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The experience of covering Welsh politics for more than two decades tends to make you more resistant to shocks. The jaw doesn't drop open as easily as it once did.

But sometimes there are stories that loosen the chin bones involuntarily. Take the reaction of the Welsh Education Minister to data suggesting the country is falling behind.

"There can be no alibis and no excuses," said Leighton Andrews, dispelling the idea that we have a political system where there is always someone else to blame. He didn't blame poverty, as some councils used to do to explain poor results, he didn't blame lack of cash, he didn't even blame that catch-all scapegoat for all Welsh ills - "London".

Instead, Mr Andrews calmly pointed out: "Countries with less money spent on education than Wales have done better than Wales.

"Schools, local authorities, and ourselves as government need to look honestly at these results and accept responsibility for them."

As if that were not enough jaw-dropping stuff for one week, out pops more, this time from the Office for National Statistics.

The news that Wales remains the poorest nation in the United Kingdom will have have surprised few. What slackened my jowls was the news that the gap between Wales and the rest of the UK appears to have grown under the last government.

Conservative Ministers have not been shy of pointing out that the gap grew under Labour ("the party of equality" - Ed Miliband).

The Welsh assembly government set a target (by a different name) of reaching 90 per cent of the UK's prosperity level by 2010. Instead, despite billions of money in EU aid for our poorest areas, GVA per head fell from 77.4 per cent in 1999 to 74.3 per cent of the UK average on the latest measure.

At the advent of devolution, the former Welsh Labour leader Rhodri Morgan used narrowing the prosperity gap as a strong argument in favour of power being devolved from Westminster to Cardiff Bay.

There are plenty of other arguments for devolution and you could argue that the gap would be wider had there not been some control over economic development in Cardiff, although I suspect Welsh Ministers would not want to rely on that argument.

Perhaps the assembly government should, like David Cameron's administration, try to move on from pure economic data and try to measure general well-being - for example, we are happier as a nation thanks to more universal welfare, free prescriptions and free swimming.

Except most of the work on general well-being suggests that the happiest countries are more equal ones - and the latest figures suggest inequality has grown within the UK.

The silver lining is that these figures may be the ones that determine the next tranche of European aid - and continuing relative Welsh poverty could yet see more EU cash winging our way.

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