Stradey Park - the men in suits put the champagne on ice

The convoluted and seemingly endless battle over the controversial Stradey Park development in Llanelli seems to moving towards a climax, with distraught locals and a clearly less than enthusiastic Welsh Government on one side, and the powerful commercial interests of Carmarthenshire County Council, Taylor Wimpey and the Scarlets on the other.

Work on the site is now in full swing even though the Welsh Government issued a section 18 stop order on the renewal of outline planning permission while it considered new call-in requests. The work is going ahead on the strength of reserved matters planning permission granted by the council in 2010 which the Welsh Government found it was unable to call in because of a legal technicality.

Of course, what may be a legal technicality for the men in suits translates into the very real risk of catastrophic flooding for local people.

Taylor Wimpey appears to be very confident of the outcome of this game of chess, and has now paid  £2.8 million in Section 106 money to the council, with the balance (£4.6 million plus interest) being promised for March 2014.

Before anyone gets out the champagne to celebrate this sudden windfall, it is worth remembering that the council took this money out of its reserves several years ago to pay for the new stadium at Parc y Scarlets.

Still outstanding is a further £2.25 million raided from the council's reserves in 2007 and forwarded to the Scarlets as a soft loan.

Councillors will have an opportunity to quiz the club's management when it shows up at the October meeting of the full council, an invitation which has the words "stage managed" written all over it.

The purpose of the visit is not yet clear, although clearly the final repayment of the section 106 money will be a cause for back slapping, possibly to soften up councillors before they are asked to approve a new aid package for the financially challenged club.

The Scarlets scheme always had the enthusiastic backing of the council's chief executive (it was his first major new project after arriving in Carmarthen fresh from the debacle of Princess Royal Arena in Boston), and was undertaken despite warnings from external auditors that the business plan was "extremely challenging".

The auditors have been proved right, and the club's accounts show that it is insolvent. Fortunately it has the exclusive use of the stadium rent free under the terms of its 150 year lease until such time as it makes a £1 million annual profit. That day is somewhere over the horizon in a dim and distant future.

Perhaps in 140 years from now when a packet of crisps costs £500,000, the great great grandchildren of our present councillors will chuckle when the first contribution finally arrives.

Not surprisingly, the stadium is regarded by the club as a huge financial asset, even though it does not own it.

Coming very soon will be another report on a deal which shows how, if you are very lucky, you too could make pots of money by flogging off something you don't own.

Postscript

Peter Hain has just been on the Today Programme reminiscing about negotiating an agreement with Spain over Gibraltar which he said would have enshrined people's right to "enjoy a pint of beer" on the Rock. The agreement was no such thing as it was vetoed by the Spanish Government, and of course drinking beer is prohibited in Spain, but why quibble about mere details.

This brought to mind the curious part played by the Orange One in the Scarlets saga back in 2006 when he wrote to the then Environment Minister, one Carwyn Jones, to drop a not very subtle hint:

"I understand that you have decided to "call-in" the planning application to redevelop the site of the current Stradey Park stadium. This is, of course, entirely a matter for the Welsh Assembly Government and it is right that all issues are properly considered. However, there are concerns about the possible implications of an undue delay in the planning process and I would welcome your views on whether this can be avoided.

I understand that the application will allow the Llanelli Scarlets Rugby Club to both sort out its financial problems and contribute towards the construction of a new state-of-the-art stadium and training facilities.

As a keen rugby supporter, I believe that Welsh rugby should have four commercially viable teams, and the Scarlets, with their proud history and tradition, are of vital importance to the future of Welsh rugby. The outcome of the planning application and the timescale involved could have significant financial implications for the Scarlets, and I feel that these also need to be carefully considered, together with the protection of local concerns, when deliberating the application.

I hope that it is possible to come to an early decision on this matter and I should also be grateful if you would keep me informed of progress"

Car parking charges, Rebecca and the Barnet connection

Around about 170 years ago Carmarthenshire and some of the surrounding counties were in turmoil in what we now call the Rebecca Riots.

The Daughters of Rebecca would be called grassroots activists nowadays, as they meted out justice to racketeering landlords, Anglican clergymen who demanded their tithes from non-conformists and other representatives of the Establishment. A particular target for Rebecca and her followers was toll gates where locals were forced to pay extortionate charges as they went about their business.

Merched Beca - Rebecca's Daughters

In the end London sent in the troops, and the movement fizzled out. It did however notch up some important successes, including an act of parliament to sort out the turnpike trusts.

The racketeering landlords, greedy Anglican clergy, turnpike trusts, workhouses and Tory magistrates all have their modern counterparts: the privatised utilities, the banks, the oil companies, developers, "consultants", Virgin Trains, BT and even our local authorities, to name but a few.

Labour-led Carmarthenshire County Council is gearing up for a new wave of privatisations as it plans to deliver services in what the chief executive calls "a different way", and the council's car parking charges are the modern equivalent of the old turnpikes.

Last month residents of the London Borough Barnet won an important case in the High Court to stop their council from pushing up charges for parking permits as a way of generating extra income. The judge said that the 1984 Road Traffic Regulation Act "is not a fiscal measure and does not authorise the authority to use its powers to charge local residents for parking in order to raise surplus revenue for other transport purposes".

The council intends to appeal the ruling, but in the meantime it has sparked a debate over whether it is legitimate for councils to use car parking as a means of raising revenue.

Prior to the High Court ruling, the uppity residents of Barnet also took on their council over a disastrous new parking regime which introduced exorbitant pay-by-phone charges in the Borough's high streets. The introduction of this scheme led to a slump in business for traders, and culminated in the disgrace of a leading Tory councillor who assaulted the proprietor of a cafe when she filmed him flouting the charging system he himself had introduced.

The council has since abandoned the scheme.

Resident parking permits are confined to the urbanised parts of Carmarthenshire, but the council has been busily racking up other parking charges for several years.

Not all that long ago parking was free in most of the county's smaller towns, but by 2011 we were paying 40p per hour, and the County Council announced that it would be raising those charges year-on-year to 70p an hour by January 2014. No doubt plans are already being drawn up for the period after that.

A spokesperson for the English Local Government Association told Radio 4's Today Programme the other day that rises in car parking charges in many local authorities were not keeping place with inflation.

The ramping up of charges in Carmarthenshire is clearly far outstripping the rate of inflation, and we know thanks to freedom of information requests submitted by some community councillors that the County Council is making huge and growing profits from its car parks as charges escalate while maintenance is minimal.

The effect on our small towns is crippling. Why pay 60p to go and buy a loaf of bread and a newspaper in your local high street when you can park for free at a supermarket?

I wonder how Rebecca's Daughters would have reacted to this?


Footnote


The London Borough of Barnet and Carmarthenshire do not on the face of it have much in common, but Barnet is where the chief executive of our county council began his ascent up the local government career ladder, and he worked alongside the brother of the doyenne of the Barnet blogging scene, Mrs Angry.

For a brief period Cneifiwr also lived in the London Borough of Barnet where he used to frequent some of the rougher, spit and sawdust drinking holes. No doubt those have all long since been gentrified, and it is unlikely that he would have bumped into the genteel Mrs Angry sipping her pint of stout in such places.

Mrs Angry contemplating the downfall of Cllr Brian Coleman

Mrs Angry and some of the other Barnet bloggers took a very close interest in the Caebrwyn libel case, and Mrs A wrote a superb series of court reports while the case was in progress. Friendships were formed, and the Carmarthenshire and Barnet bloggers now occasionally compare notes.

No doubt there will be those in County Hall who suspect that there is some sort of conspiracy afoot between the scurrilous* bloggers of Carmarthenshire and the urban sophisticates of Barnet, but the truth is that we are just not that disciplined.

* A term used by the council chief executive to describe the Carmarthenshire bloggers.

An Open Letter to Marc Bolland, CEO of Marks & Spencers plc

Dear Mr Bolland

Things have not been easy for M&S in recent years, and you have quite a job on your hands turning the fortunes of the company round. I wish you well.

M&S is a great brand, but perhaps the brand is part of your problem as well. Woolworths was a great brand once too; everyone knew what Woolworths stood for, and a lot of people felt affection for it, but that wasn't enough to save it, was it?

Let me tell you about one of your smaller stores in Carmarthen, the oldest town in Wales. A lot of people here speak Welsh, and a lot of people go shopping in Carmarthen from the smaller towns and villages around it. A lot of them speak Welsh too.

True, there are lots of people in Carmarthen who don't actively use the language, but who still know quite a lot of Welsh. A bit like the policeman I will tell you about shortly.

Carmarthen is also a popular destination for lots of tourists who come to this part of the world to enjoy the countryside and the coast, including growing numbers of people from the Netherlands. Lots of these visitors also like the fact that Wales is different, with its own history and culture - something which is obvious from the place names.

For quite a long time now quite a lot of local people have felt unhappy about the way in which your company treats the Welsh language. Many of them like your products, and they have been asking the company to recognise the fact that this is a bilingual community with a distinct culture and outlook.

But recently the Carmarthen store was refurbished, and most of the bilingual signs were taken down and replaced with signs in English only. In the food hall there is only one small bilingual sign. If it weren't for the way many of the customers speak, you could be in Croydon, Coventry or Colchester.

You will not be surprised to hear that this change did not go down well, and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) has tried lobbying your management to change things. Last month we organised a protest outside the store and collected a huge number of pairs of men's underpants to convey the message that your language policy is "pants".

Cymdeithas celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, and has notched up many successes during that time. One of the society's core values is non-violence, and our campaigns quite often have a large element of humour.

The store ignored the pants protest, and the managers did not come out to talk to us, so this month we decided to take the protest into the shop.

We worked out that we could bring the food hall to a halt for a few minutes if just a small group went round filling baskets and trolleys with non-perishable food items (we did not want to cause any damage), went through the checkouts and then refused to pay for the goods, while asking to speak to the manager.

This worked very well because we look just like any other M&S customers, as you can see from this picture:

Some unhappy customers

While we were waiting for the store manager, there was a commotion at the tills because a large and very aggressive man pushed through the queue and shoved one of our members into a pile of empty baskets. At first I thought he was an irate member of the public who was angry at being kept waiting, but it turned out he was the store security manager.

He also managed to upset some of the other customers who were not part of the protest, as you will see if you watch the CCTV footage.

Although he works in a store whose customers are overwhelmingly Welsh, and many of them Welsh-speaking, your security manager could not speak Welsh and had a strong London accent. To be perfectly frank, he would not look out of place in a march by one of those far-right groups you get in England.

Given that a security manager will inevitably have dealings with the public in stressful and difficult circumstances, perhaps it would have been better to employ a local person with better inter-personal skills.

It's a question of cultural sensitivity really, isn't it?

Anyway, shortly afterwards a store manager called Jane arrived. She could speak Welsh, and calmed things down. She spent about ten minutes talking to us, and explained that many of your local staff were unhappy with the rebranding. Apparently your senior management will, provisionally, be meeting on 17 September to discuss the situation.

Jane was diplomatic, and she said she would sort things out with the security manager, who was hovering on the fringes while the discussion was going on, talking loudly into a walky talky.

It turned out that he had called the police and made an allegation of assault.

The police arrived and spoke first to the security manager. The young constable then spoke to us. He said he could not speak Welsh at first, but it turned out that he could understand the language very well. He  explained that he would have to investigate the allegations, and would go through the CCTV footage. We are confident that that will show what really happened. Nobody was arrested.

Our conversation with the police officer was also relaxed and friendly.

The reason I am telling you about all of this is because it demonstrates the value of cultural sensitivity. The staff at the checkouts, the store manager and the police all deserve praise for the way they responded, and we made it clear that our protest was not aimed at them or the customers, but the intransigence and lack of sensitivity shown by the company you run.

What we are asking for in Carmarthen is a store which recognises the place of the Welsh language in the community, which encourages the staff to use their Welsh and actively recruits people who can speak the language.

Wales also produces a lot of very high quality foodstuffs, and we would like to see your company recognise that by offering Welsh goods, clearly labelled as such. We think your customers would like that too, and prefer to see a store which identifies with the local community over one which has displays such as this:

'Best of British' display, M&S Carmarthen

You see, Mr Bolland, outside your store, you will not see many Union Jacks in this part of the world. It is true that opinions are divided about the Union Jack, the royal family and other symbols, but a glance at the political map will show your market researchers that most people round here are not very keen on such things.

Again, it's about cultural sensitivity and trying to be a part of the community you serve. Or to put it into corporate language, it's about your brand.

In the meantime, we are planning our next protest because we feel that too many promises have been broken in the past, but if you would like to invite us to speak at your meeting on 17 September, we will be very happy to come along.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Digwyddiad cas ym Marks a Spencer Caerfyrddin

Yn sgil protest ddi-drais Cymdeithas yr Iaith yn erbyn polisi iaith M&S yng Nghaerfyrddin heddiw, galwodd rheolwr diogelwch yr heddlu a chyhuddo un o'r aelodau o ymosod.

Roedd yr aelod, dyn o Lanelli, yn aros wrth y tiliau i gael siarad â rheolwraig y siop pan gyrhaeddod dyn arall â walky-talky, a gwthio ei ffordd drwy'r rhes.

Gan fy mod i'n sefyll ychydig droedfeddi oddi wrth y til, roedd hi'n amlwg taw y dyn diogelwch oedd yn hwpo a neb arall. Gwylltiodd menyw nad oedd yn rhan o'r brotest oherwydd ymddygiad ymosodol y dyn boliog ag acen Cocni.

Cyrhaeddodd rheolwraig y siop wedyn, ac mi wnaeth hithau ei gorau glas i esbonio'r sefyllfa. Bydd cyfarfod arfaethedig o'r bwrdd ym mis Medi, meddai. Roedd y staff lleol wedi bod yn pwyso ar y cwmni i newid ei bolisi.

Ar wahân i un arwydd (Talu a Chasglu) yn ei Neuadd Fwyd, mae Marks a Spencer Caerfyrddin yr un peth ag unrhyw M&S ar ochr arall Clawdd Offa. Gallwch chi brynu Fruit and Vegetables neu fanteisio ar eu special offers. Colchester, Caergrawnt, Coventry, Caerfyrddin - does dim ots, Saesneg yw iaith M&S, ac mae eu cwsmeriaid Cymraeg yn gorfod derbyn pethau fel y maen nhw.

Chafodd y protestiwr mo'i arestio, a bydd yr heddlu'n archwilio ffilm CCTV o'r digwyddiad.

Thrashed with a feather duster

News from Suffolk where the Royal Town Planning Institute has rejected a complaint against consultants Nathaniel Lichfield Partners made by locals opposing plans for a new Tesco supermarket.

As reported previously, Nathaniel Lichfield has once more been under the spotlight for its curious habit of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, or to put it another way, helping the large supermarkets with planning applications while advising local planning authorities on...erm...supermarket planning applications.

The results of this cosy collaboration can be seen all over Britain, with council planners being advised by NLP that even small market towns can comfortably accommodate a couple of supermarkets. It will sometimes concede that the arrival of a Tesco, Sainsbury's, etc. will hit local businesses, but argue that they were over-trading anyway.

NLP is a prominent member of the Royal Town Planning Institute which regulates the activities of its members. Needless to say, the Institute rejected a complaint that NLP had a conflict of interest, but suggested that the firm might in future want to stop talking about working for Tesco's and "consider further demarcations" between its public and private sector work.

Or in slighlty plainer language, it's OK to work for Tesco's and the others as well as local authorities. Just don't tell the public you are doing it.

Oh, and it would be awfully kind of you to think about creating a Chinese wall to ensure that the same staff don't work on both sides of the fence. We know that you have been telling all and sundry that you have some such wall in place, but we're not really convinced that you do. Could you do something about it before we get any more tiresome complaints in from busybody members of the public?

In a nutshell, then, the RTPI is not going to do anything about this scandalous state of affairs, and NLP will carry on with the business of making money.

Outside the cosy world of council planning departments, developers and extremely highly paid consultants where everyone knows everyone, public confidence in the planning system is at rock bottom and has been for a long time.

Westminster, or in the case of Wales the Senedd, could make a start by insisting that local authorities use properly regulated and truly independent consultants who do not depend on the supermarkets or large developers for a significant chunk of their business.

Business as usual - Carmarthenshire's Local Development Plan

Carmarthenshire County Council's Ministry of Spin recently went to town publicising the results of an opinion survey which showed, among other things, that most people in Carmarthenshire feel that the council keeps them well informed, and this put the council at the top of the rankings among Welsh councils.

The PR release forgot to mention that only just over half of the people surveyed (52% to be precise) felt this way, and it completely forgot to mention that when it came to listening to what its people have to say, Carmarthenshire came bottom of the poll.

The positive results for keeping people informed probably had a lot to do with Carmarthenshire News, the increasingly bulky council newspaper which drops through everyone's letterboxes every other month. Sadly,  most readers of this publication will be blissfully unaware of all the important council news which does not make it into the glossy pages of this propaganda sheet.

Without a doubt, one of the most important things happening in Carmarthenshire at the moment is the creation of a Local Development Plan which will have far-reaching consequences for just about everyone in the county.

The Council has just launched the latest round of statutory consultations on the plan, but you won't find a word about this in the latest edition of Carmarthenshire News, although it does devote a full page to children's puzzles and games.

Carmarthenshire is not alone in refining its LDP. The process is going on all across Wales, and the most frequently heard criticism of all of them is that they base their projections for housing, etc. on a sharp rise in the population in the period up to 2021.

The forecasts were drawn up long before the 2011 census which showed that population growth in many parts of Wales had stagnated. The census also showed that in many parts of Wales there are very large numbers of empty properties, including in Carmarthenshire.

Like other Welsh councils, Carmarthenshire has no doubt had a lot of feedback from local people criticising the population forecasts, and its response to the criticism has been to increase allocations for new houses under the plan by 7% to 16,240.

Students of Carmarthenshire consultations will not be surprised, and neither judging from the results of the opinion survey will the public at large.

The plan is paving the way for huge new housing developments across the county, and there is barely a village which will escape. In Newcastle Emlyn (population about 900), the plan makes an allocation of 89 new houses. That does not sound a lot until you realise that this would represent a population increase of about 20%.

The new draft LDP also has a lot to say about the Welsh language, and the council has produced a glossy new Supplementary Planning Guidance to deal with this. This blog will look at this piece of window dressing in more detail next week, but in essence what it does is to say that language impact assessments and 'linguistic statements' are a wonderful thing, although they will only be necessary for developments which are outside the allocations set out in the LDP.

In other words, the 16,240 new houses included in the plan will not have any impact, and anyone expecting the new policy to prevent a recurrence of what happened in Penybanc will be in for a shock. And even if a developer comes along and wants to double the number of houses allocated to a particular site, the council is likely to declare that the increase is "within the tolerance levels".

Business as usual, in other words.

Anyone wishing to write in and give their view has until 13 September to do so. The place to start is here.

Groundhog Day at Towy Community Church

The bizarre circus which is Towy Community Church appears to have consulted its PR advisers over at County Hall and decided once again to remove an article from its website advertising its intentions to set up a "life centre" in Carmarthen with Mercy Ministries, the controversial Tennessee-based evangelical movement which specialises in administering large doses of biblical tracts and "deliverance" therapy to young women with anything from eating disorders to what it terms "inappropriate sexual behaviour".

A previous article and link to Mercy Ministries disappeared from the church's website shortly before it went back to Carmarthenshire County Council to ask for a large cash injection back in December 2011, only to reappear in a reinvigorated form immediately after the gala opening of its bowling alley. At almost exactly the same time as it was submitting a licensing application to sell alcoholic drinks, despite promising local residents that it would not do so when it "consulted" them before the alley was opened.

Eagle-eyed readers have spotted several other changes to the church's website in recent days, all involving the removal of content.

Fortunately Caebrwyn has kept screenshots of some of the more interesting material which would otherwise have been air-brushed from the record.

Whatever their religious beliefs, local people must now be asking themselves whether they can believe anything Towy Community Church has to say.

Is Welsh difficult?

Update

There has been some confusion in the comments section about what Rhys David looks like. So to clear matters up, here is a handy guide:

R.S.Thomas

 

Meri Huws

Rhys David

___________________________

In what seems to becoming an annual ritual around this time of year, the Institute for Welsh Affairs has published another article peddling the myth that the Welsh language is inherently difficult and needs to become more like English. It's a bit like Rex Harrison singing "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" in "My Fair Lady".

The author this time is Rhys David, a former journalist and executive with the Financial Times. Last year it was Colin Miles, another retired businessman (see Cneifiwr's reaction and link here).

Rhys David has some interesting things to say in what is quite a wide-ranging article, but he devotes a lot of space to explaining why in his view Welsh is a difficult, stuck-in-the-mud, geriatric sort of language.

The Welsh language faces many challenges, and it is fair to say that the perpetuation of this myth is one of them.

It is very common to hear Welsh speakers say to learners, "Welsh is a very difficult language, isn't it?" They invariably say this with good intentions, but the correct, if somewhat rude, response should be, "If it's that bloody difficult, how come you can speak it?"

Unlike Colin Miles, Rhys David is certainly familiar with the language, and from what he writes, he most likely speaks it. The trouble is that he looks at Welsh through the prism of English.

After some preliminary thoughts, Rhys gets into his stride by comparing Welsh to software. Although it's been around for a long time, "we only have the beta version at present and it needs some reworking to make it fit for purpose".

Let's take a deep breath and move on to the substance.

All languages have their quirks and irregularities. English has around 200 irregular verbs in common use (I see, I saw, I have seen). Modern spoken Welsh has five. Yes, five (bod, mynd, cael, dod, gwneud).

English has two or arguably three present tenses (I go, I am going, I do go). Modern spoken Welsh has just one.

To make a present tense in Welsh, all you need to know is the forms of the verb bod ("to be") and some vocabulary:

Mae e'n mynd.  He goes/he is going/he does go.

Replace the 'n with the word wedi and you've got:

Mae e wedi mynd   He has gone.

Now compare the four English permutations, including the forms "go, goes, going, gone" with the two Welsh sentences. Which of these languages is making a meal out of things?

Rhys goes on to talk about "archaic declensions". In grammar "declension" is a term used to describe how nouns, pronouns and adjectives change depending on what is going on around them. Welsh nouns and pronouns do not decline execpt to show plural forms. Ever. Nhw in Welsh can be either "they" or "them" depending on whether the English pronoun is a subject or an object (direct or indirect). In English you add 's to show possession (genitive case). Jac's car. Welsh: Car Jac.

True, there are a small number of feminine adjectives in Welsh in regular use, but they have never caused anyone to have a nervous breakdown, and people happily sing Gafr wen, wen, wen, ie finwen, finwen, finwen....  As far as I know, nobody has ever objected to the use of wen and insisted on singing gwyn ("white" in English).

Rhys is not very happy that Welsh has masculine and feminine grammatical gender, forgetting that among European languages English is very unusual in not having grammatical gender. Quite a lot of European languages have three genders, but that has not threatened the existence of German, Polish or Russian.

Welsh has multiple plural forms, he complains. But so too do German, Italian, Swedish, Greek and Russian. English also has a few oddities in this department (children, mice, men....).

Rhys finds that using peidio to make negative commands is also unsatisfactory. In English you say "run!", but if you want to make that negative you have to say "don't run!" You see, Rhys, in English you have to use the word "do" as well as the word "not" to make a negative command. In Welsh you can just stick the word paid in front of the verb. Paid siarad rwtsh. Or if you prefer, paid â siarad rwtsh.

Staying with negatives, Rhys thinks Welsh is too complex here as well. Compare and contrast:

Aeth e     He went

Aeth e ddim  He did not go.

Which language is making life difficult?

Of course mutations make an appearance on the charge sheet as well. Most people who speak Welsh as a first language have not got a clue about the rules for mutations. They do mutate, without thinking about it, and very often not according to the rules set down in the books. Mae Dylan yn mynd i Llanelli, people say, but mae Eirlys yn mynd i G'fyrddin.

In fact the rules for using mutations in written Welsh are pretty easy to learn. Much more difficult, in fact impossible, is to formulate clear rules for how mutations are used in spoken Welsh. Very often spoken Welsh avoids mutations which are standard in the written language, but sometimes spoken Welsh introduces mutations where the written language has none (after the word os for example).

Recently I saw someone who is one of the most prolific Welsh tweeters on Twitter worrying that he did not know the rules for mutations, and yet he consistently writes good Welsh and has interesting things to say.  

Paid â phoeni, Hedd.

The point is, Rhys, that mutations are not something anyone should lose sleep over. If you are a learner, go with the flow. Copy what you hear other people saying. If you want to write and cannot get to grips with the rules, there are handy mutation checkers available.

Welsh is no harder and no easier than any other European language, Rhys, so please stop perpetuating this depressing and destructive myth.

Finally, Rhys David reckons we need something like the Academie Francaise to regulate and standardise the language. He also thinks that Welsh is somehow not strong enough to evolve naturally as other languages do.

The truth is that Welsh is evolving and changing naturally, and it always has. All languages do. That is why you hear people saying things like fi'n mynd or car fi. Judging from what he says about the sort of Welsh to be found on Facebook, Rhys David is not too keen on this sort of thing.

So what would an academy do? Which forms would it give its seal of approval to? Yr wyf yn mynd? Rwyf yn mynd? Dw i'n mynd? Dwi'n mynd? Or one of the several other possibilities?

A number of countries have tried to legislate on language, and they have nearly all come a cropper. The German speaking world tried to introduce a series of spelling reforms back in 2006, and the arguments are still raging.

Norway tried over a long period to merge the two distinct forms of Norwegian, with penalties for children who used the "wrong" word for seven at school. It simply upset everyone.

One of the few examples of successful legislated language change in Europe was the simplification in Sweden of the rules for using the words for "you". Now you say "du" to one person or "ni" if you are addressing more than one person. The reason why that reform took hold had a lot to do with the insanely complex system which preceded it, where if you wanted to be polite to someone you had to refer to them in the third person.

Did Mr Eriksson have a nice holiday? Did his son enjoy it too? And has he stopped wetting the bed yet?

But who wet the bed? Mr Eriksson or his son?

There are lots of things which need to be done to promote the Welsh language and encourage its use, but fiddling with the language itself is not one of them. The one sure way of killing the language would be to strip it bare to make it conform to English rules.

And no, Rhys, Welsh is not a piece of dodgy beta software.

What you won't be reading on the beach this summer

In the small but incest-free world of Welsh blogs Oggy Bloggy Ogwr is the place to go if you want to read about the legislative output of the Senedd. Fortunately he writes about other things as well because, let's face it, there really is more excitement in watching paint dry than the turgid and distinctly unambitious stuff churned out in Cardiff Bay.

In fact one of the specialities of the Welsh Government and its civil servants is measures, laws, technical advice notes and all the rest of it which sound vaguely interesting, but which turn out to be utterly pointless and of no use whatsoever. However they do enable Carwyn & Co to put a tick in the box, claim that they have acted on sustainability/the Welsh language/climate change/local democracy/child poverty, etc., etc. before moving on to the next topic, safe in the knowledge that nobody much will bother to look at what they have actually done.

Take the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2011, enacted by the Senedd. Section 5 of this piece of legislation deals with the production of annual reports by councillors. What it says in plain language is that councils must make provision to allow councillors to produce annual reports detailing their activities during the previous year, and that councils will publish reports produced by councillors or members of the council executive.

The full, and rather dry text of this part of the Measure can be read at the end of this post, but the one thing it does not say is that councillors or members of the council executive must produce an annual report. This rather glaring loophole was picked up earlier this year by Vale of Glamorgan County Council (report here).

Councils are also supposed to publish details for the arrangements for publication of annual reports.


The subject of councillor annual reports came up in a council committee in Carmarthen in March of this year (agenda here). The report contains the following underlined warning:

The Assembly Government expects that the first annual reports will be published no later than the end of June 2013.

The report also warns councillors that they may only mention activities undertaken in their role as councillor. This will come as a disappointment to all those who were looking forward to hearing accounts of Ivor Jackson's cruises or Meryl Gravell's holidays, and it may leave some councillors with precious little to say.

Here we are at the end of July 2013 and not a single report has been published; the council has not published its arrangements for publishing reports either, but since there is no requirement for councillors to publish a report, there seems little point in the council telling us about its arrangements for non-publication of non-existent reports.

Actually there is one exception to this lack of activity. If you bury deep enough, you will find three previous "annual reports" on the profile for Kevin Madge, the most recent document being for 2010/11.

Kev's annual reports (here's one) contain large splashes of red (presumably a reference to his professed socialism), and quite an amount of yellow (you can make your own minds up about what that alludes to...taking the **** perhaps?). Otherwise they are the sort of electoral junk mail that normally gets stuffed through your letter box a few weeks before polling day.

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And now for the bit you have all been waiting for: Section (5) of the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2011:

 5. Annual reports by members of a local authority
(1) A local authority must make arrangements for—
(a) each person who is a member of the authority to make an annual report about the person's activities as a member of the authority during the year to which the report relates,
(b) each person who is a member of the authority's executive to make an annual report about the person's activities as a member of the executive during the year to which the report relates, and
(c) the authority to publish all annual reports produced by its members and by the members of its executive.
(2) The arrangements may include conditions as to the content of a report that must be satisfied by the person making it.
(3) A local authority must publicise its arrangements.
(4) In exercising its functions under this section a local authority must have regard to guidance given by the Welsh Ministers.

Remembering the 1911 Llanelli Railway Strike and Riot

AUGUST  2013  - A WEEK OF COMMEMORATION

Wednesday  14th  August Poems and Pints – at ‘The Club’  Queen Victoria Road 7.30 ‘til late   FREE

Thursday  15th  August FORUM – ‘From the Great Unrest of 1911 to the Global Rebellions of 2013’  with John Edwards, Robert Griffiths, Jonathan Edwards MP, Tim Evans at Llanelli Rural Council Offices, Vauxhall  5pm  FREE Tickets are limited. Tel Tim Evans to reserve them 07962804452

Saturday  17th  August Commemoration March – assemble at Llanelli Railway Station, 11.30 for 12. Rally in town centre, wreath laying ceremony at Box Cemetery. Côr Cochion Caerdydd. Meet in Stamps public house, Station Road, after march.