This year's Pulizleg Prize for pointless journalism must surely go to Graham Henry of the Western Mail for this article about the latest census figures on Welsh language ability. It carried the sub-headline:
New figures from the 2011 Census show the number of children speaking
Welsh is more than twice that of those aged 16-64 and the over 65s
In fact, every single figure quoted in the article was available from previous releases. The thing that was new in yesterday's release was that Welsh language ability was correlated with country of birth and national identity.
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Wales Online may have missed the significance of the new data, but at least Newyddion 9 understood what the new figures meant. They correctly reported that:
• of the 830,000 people in Wales who were not born in Wales, only 66,000 could speak Welsh
• in Ceredigion, 75% of those born in Wales could speak Welsh, but only 15% of those not born in Wales could
• in Gwynedd, 89% of those born in Wales could speak Welsh, but only 20% of those not born in Wales could
• in Sir Gâr, 54% of those born in Wales could speak Welsh, but only 13% of those not born in Wales could
For those who want the full data, the figures for Welsh language ability correlated with country of birth are here, and with national identity are here.
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But even though Wales Online aren't that good with numbers, they sometimes make up for it with their pictures. This one is brilliant:
I haven't seen this story from last night's Newyddion 9 reported anywhere else, so I thought I'd put it up for any who might have missed it:
In essence the report says that the leader of Neath Port Talbot Council has agreed to allow councillors to speak in Welsh once a year, on or around St David's Day.
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According to the South Wales Evening Post, the background to this story is that Rebeca Lewis, the Plaid Cymru Councillor for Trebanos, had wanted to speak at council meetings in Welsh. She was at first told by council officers that there was no simultaneous translation service available, even though the council's own Welsh Language Scheme states that:
Meetings of the Council
The Council's Standing Orders require that in all proceedings of the Council, the Welsh language and the English language shall be given the same status and validity, with appropriate advance arrangements being required for simultaneous translation facility requirements.
Naturally, she then tried to find out how much notice was required, and was eventually told that it needed four weeks' advance notice. However that wasn't of the slightest use because the usual notice period for council meetings is only two weeks. When she told the council officers that this was ridiculous, she was told that a week's notice would "probably" be enough.
To me, that seems fairly reasonable, not least because she had said that she wanted to speak in Welsh at every meeting. So the council officers would be in no doubt about what they were required to do on a regular basis.
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But that makes the story as reported by the BBC all the more strange. Why, if council officers had already agreed that simultaneous translation could be provided at every meeting other than those arranged at very short notice, would it be necessary to reach a "compromise" that reduced this to only one token meeting a year?
Even more strange is why the leader of the Plaid Cymru group, Linet Purcell, has agreed to this as a compromise. Or why another Plaid councillor, Del Morgan, was reported as saying this compromise was a step forward.
How on earth can getting something less than the Council's own Welsh Language Scheme requires, and less than the Council's own officers were reported as having agreed they could do only two weeks ago, be considered a step forward? We shouldn't be on our knees begging for and being satisfied with a crust of bread, Del Boi, we should be on our feet firmly insisting on rights that have been established by law.
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As the BBC report said, other members of the Plaid group on Neath Port Talbot Council are not at all content with the compromise that the leader of the Plaid group has agreed to, and I don't blame them. I'm quite frankly amazed that anyone in the party would be anything less than disgusted by the spinelessness of the Plaid leadership in Neath Port Talbot for ignoring both principle and good practice, and agreeing to nothing more than a token gesture instead.
To Beca, I would say that you should stand up for your right to speak in Welsh at every meeting you want to. Well done for taking this so far, but please don't give up now. This is too important a matter for such a shameful, shabby compromise.
I thought this snippet from WalesOnline yesterday was particularly enlightening:
Asked if he believed that Wales would be worse off if the UK voted to withdraw [from the EU], Mr Davies said:
"No, I don’t. I don’t believe that. Quite clearly if you look at the EU, at the moment we have a trade deficit of some 50bn euros, that's not to our advantage. And of course we pay £8-9bn a year into the European Union, and there are arguments against leaving the European Union as well, in its current form."
Those who are more financially astute will of course realize that Wales doesn't have a trade deficit of some €50bn, nor do we pay £8-9bn a year into the EU.
So why did Daul Davies answer the question in the way he did? I think he simply had no idea about whether Wales would be better or worse off ... even though he is, believe it or not, meant to be the Shadow Finance Minister in our National Assembly.
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In case anybody is in any doubt, the answer is that Wales would be financially worse off outside the EU, as Jill Evans conclusively demonstrated last November in the two documents that can be downloaded from this page.
It's not often I find myself agreeing with David TC Davies; but I do agree with one thing he said in this diatribe in the House of Commons yesterday:
"But it was the fruitcakes who warned against the euro ten years ago. We were all accused of being fruitcakes then, but the fruitcakes were right. Fruitcake is a cheap and reliable source of energy. I am for the fruitcakes. I am proud to be a fruitcake. Long may fruitcakes continue."
I came across this letter in today's South Wales Evening Post from the one and only Gwilym Levell:
Only UKIP can help us
The solution to the present unconstitutional over-government is not to add more over-government by establishing a separate government of England. It is to get out of the EU and abolish the Welsh Assembly.
Only the policies of UKIP can get us out of the recession.
Gwilym Levell
Whittington Street, Tonna
I think it's fair to say that a large percentage of UKIP's support in Wales comes from people who think the same way. With all the other parties in Wales now firmly committed to further devolution to Wales, UKIP was the only hope they had of reversing it.
There's only one problem ... or, to be more precise, two. UKIP no longer wants to abolish the Welsh Assembly, and it does want to establish an English Parliament with a separate English Government.
UKIP now supports devolution
The big thing to come out of UKIP's conference in Eastbourne this weekend for me was the release of a policy paper entitled "A Union for the Future".
The policy paper, written by Paul Nuttall MEP, is a complete rewrite of UKIP's badly written, unworkable devolution policy which basically involved abolishing the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales (but not NI) and replacing them with Grand Committees of British MPs.
This new policy paper has no such retrograde suggestions in it. The current British House of Commons would be replaced with an English Parliament with English MPs, an English Executive and an English First Minister.
So those in Wales who supported UKIP at the last election because they they wanted to see devolution either reversed or halted no longer have that reason to vote for them; and this explains why UKIP's support is falling in Wales, even though it is rising in England.
Congratulations to the Plaid Cymru candidates in Ynys Môn for a dramatic increase in seats and 34.3% of the equalized vote.
The "equalized vote" corrects the distortion of different voters having a different number of votes depending of the number of seats in the electoral division.
In a two-member division each voter is reckoned to have two half-votes; in a three-member division each voter is reckoned to have three third-votes. Therefore every voter has one whole vote.
With twelve of the thirty seats we were the big winners, and it should be possible for us to lead the new council with support from only three or four other councillors; perhaps the three from Labour, or perhaps some of the independents instead.
And even though the anglocentric media are headlining UKIP's success in England, it is nice to point out that Nigel Farage is completely wrong when he says that his party are getting "over 25% of the vote everywhere we stand". They only got 7.8% of the equalized vote in Ynys Môn ... although that is rather better than both the Tories (6.6%) and the LibDems (5.2%) managed.
I had to read Rhodri Talfan Davies' speech at the Celtic Media Festival last week several times to try and figure out what he had to say about Radio Cymru, and in the end have had to conclude that he wasn't saying much at all.
But one thing he said strikes me as being at the root of the problem. He said that:
"Welsh language broadcasting is sometimes seen as some sort of gold standard in minority language broadcasting".
Welsh-language broadcasting most definitely isn't any sort of gold standard. If we are looking for a standard to measure ourselves against, then I would suggest that the model of radio broadcasting in Euskadi is very much more appropriate than the model in Wales.
The language situation in Euskadi is very similar to that in Wales. Both countries are about the same size and have about the same proportion of people able to speak Welsh or Euskara. But in terms of radio broadcasting, Wales has only one national radio station broadcasting in Welsh, while Euskadi has three which broadcast in Euskara.
Euskadi Irratia is the original station, which used to carry all content, and now carries talk, news and general broadcasting. But two separate music stations have been added over the years, Gaztea in 1990 and EITB Musika in 2001.
To me it seems self-evident that Radio Cymru's biggest problem is that it cannot possibly cater for all Welsh-speaking audiences at the same time, and therefore I see Rhodri Talfan Davies' launch of a "nationwide conversation" about what it should broadcast as depressingly predicable and rather misdirected. Whatever might be gained in terms of new listeners by including new content will be lost in terms of alienating existing listeners. The emphasis must be on expanding Welsh-language provision rather than re-arranging deckchairs on a boat that cannot stay afloat in its current form.
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The question is whether the BBC is the best organization to deliver it. Spain, like the UK, has a state broadcasting organization called RTVE. Like the BBC, it is good at broadcasting a variety of content across the state but isn't good at regional variations. There was some regional radio provision in the form of RNE Ràdio 4. But because of poor ratings the network was shut down in 1991, and it only now exists in Catalunya where it struggles on with an audience of about 8,500.
The model that has proved far more successful is for broadcasting in the nations and regions to be the responsibility of the governments of the autonomous communities rather than of the central state broadcaster. In Catalunya the public broadcasting corporation is CCMA, in Galicia it is CRTVG, in Andalucía it is RTVA, and in Euskadi it is EITB. Once again, the Basque model might be the best one for Wales to learn from, for as well as radio stations broadcasting in Euskara it also has radio stations which broadcast in Castilian.
A centrally-funded organization is bound to think of itself primarily as a centralized provider, but there is a fundamental conflict of interest if it tries to be both a centralized provider and a vehicle for regional variations at the same time. Spain doesn't have that conflict of interest, the UK does.
This blog has been set up to complement the Syniadau Forums.
Much of what will appear on this blog will also appear in the Syniadau Forums, but the emphasis on this blog is slightly different. The forums are focused more on the structures and institutions that Wales will need to develop in order to become a successful independent nation, arranged on a subject by subject basis, but the blog will have more of an emphasis on day to day political news and developments.
People are welcome to reply or leave comments either here or on the Syniadau Forums. If anyone wants to initiate a new subject they are very welcome to do so there.
