Hat tips to Peter Black and Cleckandra on the posting by Dr Christopher Wood on the protection of intellectual property within our universities.
This is an excellent point but may be lost in the August doldrums. I have written on this extensively during the last five years and even gave a paper to the Economic Development Committee of the Assembly on the matter in 2002 which made absolutely clear the poor state of science and R&D in Wales. Unlike Dr Wood's paper, the remit was not to look at IPR but subsequent research has pointed this out
Guess what, nothing was done except an inquiry that the Assembly ignored.
We have had a government that has completely ignored the science base in Wales, despite the pleadings of several of our top scientists and technologists.
I hope that Peter and other members of the opposition will begin to take the Government to task seriously on this matter, especially as the First Minister (as science minister) has been personally responsible for the state of this country's science base since 1999.
This is an excellent point but may be lost in the August doldrums. I have written on this extensively during the last five years and even gave a paper to the Economic Development Committee of the Assembly on the matter in 2002 which made absolutely clear the poor state of science and R&D in Wales. Unlike Dr Wood's paper, the remit was not to look at IPR but subsequent research has pointed this out
Guess what, nothing was done except an inquiry that the Assembly ignored.
We have had a government that has completely ignored the science base in Wales, despite the pleadings of several of our top scientists and technologists.
I hope that Peter and other members of the opposition will begin to take the Government to task seriously on this matter, especially as the First Minister (as science minister) has been personally responsible for the state of this country's science base since 1999.
Comments
We still don't have a Chief Science Officer in Wales despite the opposition calling for one and reports recommending one.
When the First Minister Rhodri Morgan was asked about this, his response was 'We called the Chief Science Officer from London if we need advice and help' sums up the whole attitude of Government Ministers in Cardiff Bay to getting the most out of our Universities and our Economy.
Our Ministers for the economy: Andrew Davies (whose only experience of business was running a PR organisation with just three staff), and Ieuan Wyn Jones (a solicitor) are profoundly ill-equipped to deal with the economic problems of Wales.
The evidence, that we have gone backwards since devolution [see the postings DJ-E refers to, plus DJE-s own analyses], the fact that these key ministers are NOT equipped to deal with, nor facing up to the economic realities, are far more important than talk about coalitions and more powers - which are the sorts of babbling distractions which take our eyes away from the core issues.
Let's state it baldly - if the economy of Wales keeps falling backwards as it has since devolution then poverty will continue, our housing stock will continue to degrade, our brightest will continue to leave, we will get self-determination (and a reduction in post-Barnett funding), we will become less and less able to make up the deficit, and we will have no-one to blame but ourselves.
This was Peter's response:
I think you will find that the WLGA affair deprived Mike German of most of his stint as Economic Development Minister and for most of the Partnership period it was actually done by Rhodri Morgan and Andrew Davies. Mike came back as Rural Affairs Minister. This is also well over five years ago. Plenty of time to start putting things right.
07 August 2007 04:56
AND THEN … the context which I provided which shows the real issues at the heart of this profound problem for us all in Wales.
cleckanndra said...
But coalition government means collective responsibility - for the successes, and the failures. Why didn't the Lib Dems demand to know how the economy was performing, and demand changes when they saw it was failing so dramatically - while they shared governing in the Assembly?
07 August 2007 06:35
Peter B - sorry, mate, that won't wash. The WLGA scandal swung around the fact that Mike German was incapable of putting in a proper financial audit trail when running projects for the WLGA. [Yes, we all know he was 'cleared' of expenses fiddles/mis-using public cash] but what became crystal clear was that he got himself in to difficulties [[ie he could not properly account for his spending and answer difficult detailed questions about those things ]] because he was incapable of putting in clear auditing, in a relatively small organistion, and of managing that process and making others in the organisation responsible for the spending of thoudands of pounds of public money.
THEN - as if by magic - this same person, with the same inexperience, finds himself as the man responsible for the spending of BILLIONS of pounds of public money as Economic Development Minister. How on earth was he equipped for that - other than as a stitch-up deal to keep politicians in power in the Assembly?
Rhodri Morgan (Science Minister, as we speak) has no science background and has never run a company.
Andrew Davies (who once ran a three-person pr outfit) has no experience of running a company or an economy, and Ieuan Wyn Jones (a solicitor, with no experience of creating a company or running an economy) --- these are the men, NOW, who are jointly responsible for running the Welsh economy.
Is it any wonder that the Welsh economy is falling backwards?
Is it any wonder that Objective One
has been a (relative) failure?
When will we understand that you can't just throw money at problems?
Wales deserves better than 'arrogance' (which, in fact, was a mask for inexperience and lack of confidence in his own abilities), and 'mismanagement of process'.
If you are too inexperienced and, therefore, incapable of 'managing small-scale processes' then how on earth can you be expected to manage
whole-scale economies (especially those which are falling further and further behind the rest of the UK)?
Please, dear readers, I appeal to you, read the debates going on about this on this blog; on Dylan Jones-Evans's; and (by the sounds of it) Valleys Mam's archive of postings.
If the Government are not doing anything about this - surely this is where opposition should keep up the scrutiny.
Cleck - when Rhodri and the then Minister Andrew Davies were challenged with the economic reality - Wales hadn’t progressed in the Objective One areas they spun it and quoted all sorts of nonsense - I was amazed that the WM didn’t go for them.
Here in Wales we have people that are more than capable of running the economy - problem is they don’t sit in Cardiff Bay and they don’t advise those that do
It is Labour which has failed to deliver. They came rushing in to the new Assembly trailing their pals and apparatchiks, ill prepared, and singularly lacking in so many key areas. But the Lib Dems shared power with them, should have turned over the economic stones to see what was crawling under-neath, and didn't.
There ARE people of talent who the Assembly could turn to for expert, evidence-based advice [we are borrowing the blog-site of just such a one right here].
They should have the humility to admit they know sod-little about business and enterprise and running such a complex thing as an economy and bring in, listen, test, and act on the recommendations of people like Dylan J-E .... and any other expertise, whether Welsh, English, American, Taiwanese .... etc.
Leadership and management are about setting free the forces of creativity [and keeping a bloody keen eye to make sure it's working]. The worst sort of manager and leader is someone who tries to do it all him/her self, can't take advice, won't listen, won't delegate, can't structure, hides and spins to protect their backs when things go pear-shaped.
Does this all sound like someone (some group of people) we know?
I agree Valleys Mam the only opposition politician I have seen asking about it was Alun Cairns and also learning from his post above that Peter Back has done so to.
But this is a symptom of what's going wrong in Cardiff Bay, you are right VM to say that scrutiny should be a continuous process on all subjects with the opposition and media working together to raise the issues.
A new national regeneration initiative for Wales with a sharp focus on delivering improvements in deprived areas will be launched in 2009, the Welsh Assembly has announced.
Communities next will initially be funded for three years and will build on communities first, the Welsh Assembly’s flagship regeneration initiative.
The decision to launch a successor scheme follows an evaluation of communities first which said that, despite its good intentions, it had initially confused stakeholders who didn’t understand it was a capacity building scheme and expected to be given total freedom on how to spend a pot of grant funding.
Although the evaluation praised the assembly for resisting the urge to steer the communities first programme and for having the patience to build capacity rather than focusing on ‘quick wins’, it said the scheme was difficult to put into practice because the skills needed were concentrated in a few hands and because it failed to bring service providers on board.
It concluded: ‘Communities first is still a long way away from producing the regeneration outcomes that were and still are its main aim… Although projects are often community led, they are not reaching the more disadvantaged groups in the communities. This is the key challenge for partnerships.’
Deputy regeneration minister, Leighton Andrews, said the new initiative would centre on ‘stimulating practical improvements to deprived areas’.
He added: ‘Communities next will entail a focus on outcomes and activities rather than capacity building. Our intention is to refocus the programme to ensure it engages in practical ways with the challenge of community regeneration and social justice objectives such as child poverty. It is essential that we get the next phase right.’
A consultation on the new programme is likely to begin in the new year. Partnership working across the public, private and third sectors will be central to the programme.
Posted by Valleys Mam at 3:33 PM 0 comments
It's in the posting on my blog and in Chris Wood's response (ie let's stop looking at the stars and deal with the muck at our boots).
What say you?