RAINBOW ALLIANCE STILL POSSIBLE
 A Plaid Cymru-led "Rainbow Alliance" Welsh Assembly Government is possible again after Lib Dems voted to revive a coalition plan with other opposition parties. A special Liberal Democrat meeting has voted 125-77 to resume talks once more. It came only days after Labour's Rhodri Morgan being reappointed first minister, when the first talks between the parties broke down.
A series of meetings is being arranged between the "Alliance" party leaders, Zippy(Ieuan Wyn Jones), George (Nick Bourne) and Bungle (Mike German).
In a statement released today, Bungle said, "What it has said, quite clearly, is that we want to give the people of Wales that fresh start, that new approach which this all-Wales government could do for it. Up above the streets and houses, rainbow climbing high, everyone can see it smiling over the sky".
Asked to comment on the Liberal Democrats' "U-turn", Zippy said, "This means that a range of outcomes are back on the table, including a Plaid-led government. All along the streams and rivers, shining in the lakes, see the colours of the rainbow as the morning breaks. Paint the whole world with a rainbow".
These sentiments were echoed by George, who told the Scar, "I remain of the belief that a non-Labour alternative in Cardiff is important to bring a sense of direction to government in Wales and a sense of direction to our country. Take some green from a forest, blue from the sea, find the misty pot of gold, and mix them for a week. Paint the whole world with a rainbow".
NEW NORTH-SOUTH AIR SERVICE STARTS
A new air service linking North Wales with South Wales, subsidised by the Welsh Assembly, started this week. The flights, which start from RAF Valley and end at Cardiff International airport, take about 12 hours non-stop. The 2-stander aircraft, operated by Highland Airways, will make two return flights a day.
Basil O'Fee(Editor: I didn't make up the name, honest!), Highland Airways' commercial director, said, "Demand was initially for tickets flying from the north to the south, but this was now balancing out. I realise that the aircraft used are not the most modern, but they are the most economical. I know that our customers will not mind standing for a few hours, if for instance, they have an important meeting in Cardiff to get to. It is important to get the balance right" (Editor: I think that will be important for the passengers, to!).
Mr O'Fee said," The company was pleased with tickets sales, and the first official flight on Tuesday had seen a business and a social passenger".
Anglesey Council chairman W J Williams said, "This is a great opportunity to show the south the sophistication of the north of Wales. We expect many economic benefits from this venture. Who knows, in years to come, they may even be an aircraft with internal seating available".
Highland Airways had admitted that it has had trouble recruiting stewards for the service, adding that they hope to employ people with a circus background, in the near future.
"TIPIT" STAR IN STEROIDS SCANDAL
The world of the pub game, "Tipit", was thrown into disarray this week, when one of the competitors at last weeks S4C televised game, had been found to have taken steroids.
Glyn Thomas representing the Llanybyther pub, "The Farmer and EU Subsidy", failed a routine drug test after the game. This is the first time that a "Tipit" player has failed such a test. Drug testing was brought in a few months ago, following complaints that some players had substantially bigger hands than others.
For those who are not familiar with the game, "Tipit" involves two teams of three who have to hide a "Tipit" stone in one of their hands while the other team guess where it is(Editor: Wow!).
S4C presenter Morgan Jones told the Scar, "We are all deeply shocked at this news. The game is very competitive and I suppose there is always the temptation to go beyond what is legal".
Mr Thomas is now banned from competing in "Tipit" tournaments for 3 years, although he is still allowed to to enter skittles competitions.
TRUST OFFICIAL DISAPPEARS UP HIS OWN ARSE
Paramedics were called to the office of an unnamed local health trust official, today. Shocked colleagues telephoned them, after they had discovered that the official had disappeared up his own arse.
After an emergency operation, the official in question is said to be "comfortable".
This is the fourth incident of it's type in the county, during the last few months.
Consultant proctologist at West Wales General Hospital, Lewis Richardson, told the Scar, "It is a very worrying situation. When I was younger we only used to see this condition among certain politicians, but recently we have seen it spreading to local health officials, council planning and building control officers and a local voluntary organisation".
The condition, latin name "Ut evanui sursum a rectum iri", is not thought to be life threatening, but is extremely annoying to anybody that comes into contact with the sufferer.
The unnamed trust official is thought to have been heavily involved in the "downgrading" of local hospital services.
GENESIS TO TOUR AGAIN
Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford of the popular "beat-combo" of the 1970s and 1980s, Genesis, unveiled the dates for their first tour in 15 years. "For God's Sake Turn It Off Again" - the tour, will see the octogenarian band play a series of stadium concerts with their unique progressive "jungle music", in Europe in the summer of 2007. Kicking off in the Olympic Stadium, Helsinki on 11 June, the tour will hit twelve different European countries, ending in Rome on 14 July.
After along and successful career, the band split and the end of the 1980s due to "musical differences". Banks and Rutherford, wanted to perform more "mellow" and "bland" music, while Collins wanted to perform even more "mellow" and even more "bland" music. Phil Collins also wanted to concentrate on his new career as a spokesperson for Stannah Stairlifts.
To coincide with the Genesis tour, EMI Records will be re-issuing 14 Genesis studio albums in three stages during 2007(Editor: Oh my God noooooooooo!). All the releases will be SACD/DVD double disc sets featuring newly re-mastered 5.1 surround sound and stereo mixes.
Their best known album, "Boring England by the Minute", is not thought to be scheduled for release, although the single taken from the album, "I'm hooked on Werthals Originals", might be released.
Tickets will be on sale for UK dates on 24 November and for dates in Germany on 10 November(Editor: Pardon me while I slit my wrists!). Other on-sale dates to be announced.
GOVERNMENT TO NAME AND SHAME ITV BOSSES
The Government's Culture Department has announced that it will "Name and shame" ITV executives in the coming months. This follows new legislation aimed at tackling the growing blandness and "dumbing down" of British culture.
The department said it had to take this regrettable step after the televising of recent programs by ITV. It says, programs such as "The Planet's Funniest Architects", "Whinge Island" and last week's episode of the soap, "Emmerdale", where the storyline included all of the cast being kidnapped and sent to North Korea, have "overstepped the boundaries", of what is acceptable as television programs.
They were especially disappointed at "Whinge Island", where the friends of a cousin of a man who once starred in a car advert, were put together on an island, to whinge and moan about each other for an hour. Also criticised, were the frequent appearances of people who were once in one soap, appearing in another. The government said, "People were often unsure which program they were watching".
ITV executives hit back at claims the TV station was "dumbing down". "That is not true. We produce good quality programs that our advertisers want. People are entertained by our programs, but not excited. We want people to be calm, so that they will buy more of the goods advertised on our station. If our viewers are excited or aggravated in any way, they might begin to think and that is always a dangerous thing, as far as our advertisers are concerned", said a spokesperson.
"We are revamping the station in the autumn. There will be new game shows with Ant and Dec. A new thirteen part historical series about the French Revolution, hosted by Joe Pasquale, will be on our screens. We can honestly say, that we are aiming for the top".
A Culture Department spokesperson said, "If we don't crack down on ITV now, there will be another program made. It will be called 'Empty Island', where the whole of the UK population says, 'enough is enough' and leaves the country".
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ARCHEOLOGISTS FIND RHODRI MORGAN'S INTEGRITY
Archeologists from the University of Wales in Aberystwyth have found the Welsh Assembly's First Minister, Rhodri Morgan's, integrity, which everybody had thought to have been lost forever.
The team from the University of Wales had been excavating on a property once lived in by First Minister Morgan, in Cardiff. There had been rumours that the integrity had been lost there when Mr Morgan was opposition front bench spokesman on energy in 1992, but nobody was certain.
Archeologist team leader, Professor Stuart Leyshon, told the Scar, "This is an enormous find. To think that everybody thought Rhodri Morgan's integrity had been lost for eternity. It is a mind boggling event. Although it has been a very difficult process to find the integrity, it being much smaller that a normal person's, the months of hard work by the team has paid off".
The integrity will be displayed in a glass case at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth. It had been offered back to the First Minister, but he has said, "to have no need of it anymore".
BROWN PROMISES "MODERN SLAVERY FOR A MODERN BRITAIN"
 Chancellor Gordon Brown in his last budget speech before becoming Prime Minister, has promised that his budget measures will lead to, "Modern slavery for a modern Britain".
One of the announcements was of a new government program, “Partnership for Jobs”, which will be established with big supermarket chains to "encourage" the unemployed back into work. The scheme is to offer the long term unemployed employment as "shelf fillers", only if they pass an aptitude test.(Editor: It's a pity that politicians don't have to pass an aptitude test). It will mean "employment subsidies" will be given to some of the most profitable companies in the UK. In return, they will employ an estimated 100,000(5000 in Wales) people on minimum wages.
The full details have not been announced yet, but it will be interesting to see what will count as "employment", in terms of hours offered as well as wages. Certain government schemes are considered, "employment" for benefit purposes, but are then considered, "temporary schemes", if there is no successful outcome.
In other budget measures announced, resources would be redirected from "failing" college courses to the ones which employers wanted to see.(Editor: Oh yes, NVQ Level 3 Subservience. City and Guilds Boot licking). On the financial side of things, the usual "smoke and mirrors". Redistribution, that is, giving from one hand and taking with the other.
TIS THE SEASON TO BE VINDICTIVE
Editor's Comment
 It always amazes me how the people who have been, "lucky" in life, treat us "lesser mortals", even at this time of year, in this season of goodwill to all.
Take the case of the government's Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton. Educated at Westcliffe High School and Magdalen College Oxford, Senior Law lecturer at the University of Northumbria from 1994 to1997, Minister of State with responsibility for Social Care at the Department of Health in 1999, PPS to Margaret Beckett, both while she was President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1997-8), and in her role as President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (1998) and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in Oct 1998.
You would think Mr Hutton would be satisfied with his success, so far, in life and be full of gratitude towards ordinary people in the Labour movement, who have helped him get elected and who have supported him all these years. You would think he would say to himself, when seeing that unemployment and poverty were still high in various parts of the UK, "There, by the grace of God go I".
But no, this week the following statement was released to the media, "Ministers are planning to crack down on the attitudes of Britain's long-term unemployed. Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton will complain that a 'hardcore' of benefit claimants are failing to compete for jobs with growing numbers of immigrants, many from eastern Europe. He will insist in a speech there are opportunities for people who want employment, and that the government should consider withdrawing all benefits from the long-term unemployed who 'can work, but won't' ".
Mr Hutton elaborated on this statement on Breakfast TV, with such a "display of obnoxious bile" towards those less fortunate than himself, that you would have thought he was a Conservative Minister during the 1980s and the early 1990s. I wonder, if this was the same John Hutton whose first speech in Parliament was to complain about unemployment in his constituency under a Conservative government, he said, ''The one question I put to Conservative Members is to ask what kind of management of our economy we have if the government are prepared to sit on their hands while skilled men and women in Barrow and Furness are turned on to the dole". My, how times have changed.
Maybe Mr Hutton thinks this new attack on the poor, will have similar success to the policy to "persuade" the long term sick and disabled to look for jobs. This, as a report shows, had Jobcentre staff, "reluctantly telling claimants who were about to retire, about to give birth, or with what was considered to be serious health conditions that they must attend a series of six interviews".
As I said in the beginning, I am always amazed at the attitudes of the "lucky" and how they perceive the "unlucky" as "second class citizens", somehow "inadequate" in life.
People such as Mr Hutton, always remind me of the actor, Sir Alec Guinness in the "The Bridge on the River Kwai", where, playing a British officer, he encourages the sick and dieing in the camp hospital, to "lend a hand" in the building of the bridge. In the end, of course, even he realises that the whole venture has been a pointless exercise, from start to finish. I wonder if Mr Hutton will. I doubt it.
It seems Work and Pensions Minister John Hutton has "forgotten where he came from", or maybe he was "never there in the first place".
It seems so, with his strong voting support for the Iraq war, ID cards, foundation hospitals, student top-up fees, so called anti-terrorism laws and he is strongly against investigating the Iraq war.(source: http://www.theyworkforyou.com)
As the illustrious Mr "kick them while their down" Hutton, sits down to Christmas dinner with his family, let us spare a thought for him. Let us spare a thought for all those "lucky" people who though having everything "going their way" in life, still find time out of their "busy lives" to be "vindictive" and "callous" towards those they consider "lesser human beings". The Editor wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and lets hope this time next year you still have a job.
Update:
It seems that Mr Hutton's proposals are not part of the Welfare Reform Bill that's currently going through Parliament. So, his announcement and TV appearance, seems like an attempt to position himself further to the right, (maybe standing on a ledge, looking into the abyss of deserved obscurity). Whatever his motives, it seems to be at the least, "mischievous", at this time of year, or at worst, "downright malicious". I leave you to be the judge.
POLISH PROSTITUTES NOT TAKING WORK FROM LOCAL ONES
 A new report published by local employment agency, JSA Recruitment, says that, "Polish prostitutes are not taking work away from local ones".
The report goes on to say, "Prostitution in the town is a highly skilled industry and there is therefore no threat to established local prostitutes from less skilled Polish ones, who have recently been brought to the town, by our agency".
According to a spokesperson for JSA Recruitment, "The agency is expected to bring a further 50 prostitutes to the area in the next few months, but they will be spread across the communities so they will have a better chance of integrating and not outnumbering the local ones. Our workers come here to fill a jobs gap".
The report comes after revelations that eastern European prostitutes have been offering sex for only £10 from a local ASDA supermarket car park(Editor: I wonder if Tesco car park prostitutes charge less?). A local man who was accosted by one of the prostitutes, was said to be "shaken and very upset". Local councillor, John Jenkins, who has been very much involved with the town's prostitution problem, told the Scar, "This is not an isolated case. I have had reports of similar occurrences. Charging £10 for sex is way to cheap(Editor: We all have to pay for it, one way or another!). I shall be writing to the Welsh Assembly to ask them to provide more support for local prostitutes".
A local prostitute, Mary Thomas (pictured above) from Hick Street, told the Scar, "I don't care what JSA Recruitment says. These Poles are making it harder for us locals to make a living. Local people are much better off using local prostitutes. We are much more skilled and we provide a much better service. To charge only £10 is ridiculous. I wouldn't ************(Censored by the Editor) for that amount".
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