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LCOs: 'you pronounce it like Tescos' is what a helpful soul told me when we first heard about the existence of Legislative Competence Orders. There was a diagram too, involving boxes, circles and lots of arrows representing a pleasing flow of agreement and approval as new powers streamed from London to Cardiff.

I've just looked at it again and it's just a bit battered. The innocuous looking first box: "Assembly and Whitehall Govts negotiate and draft Order in Council amending Sched 5, e.g, to add matter" looms much larger. In fact it looks a bit like a brieze block that you could lob into the pleasing flow of approval if you felt like it.

So what's going on? Is there a brieze block being chucked in the way of the Environmental Protection and Waste Management LCO? And if there is is, who's chucking it?

No, says the Wales Office. Discussions between officials in Whitehall and Cardiff are part of the process, nothing more. Better that problems are ironed out at this stage than the LCO voted down in parliament after all. How embarrassing would that be, they ask ominously, just in case we hadn't worked that one out for ourselves? This is just being cruel to be kind.

And don't think they wouldn't vote it down. Don Touhig never minced his words and I gather he's one MP who'd favour letting the next LCO get past the civil servants and 'dividing the house' over it - or in other words, 'let 'em try it'.

Meanwhile in the chamber Rhodri Morgan admits there may be more of a battle over LCOs with a broader scope but that we shouldn't get our ... well our LCOs in a twist.

The opposition parties go on the attack, Plaid MPs go with the constitutional row line and the Presiding Officer, always a man with an eye for an opportunity, goes with the version that Whitehall is running scared of a Wales with higher environmental waste management standards than England.

Let's say that you were in Bourenmouth and heard phrases like 'genuine immaturity' and Cardiff needing to 'get a grip' (and that was a from sane voice). How much hope would you hold out for the Affordable Housing LCO with its plan to suspend the Right to Buy scheme - a plan that would put some real bright red water between England and Wales? 'Tricky' - another word I heard - would be putting it pretty mildly, wouldn't it?

Mind you I get the feeling that the LCO we all expect Labour MPs to love to hate - the Welsh language LCO - may yet surprise us all. It's much touted as the LCO with the broadest terms of all, invoking linguistic rights and a promise of a long line of Assembly Measures designed to put Chris Bryant off that Wlpan Welsh learning course for life.

But think on this: making that one work, holding it up as a totemic success .. now that would suit everyone, wouldn't it?

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