91Èȱ¬

How many Assembly Members does it take to change a light bulb?

Just the one apparently (unless we pay for "product support" for that job too) but it does take us tax payers to pay for it. A new book case, rugs and bulbs cost Mike German £53.21 so that's how much it cost us. Ah I can hear Nick Bourne now. If only the Tories had got in in May 2007 he could have got saving us all a few bob.

The irony is that people seem more affronted by Lynne Neagle's claim of £2.00 for a pyrex bowl and £3.00 for a roaster (on which there is unlikely to be any profit to repay the Assembly) than Lesley Griffiths' £2000 sofa or Nick Ramsay's two £1000 beds. The relatively new Conservative AM for Monmouth is either an extremely kind host with a two-bedroomed flat or he must have had rather a lot of explaining to do as to what happened to the first bed.

No, we don't yet have a John Lewis nor a John Lewis list but AMs who, by the rules, are allowed to keep a second home in Cardiff can claim mortgage interest payments, huge ones in some instances and reclaim the cost of everything from extension cords to hundred quid bins to acres of curtain poles and made-to-measure blinds - up to £12,500.

Eight AMs went to that very limit. Then again Andrew Davies AM who lives in Swansea made no claim at all. AM Mohammad Asghar lives closer to Cardiff certainly but claimed nothing, no subsistence allowance either, though some of his Plaid colleagues who made the headlines by refusing their pay-rises last year, unlike Mr Asghar who accepted his, are amongst the top eight claimants.

Ousted AMs like Laura Jones, Glyn Davies and Alun Pugh got to make claims after they'd lost their seats. But even large monthly mortgage interest payments reclaimed for as long as three months after the election, as you'll see from , are entirely within the rules.

I've no problem with £2 pyrex dishes. To be blunt I've no problem with a single AM who makes claims that are within the rules, as long as we get to know about them. Reckon you'll buy a £1000 surround-sound tv because you're worth it? Fine, just as long as your constituents agree.

It's the rules that deserve a second look. No, make that an intensive stare, especially at those rules on second homes.

So how many experts does it take to change a rulebook? The answer is simple:

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Good news for and for when they return to the Senedd after the break.

Good news, in fact, for most of you by the look of the visitors book in the Cwrt.

The temporary artworks of Baroness Thatcher and Aneurin Bevan have come down, a day early as it goes. This being a typical Welsh Summer, there were high winds in the Bay and a gust came in and caught the side of the Baroness.

She was left dangling on fewer wires than was safe so twenty four hours early, down came the "insult to the nation" and Aneurin B too while they were at it.

There must be a line there somewhere about the winds of change blowing through the Senedd ...

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That's it then - another Eisteddfod over and the bright pink pavilion in the centre of Cardiff that launched a thousand fuchsia choral blouses (or subtle pink accessories in our case of course) is on its way down.

Where next? Bala in 2009 followed by Ebbw Vale in 2010 - two towns that sound as though they were almost handpicked to illustrate a speech on the Welsh language by Carwyn Jones.

Could Cardiff City Council have put up a few more banners and signs bang in the centre of town pointing people in the direction of a festival that was happening just out of sight, two hundred yards behind the castle walls? Yes but let's not be churlish. Their skating rink on the 'maes' was a big hit and there was something surreal about the experience of landing flat on my back, again and spotting - through the haze of fake snow spewing from the corner - the leader of the council, Rodney Berman, looking down from on high on the papal balcony of the city's stand.

What's the Eisteddfod about? If your answer is 'taking part' then you won't think twice about the fact that Plaid held a celebration towards the end of the week to mark fifty years since one of their most prominent members joined the party. Which member? Dafydd Iwan, the current president who is in the throes of an election campaign to hang on to the job.

Then again, if your answer is 'winning' and if you're in any way connected to the man who has challenged for the party presidency, Elfyn Llwyd MP, you may well have raised at least one eyebrow. Was it really appropriate for Plaid to be seen to be throwing a party for Dafydd Iwan in the middle of an election campaign in which he's involved? The Elfyn Llwyd camp didn't much like it so why didn't they say so out loud? Probably because their man wasn't in Cardiff at all, opting for Croatia instead and the line that the Eisteddfod is not an appropriate place to canvas for votes.

Really? Who told him that?

The final competition was "Individual Humorous Presentation". The final competitor, his name on a piece of paper shoved in my hand, was "Rhodri Morgan". Oh please, please let it be him with a medley of greatest metaphor-hits, a First Ministerial open mic session with his honest take on Gordon and the Millibandits, or 'how to afford a General Election when the coffers are empty' and a quip or two thrown in on stamp duty.

It turned out to be a teenager from Swansea, who came second out of two.

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Rhodri Morgan WAS in the Eisteddfod pavilion to hear the Verdi Requiem, sung in Latin, on Tuesday night - ok?

You mean, you hadn't heard that the First Minister had left before Bryn Terfel took to the stage?

Neither had I as it goes but someone clearly had. And that someone had done their job properly and checked whether the First Minister had had to leave early because he was, perhaps, unwell?

Apparently not. He was there. He heard every note. He sat in the front row. He even attended a 91Èȱ¬ reception and kissed the Controller on both cheeks he told me with some gusto, just in case the point needed stressing. And he feels very well thank you very much. So well he'd bounded out of his seat to take a ticket to his wife Julie, who'd arrived a little later and had to be met at the gates.

Someone clearly saw him leave but didn't spot him coming back. An upbeat First Minister rather wished he'd let the 91Èȱ¬ report his absence so he could sue us and fill Labour Party coffers. They may well, after all, need something with which to fight an election.

Both Andrew Davies-es made it to the Eisteddfod maes, or field, today and the Conservative Education spokesman, Andrew RT Davies, has decided he's rather more of a fan of the Eisteddfod that he'd imagined. Not because he spent the day glad-handing representatives from the education sector but because the festival is coming to the Vale of Glamorgan in 2012.

Guess whose farm is on the short-list as a site for the maes?

And guess who'd get paid a decent whack if the pink pavilion ended up in his field?

Got it in one.

I wonder whether "making good my field" would come under his Additional Costs Allowance?

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Where to you go to spot a trio of Culture Ministers in one day?

To the National Eisteddfod, where Alun Ffred Jones was getting on with a job his predecessors, Rhodri Glyn Thomas and Alun Pugh, found rather hard to make a go of. I'm moonlighting for a week as ... well, as a bit of everything. The day-job bits I'll tell you about; the singing and reciting I'll spare you.

A morning in the studio debating the roots and aspirations of two organisations who, along the years, would have welcomed visiting Ministers to their stands - the Welsh Language Board and the voluntary organisation that provides nursery education, Mudiad Ysgolion Meithrin.

The latter was formed to "turn out little Welsh speaking children" as one of its supporters in the early days put it, to turn the tide on the decline of the language, to campaign for dedicated Welsh medium schools. This was not about childcare. It was part of the 'language movement'.

The former was used to taking the flak in the late eighties and early nineties as Welsh Language Society protesters descended to daub, to chant and paste posters. Eisteddfod week back then was character building, a week of taking it on the chin said Professor Elan Closs Stephens, a member of the original non-statutory Board who recalled the vitriolic letters she received when her membership was announced in 1988.

She still seemed taken aback, twenty years later, that people she met on the streets of her home-town of Aberystwyth, people she knew, people who knew she'd just lost her husband, were prepared to put their names to such vitriol. "There were some dark times".

That was then. This is now and the present Culture Minister, Plaid Cymru's Alun Ffred Jones, was spotted in the crowd outside the Welsh Language Society stand at the launch of a book examining the way forward for Welsh language legislation. No jostling, no haranguing of the Minister, not a megaphone in sight but then neither at the moment is there an LCO on the Welsh Language in sight. Perhaps when there is and it turns out to provide the private sector with more wriggle room than those standing along side the Minister today will accept, things may be different next year.

More comment on the Welsh Language LCO, this time from the man who is:

a. still seen as the First Minister's likely successor
b. Welsh-speaking
c. fully aware by now that loose talk about the language can get you into serious trouble with some in the Labour party.

Given 'a' he's in no hurry to foul of 'c' again. So today, one presumes, he chose his words carefully. Listen to this :

"The agenda for the language tends to be dominated by a small group of confident and very fluent Welsh speakers who are untypical of the body of speakers as a whole. Their views are important, but we must also ensure that we listen to those at the heart of the community, those who use the language every day on the street".

He pointed to the Aman Valley from where his parents come, an area where Welsh was dominant but that can no longer, in his view, be considered a stronghold.

Two of his theories are these: that the role of the language as a factor in Welshness has declined since the advent of devolution ("Look at Ireland. Independence there did nothing for the vitality of the Irish language") and that while Welsh medium schools have added to the numbers of Welsh speakers and are needed in areas where the language is weak, they're counter-productive in areas where the language is strong. (Does he include the Aman Valley in that?) In other words in an area where English is increasingly seen as the language of the people, a dedicated Welsh medium school = posh.

And there was a "but" worth noticing too.

"I'm not suggesting that the present thrust of Government policy (on the language) is wrong, far from it. But we need to look more deeply at the situation of the language in the working class communities of Wales ... Those communities would see little benefit from the LCO, because most people wouldn't use a service in Welsh. They have little use for a daily newspaper in Welsh because most of them won't read it".

Not a megaphone maybe but a bit of a tank on the Eisteddfod lawn?

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