I think the current UK Government have deliberately misled and lied, and I don't think that's how politics should be conducted.
While it might lead to short term political success, the long term effects are damaging, as it undermines trust.
So, with that in mind I must try to stay true to myself and ensure that I don't purposefully or unintentionally mislead anybody either.
Last night I was listening to a debate in the Senedd about the current Coronavirus restrictions, and a comment made by Health Minister
struck me. I tweeted about it afterwards, then searched for the record and placed the video here. The Minister's comment wasn't worded particularly well, but my understanding was that he said that the Tory spokesperson had attended less than half the Health Committee
meetings. Someone commented today that this was incorrect, so I've looked at the attendance records and it wasn't, in fact, correct. So, I need to be true to myself. I apologise to @AndrewRTDavies and apologise for misleading others, intentionally or unintentionally.
It certainly wasn't my intention to mislead, but what I said was factually wrong. If we're going to create better politics, then we need to fess up when we get it wrong and apologise. I'll continue to disagree with much of what @AndrewRTDavies says, but will do so based on facts.
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🐟 Fishing has become something of a cause célèbre for Brexiteers, and is an issue used to justify Brexit.
⚓ Forty years ago UK trawlers were more than happy to sail the seven seas casting their nets far and wide for fish in other foreign seas.
⬇️
🇮🇸 That is until the cod wars with Iceland.
🇪🇺 The EEC (as it was) stepped in, and brokered an agreement which placed a boundary around the seas, to ensure fairness and parity.
🇬🇧 The UK has the same rights as other coastal states.
⬇️
💹 But, following Thatcherism and the belief that the UK should concentrate on the service sector and allow manufacturing to decline, the UK Government decided to sell the fishing rights to UK waters.
The UK Government failed to take the pandemic seriously in early 2020. They first had months to prepare. When it was rampaging through Italy in February, they could have made preparations. Neither the UK nor Welsh Governments took action /2
We rightly blame the UK Government. Operation Cygnus informed us some years ago that the UK was woefully ill prepared for a public health crisis of this kind.
But the Welsh Government are equally to blame. Over a decade ago they were warned of a lack in the Health workforce /3
With the number of MPs from Wales soon to be slashed, it's worth looking towards the Second Chamber, The House of Lords, to see how Wales performs there.
A thread
👇
➡️There are 800 Peers sitting in the House of Lords;
➡️Of the 777 Members included in the June 2019 claims data and eligible to sit, 523 chose to include a broad location for their main residence, 254 did not.
👇
Of these,
🏴84.1% were from England;
🏴9% from Scotland;
🏴3.8% from Wales;
🏴2.3% from Northern Ireland;
🌍0.8% from overseas
These statements are making the Unionist cause look increasingly desperate and panicky. This by Drakeford, who's an intelligent man, is illogical and demeans him.
First he wants us to use our imaginations. OK let's imagine that Wales was independent. We'd then have our /1
equivalent of SAGE, yes, but would we be so arrogant as to ignore advice from WHO and other countries?
Would we have been so late to lockdown?
Would we have had a PM that went around hospitals shaking hands with Covid-19 patients?
Would we have had a PM that refused to /2
to attend our equivalent of COBRA?
Would we have had a government that refused to take steps to social distance sooner?
Would we have had a government that failed to invest properly in our NHS and chose instead to implement austerity and invest in willy waving projects?
/3
Border control.
There's a lot of talk about communities on the Wales/England border struggling to understand the different rules, and that those differences are 'making a mockery' of the attempts to control the virus. @DKShrewsbury was talking about it with @VaughanRoderick /1
Hands up, I don't get it. I don't understand the confusion. Are we saying that people are stupid?
There are borders everywhere demarcating different rulea. Even internally, we have borders. There are different Council Tax Rates between Gwynedd and Denbighshire /2
Different education systems - Gwynedd has bilingual schools, and Denbighshire has schools placed in language categories; different littering regimes; a blue badge holder can park the car for free in Bala, yet pay for parking in Corwen; I could be charged £100 for littering /3