Apologies

Today we have more talk about the future of Nick Bourne as leader of the Tories in Wales, in part because he claimed for an ipod on his expenses. Strangely, there is little talk of the formerly-suspended Tory candidate in the Vale of Glamorgan Alun Cairns AM, who also got a taxpayer-funded ipod, being permanently barred from standing for Westminster.

This release of AMs expenses has led to some interesting developments. It has exposed the BBC's ludicrous political editorial policy as a fraud. They are desparate to demonstrate party balance, but clearly Nick Bourne's claims for an ipod, trouser press and two bathroom refits are more newsworthy than other parties' claims. So what does the anal and overly-sensitive BBC do? It starts referring to the fact that Huw Lewis and Lynne Neagle claimed £22,000 between them, when there is nothing particularly interesting in that fact, just to demonstrate party balance. Then Vaughan Roderick, in a truly desparate attempt to attack every party on his blog, not just the Conservatives, tries to throw mud at Plaid's Janet Ryder AM for paying for a change of sign on her office. He then had to correct himself for making a major factual error.

But above all, it is right to say this system must change. This has damaged devolution and the only ones to benefit will be anti-Welsh likes of Don 'Windfall' Touhig who has made equally embarrassing expenses claims at Westminster.

And then there are the apologies I have to make. Over the past week, I have removed posts that I wrote and published which went too far. They were not libellous but on second thought I felt they were not contributing to public debate and were unnecessarily personal. An anonymous commenter quite correctly pointed out that I had gone too far, and here is my response:

"Oh dear, two libelous postings taken down in a week. It seems that even from behind the veil of anonymity you lack the guts the be the sort of partisan smear machine you want to be."

Anon, The posts were not libelous, but I did take them down because I thought they went too far. I made a mistake posting them. I don't want this blog to be a place where vile gossip and tittle-tattle reigns. Sometimes it is a difficult balance to strike between legitimate political debate and unfair attacks. I got that balance wrong, for that I offer my sincerest of apologies.