One of the very annoying, disturbing, even, facts about Welsh politics is that you invariably find yourself entombed in a bizarre system where Welsh is the only language that will do. English is sidelined on the implicit message that the English have invaded us, damaged our language, and ought to be kept outside the council gates, out in the real world, where only a handful of people speak it.
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| Peter Rogers. He's had enough and quitted Anglesey Council. Image: Daily Post/Trinity Mirror |
Indeed, stop a typical person in the street and talk to them in Welsh, and their actual fluency and facility with the language will be very poor. Liberally interspersed with English words, bad corruptions of English words and of course, punctuated by plenty of 'yeah'. The pure Welsh are a minority breed, mostly approaching or beyond retirement age, and often having occupied or occupying well-paid public sector jobs. These are the so-called elite, often labelled the 'Taffia'.
Across Wales, only
23.4% of the population say they can speak Welsh. This has sparked panic amongst the Taffia, who want to force-feed everyone until the damn well speak the Mother Tongue.
Today, we learn from the Daily Post that Councillor Peter Rogers, an independent member on Anglesey, has resigned. The two reasons cited as prompting his departure are a lack of direction in the new, supposedly-revived council, and that the leader of the council is, it is alleged, not taking enough notice of non-welsh speaking members.
Cllr. Rogers has been labelled a "maverick" by the Daily Post. I'm not sure that's fair. Rogers became snared in a monumentally bizarre, expensive and ultimately
futile case brought against him by the now defunct North Wales Police Authority. In the tribunal, it was accepted that the Police Authority's code of conduct was not even engaged, because Rogers was not representing himself as a member of the Police Authority at the material time.
So, it seems that Rogers is giving us a hint of what is happening at meetings in the New-Age Council. Whether or not his allegations of bias against those not speaking the Mother Tongue are reasonable or not is something we will have to leave to one side. But Rogers clearly thinks this is going on. He also give us an indication that the council is not moving forwards in representing the people in the way he envisages as the right way.
Little of this will come as any surprise to the people of Anglesey. The Council has never worked properly since its inception, now a very long time ago. It has simply gone from one crash barrier to the next, locked in stupid personality clashes and struggles for local, described as "parochial" power.
It seems a return to normal might be underway.
But the people of Anglesey have a lot of blame to shoulder. They keep returning the same old people to power. True, a few new faces appeared after a bit of shuffling of ward boundaries this year. But there remain a group of old guards who ensure their popularity through (a) being welsh speaking and members of Plaid Cymru, and (b) being 'someone we know', however rubbish or questionable their past performance.
In short, the people of Anglesey vote for people that are not outsiders. The island does not like people from outside its ranks, and rarely allows such people to come into the party. Indeed, few outsiders want to come to Anglesey, leaving us with a limited pool of people at the bottom of the cooking pot to take up public positions for which they are often woefully unsuited.
Anglesey is out on a limb, both geographically and socially. It is rapidly being left behind. Its youngsters, thankfully, are leaving it behind, most notably because there is no meaningful work for them here anyway. Farms are closing shop as the average age of farmers rockets and their families move elsewhere. And the few large businesses that did come here - and only because of generous but unsustainable 'carrot' packages, have left. Even the population is undergoing a strange metamorphosis, as the large number of people who retired or moved here from England in the 60s and 70s now pass away or go back to their point of origin, doubtless to take up a place in an old people's home. Few want to buy their houses, which in some cases are falling apart as they wait for a buyer.
It is, I regret to say, the typical story of an island. Some in Scotland have come together and made island life not only attractive but developed nice cottage economies.
That seems impossible on Anglesey, for all we do is sit around, hoping that one nuclear power station will solve all our problems when the existing one has done nothing of the sort. Wylfa has remained a bizarre oasis of wealth and good jobs on the shores of an island that is otherwise an economic black hole. A new Wylfa will bring some wealth for some people, but not the majority. Not the single mums and unemployed who live in hovels, funded by a state that would rather label them as wasters, or worse.
No, there is no future for Anglesey. Accept that, and we might change tack and start from the beginning. We first need an identity, not dozens of different ones. It's a tourist island, nothing else. Put all effort into that, embrace and welcome tourists and the pounds in their pockets, and make it a really attractive, different place to be. Don't try to be like everywhere else.
