Thursday, 24 March 2016

Hey you’re alright? Haven’t died or something!

That was a text message I had from a friend a couple of days ago.

The reason for his message was that I had not been posting on my 3 blogs for the best part of three weeks.

So I thought I had better explain what’s been going on.

In my mind I had the next couple of months sorted in terms of activity and had hoped to have been selected as the Welsh Liberal Democrats lead candidate for the Mid and West Wales region as the Blog - Gwynoro on Mid and West Wales  - fully illustrates.  But it wasn’t to be because the members for that region thought otherwise and chose, as reported in the Western Mail, William Powell instead.

So a change of plan and direction became necessary. Luckily I had penciled in a visit to London to see family and friends and also, after a 28 year gap, meet up with Lord David Owen. Obviously we talked about the SDP years, the Alliance, future for social democracy, the turmoil in the Labour Party and the case for a Progressive Alliance to defeat the Tories.   

Hence I had an opportunity to chill out and draw up a new plan of action for the coming three months.

So now it’s back to all systems go again.

At the centre of my blogging and videoing will be posts, views and comments that will be as far as possible impartial reflections on the Welsh Assembly Election campaign as it develops in the coming weeks.

Then of course, as I had planned, intend to play an active role in the EU Referendum campaign immediately after the Assembly election is over with campaigning and speaking engagements that are already penciled in.

I have only been silent some 3 weeks but so much as happened some were predictable and as always others unforeseen. In that latter category is the terror attack in Brussels, Labour ahead in the Opinion Polls, the resignation of Ian Duncan Smith and the George Osborne’s budget fiasco. The fallout saw three Welsh Conservative MPs' promoted in the Government. There have also been interesting Coalition Government revelations by David Laws and Nick Clegg. But more about all that in future posts.

The predictable happenings related to endless sagas and turmoil within UKIP, both here in Wales and across the UK, Boris Johnson increasingly making a mess of his Brexit campaigning, the EU referendum opening wider the cracks in the Government, the primary elections in the United States and the general findings of a new-style Welsh Opinion Poll.
So there is a lot to write and comment about from this weekend onwards.

When I saw the text message left for I was reminded of a couple of songs one was of the Dubliners' rendering of a great song - about a Swedish/American Workers’ activist Joe Hill – one that I truly enjoy and the lyrics as well. The other was by Dafydd Iwan 'Yma o Hyd' - 'Still Here'


Anyway back very soon