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Last updated Monday August 25, 2008

The Welsh Assembly Visit 23rd October 2007

Debate on the day of Ivan's groups visit to the Welsh Assembly included:

The BBC job cuts and the implications for BBC Wales.  The possibility of gaining control of broadcasting at a devolved level and increasing numbers of welsh based shows.

Also: Education and current problems in regions in north Wales.  This part of the debate focused on a school where several failures had been brought to the attention of the relevant authorities and the local labour council was failing completely.

It was actually a Liberal Democrat member, Kirsty Williams, who came up with a suitable solution for the current situations and proposed it for the Labour Cabinet Ministers of the assembly to take on.

Kirsty Williams (click photo for more information)

The current breakdown of the Welsh Assembly by party is:

The current administration is a Labour/Plaid Cymru alliance.  For more information please visit:

http://www.assemblywales.org/

On this trip we also visited the terraced house where Neil Kinnock used to live and the Council offices for the authority where he was leader before moving onto parliament where he was leader of the Labour opposition from 2nd October 1983 - 18th July 1992 and then he moved on to Europe.

Neil Kinnock (click photo for further information)

The area is also home to the oldest religious site in Wales along with several new developments including a new road system, new housing and new hotel complexes.

Book Review

by Gwynfor Evans

The author of this book was a founding member and indeed the first MP for Plaid Cymru.  In this book he argues the south west of England and Cumbria and at one point some of the midlands then the old kingdom of Mercia, which stretched all across the midlands and beyond were, before the Roman invasion, Welsh speaking. Also that the Scottish and Irish are very closely linked, with Welsh being spoken there.  By page 17 the author is referring to these peoples as "Britons", noting that the rest of the English population was of German heritage.  This indeed is correct to the best of my knowledge, but what he describes here is a land united through customs and language and heritage.  One stretching from Ireland through Wales into England and Scotland then also over to Brittany.  So he is basically describing (with one or two small patches left out) Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  The difference being he includes in this area of shared heritage etc Brittany and Southern Ireland.  He also lays claim to the leader Arthur, who helped contain barbarians to a few areas including Kent and the Thames Valley, which therefore must mean the rest of Great Britain was not controlled by the "barbarians" and under the same common rule under the "Britons".  This is in 516 according to Annales Cambriae.  Therefore though we do not speak Welsh the book really shows documentation and evidence of why we should see a combined and united heritage and that we have several more reasons to see ourselves as British than to continue down the route of devolution.

With the development of the Welsh language from Britannic and of Welsh culture co-in siding with the Christian revolution it is obvious to the unbiased reader the basis for Wales to be a separate country, which is the goal of his political party only works if you look at a specific and convenient snap shot of time.  Even Neil Kinnock was a unionist.  Before I turned a page of this book I believed that the Welsh like the Scottish and the English should have an assembly type of governance for issues relating to the separate areas.  However reading this book has only strengthened my belief that we should fight to stay united and indeed that we have even more historical reasons and ties to each other.