So yesterday, together our media partner, the Western Mail, we launched the IWA Inspire Wales Awards to recognise and reward excellence, to underline the importance of innovation in the public, private and voluntary sectors, to encourage active involvement in Welsh civil society, to champion equal opportunities and to create role models for others.

In this first year of the scheme we have designated ten categories, though this may change in future years as we see the need to highlight particular fields of activity. The ten categories for 2010 are:

·      Business Leader of the Year – Sponsored by Leadership & Management Wales. It is crucially important that, in a part of the country that is so dominated by the public sector, that we do everything we can to stress the importance of developing our indigenous business sector.

·      Educator of the Year – surely nothing is more important for securing our future than the quality of education.

·      Science and Technology – Wales has made a bigger contribution to developments in science and technology than is generally recognised. But we need to celebrate what is being done in the here and now. Again, this is crucial to our future.

·      Environmentalist of the Year  – sponsored by South Wales Shredding Ltd and WRAP Cymru. As we tackle climate change we know that there are many committed and creative people in this field trying, in big ways and small, to enhance Wales’s contribution to solving global problems.

·      Welsh at Work – sponsored by The CADCentre (UK) Ltd. The Welsh language is an essential part of our identity as a nation, and we want to recognise innovative ways in which the language has been used in the workplace and business.

·      Arts, Media and Creative Industries – sponsored by Active Music Services. Like the language, the arts, media and creative industries say so much about who we are. They help define us, but they also make an enormous contribution to society, economically and socially. In a recession they can also be a powerful means of social cohesion.

·      Active Citizen of the Year – There is a lot of talk about public disengagement from politics, but there is also plenty of evidence that people, young and old, when they feel passionately about some cause are more than able to galvanise others into action – people who are not willing just to stand by and complain, but to take action. In many ways they enhance the quality of our democracy.

·      Global Wales – Wales is a small country, but in the era of globalisation we have to project ourselves to a wider world. It’s a big task, but there are people who have carried the banner for Wales very effectively beyond our borders.

·      Young Achiever of the Year – sponsored by Wales and West Utilities. At this very difficult time, it is very important that we emphasise the contribution that young people can make when they are given encouragement and space.

·      Sporting leadership – I should emphasise that this is not another award for sportsmen and women, but a category designed to recognise those who people inspire others to participate and achieve at local, regional or national level.

Now we are looking forward to seeing some inspiring entries in all categories. The closing dates for nominations  will be on the 16^th, 23^rd and 30^th of April, depending on category. So the search is on, and on Tuesday 15^th June, at the City Hall, Cardiff, we will be celebrating the achievements of the 30 finalists and announcing our category winners at an awards dinner. 

We have already won the support of a wide range of sponsors, but there are still some sponsorship opportunities remaining. For information about entering yourself, about nominating others or about sponsorship, please contact the event organiser Emma Brennan at emmabrennan@iwa.org.uk or 029 2066 0820.

·      Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA.

There is an element of Russian roulette here as no one expects Salmond to be able to muster the parliamentary votes for his independence bill. Instead, what the SNP manoeuvres are driven by is leaving the unionist parties, Labour, Lib Dems and Tories, with the poisoned chalice of having voted down a bill promising a popular vote.

This would leave Alex Salmond as the unchallenged defender of the people, and the unionist parties as looking anti-democratic. Thus the Nationalist logic goes this would play into the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections and the SNP maximalising their vote posing as the true democrats and the unionists as not trusting the people. From this position they surmise, with the prospect of a David Cameron government, elected with few Scots Tory MPs, open to the charge of ‘no mandate’ and presiding over savage, deep public spending cuts, next stop independence!

That’s the Nationalist thinking. Whether it could work, or David Cameron provides such a willing accomplice, remains to be seen. What is beyond doubt is that Scots single-mindedly refuse to see independence as the crucial issue facing them compared to jobs and the economy. Yet the same was true of devolution before. The difference is devolution enjoyed consistent majority support; independence never has (so far).

Then there is the perception that the Lib Dems are slowly inching towards embracing a referendum as their policy in the 2011 elections, opening the door to the possibility of an SNP-Lib Dem coalition government. The choreography towards this would be aided by the SNP being unspecific about the date of any vote in a bill.

Rumours abound about the reason for delay. One is that the SNP government could not deal with the budget being passed at the same time as the independence bill. This is spurious as the budget was always timetabled for now, and the independence bill put into the same timescale.

Then there has been spin that the SNP will concentrate on recession and belt-tightening rather than independence. This can be dismissed as spin, given independence is what the Nationalists are about.

One possibility is that the SNP have encountered difficulties in how to frame a question which now looks more like a complex multiple choice rather than a simple Yes/No.

Four possible options: independence, ‘devolution max’ or full fiscal autonomy, ‘devolution lite’ based on the Calman proposals, and the status quo, are identified in the SNP White Paper. Asking a referendum question on the above choices which would be meaningful and decisive politically could be difficult.

Combine this with the SNP’s lack of thinking or interest about the detail of independence, and this amounts to a significant loss of momentum both for the SNP and its raison d’etre.

Even more inexplicable, the non-appearance of the SNP’s clarion call has occurred with nothing but a murmur from the party’s political opponents and most of the mainstream media. This requires some explanation in a political culture which is often shaped by a Holyrood goldfish bowl and jockeying for position is everything and rated as more important than dealing with serious policy issues.

This lack of public debate is the second situation which requires investigation and explanation. What after all would Scottish politics be without the ritual dance of unionists versus nationalists, Labour versus SNP? And yet all of this could lead towards an eventual realignment of Scottish politics and an SNP-Lib Dem government.

·      Gerry Hassan, author and commentator, blogs at www.gerryhassan.com

The Welsh Government’s Climate Change Strategy will be published in the spring, and it should be given the highest profile and status by all Ministers and Departments. If it reflects the responses to last years consultation, it will urge a re-think about the core assumptions behind current policies and priorities, and not look only for ‘add-on’ actions. It will recognise that climate change is caused by our unsustainable ways of living rather than simply by deficiencies in our technology or energy sources, and will call for a fundamental shift away from business as usual. The Welsh Government is also committed to quantify the contribution each proposed action makes to the 3 per cent per annum reductions that will begin in 2011, commensurate with a 40 per cent reduction by 2020. 

The level of ambition throughout the strategy process has been high, and the articulation of the significance of climate change has set the right context and tone. Recognising the chasm between scientific projections and current political commitment, Minister Jane Davidson commissioned a scenario report by the Tyndall Centre at Manchester University, setting out proposals for how 6 per cent and 9 per ent per annum greenhouse gas reductions might be achieved. As well as being dramatically clear what is required if the scientific predictions are correct, the report goes into much more politically sensitive areas which the Welsh Government Strategy cannot do.

The Climate Change Commission has helped the Government draft its Strategy, and working groups have come up with proposals on transport, energy use, public and private sector contributions and land-use. Newly devolved powers over building regulations will encourage better building design, while other strategies and plans in the areas of transport, energy efficiency and waste will contribute to carbon savings. Land-use and agriculture are largely devolved responsibilities, and some radical options are available if the Government choses to take them.

If there are weakneses in the Government’s approach, they are the consequence of its limited powers, putting a burden of responsibility on everyone else to make change happen. The Strategy will rely heavily on encouraging more sustainable behaviours, supporting business initiatives and providing advice and guidance. It will not announce new legislation or regulation, it will have few powers of compulsion, and will not use taxation or price signals to drive behaviour change.

Because energy policy and taxation is a matter reserved to the UK Government, and the main legislative framework is that introduced at the UK level by the 2008 Climate Change Act, the Welsh Government’s hands are largely tied. It would be much easier for the Government to persuade us to behave differently it it had powers of legal enforcement and taxation. High fossil fuel prices will be essesntial if the Welsh Government’s big ideas, such as Sustainable Travel Towns, Low-Carbon Regions and a major expansion of renewable energy are to be achieved in practice.

The 3 per cent a year target is for all of us in Wales, not just the Government. But the strategy is likely to be clearer about the actions the Government itself will take. There will be bold proposals for the Government’s own estate, for example to make a 10 per cent cut in emissions during 2010. I think we will see more exemplar projects and evidence of commitment from the Government itself. But what the Government can do and what it is able to persuade/oblige/force others to do, reflects the degree to which our society and lifestyles have been privatised, and shows how we’ve allowed governments to give away control over our destiny to those who control the marketplace.

The CBI’s representatives play a constructive part on the Climate Change Commission for Wales, but their actions and opinions are contradictory elsewhere. Though never expressed in meetings, they complain (in a written submission to the Welsh Government) that the Commission is “failing to engage properly with the business community” and that the agenda is “dominated by issues other than those important to businesses”. And yet it is the success business has had in lobbying against taxation and regulation that has left governments powerless. The CBI prefers market-based mechanisms such as the EU carbon trading scheme, but this has failed to deliver any emissions reductions to date. It has of course stimulated the economy by provided lucrative work for hundreds of corporate lawyers and traders!  

I hope the UK Carbon Reduction Commitment (a UK wide emissions cap and trade scheme which starts in April 2010) will fare better. However, in the current economic climate I can’t see a tight cap on emissions being enforced in the face of pressure from business. The Carbon Reduction Commitment will be debated by the National Assembly on 23rd February. 

My view is that despite increasingly bold targets, few governments at any level in any country know how to make cuts in greenhouse gases in a cost-effective, politically acceptable way, while wedded to current economic growth model. In Wales as elsewhere, it’s economic and social transformation that’s needed for our environment policies to be achieved. Will we invest sufficiently in energy efficiency in homes? Can we redefine our social aspirations so that we travel less? Will we redirect our economies away from high-carbon infrastructures? Will we treat not the symptom of our malaise but its cause: our unsustainable levels of consumption? 

There’s a real challenge for Economic Development Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones’ economic renewal programme to align itself with the climate change targets. This is uncharted territory – no other country has ever decoupled its environmental impact from its economic growth.  So the programme needs to have as its primary aim the achievement of a very low-carbon economy, and fit around that aim whatever economic development strategies that can guarantee jobs and prosperity. If we do this the other way round, or if we take a short-term approach, we will fail.  And the prospects for our future economy will be bleak.

·      Morgan Parry is Chair of Cynnal Cymru/Sustain Wales.

I wouldn’t pretend it’s easy to reduce our reliance on the combustion engine. As a frequent business traveller, it’s a real balancing act choosing between road or rail. On the one hand you have the advantage of a safer form of travel, the ability to work remotely whilst travelling, and the possible – and in some areas the probable – advantage of reduced travel time. Balancing these factors are the issues of increased cost (on last minute purchases) and the potential unreliability of the rail network.

So it was with great pleasure that I read the headline splashed across the front page of yesterday’s Western Mail: ‘£5bn vision to put Wales on track for rail revolution’. The report, issued  by the Assembly’s Enterprise and Learning Committee calls for a radical overhaul of the jaded rail network in Wales. The report calls for a high speed connection from south Wales to London (which will very much please the South Wales Chamber of Commerce) and for north Wales to the High Speed Line 2 link. It also calls for tram systems in the Welsh cities, upgrades on the Severn Tunnel, new trains on the tired Valley lines and a north to south connection, something which would benefit many rural commuters who live in and around the Brecon Beacons National Park, not to mention the probable cash injection from tourists and outdoor types arriving to the same area by rail. There is little doubt in my mind, that better rail services to beautiful mid Wales would be rewarded with big increases in the expenditure of the tourist pound.

Timing, of course, couldn’t be worse. With the spending deficit increasing even as I type, the landscape could barely be less amenable to massive cash injections. Yet to miss this opportunity would be folly. As a society we need to get more people out of their cars by providing viable alternatives. Undeniably, the motor car has its place and its uses. However, as our predominant mode of personal transit they are heavily polluting, rely on dwindling natural resources to run, are expensive to maintain (both the vehicles and the road network itself). On top of all that, cars are statistically a much more dangerous way to travel than any public transport system in the developed world (Australians for instance are much more afraid of spiders than cars, yet cars will kill over 1,000 people this year in Australia and spiders most probably none). Add the residual benefits such as meeting ambitious carbon reduction targets, reducing road spending and improved health benefits (reduction in respiratory complaints from improved air quality) and it is hard to see why we cling on to the automobile quite so tightly.

So I hope that we can dig very deep indeed, overcome the significant short term financial hurdles and the Welsh Government can lead us deep into the middle of this century with real direction and vision. This plan could ‘give Wales an opportunity to show leadership and ambition, and to learn from the past. It could give the opportunity to show how Wales is playing its full role as a global citizen, within the context set by the UN Millennium Development Goals’ (quoted from ‘One Wales: One Planet The Sustainable Development Scheme of the Welsh Assembly Government’).

In 1963 Dr Beeching’s infamous rail network recommendations led to slashed rail services across Wales and the UK, laying the groundwork for today’s reliance on road and ensuring that his name is remembered for all the wrong reasons. In 2010 an imaginative, far thinking and inventive Welsh Government could be remembered for all the right ones.

·      Simon Nurse is Head of Operations with Cardiff’s Capital Coated Steel and editor of the Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Business website www.iesme.org

The IWA has always been committed to the development of a progressive society in Wales in which all our citizens play their fullest part. It is important, especially in the current economic climate, that we continue to recognise and reward innovators and inspirational Welsh citizens. The scheme will reward those in sectors including science, education, the arts, the environment and business.

These awards have been eight months in the planning. Over the last four months categories have been created, sponsors have been sought, literature has been designed and invites to the launch at Cardiff’s City Hall this Thursday have been sent out. Momentarily the whirlwind of getting the awards off the ground has calmed, which then leaves a bit of time for reflection.

I have worked on many awards initiatives in Wales over the last decade, including the Welsh Woman of the Year awards, and have been genuinely enthused by each one. I believe it is important to reward people and create role models for others to aspire to. The whole notion of promoting best practice can only benefit Wales as a nation. The IWA’s Inspire Wales Awards will recognise and reward innovators and inspirational Welsh citizens. It will also promote equal opportunities and create role models in the following sectors: science, education, the arts, the environment and business.

When looking to launch a new awards initiative I am often asked amongst other questions: Is it the right time to launch a new awards scheme? and Does Wales really need a new awards scheme? Usually I answer without thinking. Of course, there has never been a better time, or It is important to Wales … positive phrases which I do believe but have never really had to think about and never been able to relate to - until recently, that is.

Four years ago I was managing a team within a large organisation that experienced 40 per cent redundancies. Two years later, to save further costs, the company were forced to cut bonuses and I thought, “Well a bonus is exactly that, a bonus. There is no guarantee. I should not rely on it.” Given the news I was hearing about the job losses throughout Wales, I was thankful to still have a job and reiterated this to my remaining team members.

When redundancies occur, it is inevitable that some of the workload still needs to be picked up by remaining members of staff. But I still know of lots of people during these times who feel very insecure in their roles and we are told that the economy is not going to improve for a few years. So whilst employers are unable to give bonuses to staff who are doing the work of three people, there are a few things they can give. One is a “thank you” another is a “well done”. These awards give people a public platform to acknowledge peoples’ achievements.

Call me old fashioned, very Welsh or ridiculous. Scoff at me if you wish, but a “thank you” or a “well done” costs nothing and goes a very long way.

And whilst we expect staff to step things up a level and work harder than their initial job description meant for them to, we must appreciate they are managing to cram so much more into their usual work hours, at how they are sacrificing their lunch hours and how they are working lots of overtime to get the tasks done.

What I am trying to say is that apart from the time it takes to complete a nomination form, or send an email or pick up the phone, it would not take much effort to reward a person and make them feel valued just by making a nomination. It is then up to the individual if they would like to take the next step and complete the form and it is also up to me to convince that person to enter.

Your staff are your greatest asset, you want to hang onto the good ones and the whole recruiting processes is incredibly expensive, tedious and long. Use the awards to retain and reward your good staff and Should your nominations result in a colleague being short-listed as a finalist, the public acknowledgement will serve them better in the long run that a few quid!

· Emma Brennan is the IWA’s Inspire Wales Awards co-ordinator. For more information email her at emmabrennan@iwa.org.uk or call 02920 660820.

What Leighton Andrews appears to want to do is bypass the 22 Welsh county councils and directly influence Welsh schools in the way that Tony Blair’s education reforms have done in England over the past decade. This is unlikely to entail reducing the role or even abolishing the 22 local authorities, as the Western Mail suggested in a report yesterday, certainly this side of the 2011 Assembly election. More likely is that the Welsh Government will resort to funding schools directly, as has happened in England, or possibly fund them through three or four new regional agencies or consortia.

How else are we to interpret the visit of Sir Michael Barber, Tony Blair’s Chief Adviser on Public Service Delivery from 2001 to 2005, to Cardiff Bay a week ago?  Sir Michael briefed and advised Leighton Andrews and also Deputy Minister Huw Lewis and their advisers for four hours on his approach to public service delivery.

Sir Michael’s key word is ‘Deliverology’ which means that success is just as much about means as ends, about ‘making it happen’, or in Tony Blair’s phrase, ‘what works’. ‘Deliverology’, says Barber, is the science of getting things done. All this chimes well with the words scrawled on a whiteboard in Leighton Andrews’ office in the Senedd, “Better implementation, fewer initiatives, keep it simple…”

What this means for Sir Michael was laid out in New Labour’s education reforms between 1997 and 2005. He should know because he developed the policies for New Labour ahead of the 1997 election. As he put it in an interview in the United States in January 2006, shortly after he had left No 10 to work in his current role as Global Public Sector Practice partner with the consultants McKinsey, a script that sounds like a crib sheet for what he had to say in Wales a week ago :

 “If you cut the New Labour education reforms into three slices you could say the first was about standards and accountability. The second was about collaboration and capacity-building (securing the supply of teachers, improving teachers' pay, creating opportunities for schools to collaborate, investing in professional development, building capacity in the system, etc). And the third is about market-based or quasi-market reform. And I think that's a reasonable sequence actually. Blair summarizes the approach as ‘Investment for Reform’.

So from 1997 to 1999 we went at the first phase with enormous energy and drove reform with great speed. It was a completely mission-driven agenda. We implemented a national literacy strategy in primary schools, followed quite rapidly by numeracy using the same model: large-scale reform driven from the top down; designing all the materials at the national level and training everybody in a cascade out; using the accountability system to publish results, and school inspection to check that people were adopting better practices.

We also had a very tough agenda for dealing with under-performing schools: closing some, starting some fresh, and turning around others. We began intervening in very troubled local educational authorities—Liverpool, parts of London, about 12 or 13 interventions altogether. It was very difficult to do but important.

The basic premise of our first phase of education reforms was that in order to achieve a certain minimum floor you have to first set those standards top down and drive them centrally. I think that was right and the results were impressive, but you can't keep doing that forever. You have to move on.

So between 2001 and 2005 we moved on to the third stage. What Blair increasingly hankered after was a way of improving the education system that didn't need to be constantly driven by government. He wanted to develop self-sustaining, self-improving systems, and that led him to look into how to change not just the standards and the quality of teaching, but the structures and incentives. Essentially it's about creating different forms of a quasi-market in public services, exploiting the power of choice, competition, transparency and incentives, and that's really where the education debate is going now.

I think that the concept that you devolve money to schools, you encourage choice, you make it easier for new providers to come in and you make it easier for networks of schools to develop brands—all of that is conceptually sound.

At the political level Blair really understands the challenge. Top-down reform, as I know from personal experience, is not an easy thing to do. But quasi-market reform is more sophisticated strategically. The individuals leading and implementing such changes will need to rise to this challenge and ensure that the reforms enhance equity. Since the status quo is inequitable there is every reason to believe that extending choice to everyone should produce greater equity.”

Asked about the biggest challenges to this reform agenda he divided them into two, one involving implementation and the other engaging with political opposition:

“The implementation challenges have to do with scale and speed. A lot of government programmes start off with a good idea, but as they go through the bureaucracy and out into the system, compromises are made, and by the time it gets to the actual frontline, it is so watered down that it doesn't work. Then the frontline tells you the idea was bad when, actually, there was nothing wrong with the idea, just the implementation. You need to be very conscious of what you're doing and how you're doing it, and you need to design mechanisms to make sure that the programme is faithfully implemented.

And then you have to be very clear what's non-negotiable, and be absolutely unapologetic. If you decide to publish school league tables, as we have done, then you shouldn't apologize for them, you shouldn't say they are a necessary evil, you should say they are a positive good.

A big political challenge is that in the UK, nobody believes it if test scores go up. There's a very, very strong strand — particularly on the right wing of politics, but also in the teaching profession itself — of people who believe that in the end the amount of achievement in the population is a zero sum, so if test scores go up that can only mean you've lowered the standard. We have that debate every single year when test scores come out. That is a huge political challenge because what it means is there's an undertow of cynicism. And yet, if you're in a classroom, you can see it happening, you can see that the child has learned more and the test is just reflecting what a child can do.

The second big political challenge is: How do you do rapid, large scale reform with sharp accountability? A lot of people within the system say we went too far too fast and should have made more effort to get buy-in.  I personally don't believe that. We had to demonstrate that you could do large-scale, system-wide reform quickly. But that doesn't make it any less of a political challenge.

Probably the most difficult political challenge, though, is just how hard it is to stay the course when the going gets tough. Most big reforms take eight or 10 years. You can make an impact in three to four, as we did, but to really transform a system it's going to be eight or 10 years.  How you stay the course — not just through changes of party but also with ministerial turnover in one party — is a real issue.”

This last may be the most difficult issue for Leighton Andrews, who has less than 18 months to the next Assembly election. He and Carl Seargant are telling the local authorities they have six months to get their act together, to demonstrate that they are collaborating effectively to get more money to the chalk face to push up standards and attainment levels. Otherwise other methods, presumably guided by Sir Michael Barber, will kick in. It’s a tough ask in the time available. Look out for education commitments in Labour’s 2011 Assembly Manifesto that reflect Barber’s account of Tony Blair’s New Labour’s education reforms.

·      John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

Nevertheless, the report does highlight some interesting facts which may undermine one or two cherished myths:

·      Fact 1 – NHS Wales is not obviously under-funded. In 2006 it got around 10 per cent per head more than England as a whole, and about the same as regions such as north east England which have similar levels of ill health. It may be that it costs more to provide healthcare in rural areas, which would penalise Wales – but then Wales get considerably more per head than south west England, for example, with similar issues of sparcity and remoteness

·      Fact 2 – NHS Wales does quite well in comparison with England in terms of numbers of staff. For example, in 2006 Wales had about 50 per cent more management and support staff per head, and about 40 per cent more nurses, midwives and health visitors.

·      Fact 3 – patients and citizens in the four countries all express the same levels of satisfaction about their NHS – generally, very high.

The report also raises some interesting questions about what it calls ‘crude productivity’. For example, why does Wales carry out so few day cases compared with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland? This is generally accepted as a good indicator of the efficiency of hospital services, and Wales has been trying for many years to increase its proportion of day cases compared with hospital admissions. Or, if one looks at treatment rates per head, why is it that north east England (with similar levels of ill health to Wales) provided almost 10 per cent more out-patient consultations than Wales in 2006, and almost 30 per more in-patient and day case procedures?

The report argues that much of this difference can be explained by “the greater pressure put on NHS bodies in England to improve performance in a few key areas such as waiting and efficiency, through use of targets, strong performance management, public reporting of performance by regulators, and financial incentives”. 

This is highly debateable. Nevertheless, the questions which the data raise will not go away, and the people of Wales are not well served by a response that plays the man rather than the ball – criticising the data and the perspective of the study, rather than the facts presented. Wales does not want an NHS that underperforms, and there is some evidence here that, in some respects, it may have that. Thankfully, the NHS in Wales is taking this sort of data seriously, and seeking to improve its performance. 

The case for the prosecution is not proven, but nevertheless there is a case to answer.

·      Marcus Longley is Professor of Applied Health Policy and Director of the Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care, University of Glamorgan.

It underscores the similar message conveyed by the BBC’s new headquarters building in Glasgow and its commitment to a Media City in Manchester. The Manchester Media City concept has been the template that the Welsh Government has seized on to expand the scope of the BBC project and to justify its own investment, although Cardiff may find it tougher than Manchester to realise such potential. We won’t know unless we try. 

The drama village will bring together on one site production facilities for Dr. Who and its multifarious offshoots, as well as for Casualty and Pobl y Cwm.

Bristol will, of course, feel aggrieved that production of Casualty is being moved to Cardiff, but the truth of the matter is that providing a fairer distribution of BBC production around the UK always ran into the problem that there was too much production concentrated in England. The BBC’s network production centres in Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester always constituted one too many. The key production centres will now be London, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff – with Northern Ireland and Bristol having a continuing but lesser role. Birmingham may be a bigger loser.

With such substantial physical investment in the four prime locations, the BBC will now have to ensure that they work, and that they sustain volume production. In a sense, therefore, the Cardiff Bay drama village locks in the BBC’s commitment to Wales more firmly than any number of strategy statements. At present BBC Wales network drama production is well ahead of Scotland. In the 1990s, Scotland was well ahead of Wales. The real test of these arrangements is how London will cope when Scotland, Wales and Manchester are all t creatively on-song at the same time.

Settling the major decision about infrastructure also clears the ground to allow the BBC to tackle the next major issue of cultural representation, always an even thornier issue than the decentralisation of production.

Rightly or wrongly – in my view wrongly - the power of UK and international markets tends to work against material that is geographically rooted, and that has been a difficulty for Wales given its place in the pecking order of British culture. But even in England it is an issue as well. For instance, television adaptations of literary classics might lead you to believe that Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are the alpha and omega of English literature, with regular obligatory nods to the ‘bard’.

It is also arguable that BBC television drama has been less northern than ITV – the BBC’s Eastenders versus ITV’s Coronation Street and Emmerdale. There is some evidence that Austen, in particular – with its distinctly southern character - plays less well in Scotland and the north of England.  Moreover, British television - the BBC in particular - has been far less attentive to 20^th Century literature. And what of Welsh and Scottish literature on television? There is sill a lot to play for.

One other dimension of the drama village project is worthy of note. It is that the development is to take place in Cardiff Bay, and to be carried out by the development company, Igloo Regeneration, which has a reputation as one of the higher quality developers in the UK, with a good track record on sustainability.

The combination of a major centre for the creative industries, and possible other spaces for life sciences, together with more imaginative housing than in the rest of Cardiff Bay, may provide a more genuine living community than in the rest of the Bay area, where hitherto developers have been allowed to build high with little thought for animating the area at ground level.

·      Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA.

The job of finding and restoring the moral compass that in recent decades has been buried in a sand dune of greed is going to be a long job.

Three cheers, therefore, for Dame Marjorie Scardino, Chief Executive of Pearson plc, and one of the longest serving chief executives of FTSE 100 companies, who in an address to Cardiff Business Club on Monday evening, made a thoughtful and reasoned plea for the restoration of older values in business to restore lost trust.

Her address certainly did not have the feel of a public relations exercise, occasioned by the recent crisis. The record and purposes of the Pearson company – educational as well as ownership of the Financial Times – are such that there is no necessity for that. In any case, it was very early in her 12-year tenure at Pearson that Dame Marjorie was castigated for proclaiming the heresies that she re-stated afresh to Cardiff’s business community: that the ‘corporation is a social institution’, that ‘profit can’t define an institution’, but is ‘a by-product’ of the corporation’s task of ‘moving civilisation along’.

Capitalism, she said, is about more than wealth and shareholder value, and she regretted that this had been forgotten by too many in business. Far from this being woolly-minded idealism, she reasserted the view that it was companies that had a long term purpose other than profit, and that could engender trust, that would win out in the long term. John Lewis was another example where this approach strikes a chord with customers.

She also had little time for executives whose remuneration was sometimes 1400 times greater than their average employee, and had an amusing explanation of why public anger at such excesses is greater in Britain than in the US. She cited a survey which showed that 20 per cent of Americans believe that they themselves are in the top 1 per cent of income earners - a measure of the underlying American aspiration for wealth, not to say a rather spectacular example of cognitive dissonance.

She did warn, however, that there had to be a change in behaviour. Change could not rely on regulation, rules and contracts alone. Society, too, had to make clear what it expected. She preferred the UK’s approach to corporate governance to that of the US – relying on a framework of concepts rather than bureaucratic box-ticking – but did not explore in any detail the role of regulation which is, after all, one means of expressing what society expects.

If there is a connection between the substance of leadership and product quality,  perhaps it is not surprising that the Financial Times is the only UK newspaper in which you can read a sustained intellectual debate about more fundamental reform of the banking system. It wouldn’t surprise me if, in impacting on her audience, she didn’t sell a few more copies of the pink’un in the process.

·      Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA.

I am not carrying a torch for the late Mr Batchelor, but he certainly enlivened life in this exploding Victorian city, and occasioned a row that had a permanent effect on our laws of libel, and in this case, thank God, not a pernicious one.

Batchelor was a leading Radical in the city in mid-Victorian era, at a time when Radicals dominated Cardiff Town Council. He was also the first Chairman of the Cardiff School Board. He had moved to Cardiff from Newport in 1843 and, with his brother, set up as a timber merchant and ship-builder at the lower end of St. Mary Street, when the Taff was on its older, more easterly alignment. Sadly, he went bankrupt in 1872, owing £50,000 and paying out only 11 pence in the pound.

When he died in 1883 fellow Radicals sought to erect a memorial, and were roundly criticised for doing so. Four years later opponents and creditors raised a 1200-signature petition to get the statue removed, largely on the grounds that it was associated with only one political party. William Thorne, of Messrs Gibson Bros of Bute Docks – presumably a creditor – was put in jug for defacing the statue with yellow paint and tar.

On 24 July 1887, the Conservative Western Mail, then only 14 years old, and under the robust editorship of Henry Lascelles Carr – a man who, among many eccentricities, made his own shoes - published a mock epitaph written by a solicitor named Ensor, under the rather transparent pseudonym ‘Censor’. Censor, exhibiting some sense of grievance, suggested the following as an epitaph to be placed on the statue:

“In honour of John Batchelor, a native of Newport, who in early life left his country for his country's good; who on his return devoted his life and energies to setting class against class; a traitor to the Crown, a reviler of the aristocracy, a hater of the clergy, a panderer to the multitude; who, as first Chairman of the Cardiff School Board, squandered funds to which he did not contribute; who is sincerely mourned by unpaid creditors to the amount of £50,000; who, at the close of a wasted and misspent life, died a pauper — this monument, to the eternal disgrace of Cardiff, is erected by sympathetic Radicals. Owe no man anything."

Not content with a mere letter to the editor, Batchelor’s son called on the editor, assaulted him and indicted him for libel. Mr Justice Stephen directed a petty jury to acquit (R. v. Ensor 1887), establishing that libel is not an offence at law unless injury is inflicted on a person still living.

Not much chance you would get journalism of that vigour these days, not even in the tabloids. However, the other lesson is that setting up statues of near contemporaries will not always escape controversy. The statuary inside our City Hall wisely stuck to the distant past. Perhaps we too should set a high bar.

· Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA.

• Creating a Welsh Centre of Excellence for Entrepreneurship.
• Continued help for SMEs and initiatives that ‘allow business to be more robust and take risks’.
• A national infrastructure plan to co-ordinate and deliver transport improvements.
• Long term manufacturing and export strategies that modernise industry, incorporates energy efficiency and facilitates overseas success.
• Improvements to the public procurement process.
• Simplifying and regulating the tax system.
• Cancelling the forthcoming increase in National Insurance.
• ·       Developing a skilled Welsh workforce.
  

All these present a challenge to the Welsh and on the taxation front, the UK Government. Few disagree that Welsh business – and industry in particular – has been exceptionally hard hit during the worst recession in recent history, with an uncertain future ahead. While the Welsh Government can help lay the groundwork on which to build a more amenable business landscape, businesses also have a responsibility to embrace change.

The world has slipped into a quiet but steady revolution. We are witnessing the dawn of the ‘innovation economy’, an environmental revolution motivated by the geographic shifting of markets, a reduction of raw material availability and the need to operate in a more sustainable manner. Ours is a shrinking world of exponential population growth and increasing environmental demands.

For a really good example of how Welsh innovation and – in this case, a touch of ecodesign, a dab of business altruism and a belief in what you do - can project a business well beyond Welsh borders and onto the global radar,  consider howies©, the Cardigan based sports wear company. This is a business that operates in an incredibly cluttered marketplace, with competitors including global entities such as Adidas, Ocean Pacific and Nike.

Favouring a philosophy of ‘Grow slow and grow strong’, the creative and management team behind howies© have continued to expand, innovate and impress, subsequently securing the financial backing of American giant Timberland. Impressed with the business model, they agreed to the huge concession that howies© would continue to be managed and based in Wales. This is the type of organisation that will be well set for 21st Century business, one that embraces change, takes the long view and aligns itself with a changing society.

To facilitate the journey to the new business landscape, Wales already has some of these elements in place. Consider the Eco Design Centre Wales. The Welsh Government supported the set up of the centre which works with imaginative businesses to promote effective industrial ecodesign. This small organisation operated from its Cathays home – adjacent to Cathays train station with onsite cycle parking for those interested in improving the efficacy of the road network – offers an example of the type of organisation that can truly help to embrace change and move organisations into a mid-21st Century mindset whilst the competition continue to languish in the late 20th. Similarly, the Cardiff University innovation network is an excellent example of drawing businesses to the table, offering free lectures and networking opportunities for vibrant organisations and individuals.

As a small country, Wales enjoys some advantages, in particular the close proximity and potential partnership of world class institutions to growing and open minded businesses. While the National Recovery Plan contains some sensible ideas, this will need to be partnered by strong action and behavioural change by businesses to accomplish the Chamber’s lofty ambitions.

·      Simon Nurse is Head of Operations with Cardiff’s Capital Coated Steel and editor of the Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Business website www.iesme.org