Thirty Years On....

The National Archives material released today includes:

• Thatcher locked in loo
• Callaghan says let there be light - for the Queen's Silver Jubilee
  
• SAS invades Ireland
  

You can get more from the National Archives site itself.

Nadolig Llawen!

You know you're feeling middle-aged when....

Someone tells you 'never mind Facebook, join Saga Zone.'

Hey, 50 is the new 30 as far as I am concerned.

Normal service is resumed

I suspended this blog for the election, and blogged instead at leighton4rhondda

Time to start again. though we will be making changes to this blog in due course.

Bye For Now

This weblog is going into hibernation after today until after the Assembly elections, as is Rhondda Today and Rhondda TV. Rhondda constituents can contact my Assembly office on 01443 682550 and continue to email me on leighton.andrews@wales.gov.uk or write to me at 5 Cemetery rd., Porth, CF39 0LG.

When I was a lad....

this wasn't on the school meals menu.

Not that we had a menu, of course.

No more calendars please

Every year along with the Rhondda Leader I organise a competition to produce a Rhondda Calendar made up of photographs of the Rhondda taken by local photographers. The surplus from sales is donated to Rhiondda charities.

Every year other organisations send me calendars. Probably a dozen arrived between November and January.

The late calendar award this year goes to Visit Wales for their 'Events in Rural Wales' calendar which arrived today.

And will go in the recycling later.

Civil Servants

The IPPR has published a report on the Civil Service which says:

This report argues that in spite of its many qualities, the senior civil service is still too often amateur and insular, poor at strategic thinking, leadership and performance management. These worrying conclusions are founded on more than 65 interviews with senior civil servants, ministers, and public management leaders.

This BBC account gives a summary. We should be having a debate on the role of the Civil Service in Wales as well, following the publication of the Beecham Report and the absorption of key quangos into the Civil Service.

The Assembly Audit Committee does provide an opportunity to hold civil servants to account. But is it enough?

Which West Wing character Are You?

In this quiz I came up as Toby Ziegler.

Via.

Uncool songs

I hope my mates Phil and Nick aren't reading this, but I have to confess that somewhere on my iPod you can find Boston's More than a Feeling (I was in hospital for a week when it was out) and Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street (for the saxophone solo).

They are listed in the top ten uncool songs it's OK to have.

Whoops, and so is 10CC. So chalk that one up too.

They're probably classed by iTunes as Music for Dads.

You can say that again!

Niche market for first ever Breton-Welsh dictionary

Headline in Western Mail today.

However, I remember going into a bookshop in Brittany owned by a Breton who spoke fluent Welsh. The Breton national anthem, as I recall, has the same tune as our own Hen Wlad fy Nhadau. You can find Alan Stivell singing it on this.

Enemy for the people

We went to see Gary Owen's latest play, An Enemy for the People, at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff last night. Gary is one of Wales's best young playwrights, with a string of plays to his name. The first of these that I saw was Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco, a few years ago.

Gary has a fine ear for dialogue and the rhythms of South Wales' speech, and is a great comic writer.

There is a blog about the making of the play. Gary has described the emotions that led to its writing:

'In 1997 I hugged complete strangers on Borth beach when we won the referendum, and anything seemed possible in that brave new dawn. Skip ahead to 2003, and those fools down the Bay are arguing about where to sit. I have not forgotten: and now I will be revenged.'

I was elected in 2003, and within a month or two found myself having to sit on a damn-fool committee to discuss seating, so I knew how he felt. There was an interesting post-play discussion which I joined in from the audience last night.

The play is a very funny satire and imagines a small country on the brink of moving from devolution to independence in a referendum, asking questions about politics and its relation to our lives. It has a couple of recognisably Old Labour - and one distinctly New Labour - characters, but frankly it takes us beyond party politics to ask more general questions about Wales, and issues of self-confidence and self-belief. It sends up our love of 'lost leaders' who might have redeemed us, and one episode in the play clearly draws on events that caused the demise of a specific recent 'lost leader'. It also takes a shot in passing at other targets such as Welsh poets who slum for publicity photos, before returning to safer environments. I won't write more about the content - you should see it for yourself. It is on until Sunday night.

Make your own mind up - what's good is to see an important young playwright engaging with Wales's new developing democracy.

Welsh Blog Watch

Welcome to Tomos Livingstone's blog, called 0725topaddington.

A familiar train. I'd take it once a week on a Monday, when I was living in Cardiff and working in London.

Alun Pugh's blog

For the last eighteen months I have been the only Welsh Labour blogger in the Assembly -

but now Rhondda -born Alun Pugh, AM for Clwyd West, has joined me.

His blog contains a combination of constituency and Ministerial news.

Library of Wales - on radio

Dai Smith, series editor of the Library of Wales, can be heard talking about it on Radio Four's Start the Week on 27th February here.

Congratulations, Dai Smith (updated)

Congratulations to Professor Dai Smith on his appointment as interim chair of the Arts Council of Wales.

I welcomed this appointment yesterday in the Chamber:

Leighton Andrews: I also wish to welcome the appointment of Elan Closs Stephens, who will bring academic rigour to the review of the arts. I also thank Geraint Talfan Davies for his work as chair of the arts council. Do you agree that Professor Dai Smith is one of our leading social and cultural historians? Do you also agree that he had a distinguished career at BBC Wales as head of English-language programmes, where he commissioned dramas of significance, such as Karl Francis’s Street Life and Trevor Griffiths’s Food for Ravens? Do you agree that Dai Smith’s robust common sense and intellectual integrity are precisely the qualities that the arts council needs at this moment?

Alun Pugh: Indeed. Professor Smith has a long record of scholarship, and you are right to draw the Chamber’s attention to that. He has also had a successful management career, and not many people can boast having both

Snow overnight

Snow in our garden in Llwynypia.

New Welsh website

Aled Edwards is a Christian vicar in Cardiff and was deeply involved in the Yes campaign in the 1997 referendum on Welsh devolution. We had lots of groups - teachers say yes, lawyers say yes, and so on. Aled organised the religious group and was therefore one of the 'Yes Ministers' as we called them. (I think Hywel Francis, now MP for Aberavon, coined that phrase).

Aled has now created a website to mark the opening of the new Assembly Building which records his favourite National Assembly achievements.

It also lists his favourite Assembly Member's website.

This man has great judgement.

Plaid's sonic logo

Plaid's sonic logo, which you can find here, reminds me of the Close Encounters' theme music, which you can find here.

Well, we know they're off the planet.

Plaid Cymru's new logo

Didn't Peter Gabriel get there first?