energy to homes and businesses in Wales, reducing the consumption of energy in homes and businesses and helping consumers to make informed decisions based on smart metering technology.

Ynni Cymru should be tasked with funding the mass installation, outsourced to local companies, of solar panels on the roofs of households, business premises and lampposts in Wales, beginning with public buildings and social housing. The company could coordinate and facilitate the use of publicly owned land for renewable energy purposes. 

The company could finance the acquisition and development of new large-scale generating and storage capacity, ensuring Wales becomes self-sufficient in renewable energy and becomes a renewable energy exporter. It could boost our energy market by ensuring the development of a national producer cooperative among community energy organisations.

The problem we face is that our energy production and distribution model has been effectively restructured to primarily benefit the big 6 energy cartel members, their interests and their (City) profits. 

From the perspective of energy consumers and smaller scale energy producers, or anyone who wants things to change the problem is that all the Westminster focused political parties have happily bought into this cartel dominated model of energy production and ownership (or perhaps more truthfully were quietly bought).

The reality is that the UK’s cartel dominated model for energy production and distribution is not necessarily the norm everywhere in Europe or around the world. Now contrary to what you might think, and tend hear from Westminster and much of the UK media; realistic alternatives exist and actually prosper, a particularly good example of a balanced and healthy energy mix can be found in Germany. 

Small may very well be beautiful, even with a geographically sizeable state, especially in relation to energy, in the year 2000 renewables accounted for 6.3 percent of electricity demand only, its share has been growing significantly over the last years, exceeding 10 percent in the year 2005 and 25 per ent in the year 2013. 

In 2021 renewable energy sources produced more electricity than all fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) together and now provide 41.1 percent of German electricity demand. With wind power being the most important energy source in the German electricity mix. 

Community based co-operatives (both urban and rural), farmers and homeowners are part of the 1.3 million renewable energy producers and part of the energy mix. In Germany, citizens’, cooperatives, and communities own more than half of German renewable capacity. Small-scale electricity generation is having a knock on effect encouraging change throughout the energy system.

Citizens’ owned energy in Germany involves:  

* Private individuals or farmers (jointly or individually) invest in energy facilities

* The investment is made with the citizens own capital, which gives a certain level of control over the project

* Citizens own at least 50 percent of voting shares

* Citizens have a connection to the region where the facility is operated

In Berlin, a cooperative (Burger Energie Berlin – literally Berlin Citizens Energy) continues to strive to take control of the capital's electricity grid with some 35,000km of underground cables. The cooperative is a free, cross-party coalition of citizens who are committed to a sustainable, sustainable and democratic energy policy in Berlin. Members have one vote regardless of the amount their deposit and anyone who wants the power network to be in civil hand, is welcome.

Ordinary Berliners have invested their cash in the venture with the intention of producing a reliable 100 per cent renewable energy supply. The aim is to promote the integration of renewable energy into the grid and to invest a portion of the profits from this directly into the transition to renewable energy. After some serious campaigning, on the 5th March 2019 the Berlin electricity grid was awarded to Energie Berlin. 

This is grass roots energy generation that has potentially the power to change the nature of the energy supply system (in Germany and elsewhere). The aim to build an energy grid that is better handle the rise of green power and allows local use of locally produced energy. This may well be a case of small being both beautiful and perhaps deeply disturbing from the perspective of Westminster and Cardiff Bay something that can be both community beneficial and community owned. 

There is no practical reason beyond ‘thats not the way it’s done here’ why people living here in Cymru / Wales could not benefit from membership of citizen owned energy co-operatives. In Germany, there is a deliberate promoted policy of energy transition (or ‘Energiewende’) – this is a very different approach to what is practised in these islands (at least south of the Scottish border). For a start the ‘Energiewende’ is driven by a desire to reduce and eliminate any dependency on nuclear energy.

The introduction of the Feed-in-tariff (EEG) in 2008 was an important part of this process, along with (post Fukushima) the almost unanimous across the board political commitment to a wide range of targets (in 2011) which included a commitment to reduce energy demand (with a 50% reduction in primary energy use by 2050) and the achievement of an 80% renewable electricity share of total consumption (by 2050). This has resulted in a significant uptake of renewables in Germany.

The real striking difference is that the operation of the grid in Germany means that generated renewable electricity is used first and that distribution network operators (DNOs) are also seeking to reduce demand. This is so radically different from the way the energy is generated, distributed, exported and used here in our country that it no doubt, at least from their limited perspective, quite understandably frightens Westminster focused politicians, the civil shrive and the city.

A significant difference, aside from the scale and pattern of investment (in Germany), is that small businesses, co-operatives, individual households and local authorities benefit from investment distributed by a network of local banks (again something we pretty much entirely lack here in Wales). 

The whole thing has been supported by the KfW (state investment bank) to the tune of 23.3 billion euro in the area of environment and climate protection. These developments are a million miles away from the so-called ‘Free market’ for energy that exists in the UK, which is dominated by the ‘Big 6’ energy cartel members. 

The fact that some former politicians have found rather rewarding post political career employment within the energy sector may be co-incidental but suggests that there is little desire for improvement within Westminster and perhaps a complete lack of understanding of the concept from any Labour in Wales government(s) be they previous, current or future. 

The way the current set up works, it is difficult to imagine ‘a Government’ at most levels (at least outside of Scotland in the UK grasping the concept, the practicalities and real possibilities of genuine community owned beneficial energy generation projects. 

Pending some real change in the way energy policy works we are all pretty much trapped with a real lack of meaningful choice or realistic alternatives when it comes to customers securing domestic energy from the big 6 cartel members.

Over the years we have seen a visionless increasingly corrupt New Labour, Conservative-Lib DeM and then Conservative governments in Westminster, all, of whom have remained hand in glove with despotic oil and gas-producing regimes in the Middle East ( aside from the vassal like relationship between the UK and Saudi Arabia ) so naturally there has been little real interest in developing renewables on a scale to ensure energy independence. 

After “Dodgy Dave” Cameron, we saw a weak and wobbly Teresa May, and then “lazy Bozo” Johnson ( soon to be be replaced by more of the same ) in office - all desperate to avoid fundamentally restructuring the energy sector and all hamstrung by the significant side effects of Brexit. 

All of these Westminster government’s have effectively if not actively work to pull the rug out from under the renewables sector - something that has cost highly skilled jobs (here in Cymru / Wales) and contributed to these islands over-dependence on overseas hydro carbons.

Half measures just won’t cut it - we need to be radical, starting with a windfall tall, followed by the transition from dividend profit to non dividend profit energy companies, with the breakup of energy monopolies and the developing of a fundamentally different energy sector.

We need a focus on community beneficial energy production, and a drive for much better insulation in new ( and retrofitted on older ) homes and significant energy savings and a focus on efficient use and local generation of energy supplies which can feed into the grid. 

Perhaps it’s time to shatter or at least drag into public view the questionably cozy relationship that exists between the big six energy cartel members and some politicians and political parties. Whether it’s well paid post politics jobs on the board, donations (just exactly do they get for their money?), the sponsoring of events at party conference(s), full page full colour adverts in conference programmes, or free tickets for sporting events ( very nice but just what is expected in return for the tickets?, etc ).  

OUR MANIFESTO FOR NEWPORT 2022

While the City Council lacks many of the powers necessary to transform our city’s economy - it should be possible to work with the Senedd and other partners to make life in our city better  and more sustainable. Plaid Cymru Newport’s manifesto is additional to Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales’s local government manifesto which can be found in full on-line here. 

Our City needs to focus on developing affordable housing, to focus on redeveloping our local economy, and to focus on the local rather than regional. Our city needs to build in resilience to flooding with flood avoidance being the focus rather than flood prevention, and to focus on growing green jobs and actively pushing to develop our transport infrastructure with railway stations at Caerleon, Tredegar Park, Somerton, Llanwern, and Magor. 

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

We need to tackle the housing crisis in the City - there is an acute lack of affordable homes - something made worse by rapidly rising house prices - as Newport sits between Cardiff and Bristol and is perceived rightly as a cheaper place to live - this means that people in Newport cannot afford to by or rent their own homes. 

While is is not some thing that the City Council can solve individually as former council housing is now run by Housing Associations - the City Council should work with the Housing Associations and the Welsh Government to priorities at the creation of affordable homes within Newport.

REDEVELOPING OUR LOCAL ECONOMY

We need to develop and encourage local supply chains and forces on the creation of local business, as this is create more local flexible job opportunities, within the City centre. Local businesses trade with each other, sell goods and services and help to ensure that money spent within them stays on the local economy longer. 

The Campaign for the Preservation of Rural England long ago proved that ten pounds sent in a local business circulates three times longer locally than it does if spent in a chain-  this principle applies equally to small towns or larger urban areas. 

The City Council should work to expand businesses support for existing and developing small businesses.  While the loss of Debenhams in Friars Walk was a bitter blow - which while covid did not help  - in reality the Debenham’s retail model had been failing for some years. 

The Friar’s walk development itself was too small, too limited in scope and failed to create the retail space for local businesses to set up from the start. While there have been some tentative steps towards that recently ( the redeveloped Market being a good example of what’s possible), at a fundamental level a refocus on growing and supporting small businesses - there is room enough to make this work. 

Newport has suffered because of the unhealthy obsession with directly competing with Cardiff and Cribs Causeway. We seriously need to focus on growing small local businesses that supply our needs as well as hosting the usual suspects to bring economic life back to our city centre. If we can do this then we can bring sustainable economic growth and some life back to our city centre. 

SAYING NO TO THE CARDIFF CITY REGION AND THE WESTERN GATEWAY 

There are few if any positives for Newport being a simple dormitory town for Bristol or Cardiff. Plaid in Newport can never subscribe to the Severnside agenda, no matter how many times it gets rebranded and relaunched. The proposed Cardiff City region and the Western Gateway project will not serve Newport well and need to be abandoned - to be replaced with a redevelopment plan that focuses on a local rather than the regional scale. 

FLOOD AVOIDANCE

We need to build into our city the resilience to cope with flooding - sadly in a warmer wetter world - flood events are going to become more common - we need to think and act smarter, with shifting the focus from flood prevention to flood avoidance.  Local water storage and management is increasingly part of intelligent urban design, something that is becoming more common and necessary in a warmer wetter world, as we will have to re-engineer our  infrastructures to deal with more frequent extreme weather events.

The concept of the sponge city or urban sponge. something that should be embedded and central to urban planning should now be coming into its own, particularly in Wales, with our urban areas being redesigned or designed from the start to soak up, and store deluges of torrential rain to prevent damaging and dangerous flash flooding but without the construction of large scale flood defences.  

GROWING GREEN JOBS

Newport is perfectly placed to be at the forefront of the green energy revolution with its deep water port, our highly skilled adaptable workforce, our city should be a natural centre for the development go off shore wind energy, tidal lagoons in the Severn estuary, and underwater tidal turbines.

The original Newport river barrage was rejected by the Conservatives in 1991, the City Council, working with the Senedd should commission a modern feasibility study into tapping the tidal energy potential of the Usk, in Newport, with an Usk River Barrage, nothing that if approved could transform our city relationship with our river along with our economy.

BUILDING OUR RAILWAYS

Plaid like many people in Newport, welcomed the commitment to build new railway stations at Tredegar Park, Somerton, Llanwern, and Magor. We need ground broken sooner rather than later to bring the new railway stations into being, to provide alternative means of getting around our city and elsewhere, once a degree of normality returns after covid. The new stations are an absolute necessity, but we need a railway station to serve Caerleon / Ponthir which would a real asset to both communities.

SOLVING THE ENERGY PROBLEM?

Everything is going up for most of us - as increased fuel costs and other unspoken factors - has triggered a significant rise in the cost of living. Oddly enough this steep rise in our living costs has been matched by a significant increase in the profits of oil and gas giants.

On Tuesday evening it was revealed that BP has paid £0 tax in the UK in the past five years, despite just posting profits of £13 billion pounds. This revelation has put even more pressure on Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, to do more to help the poorest families with sky-rocketing energy bills and the cost of living. 

The Party soon perhaps to be known as New New Labour (perhaps Labour 2.0) has called for a one-off, pandemic crisis windfall tax to ease the burden on Britons facing staggering costs. An obvious strategy which even if implemented, utterly fails to address the fact the the whole energy set up for these islands is fundamentally broken and utterly incapable of delivering cheap sustainable renewable energy. 

We also need, and this is very important. we need to end our dependence on gas and oil imported from unstable regions and despotic states by achieving energy independence. The Westminster based political parties have effectively entirely failed to achieve this objective.

It would also be for democracy in general to shatter or at least drag into public view the questionably cozy relationship that exists between the big six energy cartel members and some politicians and political parties - be it well paid post politics jobs on the board, donations (just exactly do they get for their money?), sponsoring events at party conference(s), full page full colour adverts in conference programmes, or free tickets for sporting events (very nice but just what is expected in return for the tickets?).  

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

Interesting to see that the Friday edition of the Financial Tines carried a front page story about the attempts of the current Westminster Conservative government to reverse the privatisation of military housing ( under John Major ) back in 1996.  The MoD is exploring the possibility of using the “statutory leasehold enfranchisement rights” to by out the private interest - currently held by Terra Firma - Annington Homes ( which is owned by Guy Hands, the property billionaire ).

The former MoD housing, is on a 200 year lease, with the MoD paying some £183 million a year plus paying upkeep on the 38,000 remaining homes. The National Audit Office ( reported in 2018 ) that the original deal had lost the tax payer something like £4.2 billion pounds when the massive difference in the value of property was factored in. 

The original deal was concluded when Michael Portilo, was Minister of Defence. The MoD understandably has a great desire to avoid getting stung with costs on the remaining 174 years of the lease, and are using the property laws, with a test case, to see if it is possible to take back ownership of the property portfolio. 

Back in March 2010, I noted that it was worth noting that 57,600 homes ( in 1996 ) from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) were sold to City Financiers and they then rented them back to troops for a profit. The terms of the deal, made in 1996 meant that the MoD remained responsible for the properties' upkeep and claimed that the extra cash from the deal would provide badly needed funds to help refurbish them. However, it has since emerged that the Westminster Government diverted most of the money elsewhere.

The deal resulted in the payment of a tidy £1.67 billion to the Treasury for the homes, a profit share of £156m on the sale of surplus properties, yet many are dilapidated and unfit to live in. Back in March 2010  it was revealed that the MoD had spent as little as £4.4m a year on maintenance and refurbishment. The Sunday Times revealed details of just how little the government spent on the properties reporting that General Sir David Richards, the head of the army, was concerned that many troops felt undervalued because of cuts to housing and shortages in other areas.

By the mid-1990s, military housing around the country was in dire need of tens of millions of pounds worth of repairs. John Major's Conservative administration agreed to sell off the Military housing stock to the highest bidder, partly to raise funds for a refurbishment programme. 

The original deal was put together in November 1996 with the government being paid for the homes, which would then be rented to troops and their families at below market rates. Surplus properties would be sold off with a percentage of the profits going to the Treasury. The consortium that acquired the military housing stock made more than £479 million in profits from its investment vehicle (Annington Homes) and became one of the UK's largest owners of private residential property.

Now this was all fine in theory, as the soldiers and their families should have benefited from the deal with hundreds of millions of pounds pouring into the Treasury. However, the Sunday Times revealed that New Labour ministers ensured that only a fraction of that sums raised be spent on the housing stock that had generated the windfall. 

Annual expenditure revealed in a parliamentary answer) on maintenance and upgrade was revealed to have ranged from £4.4 million to £13.9 million between 2003 and 2008. New Labour Ministers insisted that they would produce extra funds to help improve the quality of the homes and have pointed out that more than £27 million was spent in the last financial year (2099) but oddly enough that never happened under New Labour, the Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition government or successive wholly Conservative  governments.

So what we have now as a result of decisions made by the previous Conservative Government and by successive New Labour Governments is army families living in substandard military accommodation some of whose loved ones are serving overseas - so much for the military covenant. The poor maintenance record predated privatisation of the military housing stock well prior to 1996. 

The Conservative Government at the time washed its hands of a long standing problem, by selling off the military housing stock to the highest bidder in what can best be described a questionable deal which shifted responsibility onto someone else so that ministers who could not be held accountable and subsequent New Labour Governments failed miserably, to ensure that repair and maintenance was being carried out.

A bad situation was then made worse as successive New Labour government's failed to carry out basic repair and maintenance, they slashed the defence budget from which money for the maintenance of MOD property is provided. One wonders on what the £1.67 billion received was spent on and whether the then Chancellor Gordon Brown was ever aware of what was going on or even cared? 

Successive Conservative and New labour Governments treated our servicemen and their families with contempt, no wonder some people believe that it no longer matters which of the two larger party's is in government, as our servicemen will be treated with contempt, forced to buy their own kit and treated to a total lack of interest and yet time and time again it is our servicemen that will be called on to step in to pull the fat from the fire whether it is dealing with the consequences of strikes, disasters, the saving lives at sea, foot and mouth and almost everything else as an when necessary.

Fast forward to 2022 and it looks like if the test cases are successfully that an independent tribunal will determine the cost of taking the properties back into public ownership, using market values. The current property owner, who have been raking it in, has understandably kicked off big time as a serious little earner could vanish if the former military housing stock end up being brought back under rate control, of the state from the private sector.

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

Thursday (27th January 2022) is Holocaust Memorial Day, which is commemorated each year on the 27^th January because this is the day when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.  

Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to take time to remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and in other subsequent horrors which have followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and more recently are in Syria.

 

We should also forever remember the earlier genocides that inflicted on the Armenians and the Ukrainians.

 

It is only right and proper that we honour the survivors and continue to challenge ourselves to use the lessons of their experience to inform our lives today.

 

By the end of the Holocaust, six million Jewish men, women and children had perished in ghettos, mass-shootings, in concentration camps and extermination camps. 

 

As Allied troops made progress across Nazi-occupied Europe, they began to uncover concentration and extermination camps and the remains of camps. 

 

The camp of Majdanek in Poland was the first to be liberated, in summer 1944.

 

Faced with defeat and advancing Allied armies Nazi forces burnt the crematoria and the mass graves in attempts to hide the crimes that they had committed. 

 

The Operation Reinhardt camps of Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka were dismantled by the Nazis from 1943, and Auschwitz itself was evacuated in late 1944. 

 

The surviving prisoners, weak from starvation and ill-treatment, and poorly clothed against elements were forced to walk into the interior of Germany, away from the Allied armies, many thousands died on the enforced ‘death marches’. 

 

Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27^th January 1945,  they found several thousand emaciated survivors, and the smouldering remains of the gas chambers and crematoria. 

 

In the following months, the Soviets liberated Stutthof, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck.

 

In the west, US troops liberated Buchenwald in April 1945, followed by Flossenburg, Dachau and Mauthausen. British Troops liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15^th April 1945. 

 

It is estimated there were over 60,000 prisoners in Belsen by April 1945. Approximately 35,000 prisoners died of typhus, malnutrition and starvation in the first few months of 1945.

 

Back in 1999, Jewish leaders, were once asked  Tony Blair (the then UK prime minister) whether we needed Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain? 

Jonathan Sacks (former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth for 22 years, until 2013) noted that that, when it was proposed that the UK have a Holocaust Memorial Day, Blair wanted the opinion of British Jewish leaders. 

 

They explained that they did not need a specific day to remember as Jews.

 

When it comes to remembrance Jewish people already had Yom ha-Shoa, their own memorial day, which falls soon after Passover in the Jewish calendar. 

 

Every Jew literally (or figuratively) lost family in the Holocaust. For Jews, Yom ha-Shoa is a grief observed. 

 

The Jewish leaders said that the Holocaust was not just a crime against Jews and other victims – Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, the handicapped, Jehovah’s Witnesses and political opponents of the Nazi’s among them; it was an assault on all of humanity.  

 

As has been said previously by a survivor perhaps we need is an additional eleventh commandment along the lines of – Don’t be bystander!  

THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE

A number of thoughts crossed my mind in relation to the proposed Co-operation Agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Labour Government which emerged on Monday. Politics my old man periodically said, sometimes when I was listening, is about the art of the possible, and along with that thought, Harry S Truman said that it was amazing what you can achieve if you don’t care about who gets the credit. 

While the devil obviously lies very much in the detail it also lies very much in the actual delivery. That said the proposed Co-operation Agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Labour Government offers real opportunities to get things done and to change peoples lives for the better as well as to boost our nations economy and infrastructure. 

The proposals that have been outlined include:

National construction company – Establish Unnos, a national construction company, to support councils and social landlords to improve the supply of social and affordable housing.

Net zero energy company – Work towards the creation of Ynni Cymru, a publicly-owned energy company for Wales, over the next two years, to expand community-owned renewable energy generation.

Procurement – Explore how to set meaningful targets to increase Welsh public sector procurement from the current 52%. As a first step, we will carry out a detailed analysis of the public sector supply chains and promote the purchasing of made-in-Wales products and services.

Local tourism levies – Introduce local tourism levies using local government finance reform legislation.

Building safety – Significantly reform the current system of building safety, which has allowed a culture of cutting corners to the detriment of public safety. We will introduce a second phase of the Welsh Building Safety Fund.

Property and Fair Rents – Publish a White Paper to include proposals for a right to adequate housing, the role a system of fair rents(rent control) could have in making the private rental market affordable for local people on local incomes and new approaches to making homes affordable.

Second homes – Take immediate and radical action to address the proliferation of second homes and unaffordable housing, using the planning, property and taxation systems. 

• Actions being planned include a cap on the number of second and holiday homes; 

• Measures to bring more homes into common ownership, a statutory licensing scheme for holiday lets;

• Greater powers for local authorities to charge council tax premiums and increasing taxes on second homes. We will explore local authority mortgages.

Childcare – Expand free childcare to all two year-olds with a particular focus on providing and strengthening Welsh-medium childcare.

Public transport – Ask Transport for Wales(TfW) to explore the development of transport links between North and South Wales, including how to protect potential travel corridors on the west coast of Wales. We will continue to press ahead with Metro developments to improve connectivity and encourage people to switch to public transport. We will ask TfW to work with local authorities in North West Wales and the Welsh Government to develop plans for an integrated transport system.

Media financial support – Fund existing and new enterprises to improve Welsh-based journalism to tackle the information deficit.

All good stuff, it think that it would be well to remember that this is in no way a coalition; Plaid Members won’t be part of the Welsh Government. As the agreement states Plaid will appoint a designated lead member for the agreement and committees made up of Welsh Ministers and designated Plaid members to reach agreement on issues covered by the Co-operation Agreement.

I do sometimes wonder, even with the slow steady growth of devolved powers even within our deeply flawed devolutionary settlement, just exactly what the elected representatives of Labour in Wales have been doing since 1999? And why they appear to be so bereft of ideas that they need ours… 

Mind, as they say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, so in the short term I can live with Labour in Wales masquerading as Plaid lite, as long as the above actually gets done. 

REMEMBERANCE 2021

Another remembrance Sunday approaches,  if somewhat muted to Covid. Today, however, is the 11^th November, at 11am it will be one hundred and three years to the moment when the Great War - at least on the Western Front , ended - with the armistice. There are no more living veterans from the First World War, yet people will pause to publically and privately remember the veterans and survivors of more historic and more recent conflicts and particularly those who never came back. 

The 947,023 military casualties (with 744,702 of them from these islands) between 1914 and 1918 (by way of comparison with the 264,000 military dead from 1939 - 1945) should still shock us even now.  My family like far too many others in Wales (and elsewhere on these islands) had relatives who served and survived and also relatives who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars and other conflicts. 

My lost relatives (and their missing descendants) play on my mind at times like this - one of my maternal grandmother’s lost two brothers in the First World War and its aftermath. Her elder brother was a regular soldier, who wrote home and told them not to allow his younger brother to join up and to come out to France. It was, however, too late as the younger brother had already joined up was killed in action in 1918 and buried near Amiens. My paternal great grandfather (and my grandfather) both served in the First World War and survived but came back as deeply changed men (as did many).

Coming from a relatively large extended close family, I am of the age, that I grew up with a generation of older relatives a number of whom had seen active service in the second world war in the Navy, Army, Air Force and the merchant navy. They like many from those generations rarely talked about their actual experiences of the war, and then perhaps save only occasionally to those whom they had served with, who would have understood, because they had survived similar experiences. Younger relatives have also served in more recent more modern conflicts around the world and fortunately have come back. 

As I have said previously I have absolutely no problem remembering those who lost their lives and the courage, comradeship and their endurance of those who served in the First World War and other more modern conflicts (and not necessarily those who served in the armed forces). What I have no time whatsoever is rose tinted sentimental nostalgic flag waving foot-tapping pap. As has been said elsewhere, soldiers don’t go into conflict aiming to die - not for the politicians, for patriotism or even us - but they often can end up dying with their friends and comrades with whom they served. 

The first world war was the first conflict when real concerted efforts were made to remember and record all of those who had fallen - particularly because of the decision (taken for a variety of reasons) not to bring the fallen home for burial. One consequence is that far too many literally still lie in corners of foreign fields, are names on war memorials, faded photographs, faded memories or too many literally have no grave at all. 

Speaking of another bloody conflict across the Atlantic, the, US President Abraham Lincoln noted at Gettysburg the fallen had given their last full measure of devotion. And that what we do or say does not really matter in comparison with what the fallen (and those who survived) had done. It may be more true today that the world will little note the current crop of political leader’s lyrical wittering on conflict (both recent or older) or long remember them. 

What we should never forget what the former soldiers and veterans did and what they went through. We should not just cherish their memory but should ensure that after their military service they remain fully honoured as should be the military covenant. Never again should it be found that dead heroes are cheaper to honour  than live ones.