How do you choose a political party? I was having a discussion with some friends over a pint the other day, concerning a friend of ours who is extremely liberal – but who votes Conservative because her parents do, and she wouldn’t ever consider changing her vote. To me this makes no sense, and I wonder how many other people act in a similar way and if they were to change their vote would it cause a swing?

I have also been having thoughts about my choice of political party and whether or not they suit my changing needs.

When I was 18 years old and first able to vote, in the 2003 local elections – the country had just launched a war on the nation of Iraq and tensions were running high. The Liberal Democrats were a protest vote against the war and they courted it well – they even managed to take over Cardiff council and two years later Jenny Willott (Liberal Democrat) took the Cardiff Central Parliamentary seat from the Conservatives. But at 18 I had different priorities, different ideals.
I was able to vote for whoever I wanted, since a lot of their policies didn’t affect me. I didn’t have children, I wasn’t a homeowner, I didn’t have a car and I didn’t have a high paying job – all of the things that are really affected by Government policy. I was able to be idealistic and vote for the party that played up to my only view – that the invasion of Iraq was unjust and totally illegal – this is why I chose the Liberal Democrats.

Now I am learning to drive, I have a well paid job and formerly owned my own company, I am due to have my first child and I will also soon be a car owner. Government policy now really affects me. If the wrong people are in power I could end up being taxed astronomically and have entitlements curbed – for example family tax credits and free school milk, both of which are under threat from the new “Com-Dem” coalition.

I will stop here and say that I think almost everything I have written previously, and will write after this, may actually be quite moot since the United Kingdom Government as it stands right now is a Frankenstein’s monster that not a single person in the country voted for, so “choose a party” in the case of the last general election is a pretty laughable concept – but I am confident that as soon as this coalition breaks down and a new election is called we will get back to the Government > opposition status quo will be re-established.

Previously I would never have considered voting Conservative – but their policies actually favour me and my situation. Voting Liberal Democrat, it’s entirely possible that in a few years time, once I hit that salary threshold, my income tax would be set at 50% and that is unacceptable. The Liberal Democrats speak to the working poor, students and idealists. Their policies cannot be favoured by successful people as they are the very people that their policies single out to be held upside-down and everything shaken from their pockets to fund lavish welfare schemes and initiatives.

I do still have my beliefs and ideals; especially when it comes to foreign affairs, I am a very apathetic person. I believe that as a well-off country we should be helping countries by providing aid, expertise and the United Kingdom should be a sanctuary for the downtrodden (i.e. asylum seekers). We have built a great nation where we can feel free from fear, repression and persecution – why should we not allow others who are not as fortunate, to bask in our welfare?
But this doesn’t conform to Tory ideals. This is very much a liberal view, so this goes back to my initial question: Do I vote with my heart of my head?
Voting Conservative will always be seen as the “selfish” vote, a vote of self-preservation, while a vote for the Liberal Democrats is seen as an idealistic vote.
This is the conundrum that I faced at the last election, and I continued as I always had, but who knows next time around?

The Welsh Assembly Government have made plans to enact law from March 2011 whereby any outlet within the confines of the Welsh border that supplies plastic carrier bags to consumers charge a mandatory minimum of 7p per bag – instead of the usual practice of giving them away for free that has stood firmly for as long as I have been alive.

Some retailers already impose a charge, in the case of the small retailers to recoup the cost of purchasing them, but in the case of department store Marks & Spencer – for environmental reasons, where the money made from charging for these previously free commodities gets put back into the local community.

The CBI, whose very business it is to challenge new legislation on behalf of UK businesses, have been sounding their tannoy – as is to be expected. They warn that consumers could be “confused” and that the levy could cause tension at the checkouts, but what is a brief explanation that “bags now cost 7p” in comparison to the environmental devastation the millions of plastic bags that are put into landfill every year causes?

It is my view that people generally do keep as many plastic bags as they can, often using them as bin-liners, and incentive programmes set-up by large supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsburys – where if bags are brought back to the store to be re-used a reward in the form of extra reward points is given – are working, but the sheer numbers that are required to stem an ongoing environmental disaster are not yet being hit.

Making a law that enforces environmental awareness is a good step forward, a step that will force the everyman to change habits of a lifetime – habits that have seen big-business as the enablers for so many years, so why should they not be the ones to break the bad news?

Big-business started giving away free carrier bags, as much for advertising as for convenience, and the world has become hooked on them. Now we all need to be held accountable and change our ways.

In what has become a very bad few weeks for Cardiff Council, a magistrates court has ruled that their “saturation zone” policy is unenforceable and has granted Tesco Express, which opened in November 2009, a license to sell alcohol.

This is a victory for common sense in so much as there are currently three outlets already selling beers, wines and spirits within 100 meters of the store that Cardiff Council declined to issue a license to. The off-licenses that are currently trading are small franchises of national names Spar, McColls and Nicolas. The main argument brought forward by Cardiff Council is that people on a night out on St Mary Street are likely to go to Tesco, purchase alcohol more cheaply than at any of the bars on the street, get drunk and cause mayhem. What is stopping them from doing this at any of the current outlets, all of which are selling alcohol at prices no more expensive than Tesco would?

Spar currently have 8 bottles (glass) of Tuborg beer for £5.50 or 2 litres of white lightning cider for £2.99, a bottle of which contains 15 units of alcohol which is almost 4 times the recommended daily allowance for men. If people want to come to the city centre and get drunk outside of bars by buying from off-licenses, they have the means to already.
Also, Tesco promotes itself as a responsible retailer. I have been asked for ID in Tesco Cardiff Bay on multiple ocassions, and I don’t look under 18. This is the “Think 25″ policy in action.

The Lib Dem-Plaid coalition run council have lost their way and are running the city as their own little club. They bulldoze opposition to any plans that they concoct and have a patent disregard for citizens wishes, often refusing to even open a dialogue. The best recent example is the Bute Park Access project, where Cardiff Council had an agenda (to build a road through the historic Bute Park) and were going to fulfil their wishes no matter what or who they had to step on. Planning laws, action groups, whoever. And now the park is a building site and the council will soon have their road and bridge, despite the protests, public meetings and action groups against the work.

Full-scale models of en-suite rooms planned for the rebuild of Whitchurch Hospital that is due to go in front of the National Assembly Government for approval in a months have been unveiled to the public.

The proposal lays down costs of £118m to completely rebuild the hospital at Whitchurch which has stood for over 100-years. Some of the proposed features include:

• £68 million to be spent on the Cardiff inpatient hospital
• Single room en suite accommodation over two floors
• Access to unspoilt parklands, courtyards and garden areas.

In a press release they say “Whilst the care given currently is of a high standard, the old Whitchurch Hospital is no longer fit for purpose”, which is a statement that I would whole-heartedly agree with.

Anybody who has made a visit to or had a stay at the hospital will be able to tell you that it does feel exactly like the hospital from “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”. The hallways are gothic, cold and wide open. The wards are barn-like rooms with high ceilings and nothing but a curtain to separate one person from the next, very much like normal hospital wards. A set up that is not typical of, or beneficial to, modern mental health treatment methods. It really isn’t the most therapeutic of places to be, especially when taking into account the condition of the patients who use the service.

I have stated previouslythat provisions for mental healthcare within the NHS do not go far enough and should be given higher priority. This is a golden opportunity for the National Assembly Government to show that they have a commitment mental healthcare and wellbeing services and to bring sites up to standards that would compliment 21st century psychological treatments.

First Minister for Wales Rhodri Morgan seems to think that politics in the UK is too far behind that of the US to for a black person to be elected prime minister. In stating this Mr Morgan is, as usual, exercising his right to senility.

Mr Morgan, who is most likely serving his final term, is completely off the mark to suggest that the voting populous would not elect a candidate by reason of ethnicity or skin colour.

Barack Obama was a first term Senator when he was elected President of the United States. 4 years ago he was almost a complete unknown out of his adopted home city of Chicago, yet now he has taken his oath and is sitting as the commander-in-chief of the most powerful of Western democracies.

To say that years of service and experience through the political systems is required to be successful in British politics is utter rubbish. I would even say that a figure who has been languishing within the pig-pen for 20 years is possibly the worst person to put into high office, for all the scandals, lies and cheating that would likely have centred or gone on around that person through those years, making them corrupted or hardened. Look at Peter Mandelson for goodness sake. When will he give it up and buzz off? After all of the drama he’s been involved in, including have to resign, twice, you would expect him to have thrown in the towel a long time ago, at least to save (what is left of) his dignity.

So, to you, Rhodri Morgan, years of being inside a moral-less, corrupted elitist circle may have been your way of getting to the top, but this does not necessarily mean it is the de facto or only route. Stimulation, innovation and conjugation may also suffice and there are plenty of younger whipper-snappers who will be biting at your heels soon enough with oodles of the stuff.

Pro-suicide is such a crude term and begs the question, “Are expressions like pro-bullying or pro-domestic violence valid in the same way?” Probably not. With that being the case, why are the national press compelled to use this term when broaching the subject of websites that give advice or guidance on the act of seppuku?

There have been calls from the usual backbench suspects – who clearly have very little to do outside of election year other than to stand up in the house and make absurd suggestions – to consider laws that could never possibly be implemented. Not without severe repercussions on freedom of speech and monstrous infringements of civil liberties.

For a government to inhibit the circulation of the theory of practices that are not punishable by law, but rather frowned upon by society, would make the position of countless other publications, unrelated to suicide, untenable. This would of course be across all mediums; print, online, television, radio. In essence, to prevent access by force, as is being suggested, to websites that glorify or ‘normalise’ suicide, would open the flood gates to all those who feel the desire to complain about anything that aggrieves them in the media.

As an example, citation of this proposed act could have been used in the case of The Christian Faith vs. Jerry Springer The Opera. The BBC received 55,000 written complaints when it was due to be aired on the BBC2 channel in 2005. Would this have been enough public outcry to warrant invoking this act, leaving us instead doomed to ‘Allo ‘Allo repeats (which itself could be censored if enough French people claimed racism) on that Saturday night?

Legislation is no substitute for treatment or prevention. If there was enough attention focused on mental health treatment, which there is not, then perhaps there should be no need to consider absurd censorship such as this.

In my county, Cardiff, there is currently a six month waiting list to see a councelor courtesy of the National Health Service. This has been same since at least 2001. I can tell you this from personal experience. If a person seeks help from their GP citing issues of mental health, they are first and foremost offered anti-depressant drugs and then asked if they would like to be added to the waiting list to see a specialist for counseling. For some people half a year is too long, but have no other choice. Private counseling is an an option that is not always viable, for a multitude of reasons.

It takes a lot of courage for somebody experiencing mental turmoil to turn to somebody for help and for them to be dealt with in such a manner when they do, even more so with the state of mind that they are in at that time, can be horribly detrimental to their health.

In the wake of the Bridgend crisis the UK government should take this opportunity to improve the mental health services available to these vulnerable persons who feel the need to visit ‘pro-suicide’ websites, before it’s too late.

Why is it that the Welsh Labour party, in the run up to the Assembly elections on May 3rd are running such a negative campaign?

Any of the literature that I have seen dropped through the door or handed out in the street has been about how ‘if you vote for any of the other parties or independents, then you’re letting the Conservatives in through the back door, vote Labour so you don’t get the Conservative party’.

Well, that’s a profound reason. We want to let Rhodri Morgan and his bunch of do-nothing cronies continue to do barely anything for this country, just because…?

I can name three things that the Welsh Assembly government has done since it came into power, 7 years ago, none of them affect me though;

Free bus passes [but I'm not a senior citizen]
Free prescriptions [I'm rarely ill]
Smoking ban [this would have happened anyway, Assembly or not]

Even their 2007 campaign website doesn’t list much more than these as their acheivements over the past term, except for spurious claims such as “record spending on education” and “a huge increase in investment in health”.

First Minister Rhodri Morgan resided to loss a long time ago, announcing that if his party does badly in the polls, he will resign. This surely isn’t the mantra of a fighter, a leader, someone in control of his destiny or sure of his previous achievements.

All the other parties have latched onto this perception too, never before have I seen so much literature piled through my letterbox and this is simply because Plaid, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives, Independents and even UKIP know that there are potentially huge gains to be made with the greatest of ease.

I have a feeling that Wales will have a new, possibly coalition government come the day after polling, and for the better it will be too. Wales needs to be represented from within its own borders, but not in the way that it is now;
A small country with a small political voice.
We need to be a small country with a National Assembly that acts as a megaphone.