Wales (Cymru)

On Easter Saturday I explored Newtown, Powys. I photographed impressive buildings, visited the fascinating Robert Owen Museum, and squeezed in a cheeky pint before heading back to the Valleys on the T4. For the uninitiated, the T4 is the bus route between Cardiff and mid-Wales.

If a route number is prefixed by the letter T it’s a TrawsCymru service, funded by the Welsh Government. It’s a network of long-distance routes designed to connect cities, towns, and villages in much the same way the railways did a century ago. The Transport for Wales website boasts that TrawsCymru buses “provide vital public transport links for many communities across Wales, integrating with rail journey [sic] and also giving visitors an accessible, affordable, and environmentally friendly option for exploring the scenic beauty of our country.” Sounds fantastic, but how true is it?

The Welsh Government has pulled plans to make a major announcement about schools this week. On Tuesday, education minister Lynne Neagle was due to give a 45 minute statement to Senedd members titled "consultation on the school year".

The item has now been withdrawn and delayed until after the recess break for half-term. It is understood that has taken place because the reconfiguration of the school year was part of the cooperation agreement with Plaid Cymru, a deal the party withdrew from on Friday.

The parties entered into the agreement after the 2021 Senedd election and it covered a number of set areas. It was due to end this winter but Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has opted to end it early citing concerns over new First Minister Vaughan Gething as the reason.

A woman who campaigns for justice for those who died unnecessarily during the pandemic has robustly denied that holding Vaughan Gething to account can be construed as motivated by racism.

Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees was responding to a statement issued by the Welsh Labour BAME [Black and Minority Ethnic] Committee, which said: “For so many BAME people in Wales, the last few weeks will have been disturbing, unsettling and yet very familiar.

“In the Welsh media the treatment of Vaughan Gething has gone well beyond what one can reasonably call fair scrutiny … We fully endorse thorough political scrutiny from a free press and from an active political community. However, we feel that this scrutiny in recent weeks has crossed a line between fair examination and racially influenced attitudes and judgements, with a Black person being held to a higher standard.”

Police in a valleys town have been given extra powers to stop youths as young as 10 from causing anti-social behaviour this weekend. The decision follows recent incidents in the area, including alleged underage drinking, which have caused concern for residents.

The dispersal order, which is granted under the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014, will apply to those aged 10 and over and is in place until 8pm on Sunday, May 19.

The order covers Treorchy cricket club grounds and associated areas of the park, Treorchy rugby ground, A4061 High Street from the junction of Chapel Street up to the junction of Cemetery Road. It also includes Station Road from High Street to Park Crescent.

Campaigners who believe a new £835m cancer centre for south Wales is being built in the wrong place have called for a public inquiry into First Minister Vaughan Gething’s involvement in the project.

Work on the new Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff is going ahead in the city’s Whitchurch district despite massive opposition from clinicians, neighbouring residents and environmentalists.

Mr Gething has been involved at key stages as plans for the centre progressed, first as Health Minister, then as Economy Minister, and finally as First Minister. He has recently committed huge amounts of public money to the construction of the centre on the site of a much loved green space called the Northern Meadows.

An emergency motion to “provide whatever support is required” for a campaign to stop cuts and redundancies to the Welsh National Opera (WNO) chorus passed unanimously today (19 May) at the Equity conference.

The motion also reiterated that the performing arts trade union “will not accept compulsory redundancies, or the desire by WNO management to have the flexibility of a full-time contract with all the precarity of an unsustainable cut to their basic earnings.”

WNO has signalled it intends to put revised contract proposals on the table for those in the chorus who are members of Equity, the performing arts and entertainment trade union.

The union had previously said it was open to the process and believed that despite the challenging financial situation the company faces, they would protect the chorus as an integral part of what WNO describe as the “musical and artistic backbone of Welsh National Opera”.

The idea that independence for Wales or Scotland must be mandated by a referendum has gained currency and become most people’s assumption, but there’s no legal or historical basis for it. If we want independence, growing the economy matters far more than winning a referendum.

In 1956, Malta voted for full integration into the UK by a margin of 77% to 23%; eight years later it voted for full independence by 54% to 46%. We can’t guarantee the same outcome in Scotland.

When I became leader of Plaid Cymru in June of last year I was clear that I wanted my party to be a home for everyone who shares the ambition of creating a fairer, greener, more prosperous society.

I said that even in my formative years, I had come to understand that our nation wasn’t what it could be. That our voice was muffled, our ambitions held back, our aspirations ignored, and I came to see that Plaid Cymru was the beacon of hope in all of this – the embodiment to me of our determination to be a nation, to demand a distinct voice, to remove the shackles that stunted our potential and growth.

The past year has cemented those thoughts and galvanised a determination within me to set out a different vision for Wales.

Yesterday, I along with elected colleagues and the ruling Plaid Cymru executive came to a decision to end the Co-operation Agreement with the Labour Welsh Government.

Campaigners have warned that the future of policies that affect the Welsh language are “at stake” following the collapse of the Co-operation Agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government on Friday.

Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth ended the three-year deal, which was due to expire in December, with immediate effect.

He cited concerns over First Minister Vaughan Gething’s election campaign finances as a factor, claiming the receipt of £200,000 from a company convicted of environmental offences “demonstrates a significant lack of judgment”.

He’s one of Port Talbot’s favourite sons and now he’s been celebrated in his hometown.

A mural by one of Wales’ leading street artists Jenks has appeared in Bridge Street in the town centre.

The striking artwork in the street art capital of Wales brilliantly captures the Hollywood star in his later yeas and features one of his most famous quotes: ‘I love life because what more is there?’

Writing on his Facebook page artist Jenks wrote: “Fancied painting this one for a while and seeing Silence of the Lambs on TV the other night has triggered this. He is alocal legend and I wanted to see what a challenge the face complexion would be. Sir Anthony Hopkins In Bridge Street, Port Talbot.”

Plaid Cymru has ended its co-operation agreement with the Welsh Labour government with immediate effect, party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has said.

He cited concerns over First Minister Vaughan Gething’s election campaign finances as a factor, claiming the receipt of £200,000 from a company convicted of environmental offences “demonstrates a significant lack of judgment”.

Mr ap Iorweth also said he was worried about the First Minister’s decision to sack his minister for social partnership, Hannah Blythyn, following the leak of a phone message to the media which she insisted she was not behind.

It is "odds on" that a no-confidence motion to force the first minister's resignation, will be brought forward by opposition members in the Senedd following recent events, the Conservative Senedd leader has said.

The comments, by Andrew RT Davies, were in response to Vaughan Gething's sacking of a minister on Thursday alleging she leaked text messages to the media, which she denies.

It also follows months of turmoil in Welsh Labour over controversial donations to Mr Gething's leadership campaign.

Mr Davies said his party "will have conversations with other parties" in Cardiff Bay to see the level of support for a no-confidence motion.

Let’s picture the late 1390s and early 1400s, the years when Owain Glyndŵr was transformed from loyal subject of the English crown to rebel Prince of Wales. People travelled. In Glyndŵr’s time knights, yeomen, and peasants joined crusades against the Baltic pagans, or the Turks threatening Hungary’s borders. Others may have visited the Muslim Emirate of Granada, or the imperial Roman capital of Constantinople.

The world then was far more connected than we often realise – and the centre of wealth and power was Asia. Europe was in decline. By Glyndŵr’s time, the crusader kingdoms in the Holy Land had long since fallen. The thousand-year reign of Constantinople’s Christian emperors would soon be ended by the Ottoman Turks.

In our time, we may succeed where Glyndŵr failed: we may see Cymru become an independent sovereign state. If we do, we will join an international system with parallels to that of his time.

The sacking of Hannah Blythyn as a minister brings closer the tipping point when the Labour Party accepts that keeping Vaughan Gething in office is more damaging than getting rid of him, a senior Welsh Labour source has told us.

Ms Blythyn’s dismissal – for allegedly leaking iMessages to NationCymru that had been deleted by Mr Gething from a ministerial group chat – has created further turmoil within the Senedd Labour group, already in disarray following our earlier revelation that he accepted donations totalling £200k from a businessman convicted of environmental pollution offences.

First Minister Vaughan Gething has sacked Social Partnership Minister Hannah Blythyn, accusing her of being the source of the leak to NationCymru that revealed he had deleted messages that should have been provided to the UK Covid Inquiry.

A statement issued by the Welsh Government quoted Mr Gething saying:: “Having reviewed the evidence available to me regarding the recent disclosure of communication to the media, I have regrettably reached the conclusion I have no alternative but to ask Hannah Blythyn to leave the Government.

Work is ongoing to tackle "pockets of poor behaviour" amongst Wales Ambulance Service staff, including on misogyny and sexual safety, its chief executive has said.

Jason Killens said there was "a lot of work underway to modify that behaviour" after an external review found "some challenges in some of our workplaces".

He said it was a "good thing in the short term" that staff were raising more concerns about workplace behaviour.

It follows February's Welsh government takeover of the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, after an investigation found it had a culture of sexual harassment and misogyny.

The First Minister has been accused of “wasting time” on a trip to Mumbai to urge Tata Steel bosses to “look again” at plans to shut blast furnaces in Port Talbot.

Vaughan Gething visited India last week to plead with Tata Steel to wait for a Labour government before shutting off its blast furnaces and making thousands of job cuts.

The First Minister was criticised for the 9,000 mile round trip given that Tata’s bosses were in the UK just two weeks before.

Nation.Cymru asked the Welsh Government for details of the cost of the trip and how long the First Minister was in India for before flying back – but we did not receive an answer.

It’s understood that several Freedom of Information Requests have been submitted asking for details of the cost and timeframe of the visit.

​Ask someone, “What is defence?” They’ll probably say something along the lines of it being the act of protecting oneself, another person, or some cherished object.

Defending a nation encompasses all of these aspects. As Cymru moves ever closer to regaining its complete independence from the imperial project of the UK, sovereigntists need to begin to address what our nation’s defence forces may look like and how to shape them.

Book-ish in Crickhowell has been crowned Independent Bookshop of the Year at The British Book Awards 2024, held in London last night.

This is the second time Book-ish has scooped the £5,000 award, which is sponsored by Gardners, having previously won in 2020.

Following on from Griffin Books in Penarth’s victory last year, Book-ish’s success means a Welsh bookshop has been declared the best in the UK and Ireland for two years in a row.

Book-ish fought off competition from eight other regional and country winners, selected from a bumper list of 77 finalists from across the UK and Ireland.

The Welsh Government has confirmed that it does not hold a record of the ministerial group chat messages created during the Covid-19 crisis that Vaughan Gething told colleagues he was deleting – suggesting that he did in fact delete them.

This intensifies pressure on the beleaguered First Minister, who is already reeling from double scandals – firstly from NationCymru’s revelation that he accepted donations totalling £200,000 for his Welsh Labour leadership campaign from a company owned by businessman David Neal, who received two suspended prison sentences for environmental pollution; and secondly because he mislead the UK Covid Inquiry by deleting messages, contrary to what he had said in evidence to it.

On May 7 we published a message from a screenshot leaked to us dated August 17 2020 in which Mr Gething – who was Health Minister at the time – wrote: “”I’m deleting the messages in this group. They can be captured in an FOI [freedom of information request] and I think we are all in the right place on the choice being made.”

We have a new Cabinet Secretary in post with responsibility for education, and today, Lynne Neagle will set out her priorities in a statement to the Senedd.

She will have a lot to cover: a widening attainment gap between Wales’s richest and poorest children; poor attendance rates; a teaching workforce crisis; an increase in verbal and physical violence in schools; problems with the rollout of reforms to Additional Learning Needs provision and the curriculum; and the dire financial situation of our schools as well as our further and higher education institutions.

Something needs to change, and fast. After all, our children and young people deserve an education that provides them with the tools they need for their future. And our workforce and institutions that provide that education need to be supported to deliver.

In recent months, we’ve seen headline after headline criticising the state of education in Wales.

The UK Government has faced calls to take over the running of HMP Parc from private firm G4S, amid concerns over a spate of deaths.

Nine adults have died at HMP Parc in Bridgend, South Wales, since the end of February, with four deaths so far linked to substance misuse and another potentially so.

Justice minister Edward Argar argued the contract “continues to perform well” although he acknowledged there is “more to do”.

G4S has managed the establishment since it opened in 1997 and it received a 10-year contract to continue operating it in 2022.

Councillors in Gwynedd have raised concerns over “unacceptable” planned cuts to an “immensely important” Welsh railway line. They say the Cambrian Coast line provides an important service for locals accessing shops, jobs, and services, and is a popular route for tourists.

In April, Transport for Wales announced a “future timetable review”, stating it would be removing four services between Machynlleth and Pwllheli (two in each direction). Two further services would be re-timed and run between March and December 2024. A mooted hourly service would only run between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury from May to September, beginning in May 2026.

Actor Iwan Rheon has said that Wales does not need a prince after playing the role of Prince William in a TV show.

The Game of Thrones star said he agrees with actor Michael Sheen that the title should be discontinued.

Iwan Rheon took on the role of Prince William in the HBO animated comedy series The Prince, however he told the Telegraph newspaper last year that he felt no closer to the royal family for having done so.

Increasing the number of Senedd members is a "full stop" that will future proof Welsh devolution for the next 100 years, according to its presiding officer.

Members of the Senedd (MSs) voted last week to increase their numbers from 60 to 96 from the next Welsh election, in 2026.

Elin Jones said the reforms which were backed by a cross-party majority of MSs but opposed by the Conservatives, made the Senedd a "fit for purpose" parliament, even if Wales were to become independent.

Speaking to the BBC Walescast podcast, Ms Jones said the vote, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the first elections to Cardiff Bay, was "hugely significant - and a long time in coming".