Robert Lloyd - a Sir Gar Blog of random news . . . and some Clecs!

Was the result of the 2011 National Assembly election a vote in favour of the Labour party, or one against the UK government? This question will be answered in two Breakfast Seminars held this week - in Cardiff on Tuesday morning 11th October, and in Aberystwyth on Wednesday morning 12th October. In these seminars, Professor Roger Scully from Aberystwyth University’s Institute of Welsh Politics (IWP) and Professor Richard Wyn Jones of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre (WGC) will give the first public presentations of data collected by the 2011 Welsh Election Study (WES). The seminars will be held in Cardiff at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay, and in Aberystwyth at the Welsh Government Buildings, Rhodfa Padarn, and are organised by the IWP and the WGC. The 2011 Welsh Election Study was conducted by the IWP and WGC in collaboration with the leading polling company YouGov; financial support for the study was provided by the Economic and Social Research Council of the United...

Why did Wales vote Yes so clearly in the referendum in March? This question will be answered in two Breakfast Seminars held this week - in Cardiff on Wednesday morning 22nd June, and in Aberystwyth on Friday morning 24th June. In these seminars, Professor Roger Scully from Aberystwyth University’s Institute of Welsh Politics (IWP) and Professor Richard Wyn Jones of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre (WGC) will give the first public presentations of data collected by the 2011 Welsh Referendum Study (WRS). The seminars will be held in Cardiff at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay, and in Aberystwyth at the Welsh Assembly Buildings, Rhodfa Padarn, and are organised by the IWP and the WGC. The 2011 Welsh Referendum Study was conducted by the IWP and WGC in collaboration with the leading polling company YouGov, and with financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom. A representative sample of the Welsh electorate, comprising over 3000 respo...

Are the Welsh as politically radical as they like to consider themselves? This will be one of the questions addressed by one of Wales’ leading political analysts on Thursday night. In his Professorial Inaugural Lecture, Democracy in Contemporary Wales, to be delivered in the home of Aberystwyth University’s world-leading Department of International Politics, Prof Roger Scully will argue the need for the more serious, systematic study of politics in Wales. He will contend that “political life here is arguably in greater need of sustained, critical attention than in most places. In the absence of a body of serious scholarly analysis, characterisations of politics in Wales have long tended to draw heavily on myths and clichés that have rarely, if ever, been properly investigated.” Among these myths, Prof Scully will argue, is that of the Welsh ‘radical tradition’. But although the idea that the Welsh are, and have long been, more politically radical than the English is ‘ubiquitous’ in pol...