I disagree, and I think the article itself actually knows that it doesn’t really have much substance, or else it would have actually shown its hand and said ‘these are the people with the actual track records who should have been picked instead’.
Wales has a lot of public bodies, quangos, and everything else. If there was a hypercompetent, incredibly talented set of people who were being overlooked, you would be expecting to see a decent number of specific quangos doing better than you would expect.
If there was a load of domestic Welsh talent out there, they would be getting headhunted. There would be Welsh Government officials being stolen away to be appointed to UK Government departments. Welsh heads going to UK quangos and doing a great job, complaining about how little belief there was back in Wales.
You would expect to see loads of competent businessmen being selected as Tory or Reform candidates having been groomed up by the CBI, FSB or any of the more right leaning, pro-business areas, or Plaid figures of great stature emerging based on demonstrable track records.
I genuinely can’t remember the last time I saw Plaid stand up and say ‘we are in local government in this location and we’re doing disproportionately better than Labour councils’. I haven’t seen any Labour candidates emerging on the basis of demonstrable talent turning around a specific valleys town they were deputy leader of.
Instead, what I see, almost universally, is what I would consider to be a general lack of seriousness about government in Wales. The general understanding that we are all just in relative, managed decline, and our role within it is just to mitigate the threats rather than take advantage of opportunities.
I say all of this in the lead up to an election where no-one seems to really be being honest with people about what will be required to properly turn things around. I haven’t heard a single person say what they are going to deprioritise to get the funds needed to invest in delivering better public services. I haven’t heard anyone properly grasp the nettle of getting into the structures of stuff to sort out our deeper problems.
Instead, its all talk of belief. Demanding more. All the stuff we’ve been hearing from Labour for the last decade, which has already rung hollow.
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I disagree, and I think the article itself actually knows that it doesn’t really have much substance, or else it would have actually shown its hand and said ‘these are the people with the actual track records who should have been picked instead’.
Wales has a lot of public bodies, quangos, and everything else. If there was a hypercompetent, incredibly talented set of people who were being overlooked, you would be expecting to see a decent number of specific quangos doing better than you would expect.
If there was a load of domestic Welsh talent out there, they would be getting headhunted. There would be Welsh Government officials being stolen away to be appointed to UK Government departments. Welsh heads going to UK quangos and doing a great job, complaining about how little belief there was back in Wales.
You would expect to see loads of competent businessmen being selected as Tory or Reform candidates having been groomed up by the CBI, FSB or any of the more right leaning, pro-business areas, or Plaid figures of great stature emerging based on demonstrable track records.
I genuinely can’t remember the last time I saw Plaid stand up and say ‘we are in local government in this location and we’re doing disproportionately better than Labour councils’. I haven’t seen any Labour candidates emerging on the basis of demonstrable talent turning around a specific valleys town they were deputy leader of.
Instead, what I see, almost universally, is what I would consider to be a general lack of seriousness about government in Wales. The general understanding that we are all just in relative, managed decline, and our role within it is just to mitigate the threats rather than take advantage of opportunities.
I say all of this in the lead up to an election where no-one seems to really be being honest with people about what will be required to properly turn things around. I haven’t heard a single person say what they are going to deprioritise to get the funds needed to invest in delivering better public services. I haven’t heard anyone properly grasp the nettle of getting into the structures of stuff to sort out our deeper problems.
Instead, its all talk of belief. Demanding more. All the stuff we’ve been hearing from Labour for the last decade, which has already rung hollow.
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