Day Two of manifesto week sees the Welsh Liberal Democrats set out their election promises.
You can read the manifesto, which they’ve called ‘Wales Can Do Better’, here.
It’s main theme is tackling waste: money-wasting, time-wasting and wasting of the potential of people.
That’s why the very first pledge you read is to
Root out Government waste so that the money we do spend makes a real difference to you and your family.
As well as giving the Welsh Lib Dems a means of attacking Labour and Plaid’s record in government in Cardiff Bay over the last four years, highlighting waste serves another useful purpose.
It allows the Welsh Lib Dems to sidetrack the argument over whether or not the UK coalition is cutting spending too fast or not.
And that’s important because Kirsty Williams’ team would be in a no-win situation if they did get involved in the row.
If they argued that Wales needs more money spent on it, they would be accused of being at odds with Nick Clegg’s team in London.
But on the other hand they know that their poor showing in the polls stems from people who may have voted Lib Dem in recent years but who do think that cuts ARE too fast and too deep.
So the focus of waste and inefficiency allows the Welsh Lib Dems to blame Labour for creating both the need for spending cuts at a UK level and for spending unwisely here in Wales.
At the same time they can include Plaid in that criticism and set out a series of ideas that they believe can be funded by freeing up money that’s been misspent in the past.
ITVAdrian 
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