Whose National Insurance?

The recent Government Expenditure & Revenue Wales Report (GERW) published by the Wales Governance Centre indicated that Wales is currently running a large and unsustainable budget deficit. However, within the detail of the report it is clear that our devolved Wales is being forced to carry costs that an independent Wales would not need to carry. Read More

Repurposing the DVLA

Why would we need the massive DVLA in an independent Wales?

An independent Wales would need all sorts of government data to be processed, not just driving licences, but including for example registration of births, death and marriages; passport and visa applications; customs and excise duties; value-added tax; corporation tax; etc. All of these activities are currently managed at different data centres across the UK, but in the future we would need to do this ourselves. The obvious solution would be to redesignate the DVLA as the central data processing centre for all Welsh government activity. The IT infrastructure is already in place as are the highly trained staff. Read More

Lost opportunities – let’s not keep making the same mistake

The Welsh economy can only really prosper with independence. This is the great dilemma of Welsh politics: it’s hard for us to prosper without independence, and yet independence is hard to achieve without a measure of prosperity beyond where we are today. Hence it’s in the Unionists’ interest to keep us poor for as long as they can.  The only way to break this vicious circle is to throw out the Labour Party and elect a Welsh government which is serious about independence, serious about economic growth, and has the nous, experience and determination to do what’s needed. Read More