Monday 31 December 2012

I read an interesting line ...

... concerning politics !

"Politicians are all process without products !"

... it implies that politicians add very little to society in terms of value !



Friday 28 December 2012

The 3 C's, ...

... complain, challenge and Carwyn.

I should, as a taxpayer, complain about the monumental folly of  North Wales seabass,or more to the point, complain to the administrative party who were firmly in charge.

I should, as a taxpayer, challenge the current administration to publish the business plan and advice that has been used in the formulation of its plans to nationalise Cardiff Airport.

... and Carwyn might like to answer the complaint and challenge, he is, after all is said and done, the First Minister of our Welsh Assembly Government, who else should answer ....

.... or might I just lie back like the majority and let events fly over my head ?




Sunday 23 December 2012

Should the past be a burden to bear ...

... or should tomorrow be our only concern ?

Thursday last Wales Online letters to the Editor, a heartfelt submission...
The price of identity

SIR – Your report on the demise of the Welsh Language in the 2011 Census is alarming (“Language is in crisis, says Cymdeithas, as proportion of Welsh speakers falls to 19%”, Dec 12).
I was born and brought up in a Welsh speaking mining valley, couldn’t understand or speak a word of English before the London evacuees of 1940s arrived; and pretty soon we had converted them to Welsh Speakers.

Following the discovery of anthracite coal, migrants had arrived not only from many Welsh counties but from England, too, but the language sustained its position. Primary school was Welsh speaking – but as the “scholarship” paper was mostly English we had to learn it, and then all lessons (apart from Welsh!) were in English, but the language outside was Welsh.

Our forefathers built grammar schools to ensure their sons didn’t follow them down the pits, but when “children” qualified for universities, most couldn’t find professional posts in the country and had to migrate to the open arms of England. Most never to return to Wales, their parents’ homes sold – very often to migrating English.

The age of the chapels’ domination is also history; before television, the car, and Sunday opening, it was colleges, religion, entertainment, where poorly educated older people gained knowledge and language from the pulpit, Sunday School, choir singing and all in the one language Welsh.

Apart from The Western Mail, Wales on Sunday, local papers and Y Cymro, the English media really ignores Wales. The constant drip-dripping of their editions is Anglo influential as is television: Coronation Street, Emmerdale, drown out Pobol y Cwm. Similarly the English radio programmes Radio Cymru, their prolific influences controlling to a large degree an Anglicisation of news and events leaving Wales to a great measure in a poverty of Welsh/Celtic aspiration retaining it in talk and thinking and behaviour and we’re too idle to realise how our thinking to a large extent is accustomed to an Anglian perspective.

Until we awake to change and revival, this power will continue to influence our non Welsh thinking.

Destroy one’s culture and language and you destroy a nation’s pride. Too often, sadly, one doesn’t realise the value of something until it’s lost. One’s language is part of one’s culture. Lose that and how do you know who you are! You don’t destroy a nation’s pride!

The price of identity is eternal vigilance. The same must apply to one’s literature. To honour this one must understand this: Silences are the allies of enemies, detrimental to democracy.

The past can be a heavy burden to be sure, but it is heaviest of all when hindsight told you what had to be done and you did nothing.

ADRIEN JONES of Llandeilo,  Carmarthenshire
The writer pens with a certain passion, a passion that holds dear his need to protect the Welsh language, he also assigns language to culture, an integral part indeed, and finally tells the readers of Wales Online that the culture that is Wales is dependent on the Welsh language for its very survival.

I'm certain he is not correct, Wales is as multi-faceted as the UK as a whole, as diverse as the USA, we have a multitude of nationalities settled in Wales, even youth culture is an illusion with so many subcultures.

Culture has been displaced by society, and the question Adrien of Llandeilo should ask is "can his passion ever be embraced by the majority of society that have rejected the language"?

There is a company in North Wales, The Snowdonia Cheese Company, that fills a niche in the cheese habits of the UK, this is the future of Wales, doing business with the world in a language shared by the world ... there is only English writing on this particular wall ....


Sunday 16 December 2012

If it's and but's were candy and nuts ...


... we'd all have a merry christmas !

In Wales, it seems that a handful of people, a few hundred at most, will dictate that for every 100 people 19 will receive positive discrimination, a positive discrimination that will disadvantage the other 81 people, these few hundred people will dictate a particular evolution for society in Wales, the majority who look for employment in the public sector will be required to comply with a simple diktat, comply or accept 2nd class citizenship or move to England ..............
... and this diktat is :
... become fluent in the Welsh language, in the face of linguistic evolution that is marginalising the language year on year.
It doesn't matter to the "old elites" of Wales that an overwhelming majority live their lives without the Welsh language.

It doesn't matter to the "old elites" of Wales that an overwhelming majority are indifferent  to the Welsh language.

It doesn't matter to the "old elites" of Wales that an overwhelming majority prefer Hollywood to the Welsh language television.

It doesn't matter to the "old elites" of Wales that an overwhelming majority do business without the Welsh language on the international stage.
... I prefer a free society, it doesn't have to be pretty, I prefer it to be multicultural mess reflecting the reality of society in the 21st century.

So it might be time to say "No More" to the re-inventors of a Wales that died a century or more ago, did it ever exist I wonder ?

So it might be time to send a message that we favour "more freedom and less government"...
to experience the hideous vision of Wales read the Welsh language group's 'manifesto' call after census

... there is little freedom and much more government accompanying the proposals, a charter for a dictatorship of "old elites", for an example of reality try the link to NY, this is probably the way Welsh will go, time to create a mausoleum for the scholars of the future, then there is Manchester.....