Oh No! Not another Bloody Referendum

We pay our politicians good money to represent us, for that money they should bloody well do the job, rather than jib out of the job every so often and ask for a "referendum" to cover their fears of making a decision.

There is something patently ridiculous in the idea of needing a referendum to make a decision - when the referendum can only be called when those who have the power to make the decision, without a referendum, feel that the vote will go their way.

If the last need for a devolution referendum is anything to go by, we won't even have a debate about the issue of tax varying powers for the next goodness knows how many years, we will just have a convoluted debate about the best time to decide about discussing the issue!

Pathetic!

There are only two honest ways of dealing with this issue, one is for the elected to accept / reject Silk's recommendations without a referendum and accept the consequences of their decision. The other is to put the matter to a referendum as soon as is practically possible – next May - perhaps. Procrastinating about the best time will be dishonest, duplicitous and a disservice to Wales

If we have to have another bloody referendum I will, of course, make another application to lead the No campaign on a NO! Not Good Enough platform :-)

Silk - Clichés or Answers?

It was with a certain amount of despair that I heard on the BBC that the Silk Commission:

will hold its first meeting at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on Friday

What a bloody depressing cliché. They may as well have launched the Commission down The Big Pit or on a mountain farm where the farmer had been arrested for shagging his sheep – if the Millennium Stadium is their starting point, we may as well accept that the ending point will be a report full of platitudes and bereft of substance.

If the Commission had any intention of delivering a visionary way forward for Welsh governance and finance they might, at least, have launched their consultation in the memorial hall of a deprived community or in the canteen of a thriving company. Either would have shown some appreciation of the needs of Wales.

Launching in the spiritual home of the 80 minute patriot bodes ill for the value of the Silk Commission!

Tax advice for the Silk Committee.

I know that the membership has just been announced, and that it hasn't even met yet, but I would like to offer one word of premature advice to the Silk Committee – Don't do what the press assumes that you are going to do, do not look at tax raising powers for the National Assembly!

Raising is an ambiguous word.

To raise taxes suggests to most of us that the level of taxation will go up, in the sense that VAT has risen from 15% to 20%, and that raising the price of a pint of beer means charging £3 a pint rather than £2.50 a pint etc

In the political world raising taxes means collecting money for the purpose of running government. So in an oxymoronic way a government that cuts taxes by 90% would still be a government that "raises" taxes.

Any public consultation on the Assembly having the ability to raise taxes will be met with howls of protestation, because none of us want our taxes raised in the colloquial sense of them being made higher!

To avoid complication and to have honest consultation the Commission must look at tax setting or tax levying powers for the Assembly, not tax raising powers!

And those of us who belive that the Assembly should have some direct responsibility for its own financial situation should avoid the trap of using the term tax raising.

Normally pedantry is petty, in this case pedantry is important.