Hiraeth - Welsh Politics Hiraeth - Welsh Politics

50 years ago, the newly-formed Wales TUC under the stewardship of Dai Francis called for the creation of a Welsh Assembly with approximately 100 members based on multi-member constituencies. In a case of exquisite timing, this is exactly what our own parliament has recently resolved to create.

What other issues has the TUC faced in this time, what areas of work is it currently looking at and what are the current challenges for working people that will be on the agenda as it gathers for its 50th anniversary conference this week? We speak with General Secretary Shavanah Taj and Policy Officer Nisreen Mansour to find out.

We also took the opportunity to ask Shav and Nisreen about the recent controversy around the framing of Prif Weinidog Vaughan Gething's coverage in the media and whether it is indicative of racism, structural or individual. As two people with greater direct understanding of these than many in Wales, as well as the Labour Party itself, it was very illuminating to have their thoughts on what it quite a difficult subject to explore.

Our guests:
Shavanah Taj - https://x.com/shavtaj
Nisreen Mansour - https://x.com/NisreenAnnaWales
TUC Cymru - https://x.com/walestuc

As always, you can find the latest from us @hiraethpod on most social media, including Twitter/X here: https://twitter.com/HiraethPod

We hope you find this podcast interesting and useful. Please do send feedback, it's always great to hear what our audience thinks.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have enjoyed it, please leave us a nice rating or comment on your podcast app or on YouTube and, if you are able to do so, please consider supporting our work from just £3/month on Patreon: www.patreon.com/hiraethpod

Now, it's not often that you can say that there has been too much news in Welsh politics, but this week there has been.

Ongoing concerns about the financial donations to the First Minister's leadership campaign, leaks hinting at deletion of messages, his sudden sacking of a member of the Welsh Government, their replacement being appointed, the end of the Co-operation Agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru and the extraordinary news that there is an active investigation into potential falsified expenses claims by a Senedd member. And most of that took place within 24 hours.

So in this bonus episode, Hiraeth's own Matthew Hexter talks through the week's events and tries to put them into context, asking what they mean for Wales, our polity, our First Minister and the future of the Welsh Government.


As always, you can find the latest from us @hiraethpod on most social media, including Twitter/X here: https://twitter.com/HiraethPod

We hope you find this podcast interesting and useful. Please do send feedback, it's always great to hear what our audience thinks.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have enjoyed it, please leave us a nice rating or comment on your podcast app or on YouTube and, if you are able to do so, please consider supporting our work from just £3/month on Patreon: www.patreon.com/hiraethpod

You will no doubt have heard that there was a nationwide election in Wales recently for us to elect our Police and Crime Commissioners for our four police forces. If you don't know who they are or what they do, you are not alone. Over 80% of registered voters declined to express a preference so, not for the first time, people are asking about the value, validity, and futures of these elected roles. We discuss the PCC elections, results, and future here as well as a round up of the English local elections, the latest about Senedd expansion and reform, and the travails of the Scottish Gov as John Swinney takes up the role of Scottish First Minister.To discuss, we are joined by:Lila Haines, independent researcher, author and Senedd Staffer in the first Assembly in 1999: https://twitter.com/LilaEilisCllr Joseph Carter, Welsh Liberal Democrat councillor for Pentwyn and Llanedeyrn in Cardiff: https://twitter.com/joseph_carterUK

A reminder that you can buy Lila's excellent book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Radicals-Realists-Political-Parties-Ireland/dp/1860571514And listen to our conversation on the pod about it with her here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/62t9I2FursCq6gSzSXa5bz?si=MxzadEVKRYujOLdE3DttHw

As always, you can find the latest from us @hiraethpod on most social media, including Twitter/X here: https://twitter.com/HiraethPod

We hope you find this podcast interesting and useful. Please do send feedback, it's always great to hear what our audience thinks.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have enjoyed it, please leave us a nice rating or comment on your podcast app or on YouTube and, if you are able to do so, please consider supporting our work from just £3/month on Patreon: www.patreon.com/hiraethpod

With opinion still divided about what the upsides of Brexit have been (if any), one thing is clearly the case, Wales and the other British countries are all having to review, rebuild, and re-imagine links with EU countries and the rest of the world.

One EU network where Wales not only participated in greatly but also had a founding link to its creation - via Hywel Ceri Jones - was Erasmus+, the European Union's programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe.

With the UK Government blocking Welsh and Scottish ongoing participation in Erasmus+, the Welsh Government decided it would create its own successor scheme, prioritising its own policy programme including the ongoing influence of the Future Generations Act.

And so Taith ['journey'/'tour'] was created and we are delighted to be joined by former Welsh Government Education Minister, founder, and current chair of the programme Kirsty Williams, and Sharon Thomas and Lyndsey Thomas from GISDA (a charity supporting homeless and vulnerable young people in Gwynedd) and Reece, a Taith participant supported by GISDA, to discuss the scheme's merits, challenges, and future.

Taith: https://www.taith.wales/
GISDA: https://twitter.com/Gisdacyf
Kirsty Williams: https://twitter.com/Kirsty_Williams

As always, you can find the latest from us @hiraethpod on most social media, including Twitter/X here: https://twitter.com/HiraethPod

We hope you find this podcast interesting and useful. Please do send feedback, it's always great to hear what our audience thinks.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have enjoyed it, please leave us a nice rating or comment on your podcast app or on YouTube and, if you are able to do so, please consider supporting our work from just £3/month on Patreon: www.patreon.com/hiraethpod

'Assembly' elections may well be a thing of the past in Wales, but they're front and centre of daily life in the UK's capital city this week. The London Assembly itself struggles to gain the same level of visibility as its Mayor so we're using the opportunity to shine a light on one of the biggest electoral events in the UK and find out more about the campaigns trying to oust Sadiq Khan.

With its budget exceeding £20 billion, the mayoralty has powers over housing, transportation, public safety, and economic prosperity and the challenges in many of these areas will be familiar to Welsh listeners, not least the touch point of 20mph zones and other traffic management measures. Joining us in this episode are:

Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon: https://twitter.com/CarolinePidgeonGreen Party of England & Wales Assembly Member Caroline Russell: https://twitter.com/CarolineRussellGareth Morgan, MD of Cavendish Consulting: https://twitter.com/MogsyMorg

As always, you can find the latest from us @hiraethpod on most social media, including Twitter/X here: https://twitter.com/HiraethPod

We hope you find this podcast interesting and useful. Please do send feedback, it's always great to hear what our audience thinks.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have enjoyed it, please leave us a nice rating or comment on your podcast app or on YouTube and, if you are able to do so, please consider supporting our work from just £3/month on Patreon: www.patreon.com/hiraethpod

We clearly have issues in our construction industry in Wales. There are horror stories of all kinds across the country with regards to the quality, location, and design of new homes and other buildings. The regulatory landscape is mixed with enforcement regimes largely soft-touch and increasingly stretched local and national government budgets in Wales are rarely able to intervene - not to mention the powerful building lobby appear to have prevented any significant interventions by Welsh Government.

Meanwhile, across the border, the UK Government (as the government of England) are grappling with the legacy of the Grenfell Tower disaster in relation to tower block safety and cladding in a way that campaigners in Wales wish the government here was matching.

Compounding things, we have homeowners battling with the ongoing existence of leasehold - Wales and England being the only two countries in the Western world where it persists - and finding themselves exposed to unexpected liabilities in the context of rising, occasionally exploitatively so, ground rents. With Welsh Government still unable to act in relation to property law (unlike Scotland, NI, and indeed England), leaseholders are at the mercy once more of the Westminster parliament and its own exposure to hard lobbying by freeholders.

And all of this is affecting a small country with some of the oldest and poorest-quality housing in Western Europe.

So is the situation as bad as it seems and, if so, what can be done about it? We speak to two guests to find out:
- Sam Rees is Head of Policy and Public Affairs for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors in Wales: https://twitter.com/RICSWales
- Mark Thomas is Chair of Celestia Housing Company Limited (Check) and spokesperson for the Welsh Cladiators campaign group: https://twitter.com/WelshCladiators

Piece from friend of the pod Prof Calvin Jones ' Your Retrofit Alone is Not Enough': https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/retrofit-pointless-calvin-jones-vimhe

As always, you can find the latest from us @hiraethpod on most social media, including Twitter/X here: https://twitter.com/HiraethPod

We hope you find this podcast interesting and useful. Please do send feedback, it's always great to hear what our audience thinks.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have enjoyed it, please leave us a nice rating or comment on your podcast app or on YouTube and, if you are able to do so, please consider supporting our work from just £3/month on Patreon: www.patreon.com/hiraethpod