Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

I can't even begin to describe how exciting I'm finding elections at the moment. Scotland was exciting enough: 9% of the votes were spoiled, and the SNP have taken over. But the Welsh Assembly .. now there's a drama and a half.

Labour managed to get 26 seats out of 60 so they have a majority but not an overall majority making for a pretty unstable government. They entered talks with various parties but none of the talks amounted to anything.

Then Plaid, Lib Dems and Conservatives entered talks on forming a rainbow coalition. This actually seemed to be going somewhere, so the Lib Dems took it to some committees to vote on it. The Negotiating Team passed the proposal to move forward with the coalition plan 5-3. So it went to the next committee. The Assembly Group passed the proposal 4-2. And finally it went to the NEC. This vote tied on 9-9. So the proposal was not deemed to have reached the majority necessary to continue.

So that was that. No coalition.

Until ... twenty voting members of conference called a special conference in accordance with the Lib Dems' standing orders. And the conference decided to overturn the NEC's decision and stick with the All-Wales Accord by a comfortable 125 votes to 77.

How thrilling is that? That means that at the first sign of failure, Labour (and specifically Rhodri Morgan, who seems like quite a nice guy all in all) will have a vote of no confidence thrown at them and the rainbow coalition will take control. Who knows whether or not this would be good for Wales, but the fact is that there would be real change. For a start, all three of these parties are opposed to top-up fees. Free or cheap education in Wales could be just around the corner.

In the meantime, however, it is making life a little difficult for the University and, as a corollary to that, for us since it is delaying the announcement of HEFCW funding.

The other exciting election is in Ireland, where our nasty Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) has lost his seat in the Dail to the chairman of the Green Party. Hooray!