Congratulations

Congratulations to Cadoxton Barry FC who won the South Wales Senior League Division Two in their first year as a club.

The idea last Summer, of what was seen by some as a bit of a shotgun marriage of Cadoxton and Barry, was to create a ‘second’ club in Barry that would grow and get promotion through the Welsh pyramid system.

That vision was rewarded on the weekend as the Linnets won the championship with a thumping 11-1 victory away at Cascade.

Local derbies with Sully Sports, Cogan and St Athan await next year.

Two years since Barry Cinema closed

Today is two years since the Theatre Royal, Barry Cinema, closed its doors.

Barry used to have five cinemas, now there are none – with the Theatre Royal still standing on the corner of Broad Street and Gladstone Road, maintained by the Save Our Cinema Association (SOCA) who are fighting to re-open.

For many people, not having a cinema is a practical issue about a form of entertainment - taking a family of four to the cinema in Cardiff can cost upwards of £40.

But the loss of the cinema is something which still touches many people in Barry because of its iconic nature.

It is a clear example of Barry lacking in a facility which most people take for granted and which people think should be open here.

Fighting for facilities, especially arts and cultural facilities across the Vale, is an important part of my campaign this year. Barry needs a cinema, an arts space, somewhere that people can create and contribute, and I passionately believe that the community is enriched by people participating and generating ideas and interaction.

Back before it was trendy to do so, I started a Facebook group about the cinema, which had nearly 2,000 members within a fortnight.

Unfortunately, that was when we realised that the power of Facebook isn’t the same as a man determined to close something down.

SOCA and other groups looking to improve the cultural life of Barry and the Vale have my full support, and I hope it won’t be long before we can have the cinema back.

In the meantime, there is an exhibition at Victoria Park about the history of the Theatre Royal, open until next Saturday, 17th April.

Vale Friends of the Earth

Last night I went to the Friends of the Earths’s Vale branch where the main point of discussion was the re-tabled Sunrise Renewables application for an energy generator at Woodham Road on Barry Docks (over a pint at the CAMRA Good Beer Guide pub, the Castle).

A very similar application was refused by the Vale Council last year, and is going to appeal, but in the meantime a new one has been laid – and is under discussion at Barry Town Council’s planning committee tonight.

The Town Council can only offer advice on planning issues, they don’t make the final decision, but where last year’s planning officer’s advice was a strong objection, this time around the advice is rather more non-committal.

I’ll be joining Friends of the Earth and local residents at the meeting tonight in an attempt to get the committee to strengthen that advice.

Ten years of Labour v Ten weeks of Plaid

This week saw Barry named the seventh Strategic Regeneration Area in Wales, with Plaid’s Jocelyn Davies AM, Deputy Minister for Housing and Regeneration coming to Barry on St David’s Day to do the honours.

As many readers will know, one of my chief concerns is the economic development of Barry, and specifically the significant retail and tourist opportunities that we have on the Waterfront, the former Docks area.

The £9 million coming from the Welsh Assembly must be wisely used by a Tory Council who sadly do not have an impressive record when it comes to economic development.

When I attended the launch of the Barry Survey results on Friday at the YMCA Hub, I jokingly noted the excellent timing and pointed out that the real ‘result’ was the recognition that Barry is a special case – a town which has suffered from chronic under-investment for too long but unable to access the European funding that many towns in Wales have been able to get.

This is a real result for Barry and shows the impact of Plaid in government.

Labour had held the regeneration portfolio at the Assembly for ten years. It took just ten weeks for their Plaid Cymru replacement to recognise the problem and take action.

Rigging polls

There’s been plenty of comment about Paul Flynn’s claim that Plaid Cymru bloggers rigged the Total Politics ‘best Welsh blogs’ poll, where six of the top ten were Plaid.

As Menaiblog points out, I only wish someone had told me beforehand.

A different type of poll is under question in this week’s Glamorgan Gem, though.

The Gem suspended their online poll about whether or not the Labour Party in the Vale of Glamorgan should have an all-women shortlist for their general election candidate, citing voting irregularities when the results changed massively after they published their initial findings.

As a former tutor in social science methodology, I’m not sure that anyone should take too much notice of open access online polls, as even at best they can only ever be indicative rather than being truly representative.

But, if the Gem are right, then that looks rather more like someone trying to rig a ballot than the easier to explain results from the Total Politics poll.