Getting a grip - today's the day

Today is the day Andrew RT Davies, Conservative leader in the Assembly, hopes Conservatives in government in Westminster "get a grip" and start communicating their message effectively to the public. The message, he insists, is right but it's not coming across right.

Today is the day David TC Davies, Conservative MP for Monmouth, hopes David Cameron starts to win back people like his Mum, who voted last Thursday for UKIP. She lives in Newport, where Labour gained control but Monmouthshire too fell out of outright Tory control, suggesting Mrs Davies wasn't alone in that neck of the woods in losing faith in her son's colleagues. A Tory Lib Dem coalition is still on the cards in Monmouthshire it seems - a miniature UK coalition that they'll hope is more Rose Garden, than Tractor Factory.

Today is the day the Queen opens Parliament, setting out the UK Government's plans to stimulate growth, reduce the deficit by delivering not austerity but efficiency, stand by families who are finding it tough - and fight back. Today's also the day both Tories and Lib Dems stick with plans to reform the House of Lords, that "perfectly sensible plan" that is not a priority but is still there.

And today is the day Labour will accuse the coalition of proving they're out of touch, not prepared to listen to those voters who abandoned them last Thursday and the day that Plaid Cymru will accuse them of failing to act on a long list of policies that would transform the Welsh economy.

Today's also the day the Welsh Government is having to accept that when the First Minister talked a few weeks ago about hundreds of jobs in an Indian-owned call centre firm "coming to Cardiff", he didn't add that the jobs were coming to one part of Cardiff, from another part of Cardiff. Saving jobs is good news, say the opposition parties but whichever way you look at it, it isn't tantamount to creating jobs. It's semantics, say the government. It's skating on thin ice, say the Conservatives. It's incompetent say the Liberal Democrats.

Today's also the day that the vastly experienced Health Economist, Marcus Longley, warns that parts of the health service in Wales are in danger of "collapse" unless radical changes are made. His report is peppered with words like "acute", "worrying" and "unsustainable." They'll come as no surprise to ministers who saw the report back in March and who'll have both recognised and endorsed the severity of the warnings.

And today's the day that we'll all get to see the report that concludes, we gather, that the Labour AM for Llanelli brought the Assembly into disrepute after turning up drunk at a Cardiff hotel in the early hours.

Today's the day it would be rather nice to bring you some unadulterated good news. I'm working on it.