Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, in need of a ...

... reality check, the Public Bodies Bill currently going through Parliament lists those organisations that require public funding in its scope, including S4C.  An amendment tabled to exclude S4C from the Bill was defeated in committee, following the defeat Bethan Williams, Chair of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, was led out of the committee room shouting (in Welsh) "This vote is an insult to the people of Wales", how many in the room would have understood her.

Elsewhere the House of Commons passed an amendment which says that the secretary of state shall secure that S4C is provided with sufficient funds to cover the cost of delivering its television services, seemingly a contradiction.

As a public body S4C is not in any way exceptional, nor can it be made an exception where public funding is used, the public should expect scrutiny of the organisation and its funding by our members of parliament, for a decade or more S4C has benefited from a £ Billion without effective scrutiny, the current state of this organisation tells a story of ineptitude of almost biblical proportions.

If the language activists wish to have total control over S4C they must ask for it as a gift from government to do as they wish, becoming a private organisation much as Sky TV, I'm sure such a request would be met with a positive response.  The funding then could be arranged through the Welsh Assembly Government, on an annual basis, in public, competing with all the other demands for public funds.  An organisation such as Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg might consider buying the TV channel and making it a pay-per-view option of the airways, then they would be able to do as they wished.

The bottom line is scrutiny, if you want taxpayers pennies expect it, scrutiny is the only way in a democracy.

Notable that Leanne Wood A.M. has refused to pay her license fee in protest against good governance, she also wants to have control over all broadcasting in Wales, what would the audience do if politicians screwed up in the same way our Wales education and our young peoples futures have been effectively destroyed, switch to Sky is my prediction.

When the Rebeccas destroyed the Bolgoed ...

... toll-gate on the outskirts of Pontarddulais, 6 July 1843, I wonder if they realised their descendants would become the toll-gate builders of the 21st century.


Not built of stone and lime mortar with the perspiration of the mason as was the 17th century toll-gate, but paper and ink and a certain prejudice against anything East of the River Loughor where Pontardulais is located, by those with a certain agenda to keep out the steady march of time.


And this new toll-booth is the "Action Plan" published by members of the Assembly Government who consider a particular Identity to be preferable to prosperity, the identity of Welshness as demonstrated though the use of the Welsh language, as opposed to Welshness being expressed in the English language.  Is there a difference I wonder?

Background information can be found at "New homes seen as threat to Welsh language in Carmarthen".

It seems this action plan is deemed preferable to prosperity, the prosperity that might be brought by people whose only crime is to chase success as measured by the return on capital.  This action plan makes it markedly more difficult for inward investment, not because of the language, but because the Assembly Government has created another hurdle to be jumped, an unnecessary hurdle.  Try convincing the manufacturer intent on expanding into Carmarthenshire that it is not enough to be neutral towards language, to be indifferent, the business will have to add to the local definition of Wales through positive linguistic action, otherwise approval for the manufacturing plant could be disallowed.


On the wall of our 21st century toll-booth there is a very small sign under the price list, under the tariff that determines whether a proposition might gain entry, the very, very small sign tells the travellers ...

"survival of the language ultimately depends on individuals taking ownership of the language."

... but it doesn't add that there is always a place in Wales for success, there is a place for the entrepreneur, there is a place for difference, it is a sad piece of government ...

Wales is punching above ...

... its weight, don't listen to the doom-mongers of the left, the sky isn't falling in, in fact we have two contenders in the top thirty, number 11 is at Cardiff Bay, and who would have thought Ebbw Vale could fight off the competition from the South and West of England and sit at at number 25.


At No. 11 we have Cadwaladers at Bute place, Mermaid Quay, Cardiff, this is where to go for the best ice-cream in Wales, have a peak into the business.


At No. 25 there is Sidolis at Bethcar Street, Ebbw Vale, Gwent, who would have thought there is a shining star of ice-cream excellence to be found amongst the remains of our Industrial revolution, well, for those who write of "Poor Wales", another company with good provenance is serving excellence in the market place.


Spoilt for choice, Cawaladers is found in 9 towns throughout Wales, whilst Sidolis sits in the South, its home since 1922.  

So we have 6% of the top ice-cream parlours with 5% of the British population, punching above our weight I believe.  

There is a man who is punching well above his weight, Adam Higgit at Wales Home, he has been fighting a rearguard action in a battle with the "separatist agenda", this is a man that the Welsh Assembly Government should be employing to organise the defence of  Wales against those that would take us to a dark corner, a corner that is probably not very democratic, and reading the comments attached to the thread "Is there really a linguistic Apartheid in Wales", very definitely xenophobic, bordering on the racist, and not very agreeable,  but only with regard to people like my wife and daughter, they were both born in England.

Y Teifi, non de plume of a separatist ...

... who would be lost without the politics of identity, I missed it earlier at Wales Home, possibly because it is "so last century" as my daughter would say, linked here, but duplicated below.

... and please don’t go back to the argument that the Welsh and the English are the same and therefore should be governed the same. It’s ignorant and insulting. I’d suggest that the English and the Germans are much more the same than the English are to the Welsh, possible unity with Germany maybe?

If the writer is able to read anything other than the "separatist agenda" tripe, I would direct him to the Prospect paper written by Stephen Oppenheimer titled "Myths of British ancestry", linked here.

Genetics demonstrates the British, that is everyone other than the most recent or distinct immigrants, are in fact so similar we are quite indistinguishable,  it is not "ignorant and insulting" to consider the peoples of England and Wales the same, it is "informed and courteous".

Because I doubt those of the "separatist agenda" would be interested in anything that would usurp their vision of an independent Wales, let me tell you, we are all Basque based, the English and the Welsh, the various invasions have diluted our precious bloodlines in a way that did little to alter our heritage, having said that, I welcome people from other parts of the world into Wales because they enrich our way of life, and so should the man who calls himself a river, Y Teifi.

Adam Higgit at Wales Home seems ...

... to be a lone voice in defence of the status quo (the vast majority of people in Wales) in the face of the "separatist agenda", although the separatist diatribe is tedious in the extreme it reflects very well the views of nationalists; the nationalist in this context are Plaid Cymru, Cymdeithas yr laith (Welsh language society) and the loose canon separatists of no-fixed abode.

Adam sums up the defence of the status quo when he writes ...

"All we need to is adjust the levers of government so as to give the maximum control at the lowest possible level. That should clearly be lower than the British level and lower than the Welsh level, since the variances in the different indices that have come up in this discussion are as great within Wales as between Wales and most of England.".

... it is a classic "Sicilian Defence", the King's Pawn Game, the king puts the people into battle by sleight of hand with the sufficient weapons to win the war, in this case the war for democracy.

There a very few members of the "separatist agenda", but the commentators at Wales Home represent the mentality that is a common thread, and they have a loud voice, to defeat this disparate group of political outlaws, this"Hole-in-the-Wall Gang", the government needs to shift the agenda of the majority from the politics of identity to the politics of the economy, without the politics of identity the "separatist agenda" have nothing ...............


I deliberately didn't contribute to the discussion because Cymdeithas yr laith (Welsh language society) supports direct action against individuals, criminal activities.

Wales always had a louder voice ...

... at Westminster, with the boundary changes comes a sense of equality ...

... a case where "less is more", less government is greater freedom, as I wrote in an earlier post Immanuel Kant said ...

‘Man(kind) is free if he(/she) needs obey no person but solely the laws.’

With less of them our politicians might focus their minds creating the scaffold upon which to hang our hard won freedoms, who needs micromanagement.

What's being said elsewhere ...

... can you imagine a world where Cymdeithas yr Iaith (Welsh Language Society) imposed its views on unwary democrats in society without a health warning, the latest diatribe can be found at Wales Home here, if you read it you might recognise a certain intolerance towards anything without the 28 character alphabet.