Noah (not the two-by-two man in the ark but the commentator who's no fan of just the one Assembly) spotted signs of frivolity on the blog last week. Well spotted Noah. Must have been de-mob happy.
Off for a few days with the family - back to blogging next week.
She came, she saw ... a need for more strategic thinking.
Dame Gillian Morgan, the Permanent Secretary, took up the job some months ago, has done the talking and the listening and seems now to have sized up the task ahead of her.
If the jobs advertised in a small corner of yesterday's Western Mail are anything to go by, then she's decided at least two things: firstly that the new-look civil service will need to work more strategically, look out of the silos of old and work together to help deliver good government.
She's also making it clear she's aiming for the best - her mantra when she took up the job - hence the adverts in the paper. She's opened the top jobs for external competition. Four jobs are up for grabs: four Director General posts in 'Public services and local government delivery', 'Sustainable future', 'People, places and corporate services' and 'Finance'.
The salary for each job is £130,000 and all will be based in Cardiff. We're told the reorganisation will be 'cost neutral' which must mean a smaller top team than before. There will be some Directors General already in post - covering areas like education and the economy from the looks of the list above - but that still looks like a top tier of top honchos considerably smaller than in the past.
Small, the Permanent Secretary persumably hopes, will mean more nimble and more able to work in tandem with each other.
A step in the right direction is the general consensus and broad support for the decision to advertise externally. But as one AM keen to see a gear change in the quality of the service put it: changing the top dogs is one thing. What really matters is changes to the divisions they lead.
"Local councils have £581m in the bank."
You just knew that figure put on council reserves and quoted by the Finance Minister to the Finance Committee this morning, would squeeze its way into a press release before the day was out. An amount of money that "blows the socks off" committee member, Alun Davies, must surely hit the headlines.
Plaid's Chris Franks has just obliged.
You suspect that Andrew Davies knew it too, especially when he added helpfully to any committee members who'd missed the point: "That's half a billion pounds".
Now to be fair he did go on to point out that the cool half a billion he'd just cited included allocated as well as unallocated money. In other words you get to the cool half a billion by counting money that's already been earmarked for capital to build roads, town centre regeneration projects, match funding for European projects, new waste facilities, transport, leisure centres and nearly £60million for schools.
Perhaps he'd like us to cancel all school building programmes suggested a voice from the WLGA, who'd looked out of the window and spotted the tanks on the lawn outside.
Take away the allocated money and you're left with around £144m. Andrew Davies was in helpful mode again: "You'll note that that is significantly more than the Assembly Government holds [around £100million), for a budget of fifteen billion."
It does sound like an awful lot of money stashed away for a rainy day and as Chris Franks suggests, isn't it meant to be pouring right now?
Except when you divide £144m by the number of Welsh councils - 22 - it works out at around £7m per council. (Not actually how it works but you get my drift).
Still rather a lot given how loudly councils have complained about the impact of a tight settlement from central government this year?
Except equal pay claims will have to be settled soon. That will cost millions. Fuel and energy bills are shooting up by millions.
Still ... does sound like a heck of a lot, doesn't it?
Please don't forget, says the voice from the WLGA that the Assembly doesn't actually deliver any services at all: no teachers, social workers, environmental health officers, nor the costs and inflation that go with them.
The WLGA are holding a conference in Llandrindod Wells tomorrow. According to the agenda there'll be tea, coffee and Welsh cakes to welcome delegates. If they really did have half a billion around, you suspect the welcome would be rather more Corfu than currant buns.
There was, said David Cameron at the Tory Party Conference last month, plenty of time in which to consider as the party's parliamentary candidate in the Vale of Glamorgan.
Three weeks turned out to be plenty of time. He's been reinstated and returns to the shadow cabinet as Shadow Local Government Minister.
It will hardly be a surprise to anyone who knows him that Alun Cairns is "pleased this issue has been resolved and hope people will now judge me on my actions.
"I know I have a huge amount of work to do in the Vale of Glamorgan and look forward to working with the community to explain how Conservative policies can make a positive difference to their lives.
He also looks forward to returning to terrier duties, or as he puts it "holding the Labour-Plaid Cymru government to account for the woefully inadequate way in which it is funding councils across Wales next year."
There'll be few who won't welcome him.
So that's why 'the school inspector' was in town yesterday.
UPDATE:
Welsh Labour's 'welcome' clearly avoids attacking the man but goes instead for the party and the principle: "
"This decision shows the true face of the Conservative Party under David Cameron, which is the same old nasty party we know them to be. Cameron is incapable of taking tough decisions - as this decision proves. This novice like approach, flip flopping from one position to another is not what this country needs in these difficult times. The Tories simply can't be trusted".
Hats off to the Bevan Foundation for organising last night's very well behaved Welsh blogging debate. Sandwiches were provided and much stick for anonymous bloggers.
Not accountable? True enough. Not reliable sources? Fair enough. Malicious? Some can be. Unchristian? Now hang on ...
One Labour AM seemed astounded, if not disturbed, that I read anonymous blogs at all. He threw in words like 'sources' and 'quote' that I didn't. I simply said that I read anonymous blogs because in this ever so small country of ours, there will be people with insightful things to say and who can only share them in blogs. The problem is I don't know which ones they are any more than you do. Buyer beware but I'll carry on reading thanks.
If you stayed away because you had a sneaky feeling that bloggers, both open and anonymous and 'occasional users' of blogs (what's the blogging equivalent of not inhaling?) debating the merits of blogging - in Wales - might sound just a little bit incestuous, you're not far off perhaps. Still hats off to them for offering up six navels at which you can gaze .
We pro-bloggers reckon we won on the grounds that the Bevan Foundation's Director, Victoria Winckler - the blogger who instigated the debate - has decided to carry on blogging despite anonymous nastiness and her disappointment in the quality of the online debate. Eleanor Burnham, who kicked off the 'no' camp's argument, now wants to start one.
The Ayes had it.
Meanwhile our eyes and ears today are on the Welsh Conservative camp where something is afoot. More later.
"Duw it's hard" as Max Boyce put it some thirty five years ago when he sang Live in Treorchy. I'd always argue to be allowed to stay up to watch him on tv, even though I had no idea what on earth "empty gurneys red with rust" were. He was Welsh and he was on late: that was a good enough excuse for my brother and me.
Today it was Live in the Media Briefing Room for Nick Bourne and David Melding but their considerably smaller audience of lobby journalists left with the same feeling: Duw it's hard to be an effective opposition party these days.
They took a clear enough line: their approach to the economic crisis is different enough to the Labour/Plaid coalition that in the long term, people will get it and it will benefit the Welsh Conservatives. "I'm sure of that" Nick Bourne muttered more than once. In the short term the Tory group is here as a responsible opposition to support where needed, criticise where needed.
But hard to make that work? I think they'd agree it is.
How do you make effective use of your "ten point action plan to kickstart the economy" when some of your points reflect ideas already taken on board and others reflect a basically different approach to Labour/Plaid policies that if it's to gain you votes, it will do so in the long term?
How do you, in a once-a-week press conference balance David Melding's gentle summation of talks with officials about the current approach to easing the pressure on the Welsh economy as "well begun" and clearly useful, with the attack in the press release on Gordon Brown and Rhodri Morgan for causing many of the current economic problems?
Of course both approaches can be absolutely right. But Duw, this morning, they were hard to balance.
Even harder when the double act was joined by Cheryl Gillan, who was "just on a visit" to the Assembly. She's the kind of visitor who smiles, sits to one side but rarely leaves without making her point. Looking the visiting school inspector she threw in her pennyworth on the LCO row. Why not, she suggested, take away the job of scrutinising LCOs from the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and instead, create a series of committees to scrutinise each LCO as they come up to Westminster?
She was, she said, trying to be "constructive" but had got nowhere with the Secretary of State.
The Deputy First Minister had just upped the Affordable-Housing-LCO-ante by insisting that "there is a precedent being set" and "a wider principle involved" here.
Paul Murphy may at this point be tempted to join in with Max Boyce.
All together now ...
Remember ?
The half-hearted attempt by the Assembly Government to seek the powers to ban smacking in Wales not long ago spawned a thousand dodgy headlines (yes, me too on this blog) but was quietly dropped.
The Welsh Affairs Select Committee said it would impinge on the criminal justice system, which isn't devolved to Wales. Nice try with all your talk of banning smacking "on social welfare grounds", was the message: now get real. Welsh Ministers backed off.
So is over the Assembly Government's request for powers to legislate over the so-called right to buy scheme a case of back to the future? Welsh Ministers asking for more than they think they can get, being helpfully guided - or slapped down - by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and backing off?
I don't think so and here's why.
MPs' message on smacking was simple and proved irresistible: you don't have the right to ban smacking, so don't expect us to give it to you.
On suspending, or even scrapping the right to buy, the message is far less straightforward: you do have the right to do both but you only discussed suspension of the right to buy when you talked to us about it, so we believe you should stick to that. In fact you only seem to want to suspend the right to buy in certain areas in extreme circumstances so sticking to that narrower request really shouldn't bother you.
Just being helpful.
Not the same message at all and neither is the response. It's not proving hard this morning to find Assembly Members who are lining up behind the Presiding Officer. I'm not talking just Plaid either. The Conservative group is not backing his argument but Labour, Plaid and Lib Dem AMs are. He is, they're more than happy to say on this occasion, on the money. This can't be about MPs letting go only those powers the Assembly Government says - and can prove - it needs now. What about the scope for future policy making?
MPs on the Welsh Select Committee might regard this as a bit of posturing by Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas but there are plenty of AMs who don't ... I'll venture to add, for once.
David Jones MP has this down as the PO going off on one, on cue.
"He does appear to use the argument that he is the self appointed custodian of the Welsh constitution" he says. "I really don't know where he gets that from. He is the Presiding Office for the National Assembly for Wales no more no less in the same way that a County Council chairman is the chairman of a County Council. But he has appeared to have adopted this grander role of guardian of the Welsh constitution which frankly is bemusing everybody else."
Alun Michael - who does sound genuinely bemused by it all - believes it's a case of a man who can start an argument in an empty room doing just that.
Except today, the room is filling up with people who have no appetite at all to back off, who see no reason to back off, who believe the accusation of 'anti-devolution sentiment' is well made and who rub their hands at the thought of the Secretary of State checking up on his guidance notes and acting "as honest broker should there be any dispute between the Assembly and Whitehall or Westminster".
In other words they think he should come down on their side and have the air of people who think that on this occasion, if eventually called upon, he just might.
The Chief Executive of the WLGA, Steve Thomas, is - or perhaps I should say was - a fan of Bjork, or so I'm told anyway. You can see why the man in charge of Welsh local authorities might have gone off Iceland's finest, which means she may not be blasting from the car stereo as he heads to the Treasury this morning.
Travelling to London too is Brian Gibbons, the Minister responsible for Local Government: both men on a mission to find out from the UK government how likely it is that Welsh councils, universities, police authorities get back the money they invested in Icelandic banks.
There are suggestions this morning they could get back around a third: which means Welsh local authorities would have lost £40million for good.
Compensation, says Finance Minister Andrew Davies, is 'not an option'.
He's already told public bodies that his door is open to anyone in real crisis and no-one has come calling. If they do there'll be 'advice and assistance' aplenty but no compensation - a case, they might argue, of running the gamut of support from A to, well A. A case of making sure Icelandic banks don't run away from their responsibilities says the Minister and of underlining that well-run authorities should be able to take that sort of knock.
Cold comfort for those who could lose out but at least there is clarity. And clarity, knowing where you stand, knowing how bad things are so you can see the way ahead clearly, is what Wales' business sector hope they'll get in spades at tomorrow's All Wales Economic Summit. A big name for a big meeting and there's acceptance all round that something concrete, something substantial must come out of it.
The agenda has already convinced that it won't.
For the record here it is in full:
ECONOMIC SUMMIT/BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP COUNCIL: 16 October 2008 - Conference Rooms C & D, Crickhowell House, Cardiff Bay
AGENDA
9.00 am -10.45 am
Economic Summit:
1. Presentation by Principality Building Society
2. Presentation by Atradius
3. Credit Crunch: Impact in Wales
10.45 am - 11.00 am Coffee
11.00 am - 12.00 am
4. Planning in Wales BPC 24.01.1
(Business Wales paper)
5. Vulnerable Workers BPC 24.02.1
(Wales TUC paper)
6. VAT on housing refurbishments BPC 24.03.1
(Business Wales paper)
7. Minutes of meeting held on 7 May 2008 BPC 24.04.1
8. Matters arising and updates from previous meetings BPC 24.05.1
9. AOB
Papers to note - Wales Employment and Skills Board BPC 24.06.1
Flexible Support for Business BPC 24.07.1
Add to the pot rising unemployment figures, up 10,000 in Wales to 85,000, a rise of 5.9%. Add that lost £40m and hope that they rise to the occasion.
Sensing there's something in the water is one thing. Finally working out what it is is quite another.
Eluned Morgan MEP won't be standing in the European elections. Labour's lead candidate and MEP since 1994 has long been tipped as a future Welsh Labour leader of course - a job she won't get while she remains an MEP.
One way to set the cat among the Assembly pigeons on a Tuesday afternoon. One way, it strikes me too, of seeing rather more of your young family.
Officers on the Welsh Labour executive must be thumbing through their diaries now to decide when to meet and whether this means Derek Vaughan, leader of Neath Port Talbot council rises to number one on the list and Lisa Stevens stands as number two.
A prize for the first person to spot Eluned Morgan doing her shopping in Ponty market?
Then again, Cardiff West would be even closer to home. In fact, it is home.
UPDATE
Confirmation from Eluned Morgan that she's intending to stand down:
"I have had the tremendous honour of representing Wales in the European Parliament at a time of rapid change and development. However, after fifteen years with a constantly punishing schedule in Brussels and Strasbourg, and the huge task of representing the whole of Wales in addition to the need to better balance work and family life, I believe that it is time to hand on this privileged post."
There's an element of poetic justice in it really. Mike German, the outgoing Welsh leader of the Liberal Democrats is incensed by a leaflet that was shoved through his door in Cwmbran while he was at the party conference on Saturday.
It came from True Wales, and is, says Mr German, 'lacking in truth'. What is doesn't lack is button-pressing. They are all there - AMs in shiny palaces with snouts in the trough, dreaming of more powers, next inevitable stop: independence and bust.
That's the journey True Wales makes in its first leaflet - read on and decide whether you're prepared to make it with them. This is the gist of their message:
The All Wales Convention is a publicly funded Yes campaign "travelling around Wales with £2.5million of your money"; if you vote yes in a referendum then "on previous form, AMs will award themselves an inflation-busting pay rise" and you'd probably get another twenty of them, queuing up for more cash and second homes.
The referendum would "set the country on the road to separation from the UK" so forget law-making powers alone and when you vote in a future referendum, think independence as an inevitable consequence. Given Wales pays £9billion less in taxes than it gets in public spending, in "an independent Wales we would either have to scrap the NHS and every council, or every man, woman and child will have to pay another £3,000 in taxes".
Will their arguments have traction with an awful lot of voters in Wales? Yes, of course they will.
Is Mike German right that they're more un-true than true?
Take just one figure: the '£2.5m' being spent on the All Wales Convention. There is a half a million per year in the budget to be spent on the Convention. The figure is there in the budget line for three years but given the Convention intends to report back in its second year, it should cost £1m.
Where does the £2.5m figure come from? It includes £1.5m for the Convention and the £1m budget of .
So no, It isn't accurate. But if you were on the 'other' side of the debate, would you relish having that argument ("it's just a million") with True Wales just now?
And is Sir Emyr Jones Parry's Convention going to take on those arguments while it gathers evidence and when it finally reports? That's not what it's there for. Yes, it is absolutely there to advise the government on how best not to lose a referendum. Hardly surprising then that not everyone swallows the 'neutral' tag. But does that make it a Yes campaign? Only in the same way that £1m can add up to £2.5m.
Will the arguments True Wales is taking to the people of South East Wales (and beyond in months to come) kickstart an official Yes campaign? Hardly. Mike German believes his Labour and Plaid colleagues in the shiny palace in Cardiff Bay are 'laggards'. They believe that to launch a campaign now - just when you're more worried than ever about next month's fuel bills - would do very little for further devolution and in Labour's case, do even less to promote party unity: a happy coincidence.
It's not going to happen. For now, it's just no.
A quick bit of news.
Jane Davidson, thought of at one time as a possible Labour leadership candidate, has told her party in Pontypridd that she's standing down at the next Assembly election. She made it clear last year that she wouldn't be going for the leadership but told a meeting last night that she won't fight the seat in 2011.
I doubt whether she's trying to steal Mike German's thunder as he gives his farewell speech today in Clydach but all the same, it's intriguing news and means she might yet leave her mark on the leadership election.
Heading off West but hoping to hear more from her on tomorrow's Politics Show if we can track her down and if she can make it.
The list of those 'exposed' by the Icelandic banking crisis grows:
Ceredigion County Council: £5.4 million
Gwynedd Council: £4million
Caerphilly Council: 'unknown but thought to be substantial'
Gwent Police Authority: £1 million and a familiar story, that they could see serious problems looming but couldn't withdraw their money when the bank's credit rating dropped below the Authority's 'acceptable minimum' because conditions of the loan prevented early repayment.
And cover from the Treasury for all of those exposed? What are the chances? As the list grows and grows, the chances of that warm blanket of guaranteed cover must be getting slimmer.
And I wonder just how long it's going to take the SNP to tweak on their website:
Success
Independence would enable Scotland to become more successful. Other small European countries have higher levels of economic growth and living standards than Scotland. Independence gives those nations the powers to shape their country for the better. Scotland could have this too.
Off our east coast lies Norway, the second most prosperous country in the world. Off our west coast lies Ireland, the fourth most prosperous country in the world. Off our north coast lies Iceland, the sixth most prosperous country in the world.
These independent countries represent an arc of prosperity - and Scotland has every bit as much potential as any of them.
UPDATE
Add Caerphilly Council to the list. They'd invested a total of £15million with two of the stricken banks for just three months ... "just like that" as T Cooper used to say, whose timing was rather better than the council's it seems.
Well you didn't think council Finance Directors kept the millions they get from the Assembly Government in a bucket under the bed, did you?
They didn't. Some - - were attracted by investment opportunities in Icelandic banks, like Landsbanki's promise of "Creative, positive, sustainable" plans to invest their money and better interest rates than they were offered elsewhere you assume. Now they're wishing they'd put in a bucket under the bed.
How much are we talking about? The exposure, to use the word of the moment, is around £12 million, not a lot perhaps when you hear that some of England's largest councils are sweating over £40million and more.
But hang on. Powys County Council have just been discussing a controversial plan to switch off street lamps which would save them all of a quarter of a million. The extra money they've got coming to them in this spending round is somewhere in the region of £2.5million. The £4million they handed over to Landsbanki and Glitnir amounts to 6% of their investment portfolio and is going to hurt if it doesn't make it back to the schools and old people of Powys.
Gordon Brown's office said yesterday that they weren't getting "much or any information out of the Icelandic authorities". Try again is the advice from the Welsh Local Government Association or better still give us "the necessary cover for public sector investments which have been undertaken in accord with normal practice".
They add that "until very recently these banks were rated as creditworthy by the leading credit rating agencies".
If I lived in Powys, Flintshire, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Monmouthsire and Ceredigion I think I'd like, at the very least, to know just how recently?
We're in the eye of a financial storm, one which the Assembly Government will try to ride if not calm next Thursday by holding an All-Wales Economic Summit to consider the impact of the crisis on the Welsh economy and to "discuss the challenges that are facing us". It's not clear yet who'll be on the guest list - who would you want tob e there? - but there's a pledge to try to "reinforce or add to measures to help our businesses overcome the challenges they are now facing."
There are cold winds blowing in from Iceland ... but more on that later.
Plaid AM Leanne Wood has looked at the £50b public investment in the banks, sniffed a fat-cat bail-out but spotted what she thinks is a silver lining. "If public ownership is good enough for the banks, it is good enough for the energy utilities that, after all, provide a service which people cannot do without". That's the way, she says, to abolish fuel poverty in Wales.
In the meantime AMs must get on with the day-job and so far this week, that has been a challenge for some.
Another Plaid AM, Mohammed Asghar, has stood down voluntarily from a major Assembly inquiry into a planning application after allegations that he'd shown bias and prejudice. QC Winston Roddick - and here is a man who sounds every inch the QC - didn't mince his words in condemning Mr Asghar's contribution.
"It was, if I might say, in proceedings of this kind, highly unusual and of a kind I have never seen before in the whole of my professional carreer at the Bar". Mr Ashgar had, he alleged, failed to keep an open mind and as all Assembly Members should know, .
Mr Asghar stood down voluntarily this morning, not because the criticism was justified but because "he wanted to protect the reputation of the Assembly as whole".
Perhaps he should take a look at You may find the Subordinate Legislation Committee meeting hard to follow. Eleanor Burnham, who is a member, certainly seemed to find the whole experience of taking part via video-link from Wrexham pretty taxing.
Who cares?
The answer is Labour AM Alun Davies who has written a strongly-worded private letter to the chair accusing Eleanor Burnham of behaviour that is "wholly inappropriate ... This afternoon she appeared to be both shouting and laughing loudly and almost screaming at times. It was clear from her behaviour that she had little if any awareness of how she was being seen in the committee room. In my view her erratic behaviour was embarrassing, improper and wholly unsuitable for a formal meeting of the committee".
He goes on to claim that this "eccentric behaviour brings both the Committee and the Assembly into disrepute". That word again - the Assembly's reputation - and yes, that's why he cares.
They appear together on tonight's , where no doubt Ms Burnham can explain to Mr Davies that she is a pioneer in the use of video conferencing technology. She can also pass on the message that yes, it was unfortunate that she had to leave before the meeting was over to catch a train to Cardiff but that, she claims, was partly down to lengthy interventions made by Mr Davies himself.
Tune in.
News from the Conservative Group, who have "agreed that South Wales East AM William Graham will continue as chair with Preseli Pembrokeshire AM Paul Davies as his deputy".
Mr Graham, who has been doing the job for eight years, simply says that he's "very pleased we have been able to resolve this issue and we can all now move forward together".
Mr Davies adds only that this "decision is a result of constructive, amicable, positive discussions".
IWhich means there's rather a lot they're not telling us.
On my way into work today I popped into the chemist and tried to pay for my repeat prescription for an asthma inhaler. I tried and failed.
"But it's free!" said the helpful pharmacist. "They all are now you know".
But what, I asked, if I wanted to pay because I can afford to, because I'm lucky that I don't need to pay for prescriptions that often, because I know that later today we're about to find out how the government intends to share out the little money there is in the national pot to pay for public services next year and because, frankly, I was just a bit curious.
It turns out that there was no way she could accept my money, "though d'you know what, lots of people say they wouldn't mind paying the £3 or so the charge had come down to".
She hadn't really thought about the practicalities of it before but there was simply no mechanism by which I could pay, nor was there an alternative drug that I could get over the counter that would do the same job.
So I tried and failed to take a little less out of what Andrew Davies, the Finance Minister, this morning described as the "quantum of resource to deliver public services". What he means, of course, is the pot of money we get from Westminster, the lump sum calculated by the much discussed, or should that be subbed to much dissed, Barnett Formula.
This morning the First Minister and his Deputy introduced the two members of the independent commission who, alongside Chairman Gerry Holtham, will consider the way funding and finance works for Wales. Professor David Miles is Chief UK Economist at Morgan Stanley and Visiting Professor at Imperial College in London. He's from Wales but has never worked as an economist here: he is honoured to be given the chance (just when things are getting rough in the day-job you imagine).
Professor Bernd Spahn is Professor Emeritus at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. In the past he's served as "Macro Fiscal Advisor to the Minister of Finance and Treasury of Bosnia and Herzegovina" but must now turn his considerable attention not only to the 29 year old Barnett Formula but to the implications of giving Wales tax varying and borrowing powers.
That's right: they're not talking potential tweaks to a formula that even its creator never expected to last this long. They intend to look at comprehensive reform, a Holtham Formula that will aim to be - and I quote - "fair, robust, transparent and sustainable".
But we know that up in Scotland, are doing, if not the same job, one that goes over similar territory. We know too that the SNP government is having its with the people of Scotland along, well, as Gerry Holtham put it this morning, "almost competing lines".
So does our Commission intend to reflect the positon taken in Scotland? Are we aiming for consistency and maximum impact when the reports are finally thumped on a desk in the Treasury? Or are we going it alone, heads down and coming to our own conclusions?
"It would be nice" if there was consistency admitted Gerry Holtham "but we must call it as we see it".
And here's the rub: the First Minister and his Deputy are acutely aware that so far, the issue of funding 'the devolved territories' fairly - and bear in mind that your percentage contribution from the Treasury could go down as well as up - has been defined solely in Scottish terms. The debate in Westminster happens in Scottish terms. Even a quick Google of 'Barnett Formula' and 'unfair' calls up a Telegraph article with the tag Scotland-funding-formula-unfair-says-Lord-Barnett along with a host of articles from Scottish newspapers. Wales barely gets a mention. Also-ran is a dangerous place to be in a debate like this, as the First Minister put it this morning.
And if it's not about Scotland, about oil revenue, it's about English voters asking 'why can't we have free prescriptions/free car parking in hospitals' like they do in Wales?
Those are strong voices that are getting stronger, which is why the Holtham Commission's real job will be making sure the Welsh voice is heard when the shouting really starts.
In twenty thousand words delivered to David Cameron in July, what has Lord Roberts of Conwy said about further powers for the Assembly?
We still don't know but what we do know is what he's been saying in interviews on Radio Cymru over the past few days.
Here, in translation, is a taste:
"It's not easy getting an agreed opinion on the Assembly. I don't think that there's been much of a shift in public opinion since '97 and the first referendum. If you look at opinion polls, fewer than 50% are in favour of giving more powers to the Assembly. The fact that there hasn't been a referendum suggests that neither the Assembly Government nor the Labour Westminster government have much faith they'd win one and there's no point holding a referendum where you end up going back to the status quo".
I wouldn't dare read between the lines but I think you can safely say there aren't many positives there. He goes on:
"This is my personal opinion and I don't know whether this will be the opinion the party adopts in the end: there's a reason why there's a lack of faith in the Assembly. There is something wrong. We've now had two acts of parliament relating to the Assembly. The government - even before they'd passed the second act - acknowledged the deficiencies in the first system they'd put in place".
So?
"I think we need some sort of in-depth examination ("archwiliad pur ddwfn") to see why people are so unhappy with what devolution has delivered over the past ten years".
Could the twenty thousand words lead, in the end, to just three: yet another commission?
I disappear for a few days to the world of Mastermind Cymru and its black chair and re-emerge yesterday to find Nick Bourne in the chair of the Politics Show squirming more than any of the weekend's contestants .
He might not have had an autocue but it's pretty clear he had a script and that in the circumstances, had no choice but to stick to it. Either that or he would have been sporting a plaster above the other eye by the end of the day.
It was a case of no passes as far as opportunities to say sorry went: sorry, my fault, my mess, sorry again.
Has he done enough? Enough for what?
Enough to appease his staff? It's a start but putting right the damage done there, from what Mr Bourne himself suggested yesterday, will take another dose or two of humble pie and proof he's realised just how far he went wrong.
Enough to retain William Graham as chair of the group? I'm not so sure. In a Conservative group of twelve I can think of five who would be either happy or prepared to see Paul Davies, Preseli Pembrokeshire's quietly spoken but well briefed and well organised AM take over. Kung Fu Panda - and Mr Bourne himself was the first to crack that joke by the way - might even regard that one as a blow he's prepared to take to prove his contrition.
Enough to limit the damage? Limit it, yes. Repair it, no. There was absolutely no need to get himself into such trouble but the bottom line is that Mr Bourne's judgement has now been put in question - the kind of question you can't simply answer by sitting in a chair and saying sorry.
"David Cameron understands Wales" said Cheryl Gillan this week.
"He must explain it to me one day" whispered the man behind me. Count me in on that interview Mr Cameron.
"I think David Cameron likes Wales" she added thoughtfully.
Now we're told there'll be at least half a dozen Welsh candidates and activists sitting on-stage during the leader's speech. Given the hall has been packed for the past hour at least, they must be glad they're so well-liked. I think we can guarantee now they'll hear one line in the speech referring to Wales, the inevitable line about how he believes in the Union and that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland gain strength from moving forward together.
With Mr and Mrs Cameron already making their way to the hall, with the last lap of this round of party conferences in sight, an Email arrives from the Liberal Democrats. It's a reminder that I haven't yet got my accreditation form in for their Welsh conference on October 11th.
Oh boy.
To The Observer Interview last night.
Andrew Rawnsley was talking to Eric Pickles MP, 'dirty Northern bastard' of the Conservative party and the man who revelled in making Labour pay for their own dirty campaign in .
The audience would have loved to hear more about what drives the dirty bastard in him but there was no lack of Northern attitude - and a lot of round Eric the joker. 'You look like a man who enjoys a mixed grill yerself Andrew'.
The white-suited Martin Bell, , he described as being 'like a Liberal Democrat on speed'. So there are two?
He confirmed the 'no-jubilation-at-conference-allowed' command and said he'd been helped by having a 'happiness-buddy ... they've given me Francis Maude'.
Andrew Rawnsley wondered whether he'd like to be Party Chair? 'I'm very happy doing the job I'm doing now' said the Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary.
I think that means yes.
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I'm Betsan Powys, 91Èȱ¬ Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on .
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