Verdi Requiem 17th January 2010

Nina Fishman – Funeral arrangements

Thursday 17^th December 2pm. Swansea Crematorium.

Please be seated by 2pm.

Family flowers only.

Donations may be made to any charity or fund of your choice in Nina's memory. If it's helpful for the Verdi Requiem, Nina requested donations to be made to Swansea City Opera.

Donations can be sent either via me or the Funeral Director, Rees Davies & Sons, 32/34 Port Tennant Road, Swansea, SA1 8JF.

Nina Fishman. NOT an obituary.

My friend Nina Fishman died last Saturday. I will miss her.

Nina had an inoperable and untreatable cancer. Her death was not unexpected, but for her husband, Phil, her family and friends it was still an unwelcome and unwanted surprise. Nina knew that this was one opponent that force of argument would not bend to her will - she was as direct and honest with herself in this, as she was with the rest of us in everything else. Nina had spent some eight (or more) years on the first (and definitive) biography of Arthur Horner, the Miners Leader of the 1920s-50s, putting her own health second to getting this enormous task finished. In fact 'little Arthur' so much became one of the family that when asking after herself & Phil, you always added "How's Arthur?" Having (as we all thought) overcome cancer once to finish her masterwork, we were all devastated when she was re-diagnosed just a couple of months ago. Nina was damned determined to attend the biography's publication in January next year and did what she could to keep this appointment. For once she failed.

Nina and I met over 25 years ago, through a friend of Sybil, my partner. I had never met anyone like her – still haven't! Nina became and remains my oldest and closest friend.

And that is a statement that I am proud to share with very many others, as Nina had a true gift for friendship. She was not merely a 'good friend' in the general sense, but also in the sense that she was 'good' at being a friend. Unlike most of us, who bump into our friends now and again, Nina put a great deal of time into her friends, into making them, but more importantly, into keeping them.

I guess Nina had an address book (she had no time for electronic gizmos), but it must have been the size of War & Peace. She had friends everywhere, of all ages, backgrounds and interests. And she was in contact with all of us – and was unfailingly interested in all of us. As a result, some of her friends are now friends of mine. As anyone who has met her would know, when you got Nina's interest, you got her commitment and boundless enthusiasm.

Nina was not a 'part-time' anything, when you got Nina, you got all of Nina, whether you wanted it or not! If Nina was interested in someone or something, then she cared and cared passionately.

We shared a love of opera (she converted me to Mozart, but failed with Wagner), cinema & theatre. Wine - unlike me she only bought the best. Politics, of course. There was seemingly no cause on the left that she was not involved in.

This was perhaps inevitable coming from a politically radicalised family: her parents were American academics persecuted during the McCarthy period and effectively forced to leave the US because of their political beliefs and trade union activism.

Nina was involved in driving political change at the national and European level; however, long before she moved to Swansea, she was (and remained) fascinated by the minutiae of our local politics. I admit this fascination was more likely attributable to our friendship, than my insightful analysis! But whatever it was, to an often struggling local politician she was always an interested listener. Nina knew political history, but did practical politics; pressing the lessons of history to serve a current problem. And she'd deliver leaflets (although it was Phil who most often got to deliver them). Nina was an enduring encouragement when it all got me down. I learnt not to give up, that it was worth it even if the change was small, but above all I learnt that I couldn't make anything better if I quit.

I am the better person, and certainly the better politician, for having known her. She was a gift to us all and improved the world by being in it.

I will of course miss her. I'll miss her phone calls, ringing up with some bit of news or to find out what's going on or to invite us to meet someone she thought we'd like or simply to come over for food. I'll miss her unexpected visits when she was out for one of her enormous walks and just thought she'd call in for a cup of tea. She expected to be welcomed and of course she was. There was no day so bleak, no weather so black that Nina's arrival couldn't improve it.

I'll miss too her capacity to eat for Britain. She brought the same enthusiasm and dedication to the table as she did with everything else. From the first, she was for me the personification of the 'Eater Upper', a character in N F Simpson's play, One Way Pendulum. She wouldn't eat anything, Nina liked good food, but given it, she'd eat it. All of it. And yours too if there was any left!

Nina was serious but was also great fun. She gave herself to laughter as fully as she did everything. She was a great audience, I always appreciated her rumbustious laughter whilst banging the table, as I told one of my often repeated stories.

Nina was generous; generous with her intelligence and learning, although never battering you over the head with it, well perhaps if you opposed her in debate. I recall her taking issue at a seminar with one prominent MP who had asserted that since Russian tanks posed no threat to Britain, they shouldn't inform NATO defence policy. Nina suggested, icily politely, that those people living within drive time of the Russian border might take a rather different view. Nina even managed to make thick Scousers like me believe they had made a worthwhile contribution. Nina was generous with her enthusiasm and energy, although I often had to run hard to keep up. She was generous with things – if you liked something she'd give it to you.

And it was that generosity that led Nina & Phil, to commission a 'free' performance of the Verdi Requiem. Nina had 'decided' that she wanted to hear the Verdi Requiem before she died, but a planned performance could not be found in the time she thought she had available. So Nina did what Nina always did, if no-one was doing what was necessary – she did it herself. So she booked a certain Cardiff based orchestra (listed in the programme as the Welsh Symphony), the Swansea Philharmonic choir, a top line of soloists and the Brangwyn Hall. Her plan was not only to invite her friends, but as thanks to the city that she had made her home and which had made her feel at home, all the people of Swansea. She was particularly concerned to include young people who would not otherwise be able to afford to attend such a performance. The concert will be performed on Sunday January 17^th 2010 as planned, as Nina was adamant that it should go ahead whether she made it or not. The Requiem will now fulfil its proper purpose.

Above all Nina was unstintingly generous with her time. Even in her last weeks, when desperately ill, she made time for the almost constant flow of friends wanting (but desperately not wanting) to take their leave.

I will miss her love. I will miss my friend. Goodbye, Nina love.

I am not a liar

Another repost.

The allegation that children were kept in motorway services because there was nowhere else for them to go is a serious one, and one which has prompted a great deal of huffing and puffing – lots of smoke and very little light.

However, the allegation that this was manufactured by Edwina Hart and myself for political advantage is a gross calumny. Mrs. Hart's statement was based entirely on what the staff in the Children's homes specifically told us. I had and (so far) have no reason to doubt them.

If the Cabinet Member is so confident that this has never happened why is he so reluctant to agree to an enquiry as I asked him. And why is there a dislocation between his categoric denials and the Service Director's more muted responses.

This the statement that I read out in the Council meeting last week.

"This is clearly an important matter. However, I am not a liar and neither is Mrs Hart AM or her representative. This was not invented to gain political advantage – we had no need to do so and frankly would not have done so. We were at the facility at the staff's invitation.

I know what I & my colleague heard and I stand by what we heard and what I wrote down. Indeed my colleague had previously been told the same thing in another forum. We did not misunderstand.

What we were told was very explicit, was repeated more than once and spoken back to the staff. It was not the views of one disgruntled individual but many. It was never qualified or amended. The terms and scope of the press release were agreed. We had and have no reason to doubt the accuracy what we were told.

The Leader of Council has already, and very inappropriately, called on me to report to the Director of Social Service, the name of the member of staff who made the allegation. Disciplinary action has already been threatened. So I won't be naming anybody.

Given that, however, I can understand why staff members might now be seeking to distance themselves from the issue. However, I am very concerned as to whether any form of inappropriate pressure has been applied to staff to get them to retract a clear and unambiguous statement of the consequences of the bed-blocking at these two facilities.

I fully support the hard and important work that the staff in Ty Gwaun and Ty Cwm perform and the service and support that these facilities provide to some of the most challenging children; children for whom there is currently simply no alternative – save, in many cases, transporting them many miles from Swansea.

To resolve this matter and put it beyond doubt, I call on the Cabinet Member to commission a review of say, the past two years, to establish that no child, in any circumstances, has had to spend time in motorway services."

Sage stooge stuffed

Yet another repost, as it got lost between this computer and the blogsite! Where it is no-one knows.

That master of political intrigue, the Uriah Heep of the Uplands, the sage of Brynmill, the Scourge of Students, er...where was I , oh yes, Peter May, got a quick lesson on the wisdom of the old political adage that 'you never ask a question unless you already know the answer'.

At the start of each Council meeting there is a session where members of the public can turn up and ask questions. Generally, (in fact almost invariably) the questions are put to the Cabinet Members, that's really the point of the exercise. However, the Tory Group Leader, Cllr Kinzett, had established that questions could be asked of any elected member.

So at the start of the meeting a young man stands up and asks me about the allegations of children being kept overnight in motorway services or something along those lines. It turns out that he was the campaign organiser (sic) for Cllr May. (Clearly Cllr May didn't want to be overshadowed by his colleagues Cllr Speight, who has his own researcher (singular or plural) and who caused a deal of upset a few months ago). I had been away for the special meeting the previous week – an unbreakable engagement booked long before the Council date was set. I guess that Cllr May thought this a jolly clever wheeze – and that he'd catch me out and embarrass me! Er...embarrass me! What a silly boy!

I had anticipated that I'd be asked something somewhere in the meeting – although I didn't expect it to come from the public gallery. But 6 of one etc. I read out the statement that is posted in the next blog.

The allegation that children were or were not kept overnight in motorway services is clearly an embarrassing one for the Administration. We have had robust (and aggressively over-the-top) denials from the Cabinet Member, which contrast greatly with the equivocal responses from the Service Director. However, whilst a powerful illustration of the effect of the closing of the homes, in my view - it's not the main issue, as without it serious doubts remain about the implementation timetable and the efficacy of the proposals – which are untested in Swansea and cannot be guaranteed to work, as the Service Director freely and openly admitted. That is why the failure to seek consensus on the proposals is so serious.

What is in many ways worse, is the Administration's failure to distinguish between 'consulting' and 'consensus'. There clearly had been some sort of agreement between the Chair & vicChair of Scrutiny and the Cabinet Member that was cavalierly over-ruled by Chris Holley. He made plain where he stood on the issue, as when asked for an assurance that the proposal to close the homes would come to Council, was "The only assurance I will give you is that it will be dark outside when we finish here" or words to that effect. Nice!

Leader assassinated – no-one notices

Probably the most enjoyable bit of the yesterdays meeting was the careful, considered and oh, so polite demolition of Cllr Chris Holley and his 'consensus' credentials in regards to the closure of the Ty Gwaun and Ty Cwm Children's homes by Cllr Paxton Hood-Williams. I suspect that the observers from the Intervention Board in the were taking careful note. Certainly HRH H squirmed a lot whilst the knife was going in – but dealt with it in his usual way, he pretended it hadn't been said and simply ignored it. Which is his response to every item of inconvenient truth. Of which, of course, there are lots! But then of course, we know that the central political dictum (and no that isn't rhyming slang) of Lib-Dem politics is to ignore the truth if it gets in the way of their view of the world. Peter May's litter-fest of posters demonstrate that.

The Surreal world of FitzHolley

Following the last Council meeting six weeks ago (see previous blogs – those I haven't accidentally deleted that is) there was a brisk and robust exchange of correspondence between the Chief Executive and the Opposition Group Leaders (Rene Kinzett and myself), which in my case I followed up at my regular 1-2-1 with Paul Smith. (I cannot speak for RK as these meetings are confidential, 'Chatham House rules'.)

It would be fair to say that there was (and probably remains) a significant difference of opinion as to the cause of the ridiculous way that the meetings are conducted. The Presiding Officer (PO) seems to go out of her way to be confrontational. As PO she should not only be impartial but be seen to be so. I rather got the impression yesterday that she genuinely thinks that she is being impartial. If this is correct, then I couldn't begin to guess what this would mean for those times when she would be being partial! I had cause to remonstrate with her yesterday about her irritated body language, her terse "Yes, Cllr X, what do you want now...!" or words to that effect and her total refusal to engage with or listen to what a speaker is saying – at least insofar as she comprehends what is being asked. In her hands, these essentially silent signals become screamed down a megaphone! And as I reported previously, this has the effect of raising the temperature and creating animosity and aggression where there was none. I thought afterwards that she comes on like Joyce Grenfell in that sketch of hers, "Nigel...don't do that", some out-of-her-depth playschool assistant. This was rather confirmed later in the meeting when she had the sheer brass neck to remonstrate with Council that they were behaving like children!

The opening of yesterdays meeting was a case in point. At the start of every meeting councillors are asked to approve the accuracy of the Minutes of the previous meeting - standard practice. Sometimes, but not often, it is alleged that they are inaccurate, generally an error or oversight. I cannot recollect when Minutes have been challenged that the correction has not been accepted.

At the previous council meeting Council had a ludicrous debate about whether to have a report from a legal officer about constitutional changes concerning the Pension Fund. (The matter had been postponed from the previous meeting for just such a report – see earlier blogposts). The Minutes of that item were up for approval yesterday. I challenged the accuracy of the Minute as it did not include any reference to vote that was won, NOT to have the report and that that decision was then over-ruled by the Monitoring Officer (MO) who insisted that we had to have the report (and no, I don't know why he didn't say it before the vote either!)

Group Leaders are sent as copy of the Minutes in advance of publication so any errors can be corrected and the Minutes agreed without the sort of stupid public debate we had yesterday. In reading the draft I noticed what I thought was an error of omission (albeit a large one). Now I didn't consider this to be contentious and wrote to the Committee section pointing the 'error' out. Although I understand that the matter was referred to the MO, the letter was ignored and the Minute left to stand as written. So perhaps the omission wasn't an error after all!

So yesterday, I rose to have another go at getting the Minutes correct and we then entered the world of the surreal. The PO refused to accept the challenge stating "Minutes were not a verbatim transcript". No indeed they are not, they are a record of what Council decided and Council decided not to have a report, a decision that was subsequently over-ruled by the MO. So all this should have been in the Minutes – but wasn't. The Chief Executive (CE) and the MO both agreed that I was right. Now the simple solution (and standard practice) was for them to accept the 'error' and agree to record the change. But no, the CE proposed some sort of halfway house that would note my comments but not change the Minute and then the PO supported by the Leader of Council Chris Holley, put the matter to the vote and Council decided to accept as accurate, Minutes that the CE and MO had agreed were inaccurate! Surreal, no? Bizarre certainly. (The whole Administration voted to accept and Labour and the Conservatives voted not to. I didn't see which way the Brilliant Comrade and his pals voted).

And the purpose of all of this – I truly have no idea.

What I do know is that ensured that meeting got off to a fractious start – and for no good purpose. I suppose that the Intervention Board members sitting in the Gallery must have thought they were in for a re-run of the last meeting. I am certainly getting fed-up with it all. And the credibility of Council under FitzHolley? – it continues to slide through the floor.

There is now no interaction between the political parties and the CE has proposed that he call in the marriage guidance councillors in the person of some sort of mediator. RK and myself have said this is of no use, until he and the MO get a firmer grip on proceedings and the PO is not only included in the mediation but sent on some training. I understand that Mrs F. has a Social Science degree – whatever she learnt doesn't seem to have been much applied here! (In an aside - I was told that the reason that Mrs F was given the Social Service portfolio (apart from the fact that the experienced councillors wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole) was that HRH H, misunderstood it as 'Social Services'. Probably a gross and cruel calumny).

Welsh Labour Leadership contest

So it's all over – although the dust is still to settle and there's bound to be more kicked up when Carwyn announces his Cabinet – if only (and almost certainly) by the media.

The winner was hardly a surprise – indeed he had been the favourite since before the contest actually started. But it was a decisive result – and can hardly be quibbled with. He won in every category – and on the first ballot. That was a surprise. Certainly Edwina Hart must be disappointed by that – because I guess she would have been counting on getting some second preferences from Huw Lewis. It was widely expected that Carwyn would do well with the MPs and affiliates, but that Edwina would de better with the party members. Not so, in the event, although there was not much in it.

I was at the announcement in the theoretically secret location, that I wasn't allowed to disclose to anyone, but which all the media knew about as clearly did Plaid – given that Helen Mary Jones was hanging around outside to congratulate the winner (what was that about – was she hoping for a job in the new Cabinet?). Anyway, I cannot be compromising security now – so I'll tell you it was the Wales Millennium Centre.

Rhodri's valedictory speech was his usual mix of eccentricity, charm and humour. And he got two standing ovations – and that was hardly surprising either. His street popularity and recognition factor is something that Carwyn will have difficulty matching – for a while at least. But Rhodri will I am sure be out on the stump at the next elections.

Carwyn's acceptance speech was his usual polished performance and paid gracious tribute to his colleagues. And I am not going to say anything about that. Edwina's speech was also excellent – also gracious and funny. Huw Lewis' was...well strange. I had no idea where he was going with his complicated opening story/joke. (It wasn't helped by the fact that I have never seen the XFactor and absolutely no idea who or what he was (supposedly) talking about). He got a bit emotional in his thanks, especially to his wife (but as a 'blubber' myself I don't criticise him for that). I was surprised that he seemed so disappointed – he can't seriously have expected to win can he? I thought he did very well in the votes – whether that can be translated into his having staked out some territory will remain to be seen.

All eyes now will be on Carwyn's Cabinet. I have no inside knowledge (and wouldn't tell you if I did) but what will his balance be between reward and spread? Will there be a re-allocation of portfolios with Plaid? I wouldn't bet on anyone, but I would guess that Edwina Hart should be safe, not least as who the hell would seriously want the Health portfolio? Will the portfolios all remain predominantly in the south-east of Wales?

On the contest itself, I think it's shown Welsh Labour as a serious grown-up party. Prepared to engage in an open discussion of ideas. I believe that we have shown the other parties how to do it. Well apart from the announcement itself. I didn't really get the point of having it announced by an attractive young blond woman. What was wrong with the usual and clearly more suitable wrinkly old men in suits! Especially when I was eye-level with her knees and she was wearing a very (very) short skirt....

Back on-line

I predicted that I wouldn't keep the blogging up, that it would be an occasional process – and I was right. It's quite surprising how much time it actually takes – and the commitment. And once you've fallen out of it – it's a bit of an effort to get back into it. Other things fill up the space. However, I am now having another go. Interestingly my last entries were about the previous Council meeting = and I got a bit fed up/annoyed with myself, that having written the bloody stuff, my incompetence led me to delete it. Perhaps it was the powerful hand of the great critic!