Glyn Davies has some interesting reflections on last night’s IWA event in Wrexham on the ‘Future Health of the People of Wales’. And once again the issue of powers rears its head.
Budget reflections
Eurfyl ap Gwilym considers Budget 2009:
Taxing question
James Foreman-Peck reflects on the tax row sparked by the Budget last week:
Maze or motorway?
Geraint Talfan Davies takes issue with the All Wales Convention’s description of the choice of paths to law-making open to the Assembly:
Reading the runes of Welsh politics
John Osmond reports on a new prediction about the timing of the forthcoming referendum on extending the powers of the National Assembly:
Difficult decisions
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: