Wales

With the civil service being one of the biggest employers in Wales, and ridiculously high unemployment here, the closure of the passport office will be a huge loss for the people of Wales. Plus, well, it's convenient. Even my brother from the Midlands went to Newport to sort his passport out.

Please sign the petition to save the Newport passport office (and please pass this link on).

So, the First Minister and Deputy First Minister have formally given the Secretary of State their preferred date for a referendum.

Cribbed from the webpage on the referendum: If they get a yes vote, the National Assembly for Wales will get full law making abilities in the devolved areas they currently have some law making abilities. This will not give them the ability to create laws in defence, tax, or welfare.

What do people think about the referendum and about more powers for Wales?

Personally I'm on the fence on this one. I'd like us to have more powers to do more things, but only if it means that we'll get more money for it. Wales is already seriously underfunded and more powers means more money needs to be spent. The problem is, with the current government in Whitehall, I'm not sure if we'd get the extra money we'd need to be able to make use of the extra powers.

BBC News - Plan to generate electricity from waste food in Gwynedd

I was scouting the BBC news site to see if there was anything interesting to post here and I found this. I'm not sure if anywhere else is doing this, but I really hope the planning goes through. It sounds like a great idea. I hope they do the same elsewhere around Wales soon.