European Political News

This week, Miss Wagstaff has learnt that while the Assembly is away, the politicians will play. It may still be Assembly Recess (until 8 April 2008), but the build-up to local elections in May have got Labour and Plaid Cymru in a constant state of flux. Going off tangent for a minute, the website of the [...]

This week, Pippa Wagstaff writes her first column for the Wardman Wire about events at the National Assembly for Wales (the Senedd) in Cardiff.

Miss Wagstaff has been busy, so the Senedd Circular will be out on Friday morning.

Earlier I posted that we were That is confirmed, and we should have our first real Senedd Circular report posted next Thursday. This has now been confirmed, and we will be rolling from next week. You can find out more about Miss Wagstaffe on her blog. Why “Circular”? The official reason is that it is a Newsletter and the Senedd Chamber is circular. You may not believe me, but it has nothing to do with 8.3% pay increases and fatcat (i.e., circular) AMs. Nor does it have anything to do with extra-large AMs after too many political lunches. However, we now have a third reason, and it because of a publicity stunt by Jenny Willott MP (LibDem Welsh Affairs at Westminster) following on from Heather Mills throwing a jug of water over Paul McCartney’s lawyer Fiona Shackleton. Ms Willott responded to BBC correspondent David Cornock’s fishing expedition, after Glyn Davies made a “wet hair” joke. Meanwhile, Glyn Davies told the BBC to take a running jump when they tried to get him on Radio Wales about his blog post. Good call. There are more important things around, such as Tibet / China and the continuing assault on our Civil Liberties (on which I’m happy to acknowledge excellent work by the Lib Dems). (more…)

Today “Parliamentary Roundup Thursday” gains another report. In addition to Sadie’s “Westminster Watch” report, today Will Patterson - who writes the J Arthur MacNumpty blog and contributes to the Scottish Roundup - has done the first weekly roundup with news from the Holyrood Parliament. For now I’m calling the column “Holyrood Herald“, but we may come up with a better name (suggestions are welcome). Over the next several weeks a roundup from the Welsh Parliament (”Senedd Scan“?) will be added, and I’m working on similar roundups from Stormont and Brussels/Strasburg. The Roundup of the Papers will be out in the early evening today, and will be - shall we say - idiosyncratic. As a final note, I have added mobile websites to the Scottish Politics and Welsh Politics blog aggregators, and to the Comment from the Senedd Welsh Assembly AM Comment “blaggregator”. The links are, respectively, http://m.politics-scotland.co.uk/ http://m.politics-wales.co.uk/ http://m.senedd.me.uk/ These are experimental at this stage, so there may be some glitches - and I welcome comments. Tags: daily roundup, holyrood herald, will patterson, mobile phone political feeds, scotland, wales

From Miss Wagstaffe observing Westminster (”Things you don’t see in the Senedd“) Checklist: Warm coat, scarf, hat, thermal underwear, whisky-filled hipflask, sandwiches, tea-filled vacuum flask, tissues, a reliable friend or companion, a large banner of your choice, and a speech prepared for the media. They get far more formidable man-eating creatures in the Senedd. Dig the crazy black leather coat. I’m sure there’s a Member of the Senedd who wears one like that, but I’m blowed if I can find them. And as for Holyrood… Tags: senedd, torchwood, welsh wagstaffe. welsh assembly, weevil