Off-brand Joe Allen. I work at @The_TUC
Cardiff, Wales
Joined June 2018
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Joe Allen retweeted
Ageing population with multi morbidity coupled with technological advances meaning that e can offer for eg non surgical treatments to patients who aren’t fit for treatments
Newer treatments also often come with greater need for monitoring further driving service demand
Joe Allen retweeted
One professor who recently left academia said it felt like being a miner in 1982 and it’s hard to disagree
Joe Allen retweeted
Think there is a basic problem here with making national gov responsible for revaluations. The pain to gain ratio is just too high (as opposed to a model where LAs value their own taxbase + grants aren't allocated according to the size of the council tax taxbase)
The workers at Thames will tell you that one of the biggest challenges right now is uncertainty and drift.
Joe Allen retweeted
Big announcement: A news service for Cardiff.
A few months ago, Catrin Pascoe and I announced The Cymru News Network.
This was the beginning of our attempts to build a wider, grassroots news service for Wales.
Well, we are now able to announce our first title in The Cymru News Network, so I want to explain what we are doing, why, and where it sits in our wider plan.
Our new title is called Proper Cardiff News.
- We have a logo (which is inspired by the sculpture outside the city’s Central Library).
- We have an office.
- We have staff.
If you want to sign up to get our journalism straight into your inbox you can do so at propercardiff.news
We think it is crazy that the capital of Wales doesn't have much in the way of dedicated news.
So this is a regular newsletter which will include (but not be limited to):
- Investigations, features, reviews, deepdives and explainers.
- We also want to champion the people of this city and celebrate all the good that is going on.
Ultimately we want to be guided by our readers. If you have ideas, tips and leads, you can get in touch at [email protected].
To repeat, you can sign up for the newsletter here: propercardiff.news
-- WHY CARDIFF? WHAT’S THE WIDER PLAN? --
I know what you are thinking, most people in Wales aren't in Cardiff so why are we starting there?
I think this is a very fair question. Though Cardiff isn’t as well served as it should be when it comes to journalism, it gets a far better deal than many other parts of Wales.
The simple answer is that, initially, hyper-local journalism is really hard to make work financially.
We don't get licence fee money and we haven't had any public funds from the Welsh Government or public bodies.
Cardiff is simply the easiest to monetise. It has the most people concentrated in one place.
But this Cardiff newsletter is just the first of what we hope will be many titles.
Our aim is to launch titles across different parts of Wales in the coming months and years. They will be locally focused, with local offices and locally based reporters.
If we can build this across Wales, we will have a pan-Wales news service built from the bottom up.
We hope this will help bring Welsh communities together when social media is trying to pull them apart and counter misinformation. It will also create a pathway for young reporters so that talented journalists can build strong careers in Wales.
A few disclaimers:
- These news outlets are not overtly political. They are about championing and fighting for the people in the areas they serve.
- This is separate from my newsletter. That is my main focus. Proper Cardiff News and future titles have their own dedicated editors.
You can follow Proper Cardiff News on a range of social media and sign up at propercardiff.news
Will this be really hard? Yes
Will we give it our all to make it work? Yes
We think it's time Wales started telling its own story.
Diolch
"Change means more of the same." - Plaid Shadow Finance Minister in July 2024 after Labour u-turned on council tax reform.
Beyond Labour schadenfreude, spending (at least) 16 yrs trying to get this done is mental & should worry anyone who wants to see devolved gov deliver.
The original Welsh Gov promise to reform council tax was in Carwyn Jones's 2016 programme for government.
Revaluation is now due to happen in 2032 at the earliest. So, 16 years to deliver.
A rough timeline:
> Jan 2017: Local Gov finance reform project launched.
> Feb 2019: IFS commissioned to model revaluation.
> Apr 2020: IFS's "Revaluation and Reform of Council Tax in Wales" published.
> Apr 2021: Labour manifesto commitment.
> Dec 2021: Lab-Plaid Co-Op Agreement commitment
> July 2022: First consultation.
> Nov 2023: Second consultation.
> May 2024: Lab u-turn; Plaid quit Co-Op Agreement.
> July 2024: Plaid seek legislative amendment to force council tax reform by April 2025.
> Sep 2024: Royal Assent for law requiring revaluation every 5 years starting in 2028.
> April 2026: Plaid manifesto commitment.
> Oct 2026: Plaid u-turn. Revalution pushed back to 2032.
The original Welsh Gov promise to reform council tax was in Carwyn Jones's 2016 programme for government.
Revaluation is now due to happen in 2032 at the earliest. So, 16 years to deliver.
A rough timeline:
> Jan 2017: Local Gov finance reform project launched.
> Feb 2019: IFS commissioned to model revaluation.
> Apr 2020: IFS's "Revaluation and Reform of Council Tax in Wales" published.
> Apr 2021: Labour manifesto commitment.
> Dec 2021: Lab-Plaid Co-Op Agreement commitment
> July 2022: First consultation.
> Nov 2023: Second consultation.
> May 2024: Lab u-turn; Plaid quit Co-Op Agreement.
> July 2024: Plaid seek legislative amendment to force council tax reform by April 2025.
> Sep 2024: Royal Assent for law requiring revaluation every 5 years starting in 2028.
> April 2026: Plaid manifesto commitment.
> Oct 2026: Plaid u-turn. Revalution pushed back to 2032.
Joe Allen retweeted
Britain’s nature is in crisis. We are one one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, with more than 200 species at risk of extinction.
If you just followed debates online or in parliament you would assume that the biggest issue for nature is building. Discussion of nature restoration revolves around planning policy for buildings, not payments to farmers to protect and restore nature. Yet just 7% of Britain’s land is built on. 69% is agricultural land.
Nearly a quarter of agricultural land is upland sheep farms. In most recent years the price of wool does not even cover the cost of shearing a sheep. Just 1% of our calories come from lamb. But these farming businesses have been kept on life support by public money: most upland hill farming income now comes from subsidies rather than food production.
Britain’s uplands are stark, open spaces. This is not ‘natural’. Many of these landscapes were once forests. Some were even ‘temperate rainforests’ a landscape once widespread, now almost entirely destroyed. We should restore at least some of these landscapes.
And, as the sheep farmer James Rebanks has put it. “There is a simple mechanism for transitioning farming to create landscapes you want – pay farmers to do it, pay them fairly at an appropriate rate, and ensure that the payments are guaranteed for long enough for them to be viable.”
In Scotland and Wales we still mostly do the opposite. We subsidise farmers to keep grazing the hills. In England, on paper, things have changed. But things are happening far too slowly.
Three years ago 56 ‘Landscape Recovery’ projects were announced. Just 3 have moved from planning to delivery. Every project must be over 500 hectares (the size of a small town) requiring many farmers to work together and the creation of new legal entities.
To convince government that they are ready to begin work, farmers have founded they need to hire project managers, stakeholder consultation specialists, green finance consultants, solicitors, and accountants. So far so projects have spent £37 million of taxpayer money on design work. Government has also inserted a ‘ ‘termination for convenience’ clause which they can exercise at any time . Farmers who have committed to multi decade projects can have the rug pulled from under them.
If we want to restore nature, instead of arguing about building on car parks in big cities we should instead focus on getting the right deal for farmers. Government needs to make an offer to farmers on nature that is credible and does not need an army of consultants to access. Until then, sheep farmers are going to keep trying to make their money from sheep.
Read more here: britishprogress.substack.com…
All credit to @TomGegg and Ted Theisinger (who is too sensible to be on here).
One rare upside of new Welsh electoral system (6 member constituencies elected on party lists) is it weakens the constituency pull on ministers’ time and thinking.
Your re-election chances don't hinge on personal popularity/being a hyperactive local presence. Frees up capacity.
The claim that a "conversation" on local/regional government has yet to start as a justification for not doing anything until the 2030s is extraordinary.
It's been ongoing for years and years. The WCCP/WLGA just finished a multi-year, multi report project on this very question.
WCPP work can be found here and is an excellent guide to what the current local government leadership see as feasible: wcpp.org.uk/news/welsh-local…
Both Welsh Lab & Plaid currently have bizarre commitments to pretending loads of existing work doesn't exist:
SoS: Can't do any more devo as no work's been done on what that would look like.
WG: Can't touch local/regional gov this term because no work's ever been done on that.