Can you imagine the headlines if a report on MPs' expenses had recommended:
- scrapping second home allowances for half of MPs;
- scrapping mortgage payments for the remaining second homes and only allowing rentals;
- scrapping the food allowance;
- scrapping the furniture allowance.
It would have been major news. And rightly so. Yet this is precisely what our Assembly has just been told to do by Roger Jones and his report from 2011 onwards. The deafening silence from the UK media at this important pioneering work is more evidence of a metropolitan bias.
Some AMs, in particular those who were elected in 2007 and bought flats that are now in negative equity, will lose out but Welsh democracy will be the winner if people have more confidence that our AMs are not there to feather their own nests.
Plaid would be dull not to recommend the same for MPs in Westminster.
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4 comments:
it happened not just over the Roger Jones expense report on Monday but the Holtham Report yesterday on how Wales was funded, its recommendations are as significant as the Calman Report in Scotland and yet i can see nothing in any of the UK newspapers today
But why are we still surprised that Wales is invisible in the UK press anymore?
And of course as most people in Wales get their information from the British media, they will continue to believe that Wales gets unfair subsidies from the Barnet formula (so it would be madness to ask for more powers) and that all politicians have their snouts in the trough ('so we may as well get rid of the assembly and save the money)
Wales desperately needs and impartial, independent media, newspapers, TV and radio made in Wales for Wales.
Blogs and websites are read by too few people to have an impact.
In fact I'd say that is one of the most important issues facing Wales today, in the league of education and economic regeneration.
So it's up to the blogosphere to set us free! We can no longer rely on the mainstream media - radio, television or newspapers. They are expensive and dying dinosaurs.
The technology is out there. So is the talent. I have a plan.
Pelagius - do tell!
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