Unpopular (adj.)

Consider the scene; you're the President of the United States of America and you're throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at the first game at Washington's new baseball stadium. The nation's capital has gone without major league baseball for 35 years, so it's a huge day for the capital of one of the world's most fiercely patriotic nations.

And as you walk out onto the field on this day of celebration in the seat of your power, this happens;



I'm guessing the 217 days to polling can't come soon enough...

The Strange Case Of The Rebels In The Night-Time

It's strange how the different threads of your life can converge in such surprising ways.

Take tonight's list of Labour rebels on the Post Offices debate (courtesy of BBC News and the Abbotts). Now, in my recent quiet period (has it really been a month since I blogged!) I've spent much time helping with the Facebook campaign to save Jodrell Bank observatory, as part of which I've been monitoring the three Early Day Motions supporting it.

Between the level of cross-pollination in the signatures and my quizzer's memory, I've come to know many of the signatories quite well. So imagine my sense of deja vu in finding that about a third of the Labour signatories of the EDMs were also among the rebels. I mean, it was only a few weeks ago we were told that the Labour Party had dispensed with the Mandelsonian Pagers of legend; do you get the feeling that there are plenty of Labour MPs who are still only capable of something so mundane as signing an EDM when told by the men at Millbank?


PS: While we're on the subject of Jodrell Bank plugs, sign the petition. Do it now.

All Hail The Round Mound Of Rebound

With hat firmly tipped to Matt Drudge, by far the best video of the year so far;



How can you not be excited by a Hall Of Famer with two Olympic gold medals who, it turns out, is an honest-to-goddness Democrat with passion and courage? Roll on 2014!

Tickling The Dragon Of Removed Irony

This blog has already discussed the dangers of trying to be funny in job adverts. But it's one thing trying it when you're an obscure Tory PPC heading for a well-deserved electoral spanking; it's quite another when you're, ooh, I don't know... First Minister of Wales?

Cue the Rhodmeister himself;

As no member of my family is available to work for me, I am advertising for a member of staff to assist me in my constituency duties

That rather strikes me as jumping the gun; after all, once Gordon takes his balls out of the safe and Julie gets the hiding she so richly deserves, at least one family member will have a bit of time on her hands. Unfortunately that'll be just about the time Rhodri retires, but hey; at least he'll have someone to share his legacy with. And few people will appreciate how well he's overseen the destruction of the Labour Party in Wales as much as one of the victims...

Doing The Butetown Shuffle

It occurs to me that it is a little odd that, despite my self-avowed obsession with semantics, I have so far failed to explain my most obvious semantic foible. Allow me now to remedy that by taking you on a trip down Lloyd George Avenue…

Metonymy has infected most political jurisdictions around the world. Westminster, Holyrood, The Hill, The Kremlin, L’Elysee; all instantly recognisable as the institutions based there. Wales is no different, with Cardiff Bay or just The Bay being metonymous with the Assembly. Which would be fine, if Cardiff Bay was, well, real…

In reality, there used to be a place called Tiger Bay and a place called Butetown, with a somewhat amorphous boundary between them. Then in 1987, something called the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation turned up and started building things. Fifteen years later there was the Barrage, the Wales Millennium Centre, the Assembly… And all this shiny architecture acquired the name of the corporation, a name so important it gets brown road signs.

Now this is all very well, but the Department of Metaphor has an important objection. In 1994, Bute Road station was also renamed Cardiff Bay, leaving us with the area east of the station;

The station itself;

And the area west of the station;

Can you tell what the metaphor is yet?

For all the shinyness on the east side of the railway line (and there’s no doubt it has done a tremendous amount for the general sense of civic pride in Cardiff and beyond), Butetown itself remains the most deprived area in all of Wales. Regeneration work is now starting there, but that is thanks to Cardiff’s Lib Dem council, not the Assembly.

So for now I’ll continue to walk down the Butetown side of the railway line every morning and I’ll continue to call it the Butetown Villlage, because until everyone has shared in the success, the Assembly cannot claim to have finished its job.