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What's the Point of Britain?

Interesting article in The Times by Rachel Sylvester on 1 September. Now that Britain is just a medium-sized state why stick with it? What ever your view on the Lockerby Bomber decision it's interesting to note two facts. It took a Scottish Parliament Minister to stand up to the Americans in a way the 'Brits' never would, what Blair called the 'Love Actually moment' and related to that, the general increasing irrelevance of, or irritation with, Britain which the US feels.

Now that Britain can't offer the glory which always attracts a type of person who just like to be on the winning side, then what does Britain offer? Unlike a Welsh or Irish or Estonian state which are there to foster and promote weaker cultures and languages, the most appealing parts of British identity - comedy and popular music are independent of needing a state. After all, would the independence of four Britannic nations undermine 'British' comedy or pop music? Hardly ... it would probably strengthen it if anything. So, why stick with Britain?

Basically, there's nothing a British state can do which a Welsh or Scottish one can't do just as well or better. Now that the glory and prestige once attached to it is fading it will lose the affection of those fickle people who want to associate themselves with it. There is no point to Britain!

Welsh Baseball

At last, after years of waiting, suffering the Brit natfest (or even worse, English nat in Wales fest) which was the Ashes (haven't they bloody finished yet!) we get an item on Welsh news about one of closest things to an indigenous Welsh sport - Baseball.

It was on S4C's news program at 7.30pm Monday 17 August - about 23 minutes into the programme and BBC Wales. Good on Wyre Davies! Of course, this being 'Welsh' media the item was only broadcast because of the lack of support by the Olympic committee towards the game and also because the item was run on Radio 4's Today programme the previous Thursday - if it's been in 'national' (UK) radio then it must be a proper story see boys! It was also featured in the letters pages of the Times.

It's an excellent game, an honest working class game, which is played mostly in Wales (Cardiff and Newport) and Liverpool in England. View Wikipedia page. BBC Wales used to broadcast the annual Wales v England international in the mid 1980s, but that stopped. Why? Clip available on youtube. (ignore the cheesy music!)

I went to a school, like so many, that made us suffer playing cricket. The usual sports personalities of the year would go in to bat and bowl and would be there for the rest of the sports lesson, leaving the rest of us to lust after the girls or if they weren't about be bored rigid. Baseball, by comparison, gives everyone a chance, has no pretences, isn't a class bound English thin ... and yes, it's still an English outpost in Wales - notice the decidedly mute response from 'Welsh' cricket fans to the campaign for a Welsh national cricket team.

Had the BBC and S4C spent just a fraction of the money spent on covering the Ashes in Cardiff on baseball the game would be set up for years. Why isn't it promoted in schools? It's a much more democratic game - everyone participates, size and height doesn't matter, you could easily have mixed sex teams. Why won't the Assembly run with it? Owen John Thomas, Plaid's AM for Cardiff and Valleys, was a keen advocate of baseball. Maybe Mohammad Ashgar being from Pakistan is more inclined towards cricket, but what about good blokes like John Griffiths in Newport or Chris Franks? C'mon boys.

Why won't Golwg360.com or BBC Wales/Cymru news just include the scores - hardly a difficult job - everything else is listed? Don't the Welsh Baseball Union contact these people? How about S4C broadcasting the annual international with England - it can't get worse ratings than some of their programmes, the broadcast rights would be small, it would be a unique sport on the channel and would fill in time? With just a bit of promotional work the game could be played across Wales. Teachers - do the 'pepsi challenge' - give the kids a choice of playing cricket or Welsh Baseball and I'll take no bets which they'll prefer!

So, good to see an item of the final between Grange Albion and Grange Catholics - but next year I'd like to see more coverage on the Welsh media - web, tv and print!

Cymraeg, Quecha, Amara, Guarani - Save Struggle

Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia is making history. Not only taking control of the country's natural wealth which goes down well with the Brit left wing, but is also proving that the battle for economic control is the same as the one for dignity of marginalised languages and cultures... something some of our British nationalist friends in the Labour party conveniently forget.

My Spanish is pretty ropey, but from what I gather from this news item, the fantastic President has opened 3 university sites in Bolivia teaching in three of the states languages; Guarani, Quecha (language of the Incas) and Aymara (his people's language). This battle to win rights, dignity and normalising marginalised languages is the same as the fight in Wales or Brittany for Welsh and Breton education.

What serendipity. After denying the need or ability to develop a Coleg Ffederal, funny that Labour, with Plaid in government - and keeping to the One Wales pact, now goes about actually delivering a gear change in university education through Welsh with the delivery of the Coleg Ffederal Cymraeg. Evo Morales is doing the same in Bolivia. The Welsh nationalist project is a world-wide project not the spiteful one so long propagated by some Labour members.

And the proof, well, this item on the www.eblul.org site (the old Eurolang.net site) mentions that the Bolivian Ambassador will visit Machynlleth on 14 August. Why? Well to learn and hear from us Welsh about our struggle for linguistic rights and our efforts to normalise our language in our own country.

Fantastic! Funny, I don't think our Brit Nats friends like the Kinnocks of this world (and some AMs) will have much to contribute to that discussion. No doubt, were they in Bolivia they'd be doom-saying that 'we can't afford this', 'it's divisive', 'should be spent on schools (Spanish/English speaking of course) and hospitals'.

British Labourism has run it's course. It has misread the cultural change which is sweeping across the world. Labourism is a cult of the discredited modernist 20th century a Darwinism of culture and languages. Good riddance to it. It served us badly. Welcome to the new world where Wales talks like friends to Bolivians and Welsh is an asset not a problem. Viva La Revolución - in all our languages! May the conquistadors mentality of Bolivia and British nationalism in Wales perish!

Traning Manual For British Nationalists

Hat tip to Scottish side, 1820, for this. Of course substitute Wales for Scotland ... Chinese probably use same arguments in East Turkmenistan; Danes re Greenland; George III re the 13 colonies ... you get the gist!

Mebyon Kernow - Putting Cornwall Back on the Map!

BTW doesn't know enough about Cornish politics - why didn't the Welsh media give it some space, not even the eclectic Vaughan Roderick. But in any case, with a blue tide washing across the UK (it would include Wales were there local elections here - don't fool yourself) Mebyon Kernow got three of its members elected.

Especially heartening was the thumping and well-earned vote for MK leader, the 21st century's An Gof, Dick Cole - 78% of the vote! Overall the party managed 4% of the total Cornish vote. A good vote for the Cornish nationalists considering the lack of publicity which MK suffers from (as opposed to bigoted British Nationalists) and the fact that the party didn't stand in many wards. Their vote would undoubtedly have been higher had they fielded more candidates.

It seems the election of the first Cornish unitary authority ... I'd expect the first step to a Cornish Assembly... was a straight battle between LibDems and Tory with the Independent holding up well.
The Tory's took Cornwall which bodes badly for the LibDems at the next General Election. That could be good news for MK if they can garner the anti-Tory vote in the future.

I'm not sure if the MK team are disappointed or not with the election as there was no commentary on their website as this was being written, but from where we're standing it seems they have a lot of work to do but a good platform to work on. MK have done a heroic job to place St Piran's flag flying higher than ever and get a Cornish national agenda on the Cornwall 'county' council. A stronger Cornwall means a stronger Wales.

Kernow bis vykhen!

Greenland Awakes!

Change is afoot in Greenland. In a national election held to elect a government as it enters a new enhanced form of self-government within Denmark on 21 June, the voters have gone for a left-of-centre nationalist party Inuit Ataqatigiit, a sort of Greenlandic Plaid Cymru .

This is good news. The voters in Greenland have seen that after 30 years of rule by the more cautious devolution party, they want a new party for a new constitutional set-up... will the same be true of Wales? Lets hope so.

BNW is all for independence for Greenland but as we've written before, we believe that the Danish connection is an important one as trilingualism - Greenlandic, Danish and English is better for a small linguistic community like Greenlandic than bilingualism where the second language, English, is such a strong and potentially fatal one for the smaller language. From the Greenlandic point of view, keeping Danish as a second language would enhance Greenland's independence not undermine it. The lesson from Nunavut, the semi-autonomous Inuit Canadian province next door confirms this. For small linguistic communities like Greenlandic or Welsh isn't that speaking another language is a threat but that speaking only one other language is a threat - it's best for us to be trilingual not bilingual.

It seems, that now the Greenlandic language and community is the dominant one in terms of number and confidence that Danish is no longer a threat. There's a lot to be said then for keeping the Danish connection therefore... a connection which stretches back centuries and is a window on a wider (and quite appealing) Scandinavian culture.

Maybe Greenland could have independence within a Danish commonwealth along with the Faroe Islands - another nation, were it governed by a more powerful linguistic community, English in Scotland or the UK for instance, would have seen it's language lost and economy weaker - see the Shetland islands as a comparison.

In any case - Greenland leads the way where Wales will follow!