Sunday 29 March 2009

Jenkins v Banner: the big debate!

At Politics Cymru we were wondering what would happen if we could get a staunch supporter of further devolution to talk to a member of the 'No' camp.

Never ones for procrastinating too much - until it comes to real work - we set about organising a friendly debate between Plaid Cymru's AM, Bethan Jenkins, and Rachel Banner of True Wales.

You can listen to the result here. And spare a thought for the man in the middle of it all trying to keep tabs on the two feisty ladies, our guest presenter, Mr. James Snaith.


6 comments:

'token girl' said...

Oh, boys: "feisty ladies"?? Please - never would a male politician be described in equivalent terms. Shame on you!

Cracking debate though. What fine audio levels. Must have had an excellent studio producer on that one...

Unknown said...

I listened and confirmed my opinions of the two ladies in quetion - Bethan is not a good communicator, and is still out of her depth as an AM - Rachel is a smoother political communicator, easily dodging questions and providing wrong answers with confidence.

Despite this (oe because of this maybe), I found Bethan the more believable.

Ian Williams said...

I agree Bethan is not a good AM, few of them are.
With regards to the arguments, Plaid still try to keep us in the "narrow channel" of "we are only talking about new powers" when we know, that, outside of that they are not comfortable.
The convention is a public funded 'yes' campaign that I have no doubt.
It seems that people are using 'emotion' rather than 'common sense' to put their case for "seperation" but will not step inti the arena to explain, how will pay for it? Do you really think that the people of Southeast England are going to continue to 'subsidise' a seperate Wales. Dream on.
Peoples Voice Torfaen against seperation.

Anonymous said...

Sorry about the spelling and grammar. I was in a rush.

Luke L said...

All I can say on this matter is the people of Wales ain't stupid we all know that having more powers in the Assembly will be better for us all. Things we care about will be delivered much quicker.

And im not sure what Ian Williams is trying to say that the convention is a yes campaign when time after time again Sir Emir has said it is not are you really saying that a man who has represented the UK for many years and was knighted is lying to the whole of Wales about his job grow up mate!

The same goes for "True Wales" a group of people lead by a englishman who likes nothing more than to make a foul of himself in the public eye and now i'm sorry to say he is taking more people down with him such a shame!

And we here in Torfaen again should be happy we have an Assembly because without it we would have a prison build where it wasn't wanted so I think a thank you is in order!

Thank You National Assembly of Wales! You have my vote for future powers!

Ian Williams said...

We have been lied to so many times it seems like the norm.

If you believe that this is not an attempt to take us down the route to 'seperation' then God help us. You would need to follow what as happened much more closely over the last 5 years, you can see the trend. Has for power, the Assembly has power over all the main issues of health, education, transport, further education and training, local government, environment, agriculture, social sevices, student loans, economic development and the Welsh language. And they aint done a lot with these so far , have they?

As for the comment of "there would have been a prison built" there is going to be one built, in North Wales. The assembly had nothing to do with that decision.

Our figues tell us that 80% of those asked see it as the route to seperation, that is in Torfaen.