Bethan Jenkins AC/AM Blog

I saw this on the news this morning and was fascinated. Basically, 3,000 amateur and professional musicians from across 70 countries auditioned on youtube to take part in this venture- mainly orchestrated (!) to get more young people to enjoy classical music. The players then auditioned online, and 15 million viewers then chose the members of the Orchestra. The first concert was last night in New York, and obviously people at the concert were not banned (as they usually are) from filming it, given that this was a youtube venture.

I’m not sure whether they will be touring, but they sounded fantastic given that they’ve only had a few days to practise together as an Orchestra! It made me wonder, however, if such auditions would be a good way to elect the dream team at the National Assembly for Wales?! What would 60 people elected solely by youtube do, and what would their manifesto be? Could be an interesting experiment….

 I am quite surprised to see that Gordon Brown has publicly apologised for the emails sent by McBride in an attempt to smear key Tory figures. It was quite some time coming, I have to say. Even the content of the letter that he wrote to those involved did not include the word ’sorry’ as I understand it.

I believe Derek Draper has also apologised for his role in it all too by now. Brown was ‘horrified and shocked’, and he wants to make sure that ‘everything is done to clean up politics in this country‘, and he assures us that ‘this can’t happen again.‘  Well, I jolly well hope so too, although I don’t believe that this type of thing will disappear from politics ever.

At least he’s apologised now, which is more than his predecessor Tony Blair could muster when he took us in to an illegal war in Iraq.