FIRST the good jobs news. Quinn Radiators is still going strong in the battle against fierce Turkish competition.

Their ebullient billionaire founder Sean Quinn is in prison, but the business continues.

He chose Newport because of motorway links and proximity of steel supplies.

The local plant is an engineering miracle. A chunk of steel goes in one end and emerges at the other end as a stylish radiator. The slick process is fully automated, rarely requiring the touch of a human hand.

On the same former LG site, a data processing firm has attracted big-value customers.

They have massive room for expansion and are planning a House of Commons event to showcase the quality Newport site.

Bleakly, the Panasonic factory is almost empty.

More than 700 people worked there. The problems lie with the gigantic loss of £10billion worldwide in this £55billion turnover company. Jobs will continue at Pentwyn.

That’s just across the border in Cardiff. It softens the blow if we think of it as Newport Far West.

 

TORY MP and Lembit successor Glyn Davies was scourged by the tabloid press for a tweet. He wrote that his family were entranced by the sight of a fully antlered stag near his garden.

Glyn longed to shoot it.

The Mirror excoriated him for animal cruelty. In an effort to cheer him up, I tweeted him: ‘Don’t fret Glyn. There’s no such things as bad publicity as Lembit once told me’. The next day, the paper republished an embarrassing tale from Glyn’s past. He was once stopped by the police driving a van-load of sheep while wearing a jumper, his wellies, but no trousers.

Perhaps that’s bad publicity.

 

WHAT a way to waste £100 million.

There has never been an election with 85 per cent non-voters.

Even worse was the record 120,000 who voted but deliberately spoiled their ballot papers. Most sent brief sharp messages to the government on the lines of ‘stuff this for a game of soldiers’.

The Hallelujah chorus of rejection is not the voice of public opinion that Cameron wanted to hear.

The new police and crime commissioners (PCCs) will struggle to convince us that they have a serious job to do. Gwent has a good record of fine chief constables who have served us well. None better than the present one. Ian Johnston has a tough task to improve on their quality work.

The first PCC elections could also be the last.