Cathays Park

It would be fantastic to have a proper fountain in front of City Hall, something similar to Trafalgar Square. It would set off the Civic Centre and provide a great meeting/photo point. The square pond is very uninspiring.

It would be fantastic to have a proper fountain in front of City Hall, something similar to Trafalgar Square. It would set off the Civic Centre and provide a great meeting/photo point. The square pond is very uninspiring.

I agree, it's something that Cardiff really lacks.

It would be fantastic to have a proper fountain in front of City Hall, something similar to Trafalgar Square. It would set off the Civic Centre and provide a great meeting/photo point. The square pond is very uninspiring.

Hear hear! The horrible square thing with the Prince of Wales feathers water jets was a gift from Sir Julian Hodge to commemerate the investiture in 1969. It was cheap and nasty at the time and has aged badly. It needs to go.

I don't get this nostalgia for 'home rule' - wasn't that an idea dreamt up in the time of empire to placate the Irish? This was at a moment in time when presumably maintaining solidarity on these islands was hugely important given the rivalries on the continent as alluded to by RC? Canada and Australia achieved home rule but stayed as part of the empire. It makes no sense in the modern world of the EU NATO etc, unless we really believe our future is part of an English empire. A bit demeaning but since we would be as good as admitting we we run by foreigners it might help preserve our identity without the whole messy concept of Britishness. Forget federalism. Either you force England to be divided up into various regions which would provoke a lot of hostility given it would be seen as an answer to an essentially non-English problem or you accept an English parliament which would dominate and be hugely destabilising to the UK as a whole. The experience of the Eurozone surely also makes clear that the idea of home rule is a bit daft without your own currency. Either you back the continuance of the UK or you support independence.

Given how things have turned out over the last 40-50 years it's interesting to wonder whether Wales would have been better off going independent after 1918, or at least had home rule within the Empire. How would we have fared? Given per capita incomes in Wales are now amongst the lowest in Western Europe it isn't a stretch to suggest we might have done better. The irony is of course that the worse Wales does in the UK, the greater the cost of independence and the less likely it is to occur. Personally I would be deeply reluctant to see the end of Britain as a nation state and I wouldn't want Wales to turn itself into the Celtic tax haven.

I actually think this fondness for home rule is a bit of a fantasy, as I say people don't want their own currency or in the case of Scotland don't even want t get rid of the Barnett formula! I mentioned identity as the true motive above but I think it might be even cruder than that. It's actually about bargaining to get the best possible deal for your area. It's not necessarily immoral and it's what politicians from Northern Ireland, including devout unionists, have long specialised in. Without any kind of binding ideology for people from Merthyr to Bradford to Edinburgh politics is reduced to a shallow localism that comes down to the local school, hospital or bypass. If we achieved 'home rule' how long would it be before people in Angelsey or the Highlands started moaning about remote politicians in Cardiff or Edinburgh and demanded home rule of their own? Neither do I think this is merely a celtic phenomenon. I'm sure it's in the mood music of the London mayoral election and go onto most MP's website and there'll be a statement about fighting for a better deal for such and such north west. We don't belong to anything any more and the culture is one of rampant individualism, so perhaps it's the only politics that makes sense?

Funny you should mention the fiscal difficulties of Welsh "Full Fiscal Autonomy" or independence, as today a major report came out of Cardiff Uni:

http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/wgc/2016/04/ ... 7-billion/

A Welsh budget deficit of 24% of GDP, compared to 5% for the UK as a whole.

In effect, taxes in rUK are used to allow Wales to "enjoy" public spending about 8% higher than the UK average, despite paying taxes equivalent to about 25% less than the UK average (due to lower incomes - as a share of GDP taxes are actually a tad higher).

Now thats not unusual in countries with significant geographic variances in incomes, and a redistributive state (and the UK is far from alone in that, although given the particular concentration of activity in London, it is a bit more noticeable than in most western-European countries). The North East would probably look similar.

Would Wales be better off now if it had had "home rule" all that time ago? Its hard to know for sure. One thing is sure though. It would be relatively easier for Wales to be more 'productive' than it is now than it would be for Welsh people to be 'better off' compared to now. Welsh GVA per capita is about 72% of UK average. Welsh household income per capita is something like 90% of UK average. In effect a lot of those spending transfers from rest of the UK boost Welsh incomes more than they do Welsh GVA. It would be easier for us to have boosted GVA above current levels than household incomes above current levels without such transfers...

I can't claim to be an expert on GVA but I do wonder how comparable the UK is to the Eurozone. Is the UK any longer an 'optimal currency area'? If Wales is 72% of the UK average GVA what is the south east? 120%? That's a 40% gap between the most productive and least productive regions - maybe more if the figures for Northern Ireland and parts of northern England are worse. What is the gap between Germany and Greece?

What is the way out of this. The solution in the Eurozone is deemed to be to make the southern periphery more competitive. A solution some would argue is doomed to inducing depression and failure.

On the subject of Cathays Park I'd really like to see the area in front of the Law Court's, City Hall and Museum rationalised.

It's very rare in the UK to have a planned civic centre. Cardiff is unusual in this regard. The three buildings taken together are our equivalent of the Three Graces in Liverpool. I really don't think we make as much of them as we could.

I'd like to see car parking removed from the front and replaced with a paved area integrated into the Gorsedd Gardens and the grassed area in front of City Hall. There is currently a Boer War Memorial between the City Hall and Law Courts. To balance it up there should be a memorial relating to recent conflicts in the area between the City Hall and Museum.

I'd like to see a proper fountain replace the nonsense that is there presently. It belongs in an out of town business park.

An 'at grade' pedestrian crossing from the castle would also integrate it more into the fabric of the city centre.

Optimal currency areas are not really about the disparity in income levels; they are about the disparity in economic cycles. The economic cycles of the various parts of the UK are very very closely aligned.

Wales is the region with the lowest levels of GVA in the country. (NE England and NI are both more like 76%). This is a structural rather than a cyclical thing - and therefore not really something monetary policy could really help with. Its down to Wales relatively low levels of labour productivity - partly down to sectoral mix -, low employment rates, and older population.