by Julian Ruck
If you politically aware folk across the Severn Seas, think Westminster is the political capital of greasy manipulation and ambitious malfeasance, then think again and try this on for size.
Old welsh Labour with its enforcers has now excelled itself, making sport out of the committee system of scrutiny and oversight where policy is concerned. If any member of said committee shows any sign at all of having an independent intellect (or indeed any intellect at all), or god forbid a view that may be deemed “principled”, then they are ignominiously ejected, without a safety harness.
You think I’m joking?
Well, let me appraise you of a recent Children and Young People’s committee, set up to consider the Welsh Assembly’s Social Services Bill.
By way of background, three of the Labour team were in support of a ban on physical chastisement of those objectionable urchins who fall by the parental wayside as it were, the minister overseeing all this, one Gwenda Thomas, was not.
Chance would have it, that just before the committee was due to convene, take evidence and consider an amendment to introduce the child-smacking ban into the Bill, old Labour’s chief whip-master sacked the three liberal musketeers, and without as much as a by your leave.
Christine Chapman (Chair), Julie Morgan and Jenny Rathbone were all replaced by more accommodating members with a more corporally inclined inclination than their predecessors.
When the meeting started, microphones were injudiciously turned off so that the new chair, one Ann Jones, was left to rather miserably explain that she had only just found out about her ‘calling’ to the committee – nothing like being prepared is there?
