Bethan Jenkins AC/AM Blog

The last few days have been glorious and ideal campaigning weather. I’ve been out and about in the Neath and Swansea Valley areas with our candidate Alun Llewelyn, but today I am helping our Bridgend Candidate Tim Thomas. We have a public meeting this Wednesday at 6.30pm at the High Tide in Porthcawl, regarding Labour’s plans to privatise care homes and leisure facilities. That means we are leafleting the area to advertise the meeting. If you are local, spread the word. The last meeting we held on this matter in Tondu was very well attended, and the fact that the cabinet member with responsibility for care homes and leisure, Lyn Morgan attended stirred some passion in local people present who are unhappy with the direction the Council are taking- this is a Labour run Council just for your information.

We have managed to annoy the Council on this issue, as we received a letter from a council staff member telling us in no uncertain terms that they were not ‘privatising care and leisure.’ I found this correspondence quite extraordinary given that this was a Plaid Cymru leaflet attacking the Labour Party. Why were Council staff who are supposed to be non political writing to us to complain about what we were doing in the first place? It is not their place or position to act in such a way, and we have complained to them about this correspondence.

At the end of the day, the Labour party can dress it up any way they want- transferring to a ‘preferred partner’ is their current lingo of choice. But it is privatisation at the end of the day. Services will not be directly controlled by the Council in the area and will take away decision making from elected councillors to companies and organisations that are at arms length from them. The fact that there hasn’t been any public consultation about these changes bar talks with staff and those in the care homes in the Borough is something that we oppose as a party, and I don’t think that the Council plans to have wide scale consultation from what Lyn Morgan hinted at at the Tondu public meeting that we organised recently.

This is a clear example as to why people should not vote Labour in either Bridgend or Ogmore in this Welsh General election. With the future of care homes and leisure, they have tried to carry out changes, and are still doing so, behind closed doors. They continue to take local people for granted- local people who are angry that they are making such radical changes to services without a broad and open consultation with them as electors. I urge you to turn up to the meeting to make your views known and to send Labour a clear message that you will not be taken for granted anymore.

Yesterday I went up to Aberconwy to speak at the launch of Plaid’s Welsh General Election campaign. We are launching 4 key policies. One centres on ensuring that there are high standards in our schools, setting up a Build4Wales company and helping small businesses grow, ensuring quick and effective health care in our communities, and connecting Wales through better mobile signal and a modern transport system.

 Jill Evans MEP, Jocelyn Davies and Ieuan Wyn Jones all spoke at the launch, and emphasised how Plaid are the only party putting Wales first, and how we have the ambition to deliver for Wales for the future. Iwan Huws, our candidate in Aberconwy opened the launch, and welcomed us all to what is a lovely part of the World. We went out campaigning in the afternoon in Conwy, and I met with locals who were concerned about local jobs and tourism. Many other Plaid activists then went on to campaign elsewhere in the area, while we made the journey back to South Wales. It was a good launch, and a chance for us to hint at some of the ideas in the manifesto which will be launched next week. 

Today, I met with Tata Stell representatives at their site in Margam. It was a visit to get an update about their work, and how, if I am reelected in May, I can raise issues of concern or interest about this most important sector with the new Welsh Government. I was particularly interested to talk  to them about their links with Swansea University in research and development, as well as their apprenticeship scheme. Tata Steel is the engine of industrial activity in South Wales West, so it is important that I keep updated with what they are doing as much as I can.

We are campaigning hard in the region now, and the weather is good canvassing weather. We are hoping to win Neath for Plaid this time around, and I will be supporting Alun Llewelyn, our candidate in Neath, by helping him campaign. If anyone would like to join us then please let me know!