I thought I'd check out a few reactions to Hywel Williams, and his colleagues breach of the spending rules
Glyn Davies headlines the issue in a hard way,
Ordovicus is a little more factual, but little sympathy,
Peter Black thinks they were caught out- "Guilty as charged"
Paul Flynn lets fly !
Elfyn Llwyd meanwhile is as arrogant as a Lord - perhaps a sign of things to come ? However some clarification is required :
LABOUR today demanded that the parliamentary leader of Plaid Cymru immediately clarify his position over the use of public money to promote Plaid Cymru at the Assembly election. On last night's BBC Good Evening Wales radio programme, Elfyn Llwyd stated that the parliamentary authorities had seen the Plaid Cymru adverts in full before they were published.
But the official report published by the cross-party Committee on Standards and Privileges, the Commons' Director of Operations states that of the three nationalist MPs, only Adam Price submitted the full advert for inspection. Labour whip and MP for Caerphilly Wayne David, in a letter to Elfyn Llwyd this morning, demanded that Plaid Cymru clarified its position.
WAYNE DAVID said: "Plaid Cymru has shown a great deal of arrogance and contempt towards the electorate in its reaction to the report published yesterday by the respected Committee on Standards and Privileges. "Rather than doing the right thing, which was to apologise to the House of Commons and the people of Wales, you have chosen to react in an intemperate way towards anyone who has questioned your use of public money for the purposes of party political campaigning.
"Yesterday evening on BBC Wales' flagship radio programme Good Evening Wales, you stated that Plaid Cymru had submitted its complete adverts to the House of Commons authorities for approval. But yesterday's standards report states clearly that you did not. In fact it quotes the Director of Operations of the House of Commons as saying that you did not. "Moreover, the Report clearly states that you did not indicate to the fees office that the advertisement was going to be placed in a newspaper which circulates well beyond your constituency and that it was to be placed one week before the Assembly election.
"The people of your constituency and other areas of Wales, who will feel rightly aggrieved at your attempt to use their money to fund party political campaigning for Plaid Cymru, will demand to know the truth.
"Who is telling the truth on this matter?"
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7 comments:
Honestly, this is a piffling matter.
Not all parties recieve the tsunami of funding Labour recieves from various vested interests - so these thins will happen.
So two wrongs can make a right - good advice !
That's not what I'm saying.
Where one side has a massive financial advantage because they have the support of huge financial interests, there's going to be pressure on others to be, ahem, creative.
Martin your over the top flamboyant outrage is predictable. Are you going to be equally critical of Ruth Kelly who broke the rules on this issue?
"Creative" - It still sounds lke the original message from here. Perhaps we can publish the handbook of political creativity, I would even admit the main parties seem to have a few lessons to share over the years !
I don't know whether Ruth Kelly blatanly denied wrong doing like out 3 muskateers, if she did then she was wrong -agreed.
I will shortly blog on why Hywel's actions are even more questionable.
Plaid's actions were disgraceful at the time.
They remain disgraceful today.
I am glad they have been found guilty and ordered to repay the money.
In private they probably even think it was still worth it in terms of the number of electors they reached by breaking the law.
Its just a same that the same people that defended these illegal actions at the time are still defending them now.
The best thing they can say is "these things will happen."
Shame on you. Shame on Plaid.
Calm down Sion, it isn't as if we'd lied in order to start an illegal war & got a couple of hundred thousand stiffed now is it?
If we'd done something like that your feigned moral indignation wouldn't look so absurd.
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