By David
|
September 27, 2007
The majority language in Wales (pop. 3 million) is English. Despite compulsory Cymraeg lessons until the age of sixteen for everybody attending a State-run school in Wales - although not for those attending privately run schools - only about a fifth of the population of Wales speak the ancient tongue, a Brythonic branch of the Celtic family of languages which used to be spoken natively in the principality. The vast majority of residents of Wales simply cannot speak and don’t use Cymraeg in their day-to-day life.
In an entirely unsuprising moment of obtuseness, the Deputy Chief Constable of North Wales, Clive Wolfendale, has added to the national World Cup excitement by suggesting that English people carrying the English flag on their cars in Wales are behaving with discourtesy and indecency.
Some visitors again from the Welsh Office (hello) and if they come back they might like to know I think I’ll have something interesting for them soon about a fiddled poll, waste of taxpayers’ money, corruption, lies and Benford’s Law.
Consider the situation: money that was provided because of social networks rather than need; a project designed for prestiage rather than to be used; a lack of monitoring and accountablity; an [appointment] for show by somebody with little interest in the quality of the work. The outcome is hardly suprising: a project that should never have been built as built, and built badly.
By David
|
January 27, 2005
The AssemblyOnline website has had a thorough makeover. Looks like it’s going to be more debate about Welsh politics and the Assembly rather than simple making the Assembly’s own published content more accessible. Interesting.
By David
|
January 7, 2005
According to the server logs, Cloudsoup had 83 page requests through the National Library of Wales servers yesterday, and 386 from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
By David
|
November 3, 2004
When Blair & Co. were voted into office in 1997 we thought that a significant difference our new Labour Overlords (and I, for one, welcomed them) would make would be the proposed constitutional changes. House of Lords reform, Assemblies for Wales and Scotland, and so on. Now the North-East is being invited to vote in a referendum for a regional Assembly.
The Welsh Assembly hasn’t grasped the possibilities of RSS (or Atom) syndication. Although sites like AssemblyOnline have been providing RSS feeds of the Welsh Assembly media briefings and forum postings for some time, it seems the Welsh Assembly itself thinks you aren’t quite ready for it. Here’s what they say:
