Montgomeryshire is a lovely part of the world, even if my only experience is driving through it...
They don't really have much luck with their elected representatives though...
In the House of Commons they have everybodies favorite paraglider, bon vivant, celebrity botherer and Daily Star columnist Lembit Opik (Keir's significant other had the honour of sharing a lift with him, and he can exclusively reveal that our favourite Estonian kept his hands to himself.)
Whilst in the Senedd they are lucky enough to be represented by former Teacher and Farmer Mick Bates, who, Keir can not so exclusively reveal physically and verbally abused a paramedic after a heavy night on the probably taxpayer funded wine in Cardiff.
Obviously, the Liberal Democrats are the nice, fluffy, friendly party who have suspended him immediately...um, no, well, they are "investigating" things.
Keir was at one point a student and often did some rather silly things (although none really compare to assaulting medical staff) However, if he had tried to fob off friends in the morning by claiming he could not remember what happened then to say he would have been a laughing stock is putting it mildly.
Our representatives are meant to hold themselves to a higher level of probity. It has been made clear that they certainly don't at Westminster, (Hello Steen, Morley, Chaytor, I'm looking at you) and now it is clear that they don't in Cardiff Bay. It also seems pretty clear that these events happened (the paramedic is going to press charges) so I think that Micky's position should really be untenable. However, Montgomeryshire is going to be open warfare come election time, and do the Fibs really want to risk losing a seat in the Senedd? Keir supposes that the electoral math will overshadow the morality of things.
This case highlights how completely out of her depth Kirsty Williams is too. I mean, she is rather lovely, but "investigating"? That is the second most stupid thing I've heard a FibDem say recently, after Mark Oaten on 'Tower Block of Commons' said "...I need to investigate if the BNP is racist..."
It also shows that far from being the nice, environmentally friendly and personally unobjectionable party they pretend to be; the FibDems are just like the other two parties. Hopefully, people soon see through their nice fluffy exterior. In fact, on the ground, the yellow team are as nasty as you like.
As an upside, Keir would like to say that this furore masked coverage of the Fib's spring Conference in Swansea, but um, yeah, there wasn't much of that anyway.
It's a shame really, Keir is currently reading a history of the SDP; and if it wasn't for those pesky Liberals...
Monday, 8 February 2010
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