Cardiff airport

Things must be bad if the YoY drop from two consecutive months is as high as that.

At this stage if they sold it, I think they'd be lucky to recoup anything. I think the choice is between plowing on, and shutting up shop to be honest.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-30822402

The amount of money spent by Welsh ministers to buy industrial sites, business parks and office blocks for economic development could reach £120m within months.

This might be a silly question but where exactly does this money come from? since only health, educational and transport are devolved.
If they spend £52m on the likes of the airport does this mean money via the Barnett Formulae ring fenced for devolved items get reduced?

If this is so I'm f****g annoyed that the M4 sits gridlocked and the Airport become a vanity white elephant.

While the Minister who lives a down the street is picked up in his shiny new chauffeur driven V40 every morning, yesterday it was a Volvo 4X4 because of the few snow flakes.

I don't think it can be called a vanity project Zach, that term is reserved for utter crap like the Emirates Air Line in east London (called by many in London The Arabfly Dangleway). Now that was £100m or so utterly wasted for a handful of people to use every day.

I get why the WG want to save CWL and hopefully one day it may work. Imagine Wales not having a single international airport, I doubt there's anywhere other country in the world with such an unfortunate claim.

the vatican, san marino, andorra and leichtenstein don't have international airports. The Faroe Islands does!!!

Yeah right Jantra, massive countries them!

You made a claim there wasn't a country in the world. I pointed out there were four in Europe (probably soon to be five)

I'm pretty sure most people got the point.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-30822402

This might be a silly question but where exactly does this money come from? since only health, educational and transport are devolved.

I don't know why people think only health, education and transport are devolved. Its a much broader area than that including:
- local government (including, e.g. social care)
- economic development
- social housing
- recreation and culture (e.g. language, museums)

I'm not entirely sure how purchases of private (potentially income generating) assets are treated by the government accounts. It could be that this money would be from the capital DEL. Wales gets about £1 billion to spend on capital investments each year - and local authorities can borrow money on top of that. It can choose to top that up by switching some money from its resource (day-to-day) spending budgets. So in effect spending this money means less to invest elsewhere. Of course, if it generates income or retains its capital value, it can "pay for itself" in the medium to longer term.

You made a claim there wasn't a country in the world. I pointed out there were four in Europe (probably soon to be five)

I think you're being a bit of a pedant here Jantra. The examples you give are tiny countries - with populations in the tens of thousands, or lower. Wales is much much much bigger.

I can see why the Welsh Govt felt the need to invest, and ensure there was an international airport in Wales. I just think they got hoodwinked by the former owners and ended up significantly over-paying.

Devolution of APD could be a bit of a game changer. Its no secret that now Scotland will have it, and NI has it (for long haul at least), the Welsh Govt is pushing strongly for the same for Wales. They'll probably accept long-haul only, and then abolish it. Will cost virtually nothing, as basically no long haul flights at the moment. And the APD savings might be big enough for a few long-haul flights to develop. To US, and to middle eastern hubs. If they got short haul too, it could be a much bigger game changer, but I think Bristol is a rather more effective lobbyist than Newcastle (and Wales in a rather weaker position than Scotland) so I don't think this is likely.