Silk - Clichés or Answers?

It was with a certain amount of despair that I heard on the BBC that the Silk Commission:

will hold its first meeting at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on Friday

What a bloody depressing cliché. They may as well have launched the Commission down The Big Pit or on a mountain farm where the farmer had been arrested for shagging his sheep – if the Millennium Stadium is their starting point, we may as well accept that the ending point will be a report full of platitudes and bereft of substance.

If the Commission had any intention of delivering a visionary way forward for Welsh governance and finance they might, at least, have launched their consultation in the memorial hall of a deprived community or in the canteen of a thriving company. Either would have shown some appreciation of the needs of Wales.

Launching in the spiritual home of the 80 minute patriot bodes ill for the value of the Silk Commission!

Two faced Bryant

Chris Bryant MP's reaction to Roger Lewis' vicious attack on the Welsh:

"I can't believe Jonathan Edwards has risen to the bait," says Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda in South Wales. "Roger Lewis's piece is fatuous nonsense, but the last thing people want is a moaning version of Welsh nationalism. Wales is at its best when it is triumphantly insouciant about the criticism of others, and if we can't take a bit of scabrous attack without running to the police, it's a sad day for Wales."

Chris Bryant MP's reaction to Alun Cairns silly comment about the Italian football team:

Rhondda Labour MP Chris Bryant said: “David Cameron has had over two months to decide whether or not Alun Cairns should be sacked as the Tory candidate in the Vale of Glamorgan. “It’s very much decision time for David Cameron on this issue.
“Failing to sack Alun Cairns shows how indecisive Cameron really is when it comes to taking tough decisions.”

Sack somebody for making an ill informed joke about the Italians, but laugh off a scurrilous attack on the Welsh!

Typical Welsh Labour MP!

Not Covered?

From the Conservative Party Manifesto's Welsh Language Policy:

(We will) Create a Bilingual Nation – Introduce a Charter-Mark for businesses which will recognise Welsh language services. The scheme will be voluntary but will offer incentives for bilingual signage and Welsh language training for front-line staff.

As kitchen staff aren't front line and Carreg Môn doesn't appear to be a willing volunteer, what suport do the Tories offer these Welsh speaking workers?

Cymru na fydd - the heirs of Lloyd George?

There is an interesting post on the Liberal Democrat site Freedom Central that picks up on a comment made by Cynog Dafis the former Plaid AM and MP regarding demographic change in Ceredigion.

This is what Cynog said:

There has also been a demographic change in Ceredigion, to the point where up to half of the inhabitants are people who have either moved here themselves from England or are the children of people who have done so.
“This demographic change has reduced the number of people who have a Welsh perspective on politics.
“When the Liberal Democrat bubble was punctured towards the end of the campaign, voters elsewhere gravitated to the Tories or Labour. In Ceredigion, those parties don’t figure, so people tended to stick with the Lib Dems, whose only rivals were the Nats.


Cynog's comments are factually correct. A huge number of people have moved from England into the most rural areas of Wales and that demographic change does present an additional challenge to all political parties.

Plaid has risen to that challenge by making it clear that the party campaigns for the people who live in Wales, whatever their ancestry.

Of course the Liberal Democrats have jumped on Cynog's comments and condemned them as anti-English racism.

This comes as no surprise!

Since the advent of the National Assembly a consensus has developed between the Labour Party the Conservative Party and Plaid that being Welsh (in the widest possible sense of the word) is a positive thing, the Liberal Democrats have found a gap in the market and have attempted to exploit it by positioning themselves as the most ant-Welsh, even most racists towards the Welsh, party.

It is not a coincidence that the Lib Dems have only one Welsh speaking member in the Assembly, that it is the party that has benefited least from the Welsh lessons offered to Assembly members (0% success compared to very many successes in the other parties). It is not a coincidence that 39 out of 40 of the candidates in last week's election were not fluent enough to be interviewed on S4C and Radio Cymru, it is not a coincidence that well over half of the Lib Dem candidates were born outside Wales.

These things are not a coincidence they are the effect of where the Liberal Democrat Party has decided to position itself - as the anti Welsh Party in Wales. Lloyd George and (both) Tom Ellis' must be spinning in their graves!

Tip for pundits. Ask a sheep shagging joke in Wales, if you get a laugh you've found a Lib Dem strategist!

Number One Reason why I hate Labour

Thomas George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy

The most sycophantic Brit ever born in Wales. A man embarrassed by his nationality and his father's language, a man with a pathological hatred of all things Welsh. A man who would use and abuse his Welsh heritage for self advancement but refused to give anything back.

Some might claim that he is an exception rather than the rule. But when Wil Edwards MP lost his seat to Plaid Cymru in 1974 he put it down to the fact that for every one Cledwyn there are 10 George Thomases in the Labour Party.

This remains the truth today. For every one Carwyn Jones there are 10 Don Touhigs and Ian Lucases and Chris Bryants and Paul Murpheys in the party. People who make working class Welsh people feel inferior, rather than raising them up, as the Labour Party, of all parties, was created to do.

Huw's Anti-Welsh Insult

On Tuesday Huw Lewis AM posted on his blog a review of a Fabian Society pamphlet The Change We Need. This pamphlet looks at the lessons that the Labour Party in Britain might learn from the successes of the Obama campaign in the USA last year.

Huw goes on to explain the way that Labour in Wales can adapt the pamphlets' message to its own campaigns. As part of his explanation he says:

As the Democrats made a mockery of the “un-American” taunts of the right, so Labour should make a mockery of the “anti-Welsh” taunts of the cultural right here at home.

Unfortunately Huw Lewis fails to see the irony that it is statements like this that make many feel that the Labour party is institutionally anti Welsh.

The use of the word cultural in the quote here is clearly meant to be disparaging. It is part of an insult. Huw is using peoples' support for Welsh culture as a way of insulting them.

Huw's suggestion by coupling the word cultural with the word right is that all supporters of Welsh culture are also right wing in their politics. Some of us are but many are not. Huw's use of the term cultural right suggests that he dosn't belive that there is a cultural left, or if he does, that the cultured left could possibly accuse Labour of being "anti-Welsh". Now we all know that Huw doesn't like what he perceives to be the right, by coupling the world cultural with the word right he is telling us that he doesn't like the supporters of Welsh culture either.

So in his attempt to change the perception that Labour is anti Welsh, poor Huw is actually making the case.

Lost in translation #2

When I wrote about the need for a better Welsh Language computer translations service last week, I thought that such a service was needed for researchers, family historians and learners. It appears that I may have missed out a section of the community that desperately needs such a service. The anti-Welsh bigots who want to discredit the language by painting false nationalist graffiti!

As a number of bloggers have pointed out the Cai Maes Sais graffiti was produced by the piss poor translation service.

Others have already dealt with the issue (see some links below)

But I think that blogs should provide a community service, so for the sake of anti-Welsh graffiti artists posing as nationalists here is some guidance:

North of Dyfi Bridge use Saeson Allan
South of Dyfi Bridge use Saeson Mas
alternatively use the generic Twll Din Pob Sais throughout Wales.

On the other hand just grow up and accept that linguistic diversity is one of the treasures of humanity and something that should be valued by all.

Further comments:
James; Cynical dragon; The Secret Person; Hen Ferchetan; Rhys Wynne

Can we expect any apologies from the papers / broadcasters who peddled this rubbish?

No. I though not!

Existentialism, innit!

I am not renowned for my fine sense of humour and I have been known to take the huff easily when I perceive that Wales is being insulted in even the smallest way. That Pot Noodle "miners" advert really p****d me off, for example.

However I was surprised to see that 21 people had made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority about the Penderyn distillery advertisements on the grounds that they were anti Welsh and portrayed Welsh people in a stereotypical way. I thought that they were quite funny. Rather than maintaining the stereotypes that Male Voice Choirs are boring, Welsh Rugby fans are anti English and that Welsh women are thick I saw the advertisements as ridiculing those stereotypes.

Brit=Good / Welsh=Bad

Don Touhig MP is worried that Wales is too immersed in identity politics, a strange thing for a Labour MP to say in light of British Prime Minister, Gordon British Brown's British speech to the British Labour Party of Britain.

Even stranger when one remembers that the Labour in the Labour party is itself a badge of identity, which (albeit a long long time ago) use to identified the sort of person (a Labourer, a worker) who should support the Labour party.

In its purest non-partisan form elective politics is all about identity politics. Given a choice of three or four, totally independent candidates, the choice that an elector has to make is with which one do I, as an elector, identify, which one represents my identity!

By slaging off identity politics what Mr Touhig, is actually saying is that my Welsh Identity is less worthy than his British Identity, that the politics of his British Identity is good and that the politics of my Welsh identity is bad.