The Welsh parliament

March 3rd is a big day for the Welsh Assembly.

A referendum is to held to ask the people of the principality to vote for increased devolved powers for the Assembly, including tax raising powers similar to Scotland and the power to make decisions without prior approval from Westminster.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, it is a bloody silly idea that every time the Assembly makes a decision in the areas in which they have devolved powers, they have to be referred to Westminster for a committee to decide whether they are appropriate. Effectively this hands London a veto over everything Cardiff wants to do. So what is the point of devolving powers under these conditions? It's silly and it just creates expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy.

Having said that, on the other hand we did ask Scotland and Wales whether they wanted their own Parliaments. Scotland grasped the nettle and went for it and on the whole this appears to be working quite well. But Wales bottled it and took the wishy-washy option of an Assembly. In effect this is just a big council with limitted authority.

So now they want to put things right and have another vote, although they seem careful not to rebrand this a parliament..

But from what I have seen on the news, the biggest problem seems to be finding anyone in Wales who knows what the issues are, or indeed gives a toss anyway. I expect a low turnout...

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And anyway, the Welsh aren't like us

You might have noticed that I have banged on a bit about the Welsh this week? Well, I'd like to bring it all to a close on a jolly note with a joke and a song...

The joke :

What do you call a sheep tied to lamp post in Cardiff?
Answer : A leisure centre

The song :
(It's not one of mine, but it made me laugh)



And the last word goes to Ali G....

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Welsh is a dead language

Dear call me Dave,

If you are looking to shave a huge amount of money from the national budget, can I suggest that you need to look no further than the amounts spent by National and local government in translating everything into foreign languages?

It's ridiculous. If people want to live here in the UK, then they should learn to understand English. And if they can't read your literature, and let them get one of their mates to tell you what it says.

And while you're at it, you could also slash 50% off the money given to the Welsh assembly at a stroke!

I recently returned from a trip to Wales. Everything was written in two languages - first Welsh, and underneath in English. Except in the south, where it is the other way around. I wonder if there is a bit in the middle where it is side by side?

But I digress. The fact is that this costs hundreds of millions of pounds and is completely unecessary.

English is the official language of the UK not Welsh. There are 60 million people in the United Kingdom and some 600,000 people in Wales speak Welsh. That equates to 1% of the population overall and approximately 21% of the population of Wales.

The Welsh Language Society openly admits that there is less than 0.1% of the population who only speak Welsh - and those are preschool age children who are growing up in families that the speak Welsh as a first language.

Yet every street sign is in Welsh and English, Every shop sign is in Welsh and English. Every tourist leafet. every piece of official literature. I could go on, but you get the picture.

Think of the environmental cost! Bigger signs, more paint, more ink, more paper. And why? The people who read them all speak English!

The Welsh assembly has interpretors who sit in on its proceedings, translating live through members' headphones. I can understand this in the United Nations - but in Cardiff!?! It's ridiculous. Everyone present can speak English.

That is what happens when you give a tin pot little principality - note that I say "principality" not "country" - its own parliament. They piss money up the wall to make themselves look important and pass silly laws to make it happen.

And don't tell me that Welsh is still a live language - because they still speak Latin in the Vatican but that doesn't mean that every Italian street sign is in two languages.

Sorry, Taff, but  the Welsh language is a quaint little anachronism and doesn't need to be plastered over everything in sight.

Get over it and move on...

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