Wednesday, May 19, 2004
How to win friends and influence people
David Davies, the irrepressible Assembly Member for Monmouth, was not at the Education Committee meeting this morning. He told me that he had a pressing engagement in his constituency campaigning with some Tory bigwig. As a result he missed the very interesting evidence that we took on school transport. After the meeting the Committee adjourned outside to look at a ground-breaking new bus for transporting school children. TV cameras were present, so the Minister was first there (though to be fair she did have another engagement). However, she was disappointed to discover that the television reporter did not want to interview her. Instead they had installed David Davies on the bus and were interviewing him instead. David had taken advantage of the fact that he was not in the Committee to get there first and ensure that his views would be the ones that were heard. There were some very uncharitable views being expressed about him by David's fellow Committee members.
