Hiraeth - Welsh Politics Hiraeth - Welsh Politics

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

In politics, as in all aspects of 21st century life in Wales, social media continues to play an ever-growing role, for good or ill.

It has undeniable positive benefits such as tackling loneliness, allowing people and ideas to communicate and connect across the planet, and providing a platform for individuals and groups to platform issues or causes they are passionate or concerned about. However, it also comes with notable concerns about mental health, distribution of dis-and mis-information, and creation of avenues for toxicity and hate to reach right into people's homes.

It has delivered many positives, transcending geographical boundaries, allowing people to communicate and connect with others worldwide. Empowering individuals by educating them, raising awareness, and providing a platform for voices and in many cases successful business developments. 

With governments across the union currently trying to legislate to address some of the negative concerns about social media, we are joined by two experts to discuss the world of social media.

Our guests:Jessica Davies is a TV and radio presenter and well-known campaigner and advocate for online safety: https://twitter.com/_JessicaDaviesProfessor Matthew Williams is Director of Cardiff University's HateLab, author of the Science of Hate, and a Professor of Criminology at the university: https://hatelab.net/Buy Matt's Book! : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Hate-prejudice-becomes-hate/dp/0571357075

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

Wales has a rubbish problem - a big one. We have issues throughout the country with litter, fly-tipping, and pollution and social media is awash with stories of local environment being spoiled or ruined by wilful or careless decisions to make it worse for citizens and nature.

So what can be done? Is legislation the answer, are voluntary groups the key resource to be harnessed? How can we maximise community wellbeing, physical and mental health, community wellbeing, and the aesthetics of our villages, towns, and cities?

We speak to two experts in the field shortly after the national clean-up campaign Spring Clean Cymru and publication of the Keep Wales Tidy Street Clean Report for 2023-24.
Jemma Bere is Keep Wales Tidy Policy Manager: https://twitter.com/KWT_Policy
David King is co-founder of Cardiff Rivers Group and all around volunteer champion: https://twitter.com/DaveCRG

As always, you can find the latest from us here: 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 the Easter break coming to an end and a new parliamentary term about to start, it will be the first session for the new national government in Wales, with the new First Minister and his new cabinet beginning the daunting task of addressing a huge number of difficult policy and funding challenges, as well as ongoing expectation/threat (delete as appropriate!) of a union-wide general election being called at short notice.

We recently hosted a live Twitter/X Space with a fantastic mix of policy and politics guests to discuss not only the election of Vaughan Gething as Welsh Labour leader, but also his new cabinet, and some of the big portfolio challenges ahead of them - specifically health, education, and agriculture.

Here we present our event in edited form, with our guests:
-Sarah Murphy MS (Welsh Labour, Bridgend): @Sarah4Bridgend
- Tom Hoyles (Wales & West of England Policy Officer, GMB Union): @thoyles
- Terry Mackie (Educator and Author): @TerryMac51
- Lowri Jackson (Health Policy and Communications): @LowriRhiannon
- Geraint Davies (Farmer, NRW & FWAG Wales): @Fedwarian

And your hosts:
Matthew Hexter: @Hexter101
Ceri Davies: @CeriTheViking

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