According to an FOI request, the Welsh Government has spent £440,082 of taxpayer cash on insects as an alternative food source. Of this, £349,960 was awarded in January 2018 to fund insect-based food for children. The “alternative protein”, called VeXo, was offered to children aged 5-11. It is said to look like mince and contains a combination of insect and plant-based proteins. 

Welsh Conservative Shadow Minister for Education, Laura Anne Jones, was bugged by the revelation. She said:

“To learn that Labour have wasted more than £400,000 in providing bugs as an alternative food source is very concerning, Labour need to properly fund their free school meals and not waste money on dystopian futuristic meals for our children… Along with cutting the education budget in real terms this year, Labour instead prioritise this bizarre pet project. Children need nutritious affordable meals, preferably locally sourced, to sustain them through the school days and expensive bug farming is not the answer.”

If, for whatever reason, Welsh school children don’t enjoy their cockroach cuisine, Guido’s sure Matt Hancock would be happy to take it off their hands…

Over the weekend, women’s rights campaigners performed a silent protest during Mark Drakeford’s speech at the Festival of Ideas in St David’s Cathedral, holding banners attacking the Welsh government over its planned self-ID laws and demanding it “save[s] single sex spaces”. The group stood next to Drakeford throughout the entirety of his speech, while he ploughed on as if they weren’t even there…

A spokesperson for the group later said:

“…For the last four years Mark Drakeford and his ministers have refused to speak to representatives of women’s groups in Wales regarding the safeguarding concerns we have about maintaining single sex spaces and women’s sports.

“Last autumn he promised at a public event that Julie James MS would organise a meeting with the concerned groups, but despite polite requests, this meeting is yet to be scheduled. We felt that this protest was our only option to be seen and heard. We were politely asked to leave as our presence was unexpected, but we presented cards explaining that it was a peaceful and silent protest and Mr Drakeford said he was happy for us to stay.

While the protesters stayed quiet, one furious audience member broke the silence by storming up to the group and ripping the banners from their hands. The group themselves added “the important thing for us was that there was dialogue.” Which, given the manner of their protest, is an odd choice of words…

After a Canadian TikToker went viral for mistakenly saying Wales was in England, Mark Drakeford reacted as any spend-happy politician with a desire for positive publicity would. He arranged for her to take a holiday to Wales – all on the taxpayer’s expense…

An FOI request from the Taxpayers’ Alliance revealed the Welsh government budgeted £1,500 for the influencer’s trip, based on the justification it would “raise Wales’ profile across the world” and “celebrate the partnership” between Wales and Canada. It’s not the first time Mark’s spaffed the cash chasing viral hits…

The Welsh government was seemingly forced to u-turn on plans not to include the words ‘women’ and ‘girls’ in their new Period Dignity campaign, launched this week. The action plan Period Proud Wales, published on Wednesday by Minister for Social Justice Jane Hutt, states the “language within this plan aims to be inclusive and to consider the experience of women, girls and anyone who menstruates”.

“this plan includes use of the terms “women”, “girl”, “those who menstruate”, “learner” and “patient” throughout. In order to be inclusive, the term “women, girls and person who menstruates” will be used most frequently to encompass all affected by this plan”

Naturally, from the parliament that currently provides tampons in the men’s bogs…

According to the consultation published alongside the action plan, however, Drakeford’s government wasn’t originally planning to acknowledge women or girls at all. The consultation ran from October 2021 to January 2022, and one-third of the respondents raised concerns that the original draft had an “absence of references to women and girls”. They cite one example response:

“Please stop erasing women from our own health matters. It is not inclusive language if we are being pushed aside. Inclusive language would be “female” or “women, transmen and non-binary”. Women’s health is specific to women – not people. Not referring to us as women will lead to the message not getting out to women.”

Other respondents accused the initial women erasure of being “dehumanising” and alleging the government’s decision risked creating “a new euphemism around menstruation.”

The consultation report says that “an appeal to use the words ‘women’ and ‘girls’ rather than ‘people’ was by far the strongest theme of the responses.” Of the 198 responses along these lines, just 12 argued the plan should use the language of “women, girls and transmen and non-binary people”. Is it any wonder Drakeford still wants to copy Sturgeon’s disastrous plan to allow male rapists into women’s prisons…

Mark Drakeford has come out in support of Nicola Strugeon’s incredibly controversial gender recognition bill and told the Welsh parliament he intends to copy the move, despite government lawyers threatening to block the Holyrood legislation. Responding to a question from Tory Welsh Assembly member Laura Anne Jones yesterday, Drakeford told the chamber:

“We will do as I’ve said; we will seek the powers, if we obtain those powers we will put them to work here in Wales and we will put proposals in front of this Welsh Parliament so that those people seeking gender recognition are able to do so in a way that is not stigmatised and does not involve them having to go through a lengthy medicalised route in order to establish themselves in the way they themselves would wish to see established.”

Responding to the proposals, a government source fires a warning shot at Drakeford, telling Guido that “bad legislation is bad legislation. Whether in Scotland or Wales.” 

Government lawyers are still poring over the Scottish bill, and Rishi is weighing up the various options between blocking the bill, involving the courts or merely refusing to recognise gender certificates in England that were issued in Scotland. Guido’s sure the people of Wales, experiencing strikes, a collapsing health system and a stalling economy, will be delighted that Mark Drakeford’s spending his time on this vitally important issue…

In a potential hint at Mark Drakeford’s personal politics, a successful FoI has revealed that the Senedd Commission has spent over £12,000 on 82 flags for use on the Senedd flagpoles and in the speaker’s office, including North Korea, Belarus and nominally still communist Vietnam. Despite having the flag of the world’s most totalitarian communist state, the FoI bizarrely shows that the country’s free-market southern neighbour, South Korea, has no such honour.

In equally worrying vexillological news, the Senedd also holds two Basque regional flags, while not holding the national flag of Spain. Including the two Quebec flags, the Welsh parliament has twice as many flags for famously pro-independence regions than they have Union Jacks…