Cafe culture and the cost of a day off
With two weeks to go, it was a chance to remind people of what happens on May 5 - and for me to brush up on my knowledge of electoral systems (there's no better way to start the day).
Back in Cardiff, sorting through an inbox creaking with election propaganda, I spy a challenge from the Welsh Liberal Democrats - "the only party to have published a full set of costings as a part of their election manifesto".
The Welsh Lib Dems are consitent on this, publishing costings in their UK general election manifesto last year; a manifesto that promised to increase the Welsh assembly government's budget in year one and put more police on the beat, two pledges that didn't survive the coalition negotiations.
The fullness of the latest costings, which largely rely on using assembly government reserves, are equally debatable.
Take this from page 16 of the party's : "We will promote Wales to visitors....by making St David's Day a public holiday".
Any reader of the manifesto could assume this is additional to current public holidays and, as the Lib Dems' best friends in Westminster have pointed out, this is not a cost-free option. Nowhere in the manifesto, so far as I can see, does it say that this holiday would replace another one (the policy of the Welsh Conservatives).
Indeed, the (Conservative) Wales Office Minister David Jones has put the cost at £138m, not a trivial sum when budgets are squeezed and probably worth including in any "full set of costings".
The Lib Dems don't have far to look for the impact on public budgets of extra public holidays - the Lib Dem-led coalition on Cardiff Council estimates that next week's royal wedding holiday will cost the city £840,000.
Comment number 1.
At 21st Apr 2011, RW49 wrote:A bank holiday on 1st March? It's always freezing! Probably have to do away with May Day in Wales to afford it. Does this sound like a good idea? I can see the CBI liking it, nobody would want to take that day off. I don't see anything wrong with things the way they are, the schools seem to have it all worked out, the tradition is maintained.
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