Letter from Wales: This is not the way to show Labour will only spend carefully

by Julian Ruck

Cameron’s Tories are for a small government and to hell with the consequences, Ed’s Labour is for a more benevolent government with a steady eye on cost.

Welsh Labour is for an out and out free for all and to hell with cost.

I would ask readers to note that last month BBC Wales reported that the Welsh government has employed 400 extra civil servants in the last two years while the number employed across the UK fell.

The number of civil servants employed by the Scottish government also fell.

So much for Carwyn’s restraint on public spending then. It’s business as usual at the Senate and “Come on boyos, it’s only taxpayers’ dosh and while we’re at it, let’s go and watch some rugby at one of our subsidised boozers in Cardiff Bay!”

So, how does Carwyn and his Team Druid justify yet another manic departure from Westminster Labour policy?

You tell me, but apparently and according to a Welsh government spokesperson it’s all down to “a successful apprenticeship programme which has seen over 150 young people trained for future employment, many of whom have successfully gained permanent employment within the Welsh government.”

In other words there’s no private, engineering or manufacturing sector in Wales because no-one will invest here without being bribed with taxpayers’ money, so we in Cardiff Bay will take up the slack and really make the Welsh public sector the biggest in Europe. Apart from anything else, at least we keep any criticism under wraps because who is going to bite the hand that feeds it? What’s an extra 400 civil servants for some apprenticeships anyway?!

But the best bit of course is the fact that Carwyn is always tearing his hair out and knashing his teeth over what he perceives as a lack of bucks from his paymaster’s in Westminster!

Readers I feel, need to be reminded that 85% of Welsh GDP comes from Westminster, a figure which is often ignored by the Welsh nationalist community and a figure that is mostly paid by English taxpayers, albeit that since devolution there has been a growing anti-English trend afoot in the bars, coffee shops and institutions of Wales. Biting the hand that feeds it, perhaps?

I digress, but I would also like to bring to readers’ attention the recent Team Druid push for the merging of local councils in Wales (and no, I’m not about to write a small state Tory pamphlet!) from 22 to 10 or 12.

Without doubt there is need for reform of Welsh local government in respect of its local authorities (some are so small as to be a complete waste of taxpayers’ money), however the Welsh Local Government Association estimates the costs of said merger at £200m.

So, the question must be asked: Is the time right?

We all know how working people and benefit claimants are being squeezed by the cost of living. We all know about deficits and government debt.  But Carwyn and his Team Druid are still insisting on squeezing taxpayers until the pips squeak and they aren’t even property speculators!

400 new civil servants and now £200m for a merger that could wait until the country can better afford it – and I’m talking here about the UK, Wales is a principality not a sovereign state, notwithstanding that Welsh nationalist propaganda would have you believe otherwise; the reality is, as Michael Buerk put it, that Wales is just “England with an accent and a good singing voice”.

One is therefore left with the question: Does Welsh Labour have any idea at all about what is going on in the country or the world for that matter?

But then in Wales, the moderate majority will always take flight when chased by insular Welsh language ultra-nationalism and xenophobia.

Julian Ruck is an author, journalist and columnist. He also makes contributions to both Welsh and national broadcasting and media


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25 Responses to “Letter from Wales: This is not the way to show Labour will only spend carefully”

  1. Tafia says:

    More rubbish from Julian. You know where the border is Julian, use it. You are a low grade writer who poorly researchs and when challenged refuses to answer the question. You serve no purpose other than as a figure of fun and your demise will most definately not be of any note.

  2. the english language says:

    What bothers me, apart from the lies, the plagiarism, the bad writing, the fake stats and the evasion, is the sheer belittling nastiness of phrases like ‘Team Druid’ and calling Welsh-speakers xenophobic etc.
    No reputable political commentary site should host writing that is so obviously underwritten by bigotry, relentless negativity and arrogant grandstanding.

  3. Tafia:
    Really you should get out more…

  4. The Judge says:

    Ah, the typical sound of the weekend at Blairites Unhinged – that of Julian Ruck barking up the wrong tree…

    …or simply barking.

  5. Mr Akira Origami says:

    Scandalous and still no English Language Commissioner! There doesn’t seem to be one party in the Senate calling for this inequality issue to be addressed.

    The folk in England must stop ignoring this issue and hold back the aid given to Wales until an English Language Commissioner is appointed.

  6. James says:

    “Readers I feel, need to be reminded that 85% of Welsh GDP comes from Westminster, a figure which is often ignored by the Welsh nationalist community and a figure that is mostly paid by English taxpayers”

    What? How can you publish this drivel? 85% of Welsh GDP is paid for by England?

    Come on Labour Uncut, I know you;re dealing with a political and statistical illiterate as well as a liar, but honestly – can you not see that this is rubbish?

    I know Julian won’t check his facts but you’re publishing this – you must have some sort of editor/checker/sub-editor. It’s not even a matter of opinion, in this instance, it’s a matter of actual utter wrongness.

  7. James says:

    What Ruck means is that Wales’s GDP is 85% of England’s. But he can’t even say that.

    Labour Uncut should show some respect to journalism, facts, Wales and their own reputation and stop publishing this charlatan’s drivel. Or at least correct it.

  8. john abell says:

    True to form, more absolute garbage from Julian. James, he clearly does not understand the definition of gdp, he clearly doesn’t understand a lot of things.

  9. Mr Akira Origami says:

    The English speaking community in Wales should stop paying taxes!

    http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/no-taxation-without-representation–5/

  10. Danny says:

    I don’t blame Mr Ruck, an evident self-obsessed narcissist, for his repeated rubbish he writes on here. Offer him a platform for his illiterate drivel and he would be unable to turn it down.

    I blame the editing team of Labour Uncut, who rank somewhere below Piers Morgan in the league table of editorial integrity. They should be deeply, deeply ashamed of themselves. The majority of their contributors and the editors make the use of the word “Labour” in the title of their website thoroughly misleading and an embarrassment to the party.

    It is no coincidence that the majority of pieces on this website are greeted most warmly by semi-literate people like Ex-labour, an individual with as much wit, good grace and intellect as a salmon who probably finds the Tories a little bit too left-wing.

    Don’t be surprised that the editor does not have an issue with Julian Ruck’s flagrant misinterpretation of data, his unchecked “facts”, his appalling writing style and his near-libelous bile that he is permitted to publish. His articles are about as factual as an Enid Blyton mystery and so sculpted by his Blairist agenda that they are rendered pointless. I’ve long learned that anything that includes the term “Uncut’s sources can reveal…” can be filed under either scurrilous or nonsense. Why would a person so unburdened by journalistic integrity and honesty have any concern whatsoever with Julian Ruck’s awful and deceitful witterings?

    I gave up checking this website on more than an occasional basis long ago.

  11. Joao Morais says:

    “I would ask readers to note that last month BBC Wales reported that the Welsh government has employed 400 extra civil servants in the last two years while the number employed across the UK fell.”

    That is indeed the case. But you are not giving the full picture here, Julian. Between December 2009 and December 2011, the number of Welsh Government (WG) staff fell by around 1100. The extra 391 staff are largely specialists, brought in as the WG has assumed more responsibilities in the past few years (you may remember the referendum on extending the law-making powers in March 2011). So the net fall of civil servants in Wales over the last four years is at least 709.

    “So much for Carwyn’s restraint on public spending then.”

    The actual running costs of the WG are around 10% lower than they were four years ago, despite the recent increase of civil servants.

    “So, how does Carwyn and his Team Druid justify yet another manic departure from Westminster Labour policy?

    You tell me…”

    The figures I have quoted are all there in the article from which you got this information in the first place. You must have known all this, Julian. You have twisted this round to make a non-story sound credible. You have failed to quote the most important part(s) of the press release – the first three paragraphs detailing how numbers have actually fallen – and you have failed to quote the final paragraph which details how running costs have fallen too, instead choosing to only publish the penultimate paragraph as it fits your bigoted views. Anyone wishing to check my analysis may do so by following this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-25849068

    I am aghast that you have been allowed to take a single paragraph like this out of context. Why Labour Uncut didn’t check this themselves is beyond me, as it does their credibility no service at all.

    “Readers I feel, need to be reminded that 85% of Welsh GDP comes from Westminster, a figure which is often ignored by the Welsh nationalist community and a figure that is mostly paid by English taxpayers”

    Following on from James’s comment, I think it is also important to note that regional GDP/GVA per head data in the UK does not take account of regional differences in the cost of living, which in Wales is around 93-94% of the UK average. The gap in living standards between Wales and other parts of the UK is not as pronounced as you think.

    “However the Welsh Local Government Association estimates the costs of said merger at £200m.”

    Yes, but the Williams Commission estimates that the savings per year would be £60m-£80m. Not only that, Julian, but fewer councils means there will be *fewer politicians*. That sounds like something you would welcome.

    “…Wales is a principality not a sovereign state…”

    Sigh. We went over this last week. Wales hasn’t been a principality since the Act of Union in 1536. The Act of Union was replaced by the Wales and Berwick Act of 1746, which meant that Wales was (technically, lawfully) part of England. This in turn was repealed in 1967, so the country we live in today is called ‘England and Wales’. It is not a Principality. It has not been a Principality (technically, lawfully) for almost 500 years.

    “One is therefore left with the question: Does Welsh Labour have any idea at all about what is going on in the country or the world for that matter?”

    More so than you it would appear, judging this article.

    “The moderate majority will always take flight when chased by insular Welsh language ultra-nationalism and xenophobia.”

    Two points.

    1. Welsh Labour are not ‘ultra-nationalists’. Welsh Labour are Unionists. Carwyn Jones, the First Minister, has not followed in the footsteps of his Scottish counterpart for setting a date for a referendum on Welsh independence.

    2. Nationalism and support for the Welsh language are not necessarily concordant issues. It is possible to support the Welsh language and not be a nationalist. It is possible to support nationalism while not speaking Welsh. By always tying in the Welsh language with nationalism, you show yourself to have a very basic grasp of both Welsh political knowledge and logic.

  12. dave rodway says:

    “The folk in England must stop ignoring this issue and hold back the aid given to Wales until an English Language Commissioner is appointed.”

    oh dear, Mr Origami gets loonier and loonier…

  13. stevemosby says:

    Dear Labour Uncut

    It is clear from this sentence alone –

    “But the best bit of course is the fact that Carwyn is always tearing his hair out and knashing his teeth over what he perceives as a lack of bucks from his paymaster’s in Westminster!”

    – from “knashing”, through the grocer’s apostrophe, all the way to that unprofessional exclamation mark, that Julian’s copy is not being edited by any kind of professional journalist. My question: is it even being basically fact-checked? “85% of Welsh GDP comes from Westminster”. Really? Source?

  14. There is apparently to be a referendum on yet further Welsh devolution, despite the persistence of profound ambivalence, with well over a third voting No to the most recent round in 2011, as good as certainly including the great majority of those, still a significant minority but obscured by the First Past The Post electoral system, who are supporters of the Prime Minister’s own party. Plaid Cymru’s share of the vote at the 2011 Assembly Election was only half the size of that which rejected further devolution in the same year.

    An opportunity now presents itself.

    The status of Wales as a principality within the United Kingdom, the Principality of Wales, ought to be confirmed in Statute, with the monarch as de jure Prince of Wales, and with the title vested honorarily, together with ceremonial duties, in the Heir to the Throne at the monarch’s pleasure.

    Legislation of the Welsh Assembly would come into effect with the Assent of the monarch as Prince of Wales, and primary legislation could not be submitted for Royal Assent without the prior approval of a resolution of the House of Commons if it had been referred for such approval by the Prime Minister, or by the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, or by the Secretary of State for Wales, or by any member of the House of Commons sitting for a Welsh constituency, or by any fifth or more of the members of the Welsh Assembly, or by any third or more of those members (whether constituency, list, or both) from any of the five electoral regions, or by resolution of any local authority in Wales, or by petition of at least 50,000 registered electors in Wales.

    The greater number of the strongest supporters of, in particular, that parliamentary safeguard would be a very high proportion of the Labour-voting majority. They suffer most as a result of the takeover of Wales by an upper-middle-class oligarchy which uses Welsh while living in English-speaking areas, exactly as predicted by Leo Abse in the 1970s, together with the weakening of trade union bargaining power throughout the United Kingdom, as also fully anticipated in the course of those debates.

    Especially with the principality provision to put the belt and braces on Tory support, this ought to be proposed by Labour when the Bill providing for the next referendum comes before the Commons. However, it should simply be an additional part of that Bill, and not conditional on the outcome of that referendum, which is in any case to be on the question, only tangentially related, of the devolution of the power to levy income tax.

    If, most regrettably, this did have to be a backbench amendment, then obviously it would be best if it came from an MP who sat for a Welsh constituency. But failing that, or perhaps within it, it would look like a very enterprising, and a very worthwhile, way of securing oneself 20 or more nominations in the next election for Leader or Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

  15. Tafia says:

    David Lindsey, when was the last time any government in the UK polled over 50% of the electorate? Your whole proposal from top to bottom is pure Pythonism.

    Now scurry off back to the royalist tory sites and continue worshipping your German Queen.

  16. dave rodway says:

    I’m not sure all the article son this site are bad – many of them are pretty good, in a critical way, and I’m puzzled and find it disrespectful that Ruck is allowed to publish his vain, deceitful and slanted rantings on a politics site that is otherwise pretty good.
    Apart from anything else, why are Labour UNcut allowing gross factual inaccuracies to remain on the site when they’ve been corrected by people who know what they’re talking about?

  17. Mr Akira Origami says:

    So dave, you are saying there shouldn’t be an English Language Commissioner appointed in Wales.

  18. dave says:

    Yes I am saying that, and much else besides. You however seem only able to say one thing.

  19. BROKEN BRITISH POLITICS – SHAMBOLIC RBS & GOVERNMENTS – posted on 26/11/2013
    The bad blood between Brown and Blair did not go unnoticed instead of running the Country both had their own ‘camps’ and were in opposition to each other .After Blair reneged on his promise to step down he appeased Brown by giving him outright control as Chancellor .Brown in turn gave the Bank of England its self Regulatory Status .
    That opened the floodgates for Banks to operate without being overseen to run their business on a purely profit basis without consideration of the impact on the British Economy or small Businesses .
    This shambles Government fare no better ,we own 80% of RBS but have allowed their deliberate practice of allowing potential growth businesses to flounder in order to repossess them and gain profit .Whilst in the Taxpayers hands and making losses it has continued to pay out large bonuses .
    Osborne is more interested in Free Labour Workfare than the integrity of a basic standard of conduct required by Banks .Similar to Cameron he is no more a Chancellor than Cameron is a PM .
    They both entirely rely on advisors with no accountability ,they are no more than ‘Front Men ‘ revelling in the Limelight for their own gratification .11/02/2014 The money RBS Stole from Small Businesses was distributed between GRG a Chinese State Owned Listed Enterprise and West Register a Property Investments Company .RBS purposely starved their customers who had a Business of money knowing the Business would Default and RBS could sell it off .We own 80% of this Bank – Osborne is as much good as a Chocolate Fireguard .
    http://brokenbritishpolitics.simplesite.com

  20. Mr Akira Origami says:

    Thank you for being honest dave.

    We all have different opinions and yours is that the English speaking community should shut up and pay their taxes without representation.

    PS Is this the consensus in North Wales?

  21. dave rodway says:

    Mr O, if you are suggesting that we have no representation in Wales, then you are really a loon. The consensus where I am, in Cardiff, is something I would not want to presume on, unlike you, but so far as I can tell, and as a non-Welsh speaker, I and my family get to vote, use our votes, and work and live in what you stupidly and insensitively call ‘apartheid’ Wales. I see no sign of being oppressed (a word you’ve used on your blog), and the worst thing about living here is the stupidity of the anti-Welsh lobby, which you represent in paranoid spades.
    It’s people like you who make people like me (half English, half Welsh) vote for devolution in such thumping majorities.

  22. Mr Akira Origami says:

    The vote on devolution had a thumping majority? Which re-written history book have you been reading.

    All I am saying is the English speaking community should have a commissioner, this doesn’t make me anti-Welsh. As 73% do not speak Welsh ( 2011 census ) why should we not have a commissioner to protect our rights and work towards ensuring that the English language speakers will be treated equally as Cymraeg speakers.

    N.B. The 73% is Wales as a whole. South Wales would of course have a much larger percentage who do not speak Cymraeg.

  23. dave rodway says:

    No Mr O, that isn’t ‘all’ you’re saying: you’re saying the we English speaking Welsh have no representation and should withhold our taxes and the English should withhold their ‘aid’ (?!) to Wales, and that Wales has ‘apartheid’ and that we are ‘oppressed’ by Welsh-speakers.
    You are a very silly man, or a loony.
    The last vote on devolution as you know was won thumpingly by the Yes camp. Mainly because the No camp was made up of cranks like you.
    No cause you support would ever be helped by you, and your presumption to speak for people like me is laughable as well as sinister.

  24. Mr Akira Origami says:

    People pay taxes and want to be represented.

    It’s no big deal dave, the Cymraeg speaking community have a commissioner to protect their rights. It’s only right the English speaking community have one too.

    You have a strange definition of sinister!

  25. Hefin says:

    And what would this English language Commissioner do, Mr Origami? Ensure that public services have an English language option? Encourage big business to market and advertise in English as well as in Welsh (for we all know about Sainsbury’s strict no English policy, for example)? Ensure English speakers are not denied use of their language in their daily lives?

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