52 Comment Safwynt Plaid with Simon Tomas I HAD a busy weekend with


a variety of meetings and events in Pembrokeshire. I met with Pembrokeshire


Friends of the Earth, who raised their concerns about the proposed biomass plant at Blackbridge, Milford Haven. As part of the campaign against


the facility, a public meeting was held by Friends of the Earth and Biofuelwatch UK last July to inform local people. The company Egnedol’s plans


to build a 49.9 MWe waste and biomass gasification plant at Blackbridge, Milford Haven. Egnedol state that this is the first phase of a gasification plant development seven times as large, one which will ultimately require 3.4 million tonnes of waste and wood every year. The technology for this has never been used successfully at a


commercial scale in the UK. The technology is fascinating


and I have long supported the principle of energy from waste wood and energy crops. However, any such proposal needs to proceed on the basis of sustainability, including the sourcing of wood in Wales or the UK and no diversion of otherwise recyclable materials into energy production. Such a plant would generate


a great deal of heat as well as electricity and there are associated applications looking at cheese making and aquaculture (prawns). There is also an interesting angle looking at the use of algae for bio oil.


Clearly, the area around the


haven is dominated by energy capture and distribution and so this plant could be said to fit. It will be an early test of the Welsh


Government’s new planning regime and Environment and Well-being of Future Generations Acts to ensure that it is evaluated on full sustainability. I was also privileged to the


annual team pursuit race in Crymych to give out the prizes (and raffle!). Many thanks to Roland and Pat Sherwood and others for their voluntary work organising the event. I am in tremendous admiration of the 250 plus who ran in teams on a dreadfully wet day. I took the opportunity of


being in Crymych to visit local residents outside Blaenffos with local County Councillor Rod Bowen to discuss their concerns regarding road safety and speed on the A478. I will seek to raise their concerns in the National Assembly.


Eluned Morgan Mid & West Labour AM


YOU may have been feeling


as unsettled as me over the last week if you’ve been following events in America. In the Assembly this week, we debated the Annual Equality report for 2015-16. I’m proud to say that Labour is the party of equality. It was a Labour Government that introduced the Race Relations Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Sex Discrimination Act, new rights for disabled people and changed the law to allow same sex civil partnerships. Equality and inclusion are at the heart of the Welsh Government’s decision- making process. Labour is committed to social justice and equality of opportunity for all. Equality of opportunity also


means we need good education and good employment opportunities. The economic challenges for rural Wales are many and varied. The Welsh Government have a


number of strategies to enhance the economy. There is a sector- specific approach in addition to a place-based approach founded on the City Region model. There is, however, no strategy which specifically covers vast areas of rural Wales. As I’ve travelled around the region, I’ve been meeting businesses and listening to the views of community leaders. It’s really important, especially with the Brexit vote, that we start working on a new model that delivers better for rural Wales building on our traditional industries and looking ahead to the future. This week, you’ll have


heard lots of talk about schools in the news. The latest school categorisation figures have highlighted those schools still needing the most support. I’m speaking to the regional school improvement body today and will


be visiting schools round the region in the weeks ahead. I know that there is plenty of really good work happening at schools right across the region, so I look forward to sharing that so that our young people get the best start to their education. There are already ideas to


share about keeping our health services as local to communities as possible. Hywel Dda Health Board’s decision to create a Primary and Community ‘Walk- in’ Nurse led service at Tenby Hospital, following a successful pilot in the town last year, is good news. It’s welcome and right that this work will include members of the local community to develop a service that meets local expectation and visitor need. If you’d like to share a comment


or get in touch with me over a local issue of concern, call my regional office on 01437 765588.


BADGER’S HARD LESSONS WHEN Badger was young,


school was a thing that happened when he should have been outdoors learning valuable stuff. Badger’s old mum was never


much for the more studious aspect of Badger’s character; there were more pressing needs – like getting him out of the den and from under her paws as soon as humanly possible. Teachers, it appeared to Badger,


were a strange combination of educator, gaoler, and childminder. Some of them were stronger in one aspect of their role than in the other two. Back then, of course, Continuing Professional Development was a matter of how long a male teacher’s jacket lasted before the obligatory elbow patches appeared. Neither were all teachers the


possessors of degrees. Some of them had done conversion courses after the armed services, some had – well Badger guessed – gained a position because who their father or mother was, thereby proving in spades that there were really times when those who couldn’t, taught. In one instance, Badger remembers


that an easy way to avoid assembly on a Monday morning was to invite his registration class teacher to tell us all how he had done angling the previous weekend. When the time came that the school and the LEA wanted to get rid of the useless sap, he refused to go and spent the best part of an entire year sitting in the staff room without a class to (fail to) teach. The man was a menace to children,


not because he was a bad man – he wasn’t – but because he was a bad teacher. Still worse was another teacher


who was very keen to bowl flat out at hapless 12-year-olds in the cricket nets, yet beat a hasty retreat when the school opening bowler – who played for Wales – wound up his bowling arm. He was a bully and a blowhard of the worst sort, whose skill as a teacher was in inverse proportion to his opinion of himself.


And despite what the unions tell


you, bad teachers exist. They are real. And sometimes they can really screw up kids by being crap at their job. On the other hand, the teachers


who are good are really good. Badger has fond memories of two or three teachers who challenged and pushed and chivied to get the best out their charges. But the problem with school


when Badger was there was really straightforward: while teachers enjoyed teaching the brightest and the best of students, the education of those less intellectually stimulating or less bright was considerably less attractive (unless they were a promising fly half, of course). The other thing about education


in the past that people tend to forget is that it was all about the mechanical retention of facts. In history, for example, the great processes received scarcely an acknowledgement. The lives of the peasants were unexamined. The fate of the working classes before about 1870 were never considered at all. After a cursory 45 minutes about the Norman Feudal System, the poor were not heard of again until the Peterloo Massacre and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. It was a travesty of an educational


system that taught students about the lives of GREAT MEN (no women, apart from Boadicea and Elizabeth I) to the exclusion of all else. That is one of the reasons, Badger


is convinced, that the modern way of teaching history – and many other subjects – is an important improvement on the methods of the past. Badger is pretty impressed that some of the mathematical principles he was taught in secondary school are now being taught to pupils still in primary education. Learning by rote, dates, battles


(always bloody battles, in both senses), and the regnal dates of so-called ‘British’ monarchs is a risible way to proceed to teach anyone anything about history. In fact, it taught nothing


THE HERALD FRIDAY FEBRUARY 3 2017


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