Has Carwyn Bottled It?

I'm gutted. I was really looking forward to taking part in Thursday's "Pawb a'i Farn" programme on S4C. Of the two AMs pipped to appear, one of them was Carwyn Jones, former Minister for the Environment in the Assembly, and now Counsel General. In his previous administrative incarnation, I and many others addressed a letter to his department to "Call In" the LNG importation project.

Many of us, myself included, never recieved a reply.

The Assembly have a statutory duty to respond to letters from the public within 17 working days. After submitting a letter - publicly, with dozens of other people, at a demo outside the Assembly - I recieved a holding response 3 months later, in August.

And that was it.

Luckily for me, however, I am a Welsh speaker, and an invitation to participate in a special electoral edition of Y Byd Ar Bedwar before last years' Assembly elections gave me an opportunity to raise the issue again. Carwyn was one of the participating AMs, and after tussling briefly over the LNG issue, he promised to look into the mysterious issue of the disappearing letters.

Of course, what I didn't take into acount (and Carwyn probably did) was the fact that it was 1 month before an election, and Mr. Jones would probably be shifted to a new department. So I'm still waiting for a reply. I've been waiting for around 2 years now...

So here we are. I've got a place in Thursday's audience, I'm all revved up and rearing to go...I still want to know about my letter, and whether Carwyn deserves his 8.3% pay rise, backdated to the point last May when I last asked about the letter, and he promised to look into it.

And then I get a call from the Beeb to confirm my place in the audience, and by the way, Carwyn's dropped out, to be replaced by Dai Lloyd, who has taken a much more assertive and principled stand over the LNG project, and along with 5 other Plaid AMs has refused to accept the 8.3% pay rise.

For this reason I get the feeling Dai will have an easier time of it on Thursday, or maybe it's just that he's got a hell of lot more backbone than his Labour counterpart...