THEY DON'T LIKE IT UP THEM!

I must confess that I am great fan of Dad’s Army and my favourite character in that series was Lance Corporal Jack Jones, played by the irrepressible Clive Dunn.

As we all know, two of his more famous phrases were "Don't panic!" and "They don't like it up 'em".

Interestingly, both of these phrases seem to apply directly to the recent criticisms of my weekly column by Labour politicians in North Wales who seem terribly upset that an adviser to the Welsh Conservatives writes for the Daily Post.

In particular, the MP for Anglesey has even gone so far as to suggest that as I support a different political party to him, then my comments on the economy are no longer valid.

I could respond by pointing out that, unlike the last three Labour administrations, the current UK Government had given preferred new nuclear site status to Wylfa thus opening the door to thousands of new jobs within his constituency. Or that, despite cuts elsewhere, the Strategic Defence Review has guaranteed the future of RAF Valley, one of the island’s largest employers.

Of course, that could be interpreted as political posturing so let’s stick to the facts and focus on what the statistics say about the current state of the economy of Anglesey.

Since the current MP for Anglesey entered Parliament in 2001, Anglesey has remained the poorest county in the whole of the UK, with an average prosperity per head of 55 per cent of the UK economy.

During the last two years of the Labour Government, a number of major employers shut their operations, including Anglesey Aluminium (450 jobs), Eaton Electric (240 jobs), Menai Electrical (50 jobs) and Readileads (35 jobs) whilst restructuring at Welsh Country Foods has cost a further 191 jobs.

In addition, 39 per cent of all shops in Holyhead’s high street are closed, the worst rate in the UK. Llangefni, the island’s other major town, also has just under a quarter of its shops empty.

Those are the basic facts about the economic tsunami that has hit Anglesey hard during the last few years.

But as we know, Anglesey, as the poorest county within the whole of the UK, has the advantage of being able to access £2 billion pounds of European Structural funding in order to create jobs and new businesses to alleviate the effects of the recession.

Unfortunately, that has simply not happened.

The latest official data shows that, in the last three years, only 111 businesses on Anglesey have been helped through European convergence funding.

Worse still, only 102 new jobs have been created and just 18 new businesses set up.

Remember this is at a time when Wales was going though the worst downturn since the 1920s and hundreds of jobs were lost on Anglesey.

But that is not the whole story.

Wales is also fortunate to have access to the £150 million JEREMIE fund that is providing commercial funding solutions for small firms that face difficulties in securing funding.

Yet, according to the latest figures released by WAG, whilst £30 million has been spent across Wales, only £25,000 has been invested on Anglesey i.e. less than 0.1 per cent of funding for entrepreneurs has gone to the poorest county in Wales.

Those are the facts, not political opinion, and those reading this column can judge them for themselves.

If I were the MP for Ynys Mon, I would not be spending my time writing to the Daily Post to complain about the political allegiances of its columnists.

I would instead be demanding an urgent meeting with the Welsh Assembly Government to explain why Anglesey continues to be shortchanged when it comes to allocating European funding that could help transform the poorest county in the whole of the UK.

That is the least Anglesey deserves.