The Welsh parliament

March 3rd is a big day for the Welsh Assembly.

A referendum is to held to ask the people of the principality to vote for increased devolved powers for the Assembly, including tax raising powers similar to Scotland and the power to make decisions without prior approval from Westminster.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, it is a bloody silly idea that every time the Assembly makes a decision in the areas in which they have devolved powers, they have to be referred to Westminster for a committee to decide whether they are appropriate. Effectively this hands London a veto over everything Cardiff wants to do. So what is the point of devolving powers under these conditions? It's silly and it just creates expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy.

Having said that, on the other hand we did ask Scotland and Wales whether they wanted their own Parliaments. Scotland grasped the nettle and went for it and on the whole this appears to be working quite well. But Wales bottled it and took the wishy-washy option of an Assembly. In effect this is just a big council with limitted authority.

So now they want to put things right and have another vote, although they seem careful not to rebrand this a parliament..

But from what I have seen on the news, the biggest problem seems to be finding anyone in Wales who knows what the issues are, or indeed gives a toss anyway. I expect a low turnout...