Cardiff Welsh Republicans

According to Media Wales today, two Conservative members of the Welsh Assembly bought iPods on their taxpayer-funded allowances.

Opposition leader Nick Bourne and fellow Tory Alun Cairns submitted the portable music players, worth a combined £398, as office costs.

Mr Cairns also bought his office a £250 Dyson vacuum cleaner. Well, perhaps its high time the Tories cleaned up their act!

Tory AM Nick Ramsay bought his office a television, a stand and television insurance worth £814.98. An earlier batch of second-home expenses, released in August, showed he spent £977.95 on a Sony LCD television and surround-sound system. "Two Tellies Nick- by name and nature apparently!"

Skinflint Local Government Minister Brian Gibbons spent £16.50 on a Royal British Legion wreath, his office costs show. When I was studying law at the then Central London Polytechnic, we also had a memorial service and laid a wreath at the statue of Lord Hailsham, Quintin Hogg. We each gave £1 out of our own pockets. You'd think well paid Gibbons would be willing to shove out less than £20! Gibbons should stop monkeying around with our money! Hopefully, his face is now as red as his bum.

More than £26,500 has been immorally misspent   – including  over £2000 on a bed for an AM whilst another claimed for- wait for it- a fully fitted kitchen and microwave! The AM was able to have the kitchen fitted within weeks, whilst my relative, Aunty Llinos Dragon, had to waiting over 16 months  (after a massive stroke) for hard pressed Bridgend Social Services to fit a shower in her Bettws council cave.  Is this fair? Is this the type of Wales we wish to live in? In the eyes of God, are not all people created equal? Endowed with inalienable rights?

In colonial Wales today, if you steal a £3.27 pence lump of cheese from Tescos you'll end up with a place in prison (which costs, according to the Prison Reform Trust £37000 per annum- thats a hell of a lot of cheese): if you're a Tory AM and steal/claim two very expensive t.v's, mega-buck ipods, deluxe kitchens and king-sized beds out of the hard earned money of ordinary folk, then the police turn the other cheek. AM's call it "allowances"- we call it the missappropriation of the proprietry interests of another- ie, tantamount to theft.

Sensing trouble ahead, both Labour and Tory spokespersons were at pains to point  out that an independent review is under way into the allowances regime and AMs’ salaries. "We have not broken any rules." No, you haven't. But a straw poll of 100 people shopping in Cardiff's Queen Street today, reveal that 97% agreed that the AMs had set a bad example in these difficult financial times.

 As ever, the review is too little too late. The Tory and Lab AM's have deeply embarrassed the notion of devolution in Wales. In 2001, Cymru Rydd Welsh Republicans (then the Independetn Wales Party) declared that the Assembly was nothing more than than a massive white elephant, a gimmick to pacify the massive growth in Welsh identity, culture, history and heritage.  Thanks to these greedy AM's, republicans will now have to make more strenuous efforts to implement the One Wales Agreement and achieve full parliamentary powers for our newest democratic body.

Mr Bourne’s spokesman said he used his £229 iPod to listen to podcasts and to help him learn Welsh. However, 8gb ipods are available for £142.

Labour husband and wife AMs Huw Lewis and Lynne Neagle claimed a combined £22,299.12 on additional living costs in 2006/07.

Several AMs bought cameras under their office expenses. Leighton Andrews, the deputy minister for regeneration, claimed £701.45 for a digital camera and equipment last August. This April, he spent another £953.97 on a video and digital camera.

Former Conservative AM Laura Jones bought a £1,109.94 television in January last year. She lost her seat at the election four months later. Perhaps this should happen to more AMs!

Some AMs submitted claims for food. Plaid Cymru’s Jocelyn Davies spent £4,549.25 on meals and subsistence in 2006/07. This of course is quite understandable. Jocelyn would have to travel all the way to Newport to sleep, eat and rest, so she obviously needs this sum. If anyone does know how many pizzas and Whoopers Jocelyn bought, we'd love to know.