News

There is a lot of truth in ‘parables’ – which are a traditional way of telling truths in the form of a story. When I heard the news about the Government’s plans to bail out major banks by taking large share holdings in some of them, solidifying their position, and the debate about whether the money would reach home-buyers and small-businesses I thought about the parable of the greedy servant.

I have always been intrigued about what makes the news what doesn’t. I suppose that’s what drew me into my first profession as a newspaper reporter before I took up a full-time career in youth work and then entered politics.

Like any organisation, Government benefits from the occasional injection of fresh blood. New people and ideas can revive projects and bring new pressure to bear on previously underappreciated schemes.

At the weekend I was delighted to attend a service in Cardiff to celebrate Siopa Teg’s 10 years of work promoting fair trade in South Wales since I had opened the shop as Secretary of State for Wales.

Next Monday, with the party conference season behind us, Parliament will return after the summer recess. Most MPs will have enjoyed a brief rest but will have spent most of the "break" getting stuck in to all the demands of constituency work and fact-finding visits that are essential to inform our debates.

As a Labour/Cooperative MP I am one of the few MPs who gets to go to two party conferences. The Cooperative Party Conference was last week and it was held in London, the Coop Party is coming up with some new and interesting ways of involving members in policy formulation and I look forward to seeing how this develops.

Why does it sometimes sound as if BBC reporters visiting Wales have been trained by the announcer at Cardiff Central Station who can’t pronounce Caerphilly? The BBC Pronunciation Department was set up in the 40s to help news readers and reporters cope with the increasingly exotic place names they were dealing with on an every day basis.

A recent BBC News website told us about an allegation that decades of cash for regeneration has failed to help the UK's towns and cities which lost their heavy industries, and has failed particularly in coastal towns.

It's impossible to miss the fact that there is an election on in America. On 4th November the Democratic candidate Barak Obama and the Republican John McCain will ask the American people to put their faith in them and their policies.

One thing that causes instant anger in my family is when a journalist talks about MPs "relaxing on their sun loungers" as if that's all the Parliamentary recess involves. It implies that all MPs fit the media image by disappearing to Tuscany for several weeks. It also implies that we have nothing to do during August and September.