Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

You can't please all of the people, all of the time. I reckon my inbox first things this morning was designed to prove that particular rule.

First, the Guardian's editorial which gives the Assembly Government's spending plans a thumbs up this morning. Why? For not pretending things are any better than they are. Faint praise you might argue; we'll take anything we're offered, WAG might argue back.

"In Wales, where the budget is half the size of Scotland's and where revenue-raising powers are, for now, more curtailed, the Labour-Plaid budget is no less indignant but far less opportunist. Having been dealt a tough hand, the Welsh not only look ahead across the whole spending review cycle but also grasp some painful nettles"

In their view, of yesterday's two budgets, "the Welsh is a more honest and progressive offer than the Scottish."

Honest? Let's see a bit more detail first. Professional? Absolutely not, says a second Email from an angry viewer in Blackwood, embarrassed that John Swinney's statement before fellow MSPs in the chamber in Edinburgh was followed by Jane Hutt's press conference, flanked by two civil servants, in a rather sad briefing room in the bowels of the Senedd. The shots of the Finance Minister, with her red pen, taking the First and Deputy First Minister through the ring-binder of draft figures didn't do it for him either.

"How embarrassing for Wales yet again, following Scotland's professional reviewing of their Budget, to see three people huddled around a Coffee Table under a Petrol Station Canopy projecting Wales' future.

Doesn't the Welsh WAG have any Image Advisors to stop such Negatives! Heaven help us!!!"

Don't shoot the messenger Mr Roberts. To tweak yesterday's much-favoured phrase of denial, 'that's the hand we media pack were dealt'.

Silk-purses-are-not-us.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?