The Failure That Is Anglesey

This week, we latest GVA statistics were released for Wales.  They make for despairing reading, if you live on Anglesey.

GVA - Gross Value Added - is a measure of the contribution of each individual producer, industry or sector in the UK.  It is commonly modified to a GVA per head of population, where it becomes 'how much of a contribution each person made to the UK economy.'

Anglesey has the lowest GVA figure across the whole UK.  Not just Wales - the whole of the UK.  And indeed, this is not the first time we've seen this outcome - it's been the same for a very long time.

And it's not just a slight difference that leads us to the bottom - our GVA per head is less than half the UK average.  We are, in every sense, a poverty-stricken island.

My name?  Anglesey.

Worse than this is the fact that Gwynedd has seen a rise of 3.4% in the period 2012-13 in its GVA figures, whilst Anglesey dropped 1.5%.  So it can't merely be blamed on geographical location.  There's something special about Anglesey that leads it to consistently be a huge under-achiever.

But maybe this is not surprising when our current portfolio holder for economic development is a former farm insurance salesman who, later, couldn't even make a sweet shop pay.  That, and the legion of well-paid tortoiseshell bespectacled officers who don't appear to be on any sort of performance-based renumeration.  If they were, perhaps we'd see something better than sitting back and watching the island sink into economic oblivion.

Sadly, the answer has, for many years, been seen as 'Wylfa B, Wylfa B, Wylfa B'.  All the eggs in one basket.  A simple measure of desperation.  You'd think the politicians would learn and set their sights on a diverse economy based on small, efficient businesses.

But, why worry when your councillor's allowance each year take you twice as high as the per-capita GVA?  That is the simple disconnect between the governed and the governors.  The workers and the wasters.  Whilst they may laugh in the poor people's faces, it is a dangerous place to go, as any history book will inform.

Caught by the glitz, the self-importance and the trips abroad, our council can only join-in with its central government master and repeat that the vast majority of people support Wylfa B, when independent studies do not support this idiotic bleating.

Meanwhile, it's clear that Anglesey has been ill-goverened into the ground whilst our noddies fought amongst themselves for power and privilege. Reap the benefits, folks, and pack-off your kids elsewhere.  Oh, and pray that Cardiff will wield its legal powers to bring the sick joke that is Anglesey Council to a very swift end.

Anglesey Council - The Dumb Dinosaur Wakes Up.

This week, Anglesey's bumbling Chief Executive, Richard Parry Jones, has written what is described as a 'frank but constructive' letter to Horizon Nuclear.

Horizon, whose knees probably won't be trembling very much, say they are 'disappointed' by the Council's letter.  Hey, join the queue of the disillusioned, Horizon!

The motivation is said to be the lack of clarity over just how many jobs, and just how much economic benefit Horizon will provide to locals, as opposed to workers parachuted-in from new plants reaching completion across the world. This, from a Council whose own clarity consisted of trying to keep hidden from the public its interim MD's pay packet (that was £1200 a day, plus a few more perks, by the way.)

It is remarkable that Anglesey is only now asking these questions.  Residents have been chatting about them for years now.  For years, the Council has been ramming its 'Energy Island' (a trademarked, jolly cover for 'Nuclear Island') down the throats of residents, even though the programme appeared with no public consultation nor any identifiable mandate.   Search online, and you will find endless rose-tinted press releases by the Council, coupled to ludicrous certainty about the New Dawn awaiting Anglesey, if it gets Wylfa B.

Energy Island(TM) has delivered dubious results for Anglesey.  Most of the whoopla about tidal energy has died away, leaving little more than, erm, Wylfa B and ever-more wind turbines that would have arrived without the Council's hamfisted involvement.

The point never addressed by our hopeless Council and our uselessly compliant local media is that Anglesey has had a nuclear power station operating since 1971.  During that time, it has stood as a perverse, government-sponsored mini-island of prosperity for the few who work there, whilst the vast majority of the island's 70,000-odd population have just grown poorer in a rapidly-declining economic environment.  Nuclear power does not bring widespread and lasting economic prosperity.  Wylfa A proves that much.

Also rammed down our throats has been the shrug-shoulders to new pylons across the island, whilst other parts of the UK have protested their way to climb-downs by National Grid, now burying their lines in many parts of England, where the people are less willing to sit and do as they are told.  According to insiders, Anglesey Council has been busy working hand-in-hand with National Grid to aid their 'preferred option' of more pylons whilst trying to appear at arms' length to the public.

The new nuclear build is said to be wanted by the majority of Anglesey residents - but only if you listen to the biased views of Horizon and the Council.  A study by Bangor University found the wrong questions were being asked and, consequently, yielded the wrong answers.  The majority, it seems, are not in favour of 'Wylfa Newydd' and its patronisingly Welsh cottage-like name.  The latest missive of concern by Parry Jones now insists that the "vast majority" support Wylfa B, and that this support is "of the upmost [sic] importance."  No points for written English, then.   No doubt by 2015, it will be 'everybody, to a man'.  Such are the assertion-laden tendencies of little men.

The reality of Wylfa Newydd has been apparent to everyone except Richard Parry Jones and his merry men, it seems.  Whilst Horizon has been tokenistically pumping money into Coleg Menai and training a few people up, these are not going to be the experienced engineers and plant installers that will be needed for an efficient construction project.  Nobody believes that those people will be local; they will obviously come hot from other projects to keep their skills honed and ready for the next one, somewhere else.

Sure, some people like painters, plasterers, and maybe a builders' yard or two may become rather wealthy from Wylfa B, the vast majority of spending will not be local due to its highly specialised nature, and the expected reliability of supply.  'New turbine assembly, you say?  Yeah, I had one round the back, somehwere', isn't the kind of exchange we're likely to see at Llangefni Jewsons any time soon.

It's rather galling to find the Council repeatedly make reference to 'evidence-based' decision making, when its own claims about the degree of public support has already been shown to be highly-questionable at best, and plain wrong at worst.  

It's also a bit rich that this Council wants clarity and adherence to policy by industry when its own development plans ground to a halt years ago.  This is, in every way, a failed Council trying to make out it's an authority with clout.  It's a bit late for that.

Still, maybe Parry Jones and his lot can take another fully-justified and necessary trip to Japan to 'clarify' the position.  Nice work, if you can get it...