Wednesday 4 June 2008

Promoting Wales?

It's not everyone's idea of bedside reading, but in the line of duty I've been studying the Wales Office annual report.

It's a rather glossier document than it used to be. There are, as you might expect, plenty of photographs of Wales Office Ministers past and present.

What you might not expect are a number of photographs of backbench Labour MPs during ministerial visits to their constituencies. I spotted six backbenchers in the space of six pages of chapter 3 - entitled Promoting Wales . Betty Williams features twice.

The fact that these backbenchers all belong to the governing party is, I'm assured, a complete coincidence - as indeed is the absence of any photographs of MPs from other parties. The Wales Office says the idea that its Ministers only visit Labour-held seats is ridiculous.

2 comments:

Peter Black said...

It is also interesting to note the apparent decision to exclude Swansea from the report. All the photographs are of other parts of Wales, mostly Cardiff and although he praises Cardiff for reaching the FA Cup final there is no mention of the Swans who actually won something.

Anonymous said...

Here speak the only two people in the country who have read the Wales Office annual report. I'm not sure even the officials read it - it is normally full of typos.