The Budget balance sheet for Wales (novices version) announced a £216m reduction in the Welsh Assembly Government Departmental Expenditure Limit
Assembly Bwletin Cynulliad April 2009
April 2009: Devolution, independence and constitutional navel gazing? – “Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s just too much fraternising with the enemy” – Fee for all top-up fees scrapped – Welsh patients to “top-up” healthcare.
English is a Welsh Language
In March 2009, as Welsh broadcasting suffered from further cuts in ITV Wales’s programme output for Wales and the prospect of five years of budget cuts at BBC Wales, the Institute of Welsh Affairs mounted a defence of English language television programming for Wales in English is a Welsh Language: Televisions’s crisis in Wales.* Its sixteen essays were part elegy for past glories, part cri de coeur as a nation’s visibility to itself was allowed to wither, and part affirmation that the problem can and must be solved. Its opening chapter was by the broadcaster and Chair of the IWA, Geraint Talfan Davies.
Delilah and the Welsh Victim Culture
John Osmond suggests that the current controversies surrounding Tom Jones’s 1960s hit song betray an atavistic Welsh culture of defeat:
Welsh politics seeks Obama moment
An ‘Obama moment’ could be far off in Wales, says Nick Morris:
Stimulating statistics
James Foreman-Peck on keeping track of Wales’s position in the world:
A risk worth taking
Nick Morris considers how neighbourhoods could be made more child-friendly:
Ffos Las – a focus for west Wales’ economic development
Peter Davies reflects on the opportunities for the west Wales economy presented by a new race course:
Speaking up for Wales
John Osmond reports on the political relevance of a weekend conference that took a backward glance at 1960s Wales: