by Julian Ruck
Welsh Labour isn’t red, it isn’t new and it most definitely isn’t blue, it’s just plain old and totally out of date. The Welsh Labour government holds on to an exclusive reliance on the state with a stubbornness that would have made even Pyrrhus think again!
It continues to obsess on policies of devolved isolationism and ‘You don’t give….but you get, get get as much as you like and to hell with the British tax-payer!’
England owes us.
For an example of profound arrogance and a total denial of austere times where the ruling Welsh ‘elites’ are concerned, consider the following.
A separatist Welsh language, that has had literally billions of tax-payers’ money thrown at it over the last 40 years, has resulted in bi-lingual signs that few understand, pyramids of bi-lingual paperwork that the overwhelming majority of Welsh folk throw straight into the bin, a Welsh Health Service smartphone ‘app’ for Welsh speakers costing £26,000 being dumped because less than a 1000 people used it, a Welsh language S4C television channel that no-one watches (and not to mention its history of rampant management skulduggery), and a radio station – Radio Cymru – that demands £13 million pa of license fee money.
A couple of weeks ago Radio Cymru’s audience figures dropped to their lowest level ever (119,000 listeners per week), according to respected Radio Joint Audience Research (16.5.13).
In comparison BBC Radio Cornwall receives a modest £1.3 million and yet it has higher audience figures!
Overall, BBC Wales receives £167 million pa of tax-payers’ money for Welsh language broadcasting, which some might feel is fair enough. After all, in any civilised society minorities should be respected and their views always accommodated where possible; but here’s the rub, none of this money has resulted in any kind of increase in Welsh speakers, indeed the opposite obtains.
10 years ago 40% of welsh schoolchildren could speak Welsh, now it’s only a paltry 24%.
