by Julian Ruck

Mark Drakeford, Welsh health minister and professor of social policy no less (these days, just about everyone who has attended the Cardiff university Welsh madrassa is a professor of something or other), was spouting forth on the Sunday Politics show last Sunday – the Welsh version, which I assure readers is far more entertaining than Andrew Neil’s London spot.

Whilst ducking and diving in true Welsh government fashion, he seemed to be of the opinion that viewers were privileged to hear his pearls of medicinal wisdom and that indeed they were lucky to see him at all. He did have better things to do than accounting for himself you know. I mean, never mind the fact that the Welsh NHS is receiving less money than the English NHS due to Carwyn’s Bernie ap Madoff accountancy rules and farcical use of taxpayers’ money to generate no hope causes eg billions of European hard earned going AWOL, Carwyn’s Carriers at Cardiff airport, business ‘Techniums’ and bankrupt pubs (I’m not joking, see next column).

He began his justifications with a flogged out, tedious and somewhat pedestrian class war diatribe aimed at Cameron’s “telescopic Etonian” perceptions of right not being might – I wonder who wrote that for him? One cannot help but wonder here, what his views on Fettes College elitism and doctoral graduates of the University of Edinburgh are? Not quite the stuff of a Cardiff madrassa, are they? Maybe he had eaten too many laverbread splattered Welsh cakes for breakfast, who knows?

So, the point of all this?

The interview was a classic example of Carwyn’s government being camera shy and not taking kindly to public scrutiny. The soundings I hear from the Welsh media are all the same: Carwyn’s gegin cabinet (gegin, Welsh for kitchen) are always reluctant to show their faces and take a sound thrashing from their masters, indeed they won’t even advise the Assembly Communications Office of briefing times.

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